Kavir Kaycee | Product Manager, Startup Advisor, Writer

Virtual get-to-gethers are now the norm.

But Zoom or Meets is the most boring way to do it.

Here’s how I used @gather_town to run virtual events and what I learnt:

So we had to run the kick-off meeting for the cohort program and had to decide what was the best way to get people to know each other.

Instead of using the same old Zoom breakout room activities which can get boring, we decided to try out Gather Town to make the experience more immersive.

Why Gather Town? It gives a game-like experience where you're a game character navigating through a map.

While doing so, it allows you to interact with other people when you get closer to them with spatial audio and video.

You can interact with objects using X.

Additionally, to participate in this, no sign-in is required, thus reducing friction

What we had done

Spotlight - Designated roles

We put Spotlight markers in two areas of the two rooms. The spotlight allows any person in that zone to speak to everyone in the room. This helps bring attention to major announcements.

Wayfinding on the floor

To help users not aware of the controls, we added wayfinding hints to the floor.

For e.g. help instructions to navigate, arrows to showcase where to navigate to, how to interact with elements on the map

Icebreaker questions

For the icebreaker event, we had created spaces where people could join tables and interact with each other.

We had also placed icebreaker prompts on the table, which could be used as conversation starters.

Reception

The participants enjoyed the organic nature of it.

I certainly enjoyed it because you get to make jokes, like let’s go sit down, I’m tired.

Learnings

Private spaces

One thing we didn’t get right was creating tables too close to each other and not marking it as a private space.

This caused audio feedback which was distracting.

Give time for people to get the hang of it

It was a surprise for the cohort members which is both a good and bad thing. Good in a way that we got to see their experience live. Bad in a way that they took some time to get used to the platform.

We had two main rooms, one landing room and the other was the main room with the conversations. However, it is better to have one large space if there are less than 40 people.

Future

I explored elements that included a fireplace and a fountain which had a great ambient sound.

I would love to see speakers where you can play music from, that would be great!

But on the whole, the interaction felt organic, way better than breakout rooms that kick you out after X minutes. The conversation could flow organically but you needed people to shepherd people around in case there were issues.

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