Join us on Wednesday, May 26 for the first of our virtual meetups: 9pm EDT / 6pm PDT / 1pm NZST (in New Zealand it’d already be Thursday the 27th). We will meet on “Sunset Island,” a virtual reality landscape. If you’re intrigued, register as “Going” HERE. You’ll need to log into your EDC account to register, and to create an account HERE if you haven’t already.
We’ve been thinking a lot about how best to meet up with each other at a distance, in a more informal and social manner. There’s only so much one can say and do in a video conference, facing a host of other faces all at once. There’s nothing natural about such encounters.
We’ve been exploring an open-source VR platform, Mozilla Hubs, as an alternative. You choose an avatar to enter this space, and you can move about and interact with others as you wish. Some of the avatars allow you to project your own face, via webcam. The platform supports voice conversations as well as text-based chat, and, crucially, enables you to talk and listen only to those you’re close to, rather than to everyone at once.
Take this first VR meetup as a small experiment, in a basic space. If this works reasonable well, we can begin to think about building our own spaces and landscapes within which to meet virtually, as a collective. If you’re curious, please register so we know you’re coming! Here’s a guide from Mozilla to this VR experience, the various features available and the controls to use.
Here’s a link to the VR space. This could be fun, we hope to see you!