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Show HN: I made an app for large group video calls where people shuffle around

mixaba.com

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Re: Show HN: I made an app for large group video calls where people shuffle around

#21

Post by andrewicarlson »

anegri wrote: post #20

Really cool idea! I've tried the zoom breakout rooms, and they get the job done for my use case, but its a bit clunky and doesn't seem to support shuffling of groups at a regular interval

Thank you! That's good feedback on the Zoom breakout rooms – it is more aimed toward the enterprise but I was thinking something like this might also be useful for workshops where you want to disperse people at those regular intervals. Obviously not the primary audience though since there are enterprise tools in that space.

Re: Show HN: I made an app for large group video calls where people shuffle around

#22

Post by jakozaur »

andrewicarlson wrote: post #17
jakozaur wrote: post #16

Very interesting. I got the same idea, but execution always beats ideas :). The key challange for your product is not technical, but go to market strategy. How users might discover your app?

You're so right. I have a long history of building things and then struggling to getting them to market. It's definitely a weak area for me. Right now I'm trying to get the word out there and get as much user feedback as possible before doing any more development – the bones are there, I just need the users to tell me what should be better. A potential area of opportunity is around meetups.

Can you e-mail me (the address is in profile)? Lets figure out how to do it.

Re: Show HN: I made an app for large group video calls where people shuffle around

#24

Post by andrewicarlson »

deejes wrote: post #23

Amazing, this is solving the exact problem I have with zoom parties and even large semi/ recreational work meetings. Will try at the end of week meeting with my team. Nicely done!

Cool! I'm looking for any and all feedback when you give it a go!

Re: Show HN: I made an app for large group video calls where people shuffle around

#25

Post by iwd »

ottobonn wrote: post #18
iwd wrote: post #9

Interesting! I built something really similar last month, though less polished: https://happyhour.ianwdavis.com/ In my case, I let people create groups ("tables") on the fly and hop between them at will, rather than forced mixing. There's a list along the side that shows which people are at each group. Groups with fewer people sort to the top, to encourage people to join those. I built on top of Jitsi and the meet.ji…

Wow, this is exactly the project I have been working on for the past few weeks, down to the abstraction of "tables," "starting a new table," and shuffling around at will! I was even building on top of jitsi. Mine was going to be called "lunchbox"... It's amazing to me how many people had this idea, and that it seemed not to exist before. I am curious how far we can go to make video chat feel as good as in-person soci…

My Python code is up on Github under a BSD license, if you want to play with it. https://github.com/iwd32900/happyhour

Re: Show HN: I made an app for large group video calls where people shuffle around

#26

Post by lhoff »

iwd wrote: post #9

Interesting! I built something really similar last month, though less polished: https://happyhour.ianwdavis.com/ In my case, I let people create groups ("tables") on the fly and hop between them at will, rather than forced mixing. There's a list along the side that shows which people are at each group. Groups with fewer people sort to the top, to encourage people to join those. I built on top of Jitsi and the meet.ji…

Really nice. Also thanks for open source this.

I'm in a student club and we have our own Jitsi instance so we will probably run it on our own infrastructure.

Do you have any plans for a "random" feature? If not would you be open for pull requests?

Re: Show HN: I made an app for large group video calls where people shuffle around

#27

Post by moron4hire »

jackbrookes wrote: post #5

Looks great - I'd also be interested in a chat app that lets users move their camera in a 2D space, even across "rooms", so you can form small social groups. I know you can do these things in 3D in things like Mozilla Hubs but 2D would work better for most users

I have an open source project built on Jitsi Meet that does this https://www.calla.chat

Re: Show HN: I made an app for large group video calls where people shuffle around

#28

Post by pjanoman »

andrewicarlson wrote: post #2

Hello again, HN! I'm Andrew and I recently built and released Mixaba – it’s a new way to mix and mingle with people you already know online. Since the shelter-in-place orders started rolling out in the US I've had the opportunity to attend remote happy hours and larger remote social events. During those video calls I found that oftentimes the conversation felt a little out of cadence or stilted because there would be…

How do you fund this? I got semi-far with some friends on building a project similar to this, however, we stopped halfway through because we realized that video hosting quickly becomes quite expensive; without a monetization plan, there'd be no way we could stay afloat. Looks great!

Re: Show HN: I made an app for large group video calls where people shuffle around

#29

Post by trevor-e »

I tried Zoom's breakout rooms (~8 people per) for a virtual birthday party and it didn't work well. The audio delay made it really hard to have a free-flowing conversation which then made others feel bad when trying to step in. IMO large video calls only work then there's a specific agenda and one person doing most of the talking.

Re: Show HN: I made an app for large group video calls where people shuffle around

#30

Post by andrewicarlson »

trevor-e wrote: post #29

I tried Zoom's breakout rooms (~8 people per) for a virtual birthday party and it didn't work well. The audio delay made it really hard to have a free-flowing conversation which then made others feel bad when trying to step in. IMO large video calls only work then there's a specific agenda and one person doing most of the talking.

I couldn’t agree more! These rooms are capped at 4 people max per room, but you can configure it to go down to as small as 2 people per room. To keep the conversation flowing better.
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