Street-Life

40 minutes early

Street-life is where we live, it’s our benchmark for experiences and our base line starting point for quality.

Our daily lives, commutes, transits to and from our events are our intersection with street-life - part of everything we do.

Yesterday I attended an event in the City of London. All actors in this scenario, the organiser, publisher, the venue were established and experienced players. Its 2.10pm I’m around the Liverpool Street area (if you know London) armed with QR code ticket, I’d studied the programme, I was prepared and 40 minutes early, 40 minutes to spare.

2.10pm

Love cities, love London, always an opportunity, in this case a 40-minute opportunity.

I’m five minutes from Spitalfields Market, home to 110 plus daily changing stalls including vinyl record traders. I’m always on the lookout for a used (it’s out of press) copy of “Donny Hathaway Live” for my daughter so off I go.

I arrive with 35-minutes for my adventure. The market is kicking, stalls everywhere, makes you feel very “present”. No Donny vinyl but lots of super-cool jazz. The Wifi in the market is fast-n-free so I can check out the pressings so see if they are first generation or contemporary copy re-presses.

2.23pm

People look good, the market smells good too. 30 plus street food offerings from Nigerian Boys, Punks Chefs, and Pizza Guys to Pasta Families, Duck Trucks, and anything you every wanted to know about spicy Aubergine Bao but were afraid to ask.

2.29pm

Bao bun for Robert D.

Fast food, and frictionless. No queuing on the street, place my order go back to the vinyl Jazz (Count Basie’s “Splanky”) for a few more minutes until I’m buzzed to collect.

Four bites later I leave the communal eating benches, pass through a school trip shyly conducting a survey for their project. The Girls are organised into threes and getting stuck in, the boys are hanging dumbstruck in packs of seven.

I avoid Liverpool Street and the Bishopsgate crowds to weave through back streets full of bars, burgers, and boutiques. Cut through the We Work complex at Devonshire Square to check out the statement foyer furniture (OK - I’m a creative – we do this sort of thing). I’m still a little early and I’m in Aldgate London back of St.Marys Axe and I'm having a good experience, I'm up for this - street-life is working.

2.50pm

“WatchHouse” should do.

A cool looking coffee bar across the road under the corner of the “Can of Ham” building. Never been here before. Cantilevered steel bar, neutral timber contemporary lifestyle vibe, two floors, maybe more – utilitarian with panache - perhaps a little slice of Corbusier.

Individual work benches, flawless WiFi, my delicious expresso is delivered on a bamboo tray with a printed description card of my coffee bean provenance and tasting notes. It’s Ethiopian, I’m informed, with hints of cherry, peach, and chocolate – maybe cherry I don’t know enough to recognise the rest.

3.03pm

43 minutes of street-life bliss are over, I cross the road to my event and a different world.

Up in the lift, a queue of attendees because the QR code scanners don’t work “first or last name” – everyone gives both – sharpies and stickers “write your name on the sticker”.

Cloak room is on the left, water, or coffee on the right. From appearance I suspect the coffee is not a single source Ethiopian, no flavour let alone chocolate or cherry hints. No thanks.

I pass through a raft of ineligible hand written name badges. Presentation room in landscape. Three low drop-down front projection screens, a stage, lights, and a sound system.

The screen projected WiFi code doesn’t work, the landscape stage has seats right in front of the centre screen, so the projection plays over the speakers faces. The sound is good, but the stage side exit blows mic feedback every time a speaker passes too close to the PA speakers.

5.03pm

Scanners and WiFi codes and QR functionality are basic stuff. They will work, a five-or-ten-minute test that lunchtime would assure a frictionless experience. Reconfiguring the existing stage from landscape to a thrust would have pushed the interview seating into the audience for a more accessible, more intimate feel and negated the projection and sound issues.

I would’ve felt so much more present. It would’ve felt so much better.

Events, experiences, we really can do so much better. The venue was good, the content was good, the speakers of quality and the audience high value, so value them, because they’re worth it.

I don’t necessarily just mean big expensive productions, I mean the small stuff, the everyday stuff, the everything stuff.

Street-life is where we live, it’s our benchmark for experiences and our base line starting point for quality.

Upgrade everything to be at the very least - more street-life.