Gather.town and Eastercon update

[ffutures]

 Tried this again - some friends organised a trial meeting so people could check their hardware etc. My experience was not good - sound stopped working after a minute or so, and wouldn't resume regardless of anything I tried. This may be because I wasn't running it on Chrome, which is what they recommend for mac users, but I don't like Chrome and don't have it installed.

Add to that the company that runs gather.town allegedly doesn't comply with Euro / British data protection and privacy laws, and I'm really not feeling very inclined to use it, which means I'll be missing out on some of the social side of Eastercon. And they still haven't announced which video service will be used for panels - I've heard it's something used by Channel 4 for their web sites, and I can't recall ever accessing them - even if I did, I doubt it will give me any idea what the hardware / software requirements are for participants.

As far I know the Eastercon committee haven't yet contacted programme participants, and they last called for volunteers only a few days ago. With less than two weeks to go to the start of the convention this is not very encouraging. I put my name in as a possible program participant, but I think I may have to withdraw if they don't make the position clearer pretty soon.

Comments

[eledonecirrhosa]

I'm dragging my heels on even trying GatherTown, as I'm reluctant to have to learn how to use Yet Another online platform.

I wish they'd let us see the programme schedule. Even in draft. I know it is traditional not to get it until you get to the con, but if they want to stir me from apathy to enthused they need to tell me what I should be enthused about seeing.

[ffutures]

They contacted me today about program items, suggested three of which one is well outside my areas of knowledge - really not sure where they got the idea I'd be good for it - and the other two are reasonably OK. They're running some training seminars for Gather.town and I'm going to give it another try, running it with Firefox rather than Safari, and see if that helps at all. What I saw of the interface on the company's demo (which unfortunately didn't use sound so I didn't spot that problem) is that it's reasonably easy to pick up, just a bit.. well, I don't particularly want to maneuver little character icons around a map just to find and talk to someone, and I suspect that it will not be as popular as the committee hope. I've heard that someone is organizing a Discord group for the con which may help. Always assuming that it doesn't get taken over by abusive idiots, of course!

[eledonecirrhosa]

I think 6 of their 7 training sessions clash with something (mainly work), so I'm unlikely to get to one.

Hope yours goes okay with firefox.