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Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

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Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#101

Post by nend »

eambutu wrote: post #64
nend wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I had to think about it a bit, but I think in the end it's probably due to a couple bad experiences at startups. There's a lot of toxic, authoritarian company cultures out there that hide behind the idea that in order to be a good coworker you need to upbeat, peppy, and thrilled to be working at all times. It seems to go hand in hand with the (usually toxic and exploitative) work hard/play hard mentality.

If I were required to use this at work, I would instantly view it as a yellow/red flag that management is starting to get heavy handed about team culture, and I would probably start resenting it.

My ideal company culture is pretty minimal at this point: friendly people, a healthy work/life balance, and coworkers who are open to/good at learning - because that's what I strive for myself.

I'm probably coming off as a curmudgeon, and like I said maybe it's just due to some bad associations that come to mind, but this seems like it's starting down the path of "look how much fun our employees have at work!" My $.02.

That being said I wish you luck, and it seems like a neat option for more social settings.

Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#102

Post by sillysaurusx »

eambutu wrote: post #53
hwbehrens wrote: post #12

I'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?

Let people pick an emoji that represents their current mood. Bonus points if you import all Discord gifs.

Emojis are the body language of the web.

Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#103

Post by ModernTabulator »

alexlchen2019 wrote: post #84
ModernTabulator wrote: post #78

I see you guys are using p2p webrtc, and it looks like there is there no media router? Because webrtc can't do a 3-way handshake, traffic will be N^2 as more people join a conversation. Why didn't you guys use a server-side Selective Forwarding Unit or Multipoint Conferencing Unit architecture?

Hey there, thanks for checking us out! We actually are using an SFU architecture instead of P2P :)

Ok yeah that makes more sense, thanks for the reply.

Btw here's the doc of yours that said it was p2p, I guess it's outdated. Might be good to remove or update it. It was publicly accessible within the demo instance linked in this thread, as an asset in the "sponsor" room.

- Document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vR8RTTH8Dr1KwiWE...

Under platform overview: "Stack Video is streamed peer-to-peer via WebRTC. Uses Firebase (Google cloud storage) for the database Works on Chrome / Firefox, and on any laptop or computer. Tablets and mobile not supported yet."

Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#104

Post by fblp »

eambutu wrote: post #53
hwbehrens wrote: post #12

I'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?

Remember accessibility. The avatars are already quite small. I'd suggest something obvious like you could highlight yourself green or wear a green hat if you want to talk. You don't need to imitate real life - leverage the fact that you can manifest obvious queues in the digital world. If only we could make instantly make ourselves bright green in the real world when we want to meet people (sometimes people use wristbands or necklaces to do this IRL)!

Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#105

Post by svarlamov »

Great to see gather.town on HN -- I really love the entire UX of being in this type of 2D virtual environment. Wonder what kind of traction this could get with educators as a Zoom alternative to help students have more of an engaging "physical classroom" feel

Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#106

Post by trjordan »

eambutu wrote: post #53
hwbehrens wrote: post #12

I'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?

Broadcast audio further than video. Make it easy to find a break in conversation.

Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#107

Post by alexlchen2019 »

emayljames wrote: post #99
eambutu wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many more such interactions coming soon! P.S. this is an awesome space on of our users made: https://gather.town/app/qBA0zkP9HTQxpqpB/inception . This one blew my mind!!

Opened the link in Firefox and got a message "...use chrome". I find that not only unacceptable, but also bad practice.

Are you on android? Android phones don't allow WebRTC video chat to work on any browser except chrome, so it's unfortunately out of our control :( we support FF on web though!

Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#108

Post by sundarurfriend »

andrenotgiant wrote: post #79
knowtheworld wrote: post #77

This super cool!! And very similar to the ideal online meetings should be for me. I even made a video to describe this online interaction problem. https://youtu.be/q6zM1wn0dTs Good to see someone solving this hard problem!

I've never seen someone publish something that way, (in a video with storyboard art visuals) I think it was a really effective way to demonstrate the issue and your idea.

I think RSA Animate [1] is where I came across it first, and I agree it's a really neat way of explaining things. Looks like a lot of work too.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL39BF9545D740ECFF

Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#110

Post by BadInformatics »

tmabraham wrote: post #23

I have used gather.town briefly while attending a symposium. While some of the mechanics are complicated and take time getting used to, it was definitely an interesting experience and unique experience for attending posters in a symposium. However, I am not so sure if it provides much extra benefit than a traditional conference website with posters and social events hosted on Zoom (ex: ICML2020 was nicely set up). Fa…

It's funny you mention ICML. After attending a smaller conference that used Gather.Town extensively for their poster session, I strongly believe ICML 2020 made the wrong decision in not trying it (outside of the sparsely populated social area/games room they had).

More specifically:

1. First off, the other conference took advantage of Gather.Town's full functionality! This included not only proper poster displays, but also sponsor screens with video embeds, virtual booths with actual humans milling about and an easy-to-navigate floorplan reminiscent of a real poster hall (numbers and all). At ICML, most of us were juggling multiple Zoom links and often forgot to or neglected viewing certain presentations because it took much effort to keep up.

2. In the same vein, ICML's poster session had none of the discoverability or ease of browsing of a physical poster gallery. You couldn't just walk past a poster, notice a crowd asking questions and pop by to listen in for a bit. The somewhat non-deterministic sorting/filtering functionality on the talks list page didn't help either. I saw a number of presenters awkwardly asking idle attendees if they had any questions, as well as folks waiting for a no-show presenter that had probably logged on for 10 minutes, seen an empty room and left the call. Gather.Town mitigates these phenomena by replicating some of the physical signals/affordances of a physical space with actual interested people around and thus makes the whole business of interacting around a poster feel more natural.

3. Post-conference, I saw many comments on Reddit and elsewhere from presenters frustrated by the lack of audience interaction and apparent appreciation/meaningful discussion for their work. It's crazy that some posters at a top-tier conference like ICML didn't get a single visitor. I think that's indicative of how poor the UX (discoverability, spatial cues, ease of browsing, etc.) was for that poster session. A platform like Gather.Town doesn't solve all of those issues, but man does it help.

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