Eastercon Day 1
Apr. 2nd, 2021 05:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ffuturesGather.town is, as I'd feared, pretty much useless under the load of a full-sized convention with several hundred participants, nobody seems to be able to use it properly because the servers keep freezing etc.
I was on my first programme item at five, it did not go well - it was almost impossible to find out how to join the panel because emails that gave the details weren't sent out to all participants. When we got this more or less sorted (although by sharing a single link so everyone ended up with the wrong user name on screen) we got about twenty minutes into quite a fun panel before someone told us it wasn't going out. That seemed to be fixed and we restarted - then were told after another ten minutes or so that it still wasn't going out, and eventually that the server had died. So the panel was unfortunately seen by its participants and nobody else, and we talked over much of the same stuff twice which was a little annoying.
My feeling at the moment is that I will not be using gather.town again, with my blood pressure I simply don't need the aggravation. I will try watching panels later on tonight, if they have sorted the server, and hopefully by the time I'm on another panel, on Monday, some of the issues will be resolved.
My fear is that they won't send out the links to join the program for the other three days, since they've already screwed up to this extent, and that the whole con will be a waste of my money and a weekend.
Maybe they shouldn't have called the con Confusion!
Later - as of 7.25pm only one panel out of 5 is working on the streaming video, the others are blank, and unfortunately the one that's working is people talking about using video conferencing which - well, let's just say I really don't want to go there. I'll try again for the next lot of panels.
and at 8pm only one panel worked initially, but fortunately the one I wanted to see got their tech sorted at about 8.15
I was on my first programme item at five, it did not go well - it was almost impossible to find out how to join the panel because emails that gave the details weren't sent out to all participants. When we got this more or less sorted (although by sharing a single link so everyone ended up with the wrong user name on screen) we got about twenty minutes into quite a fun panel before someone told us it wasn't going out. That seemed to be fixed and we restarted - then were told after another ten minutes or so that it still wasn't going out, and eventually that the server had died. So the panel was unfortunately seen by its participants and nobody else, and we talked over much of the same stuff twice which was a little annoying.
My feeling at the moment is that I will not be using gather.town again, with my blood pressure I simply don't need the aggravation. I will try watching panels later on tonight, if they have sorted the server, and hopefully by the time I'm on another panel, on Monday, some of the issues will be resolved.
My fear is that they won't send out the links to join the program for the other three days, since they've already screwed up to this extent, and that the whole con will be a waste of my money and a weekend.
Maybe they shouldn't have called the con Confusion!
Later - as of 7.25pm only one panel out of 5 is working on the streaming video, the others are blank, and unfortunately the one that's working is people talking about using video conferencing which - well, let's just say I really don't want to go there. I'll try again for the next lot of panels.
and at 8pm only one panel worked initially, but fortunately the one I wanted to see got their tech sorted at about 8.15
no subject
Date: 2021-04-02 09:36 pm (UTC)The one thing apart from the Opening Ceremony that I did manage to see was the concert. The music videos were great!
I didn't understand how the art show works (the rooms in that area in Gather Town seemed to be empty) until I reread p. 17 of the ReadMe. I eventually found something that redirected me to https://www.kunstmatrix.com/en/confusion-2021, which looks as if it works MUCH better, but I haven't had time to look round yet. I might not go back to Gather Town at all, it's too much effort for not enough reward.
Do you know where the instructions are for asking questions at the Feedback sessions? (not that I'm likely to be up in time!) I tried the Discord, but couldn't find anything useful there.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-02 09:48 pm (UTC)You were lucky that you wanted the music; I couldn't get into anything else 9 PM (tried up to around 9.30), which meant I missed another item I wanted to see.
Sorry, I haven't really investigated feedback etc., I was so annoyed I pretty much gave up - I'll probably catch a few program items via the streaming video thing if it works, and I'm supposed to be in another program item on Monday, but that's probably about it. A waste of time and money, I'm not going to fret about it because life's too short.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-02 10:01 pm (UTC)Yep, I had much the same experience. Also the happy fun learning experience of discovering the hard way that you need to quit gather.town if you're on a panel lest your audio be interrupted by random fans chatting when they wander close to you in a tab you are no longer monitoring.
Also, gather.town doesn't work properly in Safari on Mac.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-02 11:07 pm (UTC)Yep, I had much the same experience. Also the happy fun learning experience of discovering the hard way that you need to quit gather.town if you're on a panel lest your audio be interrupted by random fans chatting when they wander close to you in a tab you are no longer monitoring.
Also, gather.town doesn't work properly in Safari on Mac.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-02 11:45 pm (UTC)Gather.town is now added to my list of sucky stuff the epidemic has thrown at me. I think I put it there provisionally after it first crashed Safari and then was a pain to use under Firefox, when I tried it a couple of weeks ago. I was prepared to give it another chance but it is a good deal worse with a con going on, so I'm just not going to use it if I can possibly help it.
Fortunately my only other programme item is Monday morning, by then it's possible that they may have things sorted a bit as regards the streaming video thing.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-03 09:28 am (UTC)I'm not using GatherTown at all - I just want the content.
First they forgot to send me a username. After sending 2 emails asking about it, I finally got one at about 30 mins before the Opening Ceremony, but the links in it were completely invisible (white on white background). It took me a while to realise they were invisible and not just missing. Then I had to do a password re-set to register, as the login screen wouldn't pre-fill.
The Opening Ceremony was well underway by the time I finally got logged in. Took several attempts to get into it.
At that point I foolishly thought everything was fixed.
Nope, the 5pm panel I tried to go to just buffered endlessly. I tried refreshing. I tried logging in an out again. I tried getting into a different panel. After 20 mins I gave up.
This morning the panels won't even buffer and don't show the timeline or volume control - just a black screen...
Nothing from yesterday is in the 'we recorded it' section yet.
ADDED: Apparently you are supposed to report tech issues on the Confusion Discord server. But they never sent me an invite to that, so I can't...
no subject
Date: 2021-04-03 06:14 pm (UTC)Haven't even looked at Gather.town today, don't plan to either.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-03 10:08 pm (UTC)This morning, I saw a tweet that the morning panels wouldn't stream, but they'd record them and put them up later. There's still nothing on the Holodeck page, though, not even the things from yesterday where the streaming was working.
I got an invitation to the Discord, but I can't find a channel I'm allowed to post in, to ask questions.
Perhaps tomorrow everything (except Gather Town) will work?
no subject
Date: 2021-04-04 11:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-04 09:57 pm (UTC)ETA: There are now quite a lot of recordings on the Holodeck, including 5 of the things I'd missed for various reasons, to catch up with over the next week. I don't know whether the ones that are still missing will be there later; apparently they have to be loaded manually.