Originally Created and Posted on Medium (Click here to see it there)
It was a fun start with Music played by Steph to celebrate the holidays — fireplace crackling going in the background at Paul’s house too! Welcome and Hello from Paul for a short Town Hall to talk about the past year.
Crackling fire continues — with royalty free music and much laughter.
Instead of the regular updates. The small skeleton team of four shared 12 ways they experienced the Clubhouse community came together in the past year. They shared this in the following twelve themes and thoughts.
🎉 Welcome Rooms
1st Theme — Hello and Welcome People — New Year’s Orientation, this is a weekly room done by the Clubhouse team. New folks have an opportunity to go on the stage and ask questions. During one Paul remembered when they met a man from the Maldives and how they were able to stay connected thanks to Clubhouse. There are replays of these rooms on Paul’s profile. Durning 2021 they did not miss even one week for the New User Orientation. Even after the replays they are still doing them LIVE! Everyweek — love meeting people new and old each week. Reminded why they built the app as they speak with people who just joined. Celebration rooms in general are amazing and brought in thousands of people to celebrate a person!
Surprise!🤗 Rooms
2nd Theme — Moments of Surprise and Delight — Steph had one of these events when 7000 people came for her birthday including her parents stopping by. Axel and the Lullaby Club having John Meyer stop by during the night…in which the team of Clubhouse arranged, since Axel’s a fan of John you can imagine his excitement at the unexpected visit. There were others shared and you can listen to them all on the replay right here!
Pop – Fan Based Rooms
3rd Theme — Obsessions: Moments where we came together to obsess. So many moments for big pop moments — Oprah coming and sharing about the Adele Interview. The app broke in the middle of the interview. Oprah was a real Pro in the moment — the first time Oprah had come on in 2020 there were 200 people in the room — this second time there were 8000 people in the room. Again they discussed more moments through the year. Replay has more fun!
Support Rooms ☕️
4th Theme — Sharing Grief: Coming together to grieve and mourn the loss of Community member WOLF & LION resulted in a room that went on for hours and the community was able to celebrate his life with Jin’s family. What a wonderful way to pay honour to a community member. Friends, family, fans, people who were touched by you are able to come and share. There were higher profile ones too.
Side Note: I had just come from a room that was happening where the leader of the room was speaking of the loss of his mother and how it would have been her birthday today. The community and room rallied around him in support and love. Many shared encouragement through words and others through song. The club that was in is First Note Play. Check out the club by clicking on the name.
🌱 Community Life Rooms
5th Theme — Real Time Events: Hearing from people who were experiencing disasters live — along with fundraisers for these disasters and other charity needs that are happening in real time. There was even a school built in Tansania that was funded by the Community on Clubhouse — all through people coming together.
🧐 Debate Rooms 💬
6th Theme — Discussions & Debates: to discuss politics and many other world events — there are some regular news shows. Discussions are happening almost round the clock about some current events and different issues — even the name-change of Facebook has been a topic of some of these debate/discussion style spaces.
🌎 Global Rooms 🌏
7th Theme — Meet The World: Meeting people from around the world has opened the door for learning new perspectives that span the globe. One in particular was the room that lasted over a week with Palestinians and Israelis came together to have discussions.
📰 News Rooms
8th Theme — Breaking News: When things just happened where you can process news together. Latest updates shared as they were revealed. Some of the most impactful and at times shocking rooms were with people on the ground in Afghanistan sharing the experiences of their changing world. Listen to the replay to hear more.
🏟 Event Based Rooms
9th Theme — Special Events: Sports Events just happening, games as they are going down. There were a couple times when Elon Musk visited… And he took over the conversation to invite someone else up. Another great event was the Olympics coverage where some of the staff even had the opportunity to be second hand sports casters. Remembrance of the flags for all countries represented in the Olympics showed up on people’s profiles during the timeframe of the games. Many would have liked to have seen those flags stay on the profile. It was great to see at a glance where someone was from.
🎥 Casting Call Rooms
10th Theme — Casting Calls & Sourcing — Making ‘sh%#’ happen for people in a way they would have never expected. People looking for composers —VoiceOver artists finding work. People even created a movie together. There are more that happened all through the Clubhouse Streets.
💏 Romance Rooms
11th Theme — Love Is In the Air: Who knew that people could fall in love or find LOVE through conversations. Oh wait. The telephone was the old way of using your voice to communicate. lol. There were many rooms where people came to “shoot their shot.” Making connections with an ask from the stage in front of everyone in the room. There are people who have met in a room and fallen in love then even had their wedding on Clubhouse. As well as new friendships happening where people meeting people for the first time feel like they have known each other for years. Best friendships have been created and deepened through connecting in rooms on Clubhouse. Anu piped in with “When you meet them it’s, kind of like being on a first date but you know all their thoughts!”
🌐 Net & Digital World
12th Theme — NFT/Crypto-Currency: This Community n Clubhouse has exploded in the past 12 months. There have been many crypto moments. Sales, discussions with the sellers and the buyers. It’s not just about the NFT but more about the community that build around why they are together.
🥴 Original Content Rooms
13th Theme — Simply Being Weird: Many came together in ways that many would think to be weird — Whale moan rooms — Dramatic reading of bios or the Singing of Recipes — people playing with sounds — a symphony — ASMR Rooms — Game Shows — Live Dating pair them together send into a private room and see how it goes — weird questions about food combinations.
🎭 Performance Rooms 🎬
14th Theme — Music Rooms — So many. These were discussed by the team in many of the categories during the preparation time of the gathering of these themes. There are many more rooms yet to be shared. All these rooms happening globally — so many coming together.
🎧 Social Audio Pro Wrap Up
There are so many more — the rooms that people join every week — the creators with the small rooms. It’s been the most exciting thing to work on. The Clubhouse team was 9 people in January and now it is over 40 people strong and spans the globe with a recent hire being an India’s Aarthi Ramamurthy as Head of International, Clubhouse. The whole team is excited about 2022. The humans you can meet. The conversations that can be had.
They are working on the road map now — the people — the community. — the fun — the weird moments — the feeling of exploring the hallways, it’s all waiting for you!
There will be many features coming that will make you feel like you have been brought to life! Thank you for being a part of all of this in 2021!
Happy Boxing Day! Go celebrate no matter what you are celebrating! Great add by Anu there at the end of the room!
👋 Connect with the Social Audio Pro!
A NOTE from the Author of this recap: So blessed to have been a part of this journey! If you want to join Clubhouse check us out in one of these Clubs.
If you are a Creative Lifelong Learner this is the club for you:
LOL Live Online Learning
If you love exploring human behavior and personalities then check out the Becoming BOLD You Club is for you. More to follow in my next article.
Watch for another piece of work coming soon where I will be sharing my own journey of 2021 on Clubhouse.