Hosting a session on Clubhouse: how we did it

If you’re in any way active on social media chances are you’ve heard of audio-based app Clubhouse.

Just nine months old, this week the app reached a billion dollar valuation. 

In part it’s built its reputation on exclusivity; users need to secure an invite from an existing member to join.

But also driving this valuation is a growing sense that Clubhouse offers something new and interesting, after several years in which the major platforms have stagnated and copied one another’s features.

I joined less than a month ago, dipping my toe into conversations. I was intrigued but not always impressed. But wanted to understand how I could use it to drive conversation on the topics I care about. So last night I co-hosted a talk on Clubhouse on a potential future of work - one in which work from home becomes work from anywhere.

The session was a success, I think. So in this post I’ll share how we organised and ran it, and some reflections on what I’d improve next time.

What is Clubhouse anyway?

Clubhouse describes itself as "a new type of social product based on voice [that] allows people everywhere to talk, tell stories, develop ideas, deepen friendships, and meet interesting new people around the world."

Within the app (which is iOS only), you can jump in and out of different chats, on different subjects. If you catch the right conversations it’s like a live, free-flowing podcast. If you catch the wrong ones it’s like sitting in a pub next to a loud, braying know-it-all. But unlike a pub you can just leave quietly without sacrificing your drink.

It offers the kind of panel discussions you might hear at a conference, plus the option of locked or private options to talk to friends. 

Crucially, the conversation is transient. Sessions aren’t recorded or saved.

Generally sessions make more sense if you join at the beginning where people introduce themselves and provide some context. But users can - and do - dip in and out.

Having done both I was keen to try hosting a session. I saw on Twitter that Lauren Razavi was also experimenting with Clubhouse. So I dropped her a line to ask if she’d be interested in hosting a session about a topic that appeared in Counterflows, her newsletter on the future of work and global living.

Here’s what we did:

Planning

First, we agreed a broad theme: in this case whether work from home will, post-pandemic, become work from anywhere.

We started Google doc (pictured) to share ideas on issues we might want to cover. What’s driving this? What’s new? What trends are related to this? What are some of the potential downsides? 

With a clearer idea of what we could cover, we invited some guests who could bring some expertise and different angles to ours.

• Matthew Mottola, author of The Human Cloud, to talk about remote work and the freelance economy
• Hotellier Hans Meyer, founder of Zoku, to talk about the rise of subscription living
• Writer, podcaster and global citizen Isabelle Roughol, who could cover issues like passport inequality

We agreed a date and time, scheduled it in the app and began promoting it via our myriad social channels.

Lauren then took our topic outline and turned it into a series of questions, much like you’d do if running a panel at a conference.

And that was it: we were set.

Delivery

Running the session was simple. Lauren hit ‘start’ a few minutes before, to give people a chance to join, and we kicked off at 7pm as planned.

I took the role of moderator, asking questions and inviting our panellists to answer. 

We reached the end of our planned questions after about 40 minutes, when we invited people to raise their hand if they wanted to join the conversation. A few people took us up on the offer, to varying degrees of success.

The free-flow conversation flowed for another 50 minutes or so, until we called it a day.

Lessons learned

The other panellists and I were pretty pleased with how it went. But here’s some things I’d change or bear in mind if we were to do it again:

• Planning definitely helped. Very much like doing a podcast it’s far more compelling if you’ve got an agreed structure than if people just shoot the breeze
• There’s no measurement. I had a quick scroll and at a rough guess would say we had about 30 people listening at the peak. But people dropped in and out so it’s hard to say. If metrics are important to you, you’ll need to nominate someone to count up joiners as you go
• Free flow conversation is hard to manage. It’s not like giving someone the mike to ask a question at a conference; it’s more akin to inviting the ‘actually more of a comment than a question’ guy on to the stage and giving him a chair
• The moderator role is critical, particularly for the post-panel conversation

Have you been using Clubhouse? Did you catch our session? I’m keen to get your thoughts or feedback in the comments below ??????