It is already pushing 100 degrees in Phoenix. The beaches are about to open this week in San Diego so I am looking forward to heading to our home on Coronado soon. Max turns the big 21 this week as well. I would take him to Vegas, but you know…COVID.
I continue to get a lot of cycling done as the roads remain quiet here in Phoenix. I am heading out on a 50 miler this morning at 7 am.
Before I get started, there are now 61 Panic With Friends.
I plan to slow it down this summer and make two per week. I have some great guests lined up including Mark Cuban this week.
Today I will spotlight the ‘Panic’ with my friend JP Rangaswani who I dialed up in London. JP recently stepped down as Deutsche Banks Chief Data and Innovation Officer. Before that he was Chief Scientist at Salesforce (where I met him). Earlier in his career JP was Chief Scientist at British Telecom and Global CIO at Germany’s Dresdner Bank.
JP and I had a great conversation about the panic and the world we live in and the future. JP has the ability to take complicated subjects and carve them into easily understandable bits.
JP discusses why demand will return for everything that was NOT meant to die. Other topics he dives into…technology used to work with nature to give us both hope and trust and government used to be in charge of just protecting us. Now the government outsources the management of risk and we are seeing the dangers in this COVID pandemic. We want to put our hope in technology, but we just don’t trust its current form…
But wait…there is more…
I have 50 tabs open in my browser with articles I have wanted to read so let me share a few of them.
Hope after the Coronavirus Pandemic: Are These 10 New Consumer Behaviors Here To Stay?
How To Start A Love Affair With Audibooks.
Two from Morgan Housel…What’s Different This Time? and ‘Who Pays for This?‘
Is Private Equity Having It’s Minsky Momnent?
Finally, one of he great joys of writing on this blog is that my wife, my daughter, my sisters-in-law and my nephews read this blog. They also chime in with email comments once in a while and come on my podcast if I ask.
The other day I blogged about ‘a dose of reality‘ and my nephew Jeremy Bernick (senior – age 21) sent me a Medium post he wrote for me to explain some of the COVID phenomenons taking place amongst our yoots! See below:
Gen Z (born after 1998 — which includes me) is destined to be a catalyst for platform paradigm shifts in social entertainment on the internet. It could either take the form of integration across mediums like gaming, music, live events, or convergences in celebrity culture, social networks, and collective vr experiences. Over the course of the next 5 years, kids born in 2009 will be turning 16. In 2009, we had already fully transitioned to mobile (iPhone 4s – Siri was announced). These kids have never known a time without multi-platform, on-the-go, and fully virtual consumption at their fingertips. As a result of these lifelong experiences and habits, I believe we will soon see these kids and gen z generally push towards vr/ar and gaming as new modes of entertainment become more common. By way of illustration, recently, Fortnite featured Travis Scott, one of the largest artists in the world, through a holograph of him immersed playing his album live in Fortnite. Tellingly, the attendance rivaled that of the NFL playoffs and was global in nature. According to Fortnite developers, attendance was approximately 12.5 million. Prior to Scott’s performance, the most attended concert globally was Rod Stewart’s 3.5 million person show at Copacabana beach in ‘94. Unquestionably, there is nearly unlimited potential for most live media and concerts to adopt this virtual platform. These could be far more successful and immersive fan experiences. Here are clips from the show and our potential future.
Beyond live media, I think we are beginning to see the evolution of internet usage expanding into something like animal crossing level immersion and fully virtualized social interaction. Considering that computers and content delivery networks are only getting better at distributing high bandwidth applications across the globe simultaneously, we are in for some significant changes to consumption patterns. Here’s another example from the game Minecraft. Tonight, 15 prominent pop artists, who all have global audiences, will be having a concert live and inside Minecraft. Attendance numbers will likely be massive and beyond any concert stadium’s current capacity. I am curious to see how billing models will adapt to events like these.
The vr/ar scene has historically had infamous volatility in its marketability and market presence over the last 10 years. But based on these recent events in virtual spaces, I am optimistic that the young kids of tomorrow will solidify it as the platform of tomorrow.
Give him a follow on Twitter here and have a great Sunday.