“Don’t be a bystander – be an upstander” – learnings from first weeks at the new social voice platform Clubhouse

You might have met them at one of the profiled innovation events taking place somewhere in Sweden – or around the Globe. Michael Sillion alias Captain Future and Bert-Ola Bergstrand is a duo with mutual understanding for global trends, society, behaviors and innovation. Now, they are exploring Clubhouse – the new hyped social platform based on voice – trying to find out how to best position Swedish entrepreneurs, Nordic Innovation and how to bring people together across the globe.

They are passionate about the global goals, social entrepreneurship and bringing people together across all sectors and national borders. I think we met in Almedalen for the first time more than ten years ago, and since then we’ve met many times. A few years back, we even ran in to one another in the streets of San Francisco, which ended up with great conversations in a rooftop bar.

I really appreciate Michaels and Bert-Olas holistic views on how the world is evolving and how it affects our future societies. I’ve learnt a lot from listening on what caught their interest when travelling the globe, but also from the deepened theories that lies as a fundamental for their beliefs. They often talk about community, the sense of belonging and how to foster people and ideas in a very including way. 

A few weeks ago, they pinged me on Messenger, inviting me in to this new platform called Clubhouse. I hadn’t heard about it, but decided it could be fun to try out. 

Clubhouse is a new type of social network based on voice - where people around the world come together to talk, listen and learn from each other in real- time. Kind of like a livestreaming pod, conference or conversation – like a next step to pods, digital books or even Spotify. Alpha Exploration, the company behind Clubhouse, describes it like “a space for relaxed voice-conversations”. And this platform really has trended. At the start of December 2020, Clubhouse had just 3,500 members around the world. Recently it passed 2 million users, and last week Clubhouse confirmed it raised a Series B round led by Andreessen Horowitz and the valuation is 1 Billion USD.

I downloaded the app, and found myself very quickly into a room together with Michael and Bert-Ola guiding me through the app. Virtual rooms, chat rooms and the names of the people in them. In some rooms there are more than a 100 people participating, in others only a few. When you enter a room, you can hear the conversation – and if you want to speak, you raise your hand. It’s truly fascinating, and if you have the time, the opportunities to listen and engage are endless.

Michael and Bert-Ola enthusiastically tells me about how they been hanging at Clubhouse day and night for the past few weeks. Deepening their understanding of how the platform works and building their network, they have now started to open their own chat rooms and virtual rooms trying to position the Nordics – and bringing people from all over the world together.

- There are so many important conversations taking place at Clubhouse, Bert-Ola sais. If I would to recite one, I would like to mention Tim Leberecht who said “The pandemic made the “multiverse workplace” a reality, which demands multiverse leaders adept at commuting between different worlds, in fact, multiple universes, and not just virtual and real worlds, but different platforms, cultures, identities”. As leaders it means we need to step into these platforms and curate these conversation about how to form our future.

- We live in a global world, sais Michael Sillion, and if we are to continue to do that and solve all of our many global challenges together - many defined by the 17 SDGs - we need to build global collaboration - on all levels - and start learning from each other. And Clubhouse is by far the most interesting and exiting tool and platform to do that. We here in Sweden/the Nordics have a very strong brand and ability to contribute to this. That’s why many of us here need to get on Clubhouse and start living up to that brand and start connecting and collaborating globally.

- One of the most thrilling experiences so far was listening to a former holocaust survivor on his way to the UN. The session was put up 10 minutes in advance and took place in a taxi. More than 1000 people joined in. On a question of what advise he had for the future generation, he said “Don’t be a bystander – be an upstander”. That is something I carry with me, Bert-Ola shares.

-  Now is the time to enter Clubhouse, we have a window of opportunity to position Sweden and the Nordics. We are at the moment trying to establish two rooms; Meet the Nordics (Fridays) and Learning Sessions (Thursday 14-17). My advise would be to enter and engage – step up and make your voice heard, sais Bert-Ola.

Me, myself, I’ve listned in on a number of interesting conversation, among them theories on how to go from scale to smaller cities - even tribes in the future, to find the sense of meaning in our technocratic world. That’s just one example. I hope to explore more, learn more and engage in future conversations. And I hope to bring the Link?ping community with me, and to share thoughts together with our Swedish and Nordics – and of course widen our perspectives globally as well.

//Lena Miranda