Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 666

Okay, Clubhouse is pretty awesome. I participated in my first discussion room -- thanks to my friend Evgeny , who has been a vocal supporter of the platform -- and I have now seen the light. The topic was real estate and PropTech. And we hope to do it again.

It feels a bit like Twitter to me, but obviously with audio and with greater controls and visibility in terms of who can participate inside of a discussion room.

It also makes perfect sense to me that Twitter is piloting their own version of Clubhouse called Spaces . That feels like a natural extension and something that needs to happen. Perhaps some of the moderation features will also make their way into the rest of Twitter.

As many of you already know, what makes Clubhouse unique is that the communication is free-flowing and impromptu. You are able to see what topics people are talking about and then jump in and out of those audio rooms, as well as invite people to join a discussion that you may be having.

All of this makes the communication feel like you're at a party or in an open office. Over there you can see/hear that someone is talking about the " Pensky file ." If that's interesting and/or relevant to you, you have the option of jumping into that conversation.

I wouldn't be surprised to see some of these features and behaviors translated over into workplace collaboration tools. I think it would be helpful to see what other discussions are taking place within a team or company.

Maybe if we made things a little more free flowing, we wouldn't need so many damn Zoom meetings.

Proptech Collective has just published their inaugural 2021 Proptech in Canada report. Here are a couple of screen grabs that you all might find interesting:

What these images should tell you is that the Canadian proptech landscape is fairly Toronto-centric, but that it's also very much in its nascent stages. We're just getting started here.

I would encourage you to download a full copy of the report . It's very well done.

https://youtu.be/FXeANRVTFoM

What We Started is an interesting documentary about the birth and history of electronic dance music (EDM), starting with house music in Chicago and techno music in Detroit.

Personally, I view EDM as being distinct from house & techno, and it's generally not my favorite kind of electronic music. But that's besides the point. EDM is now wildly popular. It has crossed over into the mainstream and bled into many other genres.

What's fascinating about the story of electronic music is that it's a reminder that new ideas and new movements tend to start out on the fringe. Electronic music came from hobbyists experimenting in their garages, basements, and in warehouses. It was people tinkering with something that they were passionate about.

And let's face it, that's the only way this genre of music could have gotten started because no record label would have signed an electronic DJ back in the 1980s. It was weird and underground, and in the early years, the US mainstream media was openly hostile toward it.

It reminds me of a blog post that Chris Dixon wrote back in 2013 called, " what the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years ." New ideas start on the margin.

The other fascinating thing about this story is that the emergence of new ideas are often tied to a particular time and place. Think tech and Silicon Valley. In the case of techno, which is often described as being sharper, faster, and more precise than house music, it feels right that it originated in a city like Detroit.

Detroit was extremely musical, but it was also high-tech. It was machines and assembly lines and that clearly created fertile ground for a new genre of music that relied on, well, machines.