WXO

Campfire 70: Tech That Takes You There Before And After
2022-07-13 09:55 - 11:25 (Europe/London) | Zoom
The travel summer season is in full swing – but remember when it wasn’t?
In recent years, travellers were forced to seek their thrills from the confines of their own homes.
And even though IRL travel is back on the cards, as a result the time before and in particular after a vacation has become far more important. This doesn’t just apply to travel, but to all experiences.
So what can museums, attractions, hotels and all other experience creators do when their audiences are not on site to increase those most overlooked of the “five Es” of experiences: entice and extend?
How can you take your experiences into customers’ living rooms and remind them of the beautiful moments they had?
And how can you merge the digital and physical worlds to create something far more impactful than yet another newsletter?
Barbara Prodinger is a lecturer in Experience Design in the field of Tourism at the University of Applied Sciences in Salzburg, Austria.
During the pandemic, she asked herself how a travel destination might get in touch with its guests in times of travel restrictions. This is how her startup, LIVIAR, was born. By merging the physical with the digital world, travellers can now dive into their holiday memories.
In anticipation, think about these questions:

What new ways could you engage with your clients before the actual experience?
How about afterwards?
How might you create a tailored experience in your customers’ living rooms?
How might you merge the digital and physical worlds?

*NB: This event is for WXO Members ONLY. To attend Campfires, click here to apply to join the WXO.*

Campfire 69: The Nowhere Office With Julia Hobsbawm
2022-07-06 17:55 - 19:25
“Everyone wants jobs but they want something else too: meaning. Work-Life balance. In other words, a workshift.”
– Julia Hobsbawm
Presenteeism. Low productivity. Stress. The world of work was sick long before Covid arrived.
So why should a return to business as usual also mean a return to the office?
Best-selling author and consultant Julia Hobsbawm‘s latest book, The Nowhere Office – an FT “Book to Read in 2022” – helps companies understand how to use this extraordinary moment in time to completely rethink the way they do business.
Hobsbawm has spent over 30 years working with organisations to develop strategies for better outcomes – what she calls “Social Health”. She was awarded an OBE in 2015 for Services to Business and is a founder of the US-led Workforce Institute.
In anticipation, ask yourself:

How might you improve your own happiness in the workplace? How might you extend this to your team?
If happier employees are more productive, should employers take an interest in their wellbeing outside of work?
When working autonomously, how can you create a shared sense of purpose and community among employees?

*NB: This event is for WXO Members ONLY. To attend Campfires, click here to apply to join the WXO.*

Campfire 68: Here, Boy! Meet The Petaverse ????
2022-06-29 17:55 - 19:25
In January 2022 UK-based Tiny Rebel Games closed US$7m to build the Petaverse Network. Its aim is to create a web3 open standard where virtual pets can follow you through the metaverse and be passed down through generations.
According to creative director Lee Cummings:
“I don’t see an AR wearables future without pets. I see people changing their virtual pets to match their outfits and moods. Pets have a positive effect on mental wellbeing, so why not augmented pets to make the world a better place?”
Tiny Rebel Games is building a wide variety of games and experiences for mobile, web and XR for these unique, intelligent digital pets. They are focused on composability with a cross blockchain strategy built around interpretable data, and plan to welcome the community to use their assets and technology to build experiences of their own.
So what does this mean for experience designers like you?
Tiny Rebel Games’ CEO and Co-Founder, Susan Cummings, will share her thoughts on interoperability, open standards and cross-blockchain functionality as it pertains to the building blocks of the metaverse.
She’ll be in conversation with experiential marketing guru Max Lenderman, who gave us an overview of web3 for experientialists in Campfire 44 – excellent reading material to get you prepped for this session.
In anticipation, think about these 3 questions:

How might your experiences translate to the metaverse?
How could you link or extend your experiences across devices and blockchains?
How could web3 technology elevate your experience to new heights?

*NB: This event is for WXO Members ONLY. To attend Campfires, click here to apply to join the WXO.*

Campfire 67: How Meow Wolf Makes Art Accessible
2022-06-22 17:55 - 19:25
“The disability market is the largest untapped market in the world.”

So says Beth Rypkema: accessible arts expert, art guide for Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station, and our next Firestarter. Rypkema specialises in making art experiences accessible to the visually impaired and those with other disabilities. Her work to create an accessible tour of Meow Wolf’s latest experience, Highlights of the Convergence, was a groundbreaking project in the immersive arts.As well as making good commercial sense and helping Meow Wolf to fulfil their commitments as a BCorp, it opened up new worlds to the accessibility community – many of whom had thought they would never be able to experience something like this.As a creator looking to trigger transformation, you already know that art should be for everyone. So it’s time to ask yourself: why is accessibility often the last thing that immersive experience creators think of?
Rypkema will share how by designing to accommodate disability, you can enhance the experience for everyone. As Arthur Zards commented in Campfire 55:“Accessibility isn’t a constraint. It’s an opportunity.”In anticipation, think about these 3 questions:

At what point in the experience design process do you usually start thinking about accessibility – if at all?
How might you adopt multisensory elements to make your experience more accessible and enriching for all?
How many different ways could you impart the same information or tell the same story?

*NB: This event is for WXO Members ONLY. To attend Campfires, click here to apply to join the WXO.*

Campfires 65 & 66: The Quest For The Experience Design Triple Diamond
2022-06-15 17:55 - 19:25
Prepare to cross the threshold of your known lands on a Hero’s and Heroine’s Journey to a mysterious island called Experience Design.Your destiny: to gain unexpected insights, gather new frameworks, and deepen your understanding of the transformative power of designing experiences.Your guide: Pigalle Tavakkoli, an experience designer and teacher with over 15 years’ experience in producing cross-disciplinary experiences that bring the arts and sciences together, and developing immersive storyworlds that merge live and digital platforms.Since 2012, Tavakkoli has co-developed and taught the UK’s first short course in Experience Design at Central Saint Martins University in London. She has also now founded the online School of Experience Design.In her quest to define the meaning of experience design and map a clear process to deliver transformation, Tavakkoli has travelled to lands far and wide. Now, she’s opening her treasure chest of insights so you can explore this hidden island together.Nuggets will include the Experience Change Equation and Experience Design Building Blocks. As you reach the final destination on the island, Tavakkoli will reveal her jewel in the crown: the Experience Design Triple Diamond process.
To get in the zone, ask yourself:

How do you define an experience and a transformation?
What are your key guiding principles when designing an experience?
Do you design through intuition, follow an established process, or have your own process for transformation?

*NB: This event is for WXO Members ONLY. To attend Campfires, click here to apply to join the WXO.*

Campfires 63 & 64: Curb Experience Enthusiasm
2022-06-08 17:55 - 19:25
Overly perfectionist or passionate clients can have us all quaking in our boots. Not to mention that sometimes our own passion can be a blocker. How many times have you struggled to let creative projects go, or broken your own boundaries when it comes to fees, deadlines and scope?But less is more. Completion is better than perfection. And killing your darlings isn’t just for novelists.So when passion threatens to get in the way, how can we manage our clients’ – and our own! – expectations to build engaging experiences that we can be proud of?Themed experience expert Cynthia Vergon may have the answer.
Vergon has worked with some of the most prestigious marketing and design firms in the themed experience industry. She was recently commissioned by experience design firm and lead creative designer Jora Vision to work on Quake, a new immersive experience at Lisbon Earthquake Centre that allows audiences to see, feel and understand the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 using a blend of narrative and technology.Based on her experiences, Vergon will tell you how to:

Work with passionate experts to find the balance between historical “fact” and storytelling
Navigate working with passionate clients, multiple changes and shifting deadlines
Manage your own passions to gracefully let go of projects that feel like your baby

To get in the zone, ask yourself:

Have you ever felt that your passion (or your client’s passion) was getting in the way of a project?
Is there a moment when a project no longer belongs to you? How do you know when that point is reached?
Is perfection possible? If not, how can you explain to your client that at some point, completion is better than perfection?

*NB: This event is for WXO Members ONLY. To attend Campfires, click here to apply to join the WXO.*

Campfire 61: Mind The Experience Design Gap
2022-05-25 17:55 - 19:25
Some of us are designers. Some of us are producers. Some of us even do both. Therefore, we all understand the value of what we do at each step of the experience creation process.However, the point at which experience designers hand over to operations is the part of this journey that often gets overlooked. And if you don’t know which questions you should be asking each other and which design elements are important for both teams to be involved in, you might be headed for disaster…Carolene Méli, Experience Strategist and Founder of Brands of the Med, will lead a discussion on how to build better relationships between creators and producers when designing new experiences, drawing on a recent VIP project for Cirque du Soleil.
To get in the zone, ask yourself:

If you’re a designer, what are three questions to ask the producer?
If you’re a producer, what are three questions to ask the designer?
What tools do you use to ensure everyone on your team is on the same page during the handover?

*NB: This event is for WXO Members ONLY. To attend Campfires, click here to apply to join the WXO.*

Campfyre 60: Top Flops & Epic Fails
2022-05-18 17:55 - 19:25
Bad experiences are bad for all of us.
When so many firms claim to offer ‘experiences’ today, how can consumers know what’s true and what isn’t? How can they choose between experiences that are really well designed and good, and those that aren’t?
And how can clients distinguish between firms who claim to create great experiences, and those who really deliver?
Friction like this is bad for consumer and client confidence. If a person or a firm is burned when they spend money and time in the Experience Economy, next time
they’re likely to hesitate, to choose an option that seems safer, and to spend somewhere else.
We need to find a way to make it easier for people and firms to avoid the ‘experience’
creators who cut corners on the experience, spend their money on hype, and so put people off from spending more on experiences in the future.
So for CampfYre 60, we’re on a mission to smoke out failure. Together, let’s figure out why bad experiences happen – and how we can make sure we don’t make the same mistake twice. If we don’t, we’ll only end up with more Fyre Festivals in all experience sectors.
In anticipation, think about:

What’s the worst experience you’ve ever attended?
What’s the worst experience you’ve ever designed?
What did you learn from both?

*NB: This event is for WXO Members ONLY. To attend Campfires, click here to apply to join the WXO.*

Campfire 59: The Expectation Effect
2022-05-18 09:55 - 11:55
Your last chance to catch award-winning science writer David Robson’s brilliant talk on The Startling Ways That Expectations Shape Experience, now at an APAC-friendly time.
It turns out, all sorts of expectations – what we think about ageing, what we think about the food we eat, if we think something will be easy or hard – have a significant impact on outcomes. Far more powerfully than most of us realise.
We think there’s many insights that experience designers can borrow from Robson’s research to craft customers’ / guests’ / visitors’ / employees’ / audience’s expectations and create better experiences.
Expect to hear radical, evidence-based discoveries on how expectation can have profound impacts on experience – and, together with the experience pioneers at the Campfire, figure out how to apply these in the experiences you create.
*NB: This event is for WXO Members ONLY. To attend Campfires, click here to apply to join the WXO.*

Campfire 58: The "New You" Business
2022-05-11 17:55 - 19:55
Our very own Experience Economy Godfather, Joe Pine, returns to share his latest thinking on how to design for the next revolution in our economy: transformations.
Transformation is what happens when companies use experiences as the raw material to guide people to change.
Many businesses are naturally already in the transformation business. Think fitness or healthcare centres, where you transform your body.
Universities or coaching sessions, where you transform your mind.
Or management consultants of all stripes, who transform companies.
However, most other businesses – particularly b2b ones, and including experience designers – could greatly benefit by thinking how they could elevate their offerings to the transformation level.
Enter Pine, and his revolutionary thinking on how to consider transformative experiences, design for aspirational jobs to be done, and stride into the “New You” business with confidence.
*NB: This event is for WXO Members ONLY. To attend Campfires, click here to apply to join the WXO.*

Campfire 57: Trojan Horses And Finding Meaning In Unlikely Places
2022-05-04 17:55 - 19:55
Frankfurt-based attractions designer Michael Badelt believes that there’s a huge amount of untapped potential to infuse attractions with an underlying narrative or meaning for the audience to discover – if they dare…
And whether you’re designing haunted houses, theme parks, or something entirely different, the ability to deliver meaningful thoughts that will *haunt* audiences long beyond your experience itself is a *frighteningly* relevant one.
This is the second of two daily sessions, at an Americas-friendly time. For APAC, see Campfire 56.
*NB: This event is for WXO Members ONLY. To attend Campfires, click here to apply to join the WXO.*

Campfire 56: Trojan Horses And Finding Meaning In Unlikely Places
2022-05-04 09:55 - 11:55
Frankfurt-based attractions designer Michael Badelt believes that there’s a huge amount of untapped potential to infuse attractions with an underlying narrative or meaning for the audience to discover – if they dare…
And whether you’re designing haunted houses, theme parks, or something entirely different, the ability to deliver meaningful thoughts that will *haunt* audiences long beyond your experience itself is a *frighteningly* relevant one.
This is the first of two daily sessions, at an APAC-friendly time. For the Americas, see Campfire 57.
*NB: This event is for WXO Members ONLY. To attend Campfires, click here to apply to join the WXO.*

Bonfire 1: The ERY Method (Part Two)
2022-04-26 16:55 - 18:30
Experience Economy expert Kevin Dulle gives 24 WXO members a guided tour through his ERY Method in the second of two exclusive, hands-on masterclasses.
For those who might have missed it, Dulle introduced the ERY Method back in Campfire 10 – the only one of our Campfires to date where every piece of feedback was a 10/10.
In this deep dive into Dulle’s self-styled “brilliantly stupid / stupidly brilliant” method, you’ll learn:

How the ERY Method liberates creative thinking for experience designers and non-designers alike.
How you can apply it to your own business ideas.
How to successfully present your evolved ideas to investors – with the chance to pitch to a surprise guest on the second session.

Places are limited to 24, for registered WXO members only, and allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. And for this first Bonfire, they’re totally free.
*NB: This event is for WXO Members ONLY. To attend Campfires, click here to apply to join the WXO.*

Women in Experience (WiX): Session 1
2022-04-21 17:30 - 18:30
Founded by WXO Co-Founders Nasya Kamrat and Sheena Patel and Founding Member Kevi Louise Johnson, WiX is open to all female-identifying practitioners in the experience sector.
This first virtual gathering will explore:

Current practices or constructs in the world of work that are not best serving women’s ability to contribute to the Experience Economy
Challenges or roadblocks to professional development and opportunities
How we effectively ‘work’ and how those attributes can contribute to and inform the Experience Economy

Click here to register your interest in attending.

Campfire 54: Pics That Produce Happiness
2022-04-20 17:55 - 19:25
Selfies and snaps are essential parts of the VALUE equation of EXPERIENCES.

They give people experiential currency and that all important status, and they give experience creators an essential marketing tool.

But taking photos can take us out of flow. And social media can be bad – really bad – for our wellbeing.

How on earth can we square this circle?

Mandy Seligman, psychologist, may have the answer.

An expert in positive psychology since she studied with the founder of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, Seligman will share her fascinating new project, and the ideas behind it, on how we can help people take pics that help, rather than hinder, their happiness.
*NB: This event is for WXO Members ONLY. To attend Campfires, click here to apply to join the WXO.*
