Exploring the World of Silent Disco with Jason Gorley

Have you ever observed individuals dancing without any audible music but sporting illuminated headphones? If so, you have witnessed a silent disco, which has been in existence for a while and is now gaining popularity. By donning headphones, one can concentrate on the music and enjoy a high-quality experience. How will this silent disco have the time of your life at your next event? In this unique episode, we are joined by the esteemed Founder & CEO of CiferNoise Productions, Jason Gorley, who shares his insightful thoughts on silent disco. He navigates through the potential of this innovative technology, providing a brief historical background, and highlighting how it creates a distinct connection among people through the power of music. Tune in to discover the many dimensions of silent disco and how it is transforming the way we experience music. --- Listen to the podcast here: Exploring the World of Silent Disco with Jason Gorley Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. For most of my life, I’ve had these competing pursuits of wanting to kind of foster people’s individuality but also build community at the same time and one of the problems I encountered was I’d always thought of these particular pursuits as competing with one another, you’re either becoming more close but becoming less individual or going in the opposite direction. My guest today is Jason Gorley of CiferNoise Productions and what they do is they do silent discos, which is one of the areas where I’ve seen people allow people to have an individual experience while also coming together. --- Jason, welcome to the program. Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, no problem. Yeah, thank you for coming on. Yeah, describe the silent disco experience and what motivated you to kind of bring this into the world. Thanks for asking. A lot of things motivated me to bring this into the world but let’s start with silence disco is it’s a unique experience that anyone can travel down with headphones but also, it’s not just wearing headphones, it’s having the options to choose what you’re listening to at a particular event. So, silent disco can have three all the way up to ten channels and each channel can be curated in a way to fit the demographic that is present within your event or any pop-up in general. You could do multiple things from movie nights to conferences to regular parties and it’s just a different way of replacing speakers and creating more of an immersive experience with your ears. How I got into it, I went to a school that partied a lot and I loved throwing parties. University of Arizona, bear down. Oh, yeah, that is known for its party atmosphere, for sure. Yeah, yeah, we do party a lot down there, especially those who don’t even go to college. I always had a knack of wanting to bring people together. The greatest thing is just watching people smile after they leave your events. I’ve always been a people person or gathering people together and putting them in little areas for them to hang out in. So, when I got into my adulthood life, more 30s, leaving the telecom industry, I wanted to find something more invigorating, I guess one would say, and I tell people I got into this on a push from an ex-girlfriend and a cover letter. So that’s a really good punch line. A push from an ex-girlfriend, and a cover letter. Now, I don’t know about anyone listening but I usually don’t think of cover letters as leading to anything fun. It’s one of the BS processes, or parts of the job finding process so you have to tell me about how an ex-girlfriend push and a cover letter brought you too silent disco. Yeah, just like everything else in this world, you got to start from the bottom. I guess during that time in my life and it’s starting to get more look far off in the past, yeah, she was the one that encouraged me to or pushed me to be like, “Well, since you’re trying to figure out a new direction, why don’t you do what you love to do and bring people together?” That’s one thing, but then really told me, “Well, the only way possibly to get in is write a cover letter,” and since I didn’t have a resume professionally in event production, management, and coordination or hospitality, blah, blah, blah, all the other words, a cover letter was the best way. We were at an event in 20, I think it was 17, 2017, late ’16, she and I went to an event that had silent disco and it was used on a great scale in a way that was like, oh my God, this could be the future of everything. So, yeah, just one thing led to another and then, eventually, I started from the bottom with the top two second company or the first company, it’s up for debate, but I think it was the first company at the time of silent disco here in Denver, worked my way up, gained more and more and more hours over time, and eventually worked to 40 and, after that, split ways in 2019 to create my own company. So, yeah, there it is. How long has silent disco been around? Because I don’t think this was around at the turn of the century, so when did it originate and become part of our culture? That’s a great question. I wish I was ready for that question because I actually don’t even know that answer but I know it’s been around for a while. It started off as just one channel. It was one channel. Just one, and then rumor has it, through the grapevine, they said it possibly came out of London. It makes sense in my books because like electronic music in Europe was different and also I don’t think it was really strong in America but I’m not fully certain, please don’t write me emails on how I’m wrong on stuff. I think it started in Europe years ago and they were trying to overcome the noise ordinance there to throw private raves and things like that nature so they wouldn’t be discovered. Yeah. So that’s rumor passed down through the grapevine so, yeah. So it was one of those someone somewhere might know the origin story and then, of course, it came to America and so 2016, 2017, you went to a silent disco party and that just inspired you to want to be part of this movement. I saw potential in the technology, because we looked at it at the party aspect but I was looking at even more of like where else it could be inputted but creates levels, because I grew up kind of like a lone sheep bouncing between multiple different styles of friends. They never wanted to go where I wanted to hang out, all of them, at once so this was kind of like to me solving that problem. Oh, yes. So, for example, if your friends are arguing, “I wanna go to this club,” “I wanna go to this club.” A lot of people don’t give you off to other music, they like what they like, and where I grew up, it was rap, country music, and whatever is left over, but that’s what I experienced so it’s like I had a diverse set of friends but they were all kind of like bar-ry types so then they ended up like just chilling at the bar but didn’t really want to go to kind of like some of the grimy places that, let’s just say, ethnic people like to go to. That was pretty much it. So it’s just like what silent disco is solving is taking three different genres and putting under one house where then you are exposed to more in a smaller space. This is why I believe like we shouldn’t build out, we should build up more, because then it condenses us all into one space to learn about your neighbor, forcefully. Yeah. I guess, yeah. So you’re talking about urban design in a way, right? Yeah, yeah, but in this — Yeah. Yeah, but in the architect of silent disco, layout bring us together. Yeah. So, obviously, a lot of people have talked recently about the loneliness epidemic, the loneliness crisis, more and more people feeling like they don’t have friends, they don’t have people they can talk to, spending more and more time alone, do you see silent disco as part of the remedy to this? I would say it can help. I’m not saying it’s a full remedy. I would say it helps in a way that we’re very anxiety ridden these days. For some people, it still is hard to get out and be around people. The world feels like it just definitely has more knives out on the outer sphere. I would say it does help a bit by like comfortably easing people back into that loud atmosphere, you can put on headphones and definitely would help out for some people who have anxiety being around a large crowd and also control that volume. Yeah. That makes sense. So, let’s get into your personal story. Now, you mentioned, first of all, the University of Arizona, which huge party school and then you went into the telecom world. Shows and sales majority of my college life. Yeah. And I was in sales, I loved it up to a certain point. You can’t force people to buy something that you don’t believe in so they could see a hungry dog a mile away before you even try. So I was burnt out. Pretty much I did it for 10 years. I don’t like bureaucracy, I don’t like these metrics that don’t make any sense where like, “You gotta sell this much to blah, blah, to keep your job,” and, honestly, I was a little lazy back day because like nine out of ten times I just wanted to hang out until I got to Denver which really changed my life professionally, being more of a man and just navigating all, let’s say, the trauma in my life that I had to, you know, you got to figure out when you start growing up. Yeah, we know about that, right. Yeah, yeah. So, I went from like really switching gears from telecom retail sales to then like working for myself and that took a whole complete mindset change and I think that took, I think five years. I wish I arrived to it sooner because I would be a hell of a lot ahead more in my life on certain responsibilities and how