Dinner Party Awesome Style

From Zanecorpwiki

It's no secret, I f'in love dinner parties, and I 100% believe in the reality of Dinner Party: Awesome Style.

#1: The Media Experience

Augmented reality is here now. You don't need holo goggles and widespread geo tagging. Just take your current reality and augment it. Dinners have small terminals, noise isolating ear buds, and everything wound together through software. The HP Mini 1000 Mi 10.1 might be a good choice. Top end of screen size for net books (which also should allow for a larger keyboard) and SSD. Plus, comes loaded with a linux that may be directly usable in the project.

These facilitate input to the user and direct to and communication to the Awesome system itself (facilitation software). Next step is to capture the main user output. Everyone is miked and those all become channels for consumption and feeds into the archival streams.

#2: Dynamic Micro-Networks

Each participant can mix all the available streams (local streams and other channels) into channels which other participants can engage with according to the access rules set for channels. Huh?

Tom DJ's his own soundtrack using his music collection, while tuning into a conversation between Bob and Sue. There conversation is open for listening, but closed for joining, but Tom is adding his own commentary to his channel, which Lucy has tuned into. She finds him a bit droll, so joins Tom's open channel to set him straight.

#3: Awesome Facilitation

The heart of the system is the hardware/software infrastructure that manages streams faciliting creating and interacting with channels. The application domain is both social and business. Facilitating brainstorming sessions, coding sessions, executive discussions made 10 times more efficient. This will probably be where the big money is made.

In addition to the software, part of the key would be to provide food, drink, shoulder massages, whatever. The primary conception involves close proximity... being in the group while not confined by it is the feel. However, in some situations break out rooms, etc. might be part of the setup as well.

The social business would certainly be priced to be profitable in-and-of-itself, but might be more valuable for the marketing and customer relationship aspects. The most awesome role pen and paper role playing session ever? Poker? Even just watching movies... to the next level.

Closing Notes

• creative brainstorming
• executive planning
• mediation
• dinner party
• role playing
• poker, other games
• policy debates
• jam sessions
• free form rap battles (whaaaaat!)

Option to record all streams (atomic and channels) for archival and re-mixing. The data laydown of the thing is bananas... especially with video in the mix. For sure want to record each users point of view (their effective audio/video channel... glasses mounted cameras put you in the seat... whaaaaat!).

For prototyping, I'd put together an 8 way system. Not sure how far it would scale, but you want something big enough to pretty much force a break up. That probably needs at least 6, but my experience leads me to fear you'd too often get two tripods, and they'd tend to be more stable than we want. 8 may be enough to keep things fluid.

Capital costs... $10K for proto-rig?

• netbooks: $330 (HP Mini is the cheapest that seems to have everything we'd want)
• headphones: $100 (I've got a pair of $40 noise isolating senhieser that sound great and are fine for blocking out the coffee shop's music, but something with better isolation would be worth if money can buy that... something with good reproduction, isolation, and active cancellation?)
• mics: $100 (not sure what a decent lavelier costs; jam mics would be a whole other thing... you could end up with 3-4 channels per person with instrument specialized mikes)

Individual equipment (get 9 so there's a backup ready) would be around $5000 with tax.

An ambient mike or two, 16 way input, and server with capacity and speed, and memory to lay down and publish all channels... Instead of recording outgoing channels, could lay down channel file that describes the mixing of the channel at a given point in time. That way the created channels could be recreated without recording them. So our recording load would be around 10 or so. Publish load would be 8 at most. Would this require another machine?

Anyway, $5K for all that.

You could probably do the prototype for $30K; 3 people for one month. If it goes well, plan for another $70K for production software for phase one. Would probably want two server for production so there's a backup ready in case of problems.

Social gatherings would maybe start at $50/hour (min 4) for parties of 8, plus extras (food, massages, etc.) You get a technician on hand. More for a specialized host. Business setups could easily go for a $2,500 K/day for middle size gatherings. Large, mini-conference formats could involve multiple rigs.

Part of the channel management system involves informing participants about channels. In the final system, this will involve browsable interface as well as opt-in push announcements.