Digital World Culture Shifts | How Real Time Interaction is Changing Everything

I read this on Kevin Kelly's blog a few months ago.  "If you are not in real time, you are dead… Living systems don't have the luxury of waiting overnight to process an incoming signal. If they had to sleep on it, they could die in their sleep. With few exceptions, nature reacts in real time. With few exceptions, business must increasingly react in real time. High transaction costs once prohibited the instantaneous completion of thousands of tiny transactions; they were piled up instead and processed in cost-effective batches. But no longer."

Increasingly, people are expecting things to happen in real time.  (I personally blame Google.)  And yet most of our Sunday morning programming is pre-produced making it very difficult to make a change and switch gears 15 minutes before a service. Though I happen to know many senior pastors who've tried.... 

In thinking about this, it occurs to me that the best example would be to look at the sports world.  Large groups of people gather together for an experience where the outcome is being determined in real-time.  There are certain parameters in place. For example, the stadium creates fixed seats. There is a single game being played. (You wouldn’t switch from soccer to baseball. ) But other parameters are variable based on what is happening at any given moment, such as the length of time for different segments, content on the screens, music being played, etc. 

At a recent San Francisco Giants game, they had a Jewish Heritage day.  After a particularly great play, a Rabbi in the front row with side curls and a black hat stood up and blew a rams horn. A cameraman saw the action and zoomed in and the director promptly put him on the big screen with the words “Rally Rabbi” below him.  The crowd went crazy.  After that, each time a great play occurred, the director would switch to the rabbi—who now realizing he was onscreen would blow the horn loudly—and the crowd delighted in the game.  The next day, guess who was on the front page of the newspaper? The Rally Rabbi.  The ability to create real-time interaction took an ordinary mid-season baseball game and made it special. They were able to go with the moment and capture a serendipity that couldn't have been manufactured if you tried.  

So what would be needed to be able to do this on a Sunday morning? Without the creative team who just spent 36 hours on the multimedia extravaganza you cut plot to shave your eyebrows in your sleep...

It appears that the most significant thing in faciliating real-time interaction is simply creating the infrastructure for it.  Drawing from our sports analogy:

Define Roles with a Goal to Facilitate.  Production teams for stadiums have clearly defined roles and the tools to perform them.  On game day, each person is prepped and in place ready to perform their function for the event.  The best directors not only coordinate the team, but also understand crowd dynamics.  They know how to create energy in groups and develop a satisfying emotional experience.  And often know how to calm a hostile energy when the game isn’t going well. Rather than show producers--though there is some of that--they are facilitators that support engagement and reaction.

Build Communication Structure.  The cameraman and the director are connected both on headset and visually.  This gives them the ability to respond in real time to the moment working as a team.

Work from a Pallet of Content.  Video production for a stadium is set up more like a buffet (non-linear) than a four course meal (linear).  There is a variety of sound bytes (in this case a ram’s horn), video clips, music samples, and graphics (rally rabbi) which can be accessed or created in real time.  The operators prepare a content palette to pull from rather than preparing a linear “show” that unfolds.

Use a Script.  Content may not be scripted, but time slots are.  The freedom of spontenaety happens within a structure.

Have a Contingency Plan.  People in sports know that not everything always goes according to plan.  If you attempt something that doesn't work--go to the team logo, then move to the next clip.

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