A Vancouver Tech Start-Up Builds Tactile Shared Experience
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Side Door is a platform where anybody can be a host to culture in their community. | Image: Side Door.
by Nancy Lanthier
The BC Alliance knows a thing or two about the challenges and rewards of building community, so when CreativeMornings announced that “Community” was the theme for August, we signed up for the presentation by Dan Mangan.
The Vancouver musician has co-founded a tech start-up called Side Door. It’s an online service that matches musicians with hosts, who turn their homes, businesses or alternative spaces into venues. It’s like an Airbnb for touring musicians and people who want to host shows. Bands can use Side Door to book gigs between larger club shows—and earn a virtually unheard-of 80 percent of ticket revenue (Side Door and the host each receive 10 percent of the door).
The goal is to create a direct-to-audience gigging economy that trims overhead and makes touring financially feasible even for emerging acts.
“Any place can be a venue, if it has a motivated host,” Mangan told his sold-out audience. And while a living room, or warehouse, or bookstore, or gallery, or laundromat may be small, at least the connection will be deep. “Intimacy can change lives,” says Mangan.
Side Door’s multi-faceted platform uses high technology, yet the result is off-line, face-to-face connectivity. “You build a community because all the people who saw the same house show in Coquitlam have a shared experience,” says Mangan.
After Mangan's talk, some of Creative Morning’s mini-presentations inspired—especially with BC Alliance’s Digital Ladders project on the horizon—including:
- Brainstation, the Vancouver company that offers digital skills training for companies and individuals, is having an open house August 23, at which anyone can "connect with top design and development talent, see walk-throughs of live projects, and network with other industry professionals”;
- Siggraph 2018, one of the world’s top conferences for innovation in computer graphics and interactive techniques, takes place in Vancouver August 12-16. The website is feast of contacts and ideas;
- OH! is a small round device outside of Vancouver’s Science World that lets people control its exterior globe lights simply by moving their hands around it. It’s presented by Vancouver company Tangible Interaction, which has produced all kinds of prestigious interactive digital projects.
Image: Tangible Interaction.
