Some interesting apps in virtual conferences. Esp. with the pandemic, ppl have tried hosting meetings in video games (animal crossing and even red dead redemption, apparently), and second life for concerts and meetups has long been a thing, but obviously those solutions leave a lot to be desired for moderation, and for video, file, and screen sharing.
Having tried remo, I think the biggest mismatch vs real life is how awkward it is to be "at" some place and just listening in - coupled with the artificial scarcity of seats at a table, I start to feel like I'm taking up a seat someone else with more to say could be sitting at.
https://remo.co/
https://gather.town/
@trinsec the apps i linked are more for situations where there are multiple loosely connected conversations going on. Like hackaday.io's remoticon used remo for their break times where people could virtually move between tables. There were not specific topics at different tables, but you could see who was "sitting" there and join if you wanted to say hi or whatever.
NeurIPS 2020 is using gather town for their poster session. easiest to just look at their video: https://nips.cc/virtual/2020/public/
@2ck Still quite a roundabout way to say 'hi'. ;) I think for something simple like that people tend to use chatrooms with text.
I'm also afraid that videos without subtitles are 100% non-accessible for me since I'm deaf. So..
Which probably leads back to the first paragraph, I would just use text if it's a simple 'hi' or whatever. But then, text is 100% accessible to me. Unless people know sign language.. heh.
@trinsec Ah. Understood. I do think there's something to remo and gather town though. Something about the analogies to physical space those apps make ticks a box in my head that says "you are among people" that I don't get from chat rooms.
@2ck I do think it might be sorta interesting for certain games... where you mingle with various groups. Werewolf or Salem maybe. Never played them myself, but I know people who do. And whatever they told me about those games, it seems this would be an interesting way.
@trinsec and yeah, it still exists. I tried it a few years ago, but found it to be way too clunky, at least on Linux. I don't know why it isn't bigger... maybe because they leaned to heavily into the whole "second world" thing. Like, Zoom has taken off this year because it's how people get work done in the real world (and, IMO, it was just way better than the alternatives of skype and google hangouts in terms of video quality and reliability). Second Life was always more about "exploring" and "discovering", which made it trivial in most people's lives.
@2ck IMO it was also because Second Life was so much leaning on a pay scheme that encouraged casinos and such because that's how you would 'win' back your money spent on those expensive lands. It was all casinos and shopping malls and sex houses when I checked it out a decade or two ago.
@2ck Does Second Life still exist? I've not heard about that in a long time.
Also those 2 links you gave, they look like a clunky way to impose limits on amount of people attending. What about a Jitsi or Teams meeting, and only invite a limited amount of people instead? Isn't that the same idea but you can use simpler software?