Observations from hosting my first Clubhouse room...

We had ~5x the attendance of our recent @indie_ldn remote meetups, despite it only being on iOS.

The fact people can casually listen while they do other things, rather than being on a video call greatly reduces friction.

My approach was to bring a few topics for my co-hosts @thisdickie @Ed_Forson @iamghyslain @MrGrillet and we just have a chat for an hour, keeping the format quite loose.

I think next time we'll have an overarching theme, so co-hosts and guests can come better prepared.

Something I didn't expect, but now seems obvious is the magic of serendipity Clubhouse brings. @dr showed up in the audience and we brought him onstage to discuss building in public. That doesn't really happen anywhere else, and it makes sense to lean into it.

I'm pretty sold on the idea of social audio generally, it feels like a category that's going to keep exploding. The question is whether Clubhouse is going to be the Facebook or Myspace of this world. I imagine competition will get even fiercer.

Tweaks to make in future:

- themes for each one in the title
- occasional interviews
- rotating cast of cohosts
- keep to 1 hour limit (6pm-7pm GMT)
- maybe do it weekly?
- think about how to get the audience involved more
- promote it more

It must be benefitting hugely from everyone being stuck indoors.

But people still listened to podcasts and radio before the pandemic. So if engagement drops off post vaccinations, it'll probably be a similar amount relative to the competition.