Don’t Go It Alone: Let’s do a field trip to the metaverse. Sign up today for our November 16th guided tour and discussion. Alex Howland (Virbela) and Cathy Hackl (Forbes) will be our guides. 

If you have big bucks, you blast off of the planet à la Bezos, Musk, and Branson. If you’re more earthbound you head to the metaverse, where whole new worlds are being designed from digital bits, much of it for land-grab sales. The market for metaverses (which I fondly call Metavii) is predicted to grow in value from $46.4 billion in 2019 to $1.5 trillion by 2030.

The promise is that you can easily move your guests between 2D, 3D, and VR or AR worlds. (No headsets are required, but they are supported). The best way to start exploring is to use the 3D renderer to transform any photo and then drop the components into a template. Aggressively priced and imminently scalable, this may be the Microsoft Office of next-gen event platforms. Next week's newsletter will continue our exploration of the metaverse with an article on Metavent, a recent VEG member.

I had a long talk with the marvelous Tami Bhaumik, former CMO of Roblox, now tasked with running Roblox’s newest effort to create partnerships but, more importantly, to spearhead maintaining civility in a Web 3.0 world. Roblox went public earlier this year and its 2022 roadmap focuses on aging up with its audience. The newly public company already has 1.3 million creators earning money on the platform and it’s on track to pay $500 million to these developers this year. 

But pre-teens turn into teens and teens turn to emotional angst. Rock concerts and avatar accessories are beginning to overshadow those innocuous little Blox-sters. Creating a system that rewards civility is a big task especially in light of the failures of Instagram and Facebook to get it right.

• TikTok reported that during the second quarter of 2021 it removed more than 81 million videos it found to be hateful or unacceptable.
• Party like it’s 2021! If you’re tearing your hair out over what to do with the office holiday party, look at Party.Space.