A MONTHLY PUBLICATION FROM THE FOLKS AT PBP
The Life of the Room
Notes on how ideas, people, spaces, and systems become live experiences.
Every live experience has a wider story: the conversations that shape it, the choices an audience feels, and the knowledge a team carries forward. We explore that story through practical production questions and deeper reflections on creativity, perception, and the experience of being together.
COMING OCT 6Issue 01
In Practice
The Event Is Won at the Handoffs
Between the first creative conversation and the final cue, an event passes through many hands. Each transition can sharpen the idea—or let important context slip away. Our first issue explores the handoffs between creative development, technical planning, and live execution, with practical questions to help preserve intent, clarify ownership, and keep the experience connected.
What you’ll find here.
One new piece each month, moving between three ways of looking at the work.
In Practice
Useful thinking about the decisions that shape an event.
The Long View
Essays on creativity, perception, and how we experience sound, space, and one another.
From the Field
Observations and lessons carried forward from actual work.
BEHIND THE PUBLICATIONWilliam D. Fastenow, PhD
Founding Editor
Written at the intersection of live event production, creative practice, and systems design.
Willie is the founder and principal of Park Boulevard Productions, a faculty member at The Juilliard School, and Director of Performance Technology for Juilliard’s Center for Creative Technology. His artistic and academic work explores how listening shapes space, participation, and shared experience, drawing connections between composition, improvisation, and technology.
He leads The Life of the Room with a curiosity that extends from the practical decisions behind an event to larger questions about creativity, perception, and the experience of being together. Alongside his writing, the publication makes room for observations from the PBP team and guest contributions, bringing different perspectives to the work and the questions it raises.
The Event Is Won at the Handoffs
For this first issue, The Event Is Won at the Handoffs, I’m starting with something quite personal: learning to trust other people with work I once carried entirely myself. The story begins at a friend’s barbecue, where I was trying very hard to enjoy a game of euchre while someone else ran the show.
From there, we visit a CEO’s rather ambitious wish to ride a Ducati into a company retreat, and explore what it took to carry that idea into the room. There was plenty to be proud of, and a missed handoff I’m still learning from.