I just wanted to register my enjoyment with the hangout we all had in Topia post-talk, and I look forward to such hangouts in the future, and hope they continue even when things return to normal
(I'll also mention that I vastly preferred the Topia experience to Zoom hangouts I've attended in the past, though I was frustrated that Topia forced me to use my desktop computer and turn off my iPad, which I usually use for chats)
All of these "video chat but in 2d space" websites have had serious problems for me. My preference would just be Zoom breakout rooms with thematic names, honestly. Not sure what the average experience has been.
Yeah, you raise a good point.
I think my experience is that in every medium (Gather Town, Topia, Zoom Breakout) we have successfully hit several good long-lasting conversations. There's a convo lasting now in Topia that's still going strong, an hour later.
Overall I think it's been going acceptably, where I think like 70% of the attendees have had a good experience in most places.
The main thing with Zoom rooms is that the participants can't really change rooms. You can make everyone co-hosts, but IME it's still hard for them. So you have to randomly assign rooms, and do constant overhead work to make sure each room is going okay. It takes more overhead and is less bottom-up than the 2D spaces. But also, the level of commitment I think on average has forced conversations to get started and for people to commit to them? So it might actually be the best?
I think the 2d-space-video-chat thing is kinda love/hate, and one solution is just:
The last app I tried out, which I was fairly optimistic about, was called Knit, which was not a 2d-space app, just a videocall running on Jitsi that included "people and form and join their own breakout rooms willy." Unfortunately it also ran into some connection problems (I guess for similar reasons to why the 2d-space apps sometimes do), so it wasn't actually an improvement over Zoom.
Mm, didn't do it yet. I think it's more likely than not that it'll happen. I think I'll probably get it started next week. You are welcome to ping me again.
This Sunday at 12pm (PDT), we're running a double crux between two curated LessWrong authors (see here for transcripts of events from previous weeks).
If you're a curated author and interested in giving a 5-min talk at a future event, which will then be transcribed and edited, sign up here.
Speakers
Details
When? Sunday August 23, 12pm (PDT)
Where? https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81137654971