Short-term social networks – Part 2

This post follows on from this previous post where we introduced this term we’re using – short-term social networks.  And remember, this term doesn’t explicitly mean digital social networks – it is much more general than that.  A crowd who gather around an incident in the street and a queue in the post office are just as much a short-term social network as a real-time twitter conversation about the latest Doctor Who episode.  What they share is that they are a community of people who gather around a common interest for a limited period of time.

Here we share some more of our continuing (and emerging) thinking on this are in application to the arts and to festivals.  Festivals are slightly more complex than the general arts case since they are by definition a series of shared experiences rather than just one shared experience but that complexity aside, in all arts cases it’s clear that the object here that people are gathering around is the performance or the event.

Here we’ve broken down the lifecycle of what happens around an event or performance into five distinct stages.  Each can constitute a short-term social network – remember that is a generic term – but each stage has very different characteristics.  As we go through them, remember we are always thinking about the community of people.

Stage 1 – Before Non-Local.  A number of people have bought tickets to an event but they can literally be all over the world and so have no connection to each other unless they have explicitly planned to buy tickets with other people they know.  While before they may have had a general shared interest such as contemporary dance or a particular theatre company, they now have a very specific shared interest – the specific performance they have bought tickets for.

Stage 2 – Before Local.  While Stage 1 can be very long – people can nowadays buy tickets quite a way in advance, stage 2 is much shorter – it is when performance attendees are in the same location but it is before the event – ie they have come to Edinburgh and the venue.  They may just be in the bar or it could be the whole city – still the only connectivity available is a happenstance meeting at the bar or in the queue similar.

Stage 3 – The Event.  This is of course the performance itself.  Typically very little connectivity between attendees unless this is artist-led and explicitly part of the performance.

Stage 4 – After Local.  So now, the show is over and people have spilled over into nearby spaces, be that the bar or another event.  

Stage 5 – After Non-Local.  Now people go their separate ways and leave the environs of where the performance took place

This may all sound quite obvious.  But it becomes *very* interesting when you look at the two key variables I’ve discussed here – proximity and shared interest.  If you follow the journey I’ve described you’ll see that while proximity by necessity peaks with the event, shared interest grows.  

Our premise is there is a great opportunity potential to create new value for audiences by giving them new ways to capitalise on that shared interest.  What might be the innovative tools & interventions that we could drop into different phases to help people do that?  This inquiry we call that the short-term social networks

Short-term social networks

Here at festivalslab we are fascinated by network theory and how it is applied through the medium of digital to make great things happen – and something particularly on our mind is the idea of short-term social networks.

By definition, what festivals do is put on events and assuming those events are any good, they attract an audience.  And using a bit of terminology we could say that what is happening is that a network or community is created around a social object.  And members of that network or community necessarily have something in common – namely an interest in seeing that particular performance or talk.  And given the nature of events, the network comes together for the length of the performance and then everyone goes their separate ways – hence our using the term short-term social networks.  This of course can also apply to something of slightly greater duration such as a festival strand or theme.

This may sound like a rather obvious description of the dynamics of a festival event.  But we think it starts to get *very* interesting when you ask the additional question… what else can these networks do?

Festival short-term social networks exist before, during and after the event but to date the only way in which they are connected is through being in the same physical space.  And interactive theatre shows at the Fringe aside, there is typically no interaction with other network members unless you are already going with friends or have a conversation with someone at the bar.

We think this is a ripe opportunity.  Everyone in the network already has something in common – the wish to see the performance and once the performance is done, the shared experience of that.  

Therefore we believe that there are also likely to be many more things they may have in common such as mutual friends and mutual interests.  So what can festivals do to enable this serendipity and in such a way that it is self-organising?  How can queuing for a performance in Charlotte Square Gardens or near the Gilden Balloon in itself become an amazing experience?

So this is the potential of short-term social networks in the festival environment.  Expect to hear much more from us on this topic in the coming months.

[thanks to coreburn for sharing your images through flickr creative commons]