A thousand people, five hundred conversations, back to the stage.

technique — attributed to Steve Gottlieb

Gottlieb spotted that the infrastructure had moved past fixed telephone wires to computers in the middle, which meant connections could be rearranged on the fly. The Shindig architecture lets a thousand people be in five hundred different conversations and then return together to the stage. Twenty-seven patents surround the concept. The design point is that virtual events should be operationally many-to-many, not one-to-many-broken-into-breakouts. The difference shows up in participant behavior. Many-to-many platforms produce conversations the producer did not plan. One-to-many platforms produce attendance with side chats. The architecture determines the social possibility.

For platform builders, virtual event producers, and corporate communicators choosing tools for large-scale virtual gatherings. The principle is most useful as a design criterion when evaluating platforms.

architecture, many-to-many, platform-design, interactivity