14 ms·

Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

100 points by sabon 5y ago

vmception 5y ago
Cute, reminds me of Gaia Online! Discord should buy that service!
KMnO4 5y ago
What the article didn’t mention is that trying to work with a camera constantly on is highly stressful for some people. If it works for you, great. But don’t assume it’s better than regularly scheduled meetings.
- haliskerbas 5y ago
  Thanks for mentioning this. I would get incredibly tense in a situation like this. Did I pick my nose? Did I spill water all over my shirt again because my bottom lip decided to give out? Does my bed look wrinkled? Did I smell myself? etc. etc. etc.
  - pjerem 5y ago
    So every other human do this ? I’m not alone ? :)
    - siva7 5y ago
      except that you're basically being recorded while doing this
  - Zababa 5y ago
    > Did I spill water all over my shirt again because my bottom lip decided to give out? This happened to me around a week ago, just before a job interview. Fortunately it was just water and I was wearing a dark shirt, but it didn't help with stress. I'm glad I'm not the only one that does that.
- teeray 5y ago
  Yeah… I’ve found audio-only is far more conducive to ad-hoc conversation. The closest I’ve ever felt to virtually “hanging out” with people had nothing to do with the modern era of group video chat. It was back when I’d jump into Ventrilo / Teamspeak / Mumble. Sure, there were video games as well, but I’d sit in there doing homework and other random crap too.
  - boondaburrah 5y ago
    Reminds me of a piece of software that was part of some human-computer interaction study that I can't find right now. I swear it was called "Glance" but that's proven to be ungoogleable It was a mac menu bar icon (or systray icon) of a closed eye. You could click on and see a menu of who was "in the room" with you. However, if you hovered or interacted with this menu for a bit, the eye would open on everyone else's screen indicating that someone was "looking around." From this menu you could initiate a chat with whoever was also "in the room" The whole idea was to try and emulate glancing up from your desk and catching the eye of someone who was also glancing up at the same time, so people wouldn't be interrupting people currently "in the zone" Thus you could create the feeling of working in the same space with people while teleworking, but not have to commit to the definite action of messaging someone in order to feel out whether it was good to talk with a "hey" I think an always-open connection is good for this too, but I agree that I'd much rather it be audio-only.
kcb 5y ago
Don't work 80 hours a week please.
jsnk 5y ago
I hate these solutions that drive people towards having more and more meetings and working in committees. If this is how you want to work with some people who prefer this mode of working, good for you. Go ahead and do that with that group of people, but just please leave me alone. I want to work alone in a solitary and quiet setting with focus. [Edit] I read a bit more, and it's even worse than I thought. You want me to be online all the time, and break my concentration every 30 minutes to talk to other people? How do people work this way? Perhaps I have a strong introvert bias when it comes to work, but even then, how do you build something creative with quality working like this?
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  The purpose seemed aimed at people that procrastinate a lot and have small-ish tasks. If you have to account for your efforts, then you might work more efficiently ?
  - rhizome 5y ago
    So like the Pomodoro technique, except the break interval is forced social interaction? There truly are a zillion business models.
arata 5y ago
A couple months ago there's an article that discusses the Study Web in detail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27347028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27347028 Inspired by this, I created a study/work Discord server that is focused on frontend design and development (arata.page/circle). Unlike the article in this thread, there are a few differences in our approach: first, the server doesn't enforce regular check-ins. Because the members are strangers from all over the places, we set our own schedule and do asnychronous chat during the break. Secondly, we tend to completely mute the input and output devices (some people like myself do a screenshare to keep them focus). This works alright for a tiny community like us.
nerdbaggy 5y ago
This sounds like a nightmare to me. Working for 16 hours, checking in with somebody every 30 min, only getting maybe 3x30 min break, telling people if I’m gone for more than 5 min, and just so much more. Seems like a great way to burn out.
neolog 5y ago
Are you and your friends all working for the same organization? Or are they just a bunch of friends working independently on their own things?
chris_engel 5y ago
Working 10 to 12 hours straight with only one or two half an hour breaks is no goal one should thrive for. Neither working 80 hours a week. Heck, it would even be against the law in my country and it favors companies over people... We tried gather.town in my team (we develop web services for a big news site) and dropped it after a week or two. While some people seemed to like it, others disliked it very strongly. I personally disliked it as well: It drew lots of resources of my PC. It was like having MS Teams constantly running in meeting mode. For me it felt childish to push a pixel avatar around in a virtual office. And also tiresome (its one more thing you have to keep in mind alongside your work). Having the camera on all the time is a no-go. And walking into the private space of a desk and talking to a person working there is as invasive and interuptive as it was before in the office. The app brought the worst of the office days into my remote days. So all in all, it was a cute little game for a few minutes, but it made work feel miserable.
- KronisLV 5y ago
  > And walking into the private space of a desk and talking to a person working there is as invasive and interuptive as it was before in the office. Hmm, do most people think that? Do they like or dislike it? In my experience, some of the less technical people seem miserable when they can't organically engage in conversations. Personally i prefer remote work on my own for similar reasons, yet in my experience any sort of privacy or deep focus are impossible in an open office setting from the get go. And there's little difference between someone waving their hand at you from across the room and wanting to converse and them just actually coming into your private space, since the end result is the same. That's the very same reason why i kind of dislike that Skype/Slack just lets you call people without asking them first whether they're available for a call at that time, same with phone calls. Now, as technical workers we might be spoilt in that regard, but somehow i feel like one's attention should be requested first, not just stolen like calls/ad hoc conversations do.
  - ikornaselur 5y ago
    > That's the very same reason why i kind of dislike that Skype/Slack just lets you call people without asking them first whether they're available for a call at that time, same with phone calls Whenever someone would do that to me, I would always reject the call and say that I'll be available in 5-10 minutes. I would then tell them I would like to discuss having a call in text before actually having it, because it's an interruption. It seemed to cause people to stop just outright calling, which I hate.
rhacker 5y ago
I am 42. I am still coping with a question I've had since I was young and was able to get my first office job. Why am I paid so much money to basically do data organization. I'm organizing data. There are other people that build houses, grow food, prepare food. Then there are others that are simply entertainers - but that does provide societal value. I mean I guess in order to have entertainment, we have to have this giant other house of cards built upon just BILLIONS of people that just sit and think all day and talk to other people. I'm just at a huge loss why we don't all focus on growing food and building interesting structures, ponds, waterfalls, arenas. No, instead our society has billions of organizers of data. Eh, it's late and I'm tired right now maybe I'll feel more useful tomorrow.
- phemartin 5y ago
  There's beauty and craft in these things too!
- dmos62 5y ago
  You make it sound like you work in a filing department and that you're being figurative at the same time.
  - JohnWhigham 5y ago
    The average web developer (i.e. most of this site's users) is exactly that though: an organizer of data. Glue some API code together to slurp data out of one system and make it normalized for your own system.
- kristiandupont 5y ago
  I have similar thoughts. I basically make pixels change color all day long, and the effect of it is mostly that it changes the color of pixels on other peoples screens as well. Somehow that's valuable and while I understand why, it also seems deeply surreal at times.
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    Button button button, button button, click slide, button.
square_usual 5y ago
I've been using gather for months now. The free 25 user plan is more than enough for the small side project I'm working on with a few friends, and even normies absolutely fall in love with Gather once they get into it. The art style is low-quality enough to not feel uncanny, and the maps are beautiful with great effects.
- Jommi 5y ago
  Can we visit your space?
  - square_usual 5y ago
    Probably not, but it's nothing special - we pick a preset, and switch it around every time we get tired of it.
Jommi 5y ago
Setting Alexey's personal working style and focus aside, what are people's thoughts on virtual co-working in general? Seems like there is a huge portion of people that have long since discovered that cities are not for them, but still yearn for some kind of group form of working. There's been attempts as far as 2008 in Second Life[1], but also others in platforms such as discord, slack, minecraft. One popular zoom-based community for this is called Weekend Club [2] Is this the future? [1] https://community.secondlife.com/knowledgebase/english/working-in-second-life-faq-r1571/ https://community.secondlife.com/knowledgebase/english/worki... [2] http://weekendclub.co/ http://weekendclub.co/
- josephferano 5y ago
  I have personally found that whenever I pair with someone and I'm explaining to them my thought process as I'm programming, my productivity and focus goes through the roof. If my work were open source, I would just stream it on twitch. I might just do that for my side-projects though. But I wish I could have a buddy that just sits with me. We don't even have to talk all the time, just having someone there flips a switch for me.
Paul_S 5y ago
"One thing that I usually do when focusing is difficult despite these check-ins (which happens occasionally to me when doing something really hard or unpleasant), is I can tell my partner about the difficulty focusing, set the timer for 5 minutes, and write whether I was focused in gather.town chat every 5 minutes until the next check in. I find that these 5-minute text check-ins are sufficient for full focus on pretty much any task, however unpleasant." This reads like satire to me. How can people work like that? Wouldn't it be easier to focus without the interrruptions? Did you do that at the office too, stand up every 5 minutes and tell everyone you are focusing?
ljm 5y ago
I'm honestly exhausted just reading the article. What I was taking away from it was micromanagement/excessive control. 12-16 hour sessions, obsession with productivity and not efficacy, camera always on, notifying whenever leaving for 5 minutes, only a couple of 30 minute breaks (which in some countries like the UK would actually be illegal), no personal email or social media, and a skeuomorph of walking up to someone's desk. It doesn't matter what the rules are, just that there are many of them and that there is no flexibility. This and the 12+ hour shifts, under total observation, are major red flags. I question how many people were genuine when they said they enjoyed this, or if they were afraid of being honest with the guy who has exerted an unreasonable level of control over two thirds of their day.
chadlavi 5y ago
Checkins EVERY THIRTY MINUTES? Good luck getting anything that requires serious concentration done.
menrris 5y ago
Gather.town seems fun if you're having a discussion or some kind of meeting as you can truly visualize and see who's interacting but to make it as your virtual co-working space, I do think that there are a lot of people who's going to struggle with this one and I'll probably get uncomfortable around the space.
lesbianbezos 5y ago
@sabon I'm a full time solo founder (ex-Stanford, $180k made through past projects). I used Focusmate and hated it. Have you heard of https://founderscafe.io https://founderscafe.io Basically gather.town but with an intimate group of founders from Stanford/Yc/Harvard etc. Thought you might be interested in it!
- lesbianbezos 5y ago
  Crap I forgot to add the disclaimer that I built this. Sorry about that (not sure how to edit here)

100 points by sabon 5y ago

Cute, reminds me of Gaia Online! Discord should buy that service!

What the article didn’t mention is that trying to work with a camera constantly on is highly stressful for some people. If it works for you, great. But don’t assume it’s better than regularly scheduled meetings.

haliskerbas 5y ago
Thanks for mentioning this. I would get incredibly tense in a situation like this. Did I pick my nose? Did I spill water all over my shirt again because my bottom lip decided to give out? Does my bed look wrinkled? Did I smell myself? etc. etc. etc.
- pjerem 5y ago
  So every other human do this ? I’m not alone ? :)
  - siva7 5y ago
    except that you're basically being recorded while doing this
- Zababa 5y ago
  > Did I spill water all over my shirt again because my bottom lip decided to give out? This happened to me around a week ago, just before a job interview. Fortunately it was just water and I was wearing a dark shirt, but it didn't help with stress. I'm glad I'm not the only one that does that.
teeray 5y ago
Yeah… I’ve found audio-only is far more conducive to ad-hoc conversation. The closest I’ve ever felt to virtually “hanging out” with people had nothing to do with the modern era of group video chat. It was back when I’d jump into Ventrilo / Teamspeak / Mumble. Sure, there were video games as well, but I’d sit in there doing homework and other random crap too.
- boondaburrah 5y ago
  Reminds me of a piece of software that was part of some human-computer interaction study that I can't find right now. I swear it was called "Glance" but that's proven to be ungoogleable It was a mac menu bar icon (or systray icon) of a closed eye. You could click on and see a menu of who was "in the room" with you. However, if you hovered or interacted with this menu for a bit, the eye would open on everyone else's screen indicating that someone was "looking around." From this menu you could initiate a chat with whoever was also "in the room" The whole idea was to try and emulate glancing up from your desk and catching the eye of someone who was also glancing up at the same time, so people wouldn't be interrupting people currently "in the zone" Thus you could create the feeling of working in the same space with people while teleworking, but not have to commit to the definite action of messaging someone in order to feel out whether it was good to talk with a "hey" I think an always-open connection is good for this too, but I agree that I'd much rather it be audio-only.

kcb 5y ago

Don't work 80 hours a week please.

jsnk 5y ago

I hate these solutions that drive people towards having more and more meetings and working in committees. If this is how you want to work with some people who prefer this mode of working, good for you. Go ahead and do that with that group of people, but just please leave me alone. I want to work alone in a solitary and quiet setting with focus. [Edit] I read a bit more, and it's even worse than I thought. You want me to be online all the time, and break my concentration every 30 minutes to talk to other people? How do people work this way? Perhaps I have a strong introvert bias when it comes to work, but even then, how do you build something creative with quality working like this?

vineyardmike 5y ago
The purpose seemed aimed at people that procrastinate a lot and have small-ish tasks. If you have to account for your efforts, then you might work more efficiently ?
- rhizome 5y ago
  So like the Pomodoro technique, except the break interval is forced social interaction? There truly are a zillion business models.

arata 5y ago

A couple months ago there's an article that discusses the Study Web in detail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27347028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27347028 Inspired by this, I created a study/work Discord server that is focused on frontend design and development (arata.page/circle). Unlike the article in this thread, there are a few differences in our approach: first, the server doesn't enforce regular check-ins. Because the members are strangers from all over the places, we set our own schedule and do asnychronous chat during the break. Secondly, we tend to completely mute the input and output devices (some people like myself do a screenshare to keep them focus). This works alright for a tiny community like us.

nerdbaggy 5y ago

This sounds like a nightmare to me. Working for 16 hours, checking in with somebody every 30 min, only getting maybe 3x30 min break, telling people if I’m gone for more than 5 min, and just so much more. Seems like a great way to burn out.

neolog 5y ago

Are you and your friends all working for the same organization? Or are they just a bunch of friends working independently on their own things?

chris_engel 5y ago

Working 10 to 12 hours straight with only one or two half an hour breaks is no goal one should thrive for. Neither working 80 hours a week. Heck, it would even be against the law in my country and it favors companies over people... We tried gather.town in my team (we develop web services for a big news site) and dropped it after a week or two. While some people seemed to like it, others disliked it very strongly. I personally disliked it as well: It drew lots of resources of my PC. It was like having MS Teams constantly running in meeting mode. For me it felt childish to push a pixel avatar around in a virtual office. And also tiresome (its one more thing you have to keep in mind alongside your work). Having the camera on all the time is a no-go. And walking into the private space of a desk and talking to a person working there is as invasive and interuptive as it was before in the office. The app brought the worst of the office days into my remote days. So all in all, it was a cute little game for a few minutes, but it made work feel miserable.

KronisLV 5y ago
> And walking into the private space of a desk and talking to a person working there is as invasive and interuptive as it was before in the office. Hmm, do most people think that? Do they like or dislike it? In my experience, some of the less technical people seem miserable when they can't organically engage in conversations. Personally i prefer remote work on my own for similar reasons, yet in my experience any sort of privacy or deep focus are impossible in an open office setting from the get go. And there's little difference between someone waving their hand at you from across the room and wanting to converse and them just actually coming into your private space, since the end result is the same. That's the very same reason why i kind of dislike that Skype/Slack just lets you call people without asking them first whether they're available for a call at that time, same with phone calls. Now, as technical workers we might be spoilt in that regard, but somehow i feel like one's attention should be requested first, not just stolen like calls/ad hoc conversations do.
- ikornaselur 5y ago
  > That's the very same reason why i kind of dislike that Skype/Slack just lets you call people without asking them first whether they're available for a call at that time, same with phone calls Whenever someone would do that to me, I would always reject the call and say that I'll be available in 5-10 minutes. I would then tell them I would like to discuss having a call in text before actually having it, because it's an interruption. It seemed to cause people to stop just outright calling, which I hate.

rhacker 5y ago

I am 42. I am still coping with a question I've had since I was young and was able to get my first office job. Why am I paid so much money to basically do data organization. I'm organizing data. There are other people that build houses, grow food, prepare food. Then there are others that are simply entertainers - but that does provide societal value. I mean I guess in order to have entertainment, we have to have this giant other house of cards built upon just BILLIONS of people that just sit and think all day and talk to other people. I'm just at a huge loss why we don't all focus on growing food and building interesting structures, ponds, waterfalls, arenas. No, instead our society has billions of organizers of data. Eh, it's late and I'm tired right now maybe I'll feel more useful tomorrow.

phemartin 5y ago
There's beauty and craft in these things too!
dmos62 5y ago
You make it sound like you work in a filing department and that you're being figurative at the same time.
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  The average web developer (i.e. most of this site's users) is exactly that though: an organizer of data. Glue some API code together to slurp data out of one system and make it normalized for your own system.
kristiandupont 5y ago
I have similar thoughts. I basically make pixels change color all day long, and the effect of it is mostly that it changes the color of pixels on other peoples screens as well. Somehow that's valuable and while I understand why, it also seems deeply surreal at times.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  Button button button, button button, click slide, button.

square_usual 5y ago

I've been using gather for months now. The free 25 user plan is more than enough for the small side project I'm working on with a few friends, and even normies absolutely fall in love with Gather once they get into it. The art style is low-quality enough to not feel uncanny, and the maps are beautiful with great effects.

Jommi 5y ago
Can we visit your space?
- square_usual 5y ago
  Probably not, but it's nothing special - we pick a preset, and switch it around every time we get tired of it.

Jommi 5y ago

Setting Alexey's personal working style and focus aside, what are people's thoughts on virtual co-working in general? Seems like there is a huge portion of people that have long since discovered that cities are not for them, but still yearn for some kind of group form of working. There's been attempts as far as 2008 in Second Life[1], but also others in platforms such as discord, slack, minecraft. One popular zoom-based community for this is called Weekend Club [2] Is this the future? [1] https://community.secondlife.com/knowledgebase/english/working-in-second-life-faq-r1571/ https://community.secondlife.com/knowledgebase/english/worki... [2] http://weekendclub.co/ http://weekendclub.co/

josephferano 5y ago
I have personally found that whenever I pair with someone and I'm explaining to them my thought process as I'm programming, my productivity and focus goes through the roof. If my work were open source, I would just stream it on twitch. I might just do that for my side-projects though. But I wish I could have a buddy that just sits with me. We don't even have to talk all the time, just having someone there flips a switch for me.

Paul_S 5y ago

"One thing that I usually do when focusing is difficult despite these check-ins (which happens occasionally to me when doing something really hard or unpleasant), is I can tell my partner about the difficulty focusing, set the timer for 5 minutes, and write whether I was focused in gather.town chat every 5 minutes until the next check in. I find that these 5-minute text check-ins are sufficient for full focus on pretty much any task, however unpleasant." This reads like satire to me. How can people work like that? Wouldn't it be easier to focus without the interrruptions? Did you do that at the office too, stand up every 5 minutes and tell everyone you are focusing?

ljm 5y ago

I'm honestly exhausted just reading the article. What I was taking away from it was micromanagement/excessive control. 12-16 hour sessions, obsession with productivity and not efficacy, camera always on, notifying whenever leaving for 5 minutes, only a couple of 30 minute breaks (which in some countries like the UK would actually be illegal), no personal email or social media, and a skeuomorph of walking up to someone's desk. It doesn't matter what the rules are, just that there are many of them and that there is no flexibility. This and the 12+ hour shifts, under total observation, are major red flags. I question how many people were genuine when they said they enjoyed this, or if they were afraid of being honest with the guy who has exerted an unreasonable level of control over two thirds of their day.

chadlavi 5y ago

Checkins EVERY THIRTY MINUTES? Good luck getting anything that requires serious concentration done.

menrris 5y ago

Gather.town seems fun if you're having a discussion or some kind of meeting as you can truly visualize and see who's interacting but to make it as your virtual co-working space, I do think that there are a lot of people who's going to struggle with this one and I'll probably get uncomfortable around the space.

lesbianbezos 5y ago

@sabon I'm a full time solo founder (ex-Stanford, $180k made through past projects). I used Focusmate and hated it. Have you heard of https://founderscafe.io https://founderscafe.io Basically gather.town but with an intimate group of founders from Stanford/Yc/Harvard etc. Thought you might be interested in it!

lesbianbezos 5y ago
Crap I forgot to add the disclaimer that I built this. Sorry about that (not sure how to edit here)