In a world where machines create art and fashion, smart contracts deliver crazy usage rights, and everyone uses their IP to grow brands across disparate mediums, it’s time to talk IP. .

My fantasy is that Zoom gets a “please don’t embarrass me" toggle that would catch me before I screwed things up too badly. Zoom is like a rabbit hole. If you just stick to the basics you probably can’t go too wrong. But any time you add the simplest little feature … a whiteboard, a breakout room, avatars or polling, you’re heading down the warren of deadends and potential embarrassments. Determined to up my Zoom IQ, I’ve been eavesdropping on two fabulous programs. 

Zoom Test Kitchen and Office Hours both feature Zoom aficionados who love nothing better than to get into the arcana of Zoom’s audio, video and some of Zoom’s less obvious features. Both shows involve answering questions from users and puzzling out hard to understand jargon. The best part is that if they’re not sure about how a feature works then they will check it out live in front of your eyes. It gets pretty dramatic because sometimes these tests go flawlessly and other times they hit a wall. But egos are checked at the door and it’s ok to say “Geez I just don’t know.”

Zoom Test Kitchen takes place every Friday at 3PM and is hosted by Jeff Widgren. The audience tends to be zoom admins, users and producers from around the world gathering once a week to trade intelligence. The group’s willingness to share is inspirational and occasionally humorous as they try to decipher “Zoom speak” from release notes and updates.

Office Hours, moderated by Alex Lindsay, has grown into a 5,000+ member vibrant daily community. It started during the pandemic as a way to figure things out together. The first hour of each daily show is spent on answering audience questions. The second is diving deeper into how to use some of the features. You will definitely get a serious case of home office envy when you see some of the group’s setups. You can sign up here. 

On this week’s Zoom test kitchen I discovered a telestrator app called Shoot Pro. If you have an iPhone or Tablet it’s fairly straightforward to play John Madden, circling important thoughts and diagramming right over your screen.

Get even more trivia about events by downloading Notified’s full study.

The Metaverse Will Meet Events
If we feel “presence” then we feel events. Julius Solaris, the oracle of events, shares his thoughts on why the metaverse will become the home of the events space.

The White House Builds a Framework
Democracy is often not pretty, and it’s even less pretty when you try to shoehorn a new paradigm into an existing government. Part of the hold-up in getting us to a working digital currency is figuring out who’s going to run the show. The White House finally issued some guidance for regulators, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), consistent with their mandates. It’s not an exciting read, but at least the discussion of who’ll take charge has begun.

Fear, Loathing and Events 
Years ago when I was running conferences at CES I was threatened by a guy, best described as a right wing fanatic, who didn’t believe we should be discussing anything but American made cryptocurrency. He ranted at me for a bit and then said that he would be back to get me. I called security and they ejected the guy from the premises. No re-entry allowed.

I hadn’t recently thought about that episode until the recent stabbing of Salman Rushdie, which took place on stage at the Chautauqua Institution, a historic gathering place for artists and thinkers. Rushdie received three stab wounds to his neck, four stab wounds to his stomach, puncture wounds to his right eye and chest, and a laceration on his right thigh. 

While incidents like these are rare, they cast a pall over inviting controversy and may ultimately lead to stiffer background checks. What do you think? 

VSef Acquired by BPA Worldwide
Since the early days of the pandemic virtual platforms have been trying to align themselves around how to measure data collected from virtual events. VSef, one of the key players, was just acquired by BPA Worldwide. This is good news all round, since BPA already owns RDSE, another virtual events reporting standard. Hopefully they will merge to create one strong, widely used, system.