Neon Monday #194 — Trends for 2022

Welcome to Issue 194.

Three event trends for 2022. Based on a dozen trend reports I read this past week, events I co-organized last year, and fingerpitzengefühl. 

1. The Micro Event

Smaller and shorter events throughout the year bridging the experience gap of attendees between annual events. With a selection of speakers who do not immediately take an hour of speaking time, but rather 20 minutes. Event content can be turned into on-demand resources that keep attendees coming back year-round to continue learning, self-learning, and more. 

Examples are Stay Curious by Beyond Tellerrand, PlaygroundTV by We Are Playgrounds.

2. The Community Organized Event

This one is closely related to Micro Events. Due to all the uncertainties surrounding COVID, event planners need to be extremely flexible with their planning and budget. Working with hubs run by the community brings people together in-person or at online gatherings throughout the year, around the main conference theme. Locally organized events help participants build new relationships and support your network. 

Examples are the House of Beautiful People Chambers, Creative Mornings, and the fully automated Nomadlist community member events. Community building apps to look at Circle, Orbit, Discord, or Beyond.

3. The rise of a Metaverse

Metaverses are already here, but not the one Zuck is imagining. When Travis Scott performed in Fortnite in April 2020, over 12 million people came to the show and spent real money on digital fan wear to wear in Fortnite. The Metaverse is not just the next big thing for events. It represents a fundamental shift in infrastructure, business models, suppliers, technology, user experience, and overall sustainability. With Meta, Epic Games, and Microsoft investing billions in creating their version of a Metaverse, it is a natural effect that the Metaverse will be the next step in the not-distant future. 

Creative Agencies to watch are Journee by Waltz Binaire and Dog Studio (Tomorrowland, KIKK Festival)

I'm excited about Mirco events and community-organized ones, because of the layered value they create. I'm somewhat skeptical about the Metaverse as much as I've been in it, it's been a special private experience. Beautiful, yet challenging setting to meet new people and make meaningful connections.

See you at one of the upcoming events. — Thomas

ps. Last week was the first time sending with Revue, unfortunately, you got my newsletter 4 times. I have no idea what happened. Revue's support team neither. In any case, I hope it will not happen again.

This Week

to Sat 29 Jan 2022

The inaugural edition of the Saudi Design Festival takes place from January 9th to 29th, 2022. The Saudi Design Festival focus on the power of transformation in and by design the festival is set to be the first of its kind in the Middle East.

UNIQUE VR EXPERIENCE to 27 Feb / Evoluon, Eindhoven / from €17,50 / 12+ /

Travel forward in time and discover the distant future. Not 10, 100 or 1000, but billions of years ahead — beyond the moment the sun has burned out.

Tue 25 Jan at 18:00 GMT / from £3.14

Nicer Tuesdays is a monthly talks event, bringing together speakers from across the creative world. This week with Alex Hunting and Naomi Anderson-Subryan

Wed 26 Jan, 2022 / 20:30 CET / Free

An in-depth interview with Netflix illustrator and character designer Abigail Larson. About her artistic journey, and successful relationship with art books.

Web 26 - Thu 27 Jan / Free

A community conference on building real-world Jamstack sites. Hear from the Jamstack experts from Netlify, Microsoft, Astro, Cloudinary, and more. Take part in live Q&As and Slack groups.

Thu, Jan 27, 2022 at 6:30 PM EST / Online / Free

Join Liz Stinson, the editor of Marvel by Design, a new release by gestalten, as she moderates a discussion that will connect the dots between comic book culture and its undeniable influence in every creative field including the evolution of graphic design, editorial design, movies, and visual culture at large. Panelists include some of Marvel’s most renowned artists and graphic designers including School of Art Dean Mike Essl A’96, Chris Eliopoulos, and Paul Sahre.

Thu 27 Jan at 18:00 CET

Design Museum LIVE event on demystifying data visualization with Paolo Ciuccarelli, Professor of Design and Founding Director at Center for Design; Giorgia Lupi, Partner at Pentagram; and Artist Nathalie Miebach.

Fri 28 Jan 2022 at 12:00 CET

Rightaligned in conversation series is a collection of events that go behind–the–scenes with a wide–range of creative people including graduates, juniors, freelancers and founders. This week with Maisie Benson.

Sun 30 Jan / 12 pm to 4 pm EST / Free

CC Fest is an opportunity for students and teachers to engage in creative coding. Come spend a few hours making interactive and engaging digital art, animation, games. We will be offering multiple sessions in creative coding, a chance to meet other students and teachers, and an amazing keynote. Tickets proceeds and donations will be shared between the presenters and donated to Processing Foundations.

Tools

  • Live video in Keynote on iPad. You can add a live video from any of your iPad’s cameras to a slide. During a presentation, the live video plays only when the slide it’s on appears. You can turn the live video source on and off at any time.

  • DeepL is an AI-powered translation tool that is faster and more accurate than Google translate in my experience.

  • Butter platform for interactive and online workshops.

See 2022 in one view. Plan your most important events for the year, and create your overview. The minimally designed calendar has highlighted weekends and is giclée-printed in black on thick and durable matte paper. It measures 700x1000mm, the paperweight is 189 g/m² with a paper thickness of 0.26 mm. The color used is ssense black (RGB: 51/51/51). Get 10% discount using code "NeonMonday"

Watch Back

In this session design leader, start-up advisor, speaker and coach, Andy Budd, takes us through some of the reasons why we're experiencing this sense of collective Ennui, and what we can do about it. This talk may make for awkward listening at times. However unless we can have an open and honest conversation about the behaviours that are holding us back, we'll never unlock the full potential of what design has to offer. Recorded at Push UX 2021.

See you next week.

Are you or do you have a friend/colleague who organizes a workshop, field trip, meet-up, festival, or conference and think it's a good fit for Neon Moiré? You are invited to add the upcoming event to neonmoire.com.

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If this issue of Neon Monday inspired you, share it with a friend, and you want to help me make more like it, you can buy me a coffee or promote your upcoming event or product in this newsletter or on our homepage. Thanks for your support! 🙏

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