Re: Disappointing take-up of Gather.Town

[Nico Williams <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Jul 30, 2020 at 04:07:14PM -0500, Spencer Dawkins at IETF wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 30, 2020 at 12:47 PM Paul Wouters <[e-mail]> wrote:
> > On Thu, 30 Jul 2020, Nico Williams wrote:
> > > We might want to consider spreadign remote-only meetings over two weeks
> > > instead of one.
> >
> > Please don't :)
> > I can mark a week as "IETF week" and my collegues know I'm mostly
> > gone/busy, but extending that to two weeks would not work. It would
> > result in me not being able to drop most non-IETF work, and it would
> > be harder for me to be seen as "busy at IETF". So regular work would
> > interfere and expect precedence over my IETF meetings.
> 
> I am sympathetic to this, especially if we hope to involve people who can't
> participate in an IETF meeting for a week or two at a time (some smart
> people don't have time to do more than show up at three sessions that are
> interesting and/or relevant, much less a whole week, much less two whole
> weeks).
> 
> But I wonder if leaving Gather.Town up for (at a minimum) the week before
> and week after an IETF meeting week would allow people to do a better job
> of contacting people you want to talk to, especially if there is a way to
> say "I'm planning to talk to (perhaps include names, and other) people who
> are interested in aspects of immersive media on Tuesday, at this time,
> please feel free to stop by".

Or maybe even a year-round NOTE WELL room(s) on some such platform that
also supports ad-hoc (not-necessarily-NOTE-WELL) rooms/chats.  With
encouragement to visit the week before, of, and after a scheduled
meeting.

> In Real Life, we do wander around in real hallways, but we also say "I'll
> meet you by the cookes during the break", and then people stop by to join
> in.
> 
> That might give people a better venue for actual "side meetings" than the
> pseudo-sessions with slides, minutes, and mike lines that people are using
> because that's the best venue they have available.

+1.