Has anyone attended an online-ified conference this past year that really "worked" for you socially / interpersonally? How'd they do it?
(attended many this past year but—despite diligent/generous effort from organizers!—I found every online conference candidly quite unpleasant)
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We decided against onlineification of the Bottlenecks workshop for this reason. In person ftw! The great remotening is cancelled.
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For me it’s a matter of format
The best online conferences weren’t like Conferences™️
I had one I enjoyed but precisely because it wasn’t ACTUALLY a conference where you’re trapped synchronously 10+ mins at a time, but can fluidly jump between unguided, chaotic backroom chats
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My opinion is that most online events are sorely lacking one of the most fundamental game design concepts: player agency
The most disappointing events of the year were just that: presentations with zero agency. They have no “game feel”: I couldn’t interact, move around, or speak
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I also found them to be pretty unpleasant, and gave up on them. I'm not so much a livestream-watching person in general! for example, I'd rather read a summary article than watch the Apple launches remotely.
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I think it’s impossible to cram rich interpersonal interactions through a video link. Perhaps we humans still need to recognize and internalize that lesson.
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Remote video interactions are good for loosely coupled work and interactions, i.e. the kinds of communication that also can be accomplished in writing, email, git commits, etc. That’s about all they can do well. Beyond that, I expect quickly diminishing returns.
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I took an online seminar with early this year and a small group would reconnect on Club House afterwards to continue the discussion. There was something that worked in the structured then unstructured, video then audio combination that could be replicated
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Audio-only seems better for discussion sometimes (although there are obviously tradeoffs)
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I didn’t go this year, but 2020 was great! The organizers put in a ton of work to make every session interactive in a face to face way on Zoom, and we were all in a big active Slack for follow up questions and discussions, randomized “serendipity” breakout rooms etc.
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