Item — HN Reader

If you're going all in on automation, at least try and do it well. In this case I don't see any technical reason why you couldn't have automated monitoring of the screenings, automated raising of alerts if there are issues, remote debugging from some central service desk, centrally controlled announcements to keep customers informed, etc.

And if you're not going the automation route, make personal service a differentiator. In the UK we have the Everyman Cinemas doing this for example, offering sofas with tables, a table service for food and drink, knowledgeable and enthusiastic staff, etc.

1 comments

> I don't see any technical reason why you couldn't have automated monitoring of the screenings

Well, I suppose the first question is whether or not your automated monitor contains a Mysterious Hum Detector, and whether or not the case of a Mysterious Hum happens frequently enough to be worth rolling out the Mysterious Hum Detector to every screen in every one of your cinemas.

Also: The Audio Has Accidentally Been Set To French detector, and the Dammit Something Has Fallen In Front Of The Projector detector are equally hard to implement.

Automating uncommon real-world events is significantly harder than you might think.

I bet you could make a Mysterious Hum detector that worked by having a camera and microphone installed in the theater that compared what it was seeing and hearing to what it was supposed to be seeing and hearing.

But I agree with you that it would be relatively pointless - any resolution to a problem like that probably needs physical intervention to resolve.

And anyways that theater was full of mysterious Hum detectors. The article was written by one!

You're right: They could implement some kind of autonomous general intelligence to assist in resolving issues.

Probably take about 9 months to build an MVP, but about 16 years worth of training data until it's able to handle most cases.