Thanks to everyone who turned out to listen in — it was a lot of fun and I was pleased with how it turned out. At one stage, we had north of 250 people listening in. Professor Callard is a great speaker, and shared a lot about teaching Plato’s Phaedo to 21st-century college students.
I thought the Clubhouse format was good, if athe little bit difficult to feel natural, just because I couldn’t see the audience. I wonder if it would be better with people you know better. On Zoom, you also have that split-second bit of feedback you see someone reach forward and unmute, which reduces the chances of people speaking over each other.
The other thing is obviously that Clubhouse is etherial in the sense that there are no notes, no copy saved, no playback. You say things and they’re gone. I think what they’re doing with the app is interesting precisely because most social networks have such long memories. “Unfettered conversations” has become a bit of a meme, but I do wonder if there’s a benefit to the default behavior of another social network to not be saving things forever. Snapchat obviously pioneered this, and there does seem to be an appetite for it.