There’s a new term for a certain type of event popping up in cities around the country: EventSlop.
Yahoo! recently wrote about bizarre gatherings such as celebrity lookalike contests, aura battles, and events where strangers gather to eat pudding with forks. The term comes from linguist Adam Aleksic, who describes EventSlop this way:
“The main purpose of the event is to generate algorithmic engagement above all else.”
In other words, the event happens in the physical world, but it’s primarily designed to create content that will perform online.
That adds a third category to the way I usually think about events.
Look at the Chairs
I often say that you can tell the difference between an event designed to build an audience and one designed to build community by looking at the chairs.
At an audience-building event, the chairs usually face the stage because the goal is to connect the people in the room to the person with the microphone. At a community-building event, the chairs often face each other because the goal is to help the people in the room connect with one another.
But EventSlop introduces a third possibility: the event isn’t really designed for the people in the chairs at all.
With an audience-building event, the attendees are the audience. With a community-building event, the attendees create value for each other.
With EventSlop, the attendees are the content.
The real audience is scrolling through TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube later.
People at these events can still have fun and make connections. But that’s different from designing the event around those connections.
Who is your event really for?
There’s nothing wrong with photographing your event, recording it, or turning it into clips to share online. But if you’re changing what happens in the room because it will perform better outside the room, you’re producing content instead of building community.
If your goal is community, don’t judge the event primarily by the content it produces afterward. Judge it by what happens between the people who show up.
The people in the room have to be the point.
So, how can you best serve those people? What can they do for each other? And how can you create something they’ll want to come back to time and time again?
That’s what we’ll work through in the Community Roadmap Challenge, starting October 5th. Over five days, you’ll use short video lessons and worksheets, along with three live calls, to figure out who you want to bring together, what they can do for each other, why they’ll want to keep coming back, and how you can generate revenue from the community you build.
This is the last Community Roadmap Challenge I’ll run this year.
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