The science behind human connections

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Lee:
Welcome to the Event Engine Podcast. This is your host, Lee. On today’s show, I am joined here at Event Tech Live by the one and only Lisa Schulteis, how are you?
Lisa Schulteis:
I’m excellent. Thanks for having me.
Lee:
I am honoured to have you. We’ve already had some great conversations whilst we’ve been here, which has been phenomenal, and I’m definitely looking forward to this one. But before we give too much away, could you give us a little mini bio as to who you are, where you’re from, what you do?
Lisa Schulteis:
Absolutely. I currently live in Phoenix, Arizona, in the States, and I actually own two companies and run a third. Oh, wow. So sleep is overrated. But I own Electralime Marketing, which is an event planning, management, and production company. I also own Your Event Marketplace, which is a global online directory for the events industry. And then I’m the Executive Director of the Northwest Event show in Seattle.
Lee:
Holy Moly, that is quite a lot. And Sleep is factored in?
Lisa Schulteis:
Occasionally.
Lee:
That’s wonderful. Now, you shared with me before this event actually an interesting article about online interactions versus Zoom interactions. Could you give us a synopsis of the article in general?
Lisa Schulteis:
Yeah, so they did some research recently, came out a couple of weeks ago, and this is not new research, this is built upon some previous, where they did some testing of people who were having live interactions versus people that were having Zoom-like interactions, is what they call it, and really measuring neural activity in the brain, as well as monitoring what was going on with their eyes. Not a big surprise if you look at the summary article, the neural activity in the brain was much higher than it was in the zoom-like interactions. But there’s a lot behind that to unpack.
Lee:
Absolutely. I mean, it was a no-brainer reading it, because right now we’re doing this interaction here. I do podcasts basically for a living. We’ve got maybe 500 or 600 behind me. Most of them are not in person. They are on a Zoom-like platform. Correct. And I don’t necessarily pick up on social cues. I’m not looking into their eyes like we are. We’re engaged right now. I don’t know anything about the neuroscience thing, but I assume specific social neurons are firing right now. We’re bonding. We’re having a good conversation. Versus if we were doing it on Zoom, I know I don’t feel as engaged. I find it harder to concentrate on what the person is saying, etc, so it’s definitely a no-brainer, I think, at least in that level.
Lisa Schulteis:
Correct.
Lee:
With regards to the article, it does go further in saying things such like, I wrote it down here that Zoom is an impoverished social platform. Would you agree? No. Good. Speak into that.
Lisa Schulteis:
Let me give you a little background on what the actual test was. Because what’s interesting is a lot of the summary articles have the synopsis, but they don’t actually say what the test was. They were measuring multiple things during the test. I won’t get into the crazy test names other than EEG was one of them. But they were measuring that neural activity. They were measuring pupil dilation, eye tracking, things like that. But when you look in here, what they did is they actually seated two people across from each other, and they did one of two things, and it was the same people. They either had a piece of glass in between them that was smart glass, so it could go opaque or transparent, and then for the other portion of the test, they put a monitor in between them so that they would see the person’s face. They would do these short tests, and I think the total run time was about three minutes. They would do for three seconds. They would have people look through the transparent glass at the other person. They didn’t talk. They didn’t do anything. They just gazed at each other.
Lisa Schulteis:
Slightly. And then they would make it opaque. Give them a 15-second rest period, do it again. And then when they had the monitors, it was the same thing. They would gaze at the other person. And so that’s one of the things that I think makes it unique, because really what they were testing in this is we all have that innate ability that we like to look at faces. It’s no different than a baby looking at a human face and lighting up when they see it. We have that innate built into us socially, and that’s really what they were testing. There was no verbal interaction based on what I’m reading in the research paper to actually show that. Yes, awkward, right? Just to stare at some stranger that you don’t know for three seconds and turn it off. They rotated through those two live interactions and virtual interactions. But the research is important. The research is very, very valid. But when you’re comparing that to an actual Zoom interaction, there’s a big component missing.
Lee:
It’s not Apple-Spot-Apple-Sy, is it?
Lisa Schulteis:
You’re not talking. One of the other things that they made a point of in the research article is when you’re looking through this glass and you’re looking at each other, we’re pretty much eye level, and we can see each other.
Lisa Schulteis:
I’m looking straight into your eyes while you’re talking, you’re looking straight into mine. When we’re on a video camera on most computers, it’s up higher. When we’re talking, if I’m looking at the screen, you’re actually looking at more of my eyelid than when we’re face to face. If I’m looking up at the camera so that I get my eyes open more, it’s still a different… I’m no longer looking at you.
Lee:
Yeah, you’re looking at a circle.
Lisa Schulteis:
Now I’m looking at the camera.
Lee:
Yeah
Lisa Schulteis:
You can see my eyes straight on, but I can no longer see your entire face. Part of the point that they made in this research article, too, is when we’re looking at these virtual capabilities, that camera angle has a lot of effect on it as well, which has nothing to do with Zoom or Teams or… I mean, inadvertently it does, but it’s actually the webcam that’s actually more of the issue.
Lee:
The end-user’s technology is unfortunately causing the problem, not necessarily the Zoom-like platform that you may be using via Zoom or Skype or whichever. Correct. Of course. I remember, in fact, I had a Dell years ago, and it had the webcam at the bottom for some reason, which was terrible because it also meant that I was looking over the person because their camera, they were down there, their screen was there. And also whenever I typed, my hands looked like this huge tarantula going across the screen.
Lisa Schulteis:
And as we know, as we get older cameras from the bottom up, is never a good idea.
Lee:
No, I didn’t like that either. But also, the one good thing, though, it did do, was it forced me to concentrate a little bit more because I will confess that when I’m doing podcast interviews or I’m having a Zoom meeting, I will often use the excuse that they don’t know where I’m necessarily looking to also be looking at an email maybe, or to maybe just be replying to a message from someone saying, I’m just on a call, I’ll call you back, and stuff like that.
Lisa Schulteis:
We never multitask. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Lee:
Well, that’s really honourable that you’ve never done that in a call, but I definitely have. I do suspect you have. Maybe, yeah. The only good thing about that was it forced me not to do that, so I felt a little bit more engaged. But still, there is something about looking at a screen. I do feel detached from it a little bit. I feel detached from that person, and I give myself more leeway to think about other things, even if it’s what the upcoming question is. Their voice almost becomes a little bit of the Charlie Brown teacher. Do you remember Charlie Brown? Oh, yeah. I’m staring, slightly not focused at them, the dazed expression, thinking, What’s the next question to follow this up? Et cetera. I still think that now. This is not really planned interview. We want to see naturally where this goes. I am still thinking, but I’m also looking at you and listening intently because this is, I mean, it’s a conversation, which is completely different, obviously, to what they were doing. And also it’s in-person. I can’t start doing this because it looks impersonal. For people listening on the podcast, I just looked at my notes.
Lee:
But yes, that would be very in-personal. We’ve established in our company, because we’re global, something called Kettle. We say put the kettle on and we do it twice a week at two o’clock on a Monday and on a Thursday. In our experience, Zoom, it’s actually on Google chat, same thing though. We all jump on camera and we share what’s going on. We don’t really talk about work that much. Maybe someone’s been on holiday, they’ll share some of their pictures of the holiday that they just went on, or maybe someone’s found a new tool that they want to show off. Look, I found this software. This is really cool. What do you think of this? Et cetera. We have for half an hour, sometimes up to an hour of just chatting about anything. Through that, that’s allowed us to build friendships. I do really feel genuinely close to my team, many of whom I’ve never met ever. Some of them I’ve talked to on camera for 12 years. How do you think that compares to what they’re talking about? What do you think that we’re doing that is improving those communications?
Lisa Schulteis:
Well, and I think that’s a really good point because obviously, live is always better. We all prefer live. We’re at a live event right now. I’m a hugger. I always forewarn people. I promise I won’t stalk you or scare you, but I am a hugger. When I come to events and I see somebody I haven’t seen for a long time, I love it. I give them a big bear hug. It’s great. It’s my preference. The pandemic was awful on me. I couldn’t hug anybody for two years. Other people were probably very happy about that. So life is always better. But there are very specific situations that either we have to do virtual or virtual is sometimes better or hybrid is sometimes better. I think it’s looking at it from a level standpoint. In live, I can see everything that’s going on with you right now. I’m not only looking at your face, I can see your body actions. I can see whether you talk with your hands like I do, which you don’t, I’m constantly moving. But I can see your entire body reactions when we’re having a conversation. In virtual, we get it from the neck up.
Lisa Schulteis:
I can see what’s going on there. If the camera is on, I can still see your reactions. I can still see if you smile. I can still see if you don’t. I can see if you make a face at me when I say something that maybe you don’t like and you don’t realise that you’ve made a face at me, right? I think I do that all the time. I know. Then we go the next level where people turn their cameras off, which is the equivalent of a phone call. We have these different levels of interaction, and I think what you all are doing as a team is great because you are actually taking the time to build your team. Whether that’s in-person or virtually, you’re taking the time to build your team. You’re taking your time to actually show your members of your team that you care. There that you give down. A lot of companies don’t do that even in person. I think what you’re doing is a great way to facilitate that, especially in a situation where you are all over the place. I have people that I’ve worked with for years that I finally meet in person and somebody will say, Wait, you said you’ve known them for seven years.
Lisa Schulteis:
I’m like, Yeah, I have. But this is the first time I’ve seen them in person. Any type of video interaction, it’s giving us a capability and giving us something that we don’t have for the in-person. Is it a perfect replacement? No. No? But is it better than a phone call? Yes. Absolutely. Because on the phone call, you can’t… Well, most of the time you can’t interpret. I have one client that he’ll say something and he’s like, I just heard you roll your eyes at me. I’m like, Okay, you know me way too well at this point. So it is providing us that ability. I think it’s reevaluating how we use it. Are we eventually going to have the technology that we can look at the middle of the screen and look at you on my screen and the camera is picking that up in the right place because the camera again has moved? Or is there better camera placement? It’s like the people that have their camera on the stand and they have it to the side of the computer, so I don’t only ever see the side of their face.
Lee:
The favourite side.
Lisa Schulteis:
It drives me crazy because they’re looking over here and having this conversation over here to my left, and you’re over here on my right and I can’t see you. That’s a totally different dynamic. We might as well turn off the camera.
Lee:
Yeah, exactly. So do you think that this article may be being very unfair?
Lisa Schulteis:
I don’t think it’s being unfair because what they were measuring was really neural activity based on the gaze. What I think has happened is I’m listening to all these people in the event industry because the summary articles are talking about live interaction versus Zoom interaction. The summary articles are putting it at the 50,000 foot view and people are stopping there and saying, Oh, well, this is proof that Zoom is awful or Teams is awful, or any video is awful. And it’s not. It is proof that we need to do better at making sure that when we’re interacting, whether we’re live or on a video, that we’re doing face-to-face, eyeball-to-eyeball, and having as much communication as we can. Because again, we innately have it built into us that we like looking at faces. It’s part of the way that we communicate.
Lee:
I’m thinking of our journey because I feel like it may not be reciprocated, but I definitely feel like we like each other. We get on well. There’s a vibe where I feel like we could have a laugh and a joke. That started from our initial messaging each other, where I texted you said I was excited, you sent me a friendly response. In text, I got a understanding of, Yeah, I think we’re going to vibe. You weren’t super corporate. You were excited to be in London. I welcomed you to London, stuff like that. I already felt. Then you took the time yesterday, in person obviously, to come over and we had a lovely chat and we shot the breeze for about 20 minutes talking about all sorts of things, etc. So again, there was that magic there, I think, about the in-person interactions, the social cues, of which I have no idea what they are. I think that’s all subconscious, isn’t it? There’s probably experts that know what they are. But I’m unconsciously picking up on things, body language, like you said, etc. I do agree, nothing beats in person, but like you said, I do have those friends.
Lee:
We vibed via text. I’ve had friends that I have literally text chatted to on Facebook for, I don’t know. I’ve been there for eight years and then met them one day at an event. And other than the first initial, Hey, hug, I’m a hugger like you. We then carried on chatting like there was nothing. Is there something to be said that, yes, video is also great, but is it the quality of conversation as well? Because I did feel like we were already vibing and did you feel the same vibe back when we were text chatting?
Lisa Schulteis:
Yeah, and I think it’s a personality issue, right? Because there are other people that I will write an email to. I think it’s the best written email in the whole wide world, and it clearly communicates what I’m trying to say, including tone. They get it, and for some reason, they’re offended. I’m like, Wait, what did I say? It’s like with my husband. I’m like, That is not what I meant.
Lee:
What happens when I text my mum and she texts me back shouting at me, Why did you say that for?
Lisa Schulteis:
My poor husband. Communicating is hard anyway. Communicating via text or email is difficult. Video makes it easier, and life makes it that much better. Again, I think it’s different steps that we’re taking, and we have to utilise what we’re able to utilise. I’ve been known with the whole ChatGPT, I’ve been known in the last few months to take an email, put it in there and say, This is who I’m writing to, especially if I’m writing to somebody in a different country. I will ask it, Is there anything in here that could potentially be offensive for this particular audience? Because I want to be considerate of that. But from a video and an in-person perspective, I spoke twice yesterday on stages, I’ve got another one this afternoon. I love speaking live because I can watch the audience and I know when they are responding to something that I’ve said and they really get it and they understand or agree, and I can watch them and know exactly when I lose them, or maybe I need to now break them down something a little bit more. We have those visual cues that are available to us live.
Lisa Schulteis:
We also have them when we are on video just a little bit less because again, we’re looking from basically neck up, so I can’t see what else they’re doing and the rest of their body language. I think the biggest lesson from this research is that, yes, innately, we are going to have much more neural activity, even when we’re not talking, just looking at each other. And the Alive! Interaction obviously is going to be much preferred over a virtual. However, that doesn’t mean that we stop doing virtual events. It doesn’t mean we stop doing hybrid events. It doesn’t mean we stop doing virtual meetings with our team. There’s a time and a place for everything, and we have to make the right judgement call based On that.
Lee:
Absolutely. With regards to virtual events, for example, as I’ve walked around here in Event Tech Live, there’s probably about six or seven companies, probably more right now, that are offering virtual events. We’ve supported companies as well in the past with virtual events. And one of the things, I guess a couple of the things we found is for the participants, they very often shy away from the networking areas where they can go into the Zoom-like areas to go and meet other people. Some people don’t want to do that. But in a physical room, they would just naturally just go and randomly walk over to the coffee shop over there and say hi to someone. I’ve done it most of the times here, but I personally would be a bit nervous about going into that created room for me to suddenly appear on camera with a whole load of other strangers. That feels weird. The other thing, which you mentioned is the speaker being able to see who they’re talking to as well. Very often on these virtual events, the speaker is speaking to a camera with no visual on the people. They’re a text chat maybe on the right-hand side as people are, Oh, yeah, great point, blah, blah, blah.
Lee:
And it’s very hard to try and read that off to the right-hand side, so you can’t get that vibe. How do you think virtual events could be improved?
Lisa Schulteis:
Significantly. So networking is one of the hard things. I tell people all the time, nobody ever believes me. I’m actually an introvert. I am an extroverted introvert. I can fake it all day long. Me too. Then I get to the end of the day and I’m like, Don’t look at me. Don’t talk to me. Just leave me alone.
Lee:
I’m laughing because this is relatable.
Lisa Schulteis:
I went walking around downtown London yesterday last night all by myself. It was lovely. It was a great opportunity for me to decompress. So for me to go into a virtual room can be very, very difficult because it’s just that much more energy that I have to expend. With that said, a lot of times it’s just simply because it’s just not handled well. So if you have different virtual rooms that it’s like the topic tables at lunch that we used to all do. If you have those set up, one, you have to have a facilitator in there who actually is a good facilitator, who’s welcoming people, who is saying, Okay, let’s start this conversation. Let’s talk about this. What are your thoughts on this? Have some interaction in there, not only verbally, but whether they’re bringing in polls or quizzes or entertainment or whatever it is that they’re bringing in. You have to work five times as hard to have that interaction. So you have to bring that in. So that’s part of it. And even for live network, if I go to an event and there’s forced networking where you have to come in and they’re doing this little crazy bingo game or whatever, I’m like, Yeah, I’m out.
Lisa Schulteis:
See you. I’m going to go to dinner. That’s part of it in terms of how we can improve is really looking at what are we doing in those types of rooms. From a speaker standpoint, there’s ways to do things with production in a virtual world that are much better. They just cost a lot more money. We’ve done events where hybrid or virtual, where we have the virtual attendees. Let’s say we’re doing a hybrid event, where we actually have the big screens up on stage and we’re actually broadcasting the virtual attendees on stage. As a speaker, I can talk to the people in the audience, but I can turn around and see my audience here and watch their cues as well. Then if we’re doing live Q and A, and again, it’s a technology thing, but if we’re doing live Q and A, where I can sit there and say, Great, I’m going to pop you up on screen because you have a question. You’re able to ask the question, the people in the live audience are able to see you on the screen asking the question. It’s a virtual feed-in. I’m able to look as a speaker at this person and face the screen and answer them back, where now we’re having this interaction back and forth.
Lisa Schulteis:
Just bringing that piece on can completely change a hybrid or virtual event. But there’s a lot more technology that’s involved with that, and so therefore there’s cost that’s involved with that, and a lot of people don’t want to pay that money. But that piece can dramatically change your interaction levels within your event.
Lee:
That’s good. I often find as well as an attendee of these virtual events that I, again, because I’m not in person because I can’t see a lot of the people, et cetera, it’s easier for to mentally switch off. As opposed to here, I’ve visited some of the stands, but I’ve also visited the talks, I’ve listened in, I’ve gotten a few Nuggets of wisdom, et cetera, which I think is a lot more helpful, again, because I am in person. I’m very conscious, even just sat over there in one of the seminar areas not to be on my phone whilst they’re talking, except when I’m online, it’s very easy for me to be sending my wife Instagram reels whilst the virtual talk is going on. But I think that technology you described might help reduce that because I would be on screen as an audience member messing around.
Lee:
What’s been your biggest takeaway as we wrap up from this event so far for yourself, maybe from conversations you’ve had or through the panels you’ve been on, et cetera?
Lisa Schulteis:
Yeah, one, I love that this is the big first year for Event Sustainability Live. I love that they brought in the second event to have it co-hosted, co-branded. It’s something that we have to start focusing on in the event world. We’re really good at making a really big carbon footprint with our events, so it’s something that we have to start focusing on and actually do things about. That’s been great having some of those conversations. For me, it’s always, like I mentioned, it’s a big family reunion, so I get to see people, especially living in the States. There’s so many people that I know over here in the UK, and I just don’t get to see them in person that often. For me, just being able to reconnect with those people, have those conversations, being able to connect with people in person, I’m going to call him out. It’s funny, Will Curran With..
Lee:
Event Profs Community?
Lisa Schulteis:
Yeah. Event Profs Community, and he’s working with Click. He lives in Phoenix. We live 30 minutes apart. We met in person for the first time two nights ago in London. He’s here. He’s here.
Lee:
I need to go and see him as well then, because I’m friends with him. I didn’t realise he was.
Lisa Schulteis:
Physically here. He’s over in the Bahammas.
Lee:
I’m ashamed of myself.
Lisa Schulteis:
But it’s funny. We live 30 minutes apart. We have been connected online for I don’t know how long. We met for the first time in London, and I looked at him the other day. I’m like, What is wrong with us? This is ridiculous. But it gives me the opportunity to really come in and connect with people that I haven’t been able to connect with, regardless of where they live, have some of those conversations. It’s nice just having to chat with people to see what’s going on with them, what difficulties they might be facing where we can sit there and go, Oh, yeah, us too. Or, Oh, we solved for that. Or, Wait, you solved for that? Share it. Let me know. So it’s just being able to be here with everybody is always just the best part of it.
Lee:
That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. Absolutely. Before we wrap up, what’s the best way for people to connect with you?
Lisa Schulteis:
Probably on LinkedIn. I’m on their multiple times during the day, so probably within LinkedIn, we can probably put that in the show notes and put the link there. Absolutely, I’ll put the link in the show notes. That or my email, but yeah, definitely on LinkedIn.
Lee:
Yeah. All right, folks, you’ve had it here, Connect with Lisa on LinkedIn. Thank you so much for your time. It’s been very eye-opening, and I look forward to chatting to you online at some point and us trying to do another interview and comparing how we felt.
Lisa Schulteis:
I know, right? That’ll actually be a good comparison.
Lee:
There you go. That would be a good study, wouldn’t it?
Lisa Schulteis:
There you go. Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Lee:
Thank you so much.
Lisa Schulteis:
All right. Thank you very much.
Lee:
Take care.