Looks a lot like https://branch.gg/
Has anyone here tried both? I personally like the style of Branch a lot more, and movement seemed a lot smoother.
Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams
61–70 of 163 posts
Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams
#62My boss got excited about this a few weeks back, but none of the rest of the office wanted to really use it (and we had some issues with video/audio feeds). I don't really get the idea: what problem does this solve that Slack/Zoom/etc don't? The whiteboard seems OK but no software can solve the problem that drawing with a touchpad sucks. Am I going to have to schedule meeting rooms again? Forget finding the right Zoo…
Look at the pricing model, this doesn't look like it's trying to replace any of those things. It looks like you'd rent it out for an event or such. I can see that it would be a bit of a fun - if we're all on video / phone chats all day & we need to do a 'virtual offsite' it would be good to change the environment a little. I can see this being useful for the occasional planning day etc.
I have no idea why they highlight the $2/user/8 hours when they also offer $7/user/month. The latter makes it clear that you could use this all day, every day.
Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams
#63My boss got excited about this a few weeks back, but none of the rest of the office wanted to really use it (and we had some issues with video/audio feeds). I don't really get the idea: what problem does this solve that Slack/Zoom/etc don't? The whiteboard seems OK but no software can solve the problem that drawing with a touchpad sucks. Am I going to have to schedule meeting rooms again? Forget finding the right Zoo…
What our office spaces recreate are all the interactions you would get throughout the day, that are not just scheduled meetings. Our team uses it to work alongside each other, and you can easily drop by someone's desk to ask a quick question or talk as you're walking out of a meeting. After work, you might notice a group playing games in our arcade and join them.
You can see what our own office looks like here: https://staging.gather.town/app/oxrhEtb3sV7VutbQ/GatherOffic...
The problem that we've heard a bunch is that people feel disconnected from their coworkers, because you don't really get to interact with them socially anymore. Would love to get your thoughts--do you not feel like you have this problem, or do you think gather.town doesn't solve this?
Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams
#64My boss got excited about this a few weeks back, but none of the rest of the office wanted to really use it (and we had some issues with video/audio feeds). I don't really get the idea: what problem does this solve that Slack/Zoom/etc don't? The whiteboard seems OK but no software can solve the problem that drawing with a touchpad sucks. Am I going to have to schedule meeting rooms again? Forget finding the right Zoo…
If you read the founders comment, they mention a lot of other use cases in addition to offices/work. I would probably really dislike using this with coworkers or for "in the office." But I can imagine it being a good fit with some of the other, more social use cases.
Could you elaborate more on why you would dislike using this to be "in the office"? Thanks for the feedback, this is very helpful.
Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams
#65i like gather.town. a totally frivolous suggestion i would make is that it should be possible to pick up and eat the coffee and cookies. you could have a meaningless status effect of some kind.
Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams
#66I've used Gather for several conferences, and I've found it to be surprisingly effective at recreating some of the benefits of in-person gatherings. In particular, since there's no formalism around creating or scheduling meetings, it makes it extremely easy to walk up to people you know, chat for a few seconds, and then step away. Or for impromptu meetings to break out, where two people are chatting, and then another…
You bring up a really point here, and it's something we haven't spent nearly enough time on. What are the kinds of body language that you think are really important in real life, that make it easy to break into a conversation?
I have a suggestion to make on this regard, not related to body language.
In scientific conferences, typically at the end of the day (e.g. after dinner, with drinks) you have "poster presentations". These presentations look pretty much like these images from Google [0]. Everyone goes to a big room, and the presenters stand in front of their posters which are ~90x120cm. People walk around looking at the poster titles figures, and when one of them catches their interest they stop to listen to the presenter (if they are already taking to a group) or ask him about it.
The fact that you have these big posters at all ends up being just a cue so people can identify who is working on which kinds of subjects/projects, and go talk to them about it. My advisor had this really funny idea of having "microposters" at a conference, where he just taped an A4 paper with one figure and the project title and his name to his back, and that is all it took to start conferences. It worked super great, it was exactly what it took to "break the ice".
In these conferences people will typically have read your papers, but they don't know your face, or even that you were in a paper (at most they will remember first author or last author, which is the professor). So just having a small cue "I'm Bob and I work on X" is already sufficient to break the ice.
My suggestion would be two things: 1) For mimicking the poster presentation aspect of scientific, to allow people to upload an image which gets displayed on an area of the map. Then the presenter can stand there, and interested folks just gather around him to listen.
2) Allow some kind of mouseover view that shows additional information about the person, eg a bio, a description of the projects, or a picture/link to a description of the projects.
I haven't yet seen a good virtual scientific conference, and it is exactly this aspect of the social interactions that is missing. In the end of the day, the primary reason why scientists move halfway around the globe to gather in a hotel for a few days is not to so much to listen to the speakers as it is to gather in small groups at breakfast/lunch/dinner/happy hour/breaks, and exchange ideas and get to know each other. Academic conferences allow people to put a face to the names they see in papers, and it really helps make science feel more humane and prompts you to exchange more.
Thanks!
[0]https://www.google.com/search?q=scientific%20poster%20presen...
Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look at the pricing model, this doesn't look like it's trying to replace any of those things. It looks like you'd rent it out for an event or such. I can see that it would be a bit of a fun - if we're all on video / phone chats all day & we need to do a 'virtual offsite' it would be good to change the environment a little. I can see this being useful for the occasional planning day etc.
I have no idea why they highlight the $2/user/8 hours when they also offer $7/user/month. The latter makes it clear that you could use this all day, every day.
Ah, good point. This is an artifact of the 8-hour block pricing being the first pricing we ever offered, but monthly is definitely more what we're focusing on.
Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams
#68Congratulations on the launch! Thoughts on competitors like Gatherly? https://www.gatherly.io/
This and other links look great, and more natural/simpler than the 2d board. But gatherly doesn't seem ready to serve my family and I if I have to request info (I can't just sign up). What's the best, simple app like this that allows easy subconversations that my family, parents, other non-technical folks could easily join? I don't mind paying to host but it has to be easy for them to log in and use.
I run a completely free service https://firemeet.io
Though I think gather's UX is actually very friendly to non-technical people!
Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams
#69Isn’t this a knockoff of something posted earlier this year?
Yeah. Probably huddle?
Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
And Movement: https://www.movement.fm/spaces And MakeSpace: https://makespace.fun/ And GroupRoom: https://grouproom.io/
And Rambly: https://rambly.app
I am super excited for https://www.huddlehq.io/
Used it for a few 1:1s and sprint plannings. I love it!