Stream: connectathon mgmt
Topic: Whova experience is awful
nicola (RIO/SS) (Sep 13 2021 at 18:24):
We use https://discord.com/ a lot internally - i think, this tool would be ideal for connectathon - you will be able to walk between sessions. @Grahame Grieve @Josh Mandel
Josh Mandel (Sep 13 2021 at 18:46):
Agree @nicola (RIO/SS) that the Whova experience for joining sessions is painful.
The agenda feature is pretty useful for conferences like DevDays where you want to search talks/tracks. Discord is great but only addresses the "see a list of channels and join one" part of the problem, not schedule management. (This Discord workflow can also be approximated by publishing a wiki page with static links to track-specific Zoom or Jitsi meetings.)
Lloyd McKenzie (Sep 13 2021 at 18:59):
Published zoom links make restricting access to only registrants more difficult, which matters for the financial viability of the event.
nicola (RIO/SS) (Sep 13 2021 at 19:04):
For discord, you can manage access to it - the only discord problem - there is no video recording by default (but it can be plugged as a bot)
nicola (RIO/SS) (Sep 13 2021 at 19:07):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ13BA3-NR4
nicola (RIO/SS) (Sep 14 2021 at 03:42):
What's good about discord - it will give us the filling of offline connectathon openspace - which i missed :( Let's make a small experiment?
nicola (RIO/SS) (Sep 14 2021 at 03:48):
I'm 100% sure everybody will like it
Josh Mandel (Sep 14 2021 at 13:50):
I think recruiting a few tracks/leads for this experiment would be great. (We did something similar within the SMART App Launch track with gather.town; but I think most of the value from Discord would be if there are multiple tracks using it. Discord chat would also probably draw activity away from the Zulip streams, which is not ideal but probably manageable. Whova and gather.town have pretty poor chat functionality, so its use is self limiting :))
John Moehrke (Sep 14 2021 at 13:52):
note that "awful" is a perspective. I have had awful experiences with discord too...
Josh Mandel (Sep 14 2021 at 13:52):
For me the low hanging fruit is still: track leads just set up a persistent meeting (Zoom, Jitsi, whatever) leave it non-recorded, and encourage your participants to hang out there full time, so you can have little discussions there the way you would around a table, etc.
John Moehrke (Sep 14 2021 at 13:57):
non-recorded is key to openness.
John Moehrke (Sep 14 2021 at 14:00):
around a table, it is clear who is listening. One can look at the attendee list, but hard to know who-is-who by names we have never seen before... and when you want someone to pay attention, presuming they are is not effective. - not any tool I have seen addresses this... (although some funny comedy skits lately about going back to the office and forgetting that you are not working from home).
Sandy Vance (Sep 14 2021 at 14:09):
John Moehrke said:
non-recorded is key to openness.
I have heard several comments related to the recordings precluding people from wanting to screen share their work.
Bryn Evans (Sep 14 2021 at 14:14):
The main issue with choosing alternative sites and software is always accessibility. Members of some organizations and government branches are very restricted in what software they are allowed to run and sites they're allowed to visit. Zoom was popular enough at the start of the Pandemic to get an exception made for many of these rules. We have experimented internally with other solutions, Discord was brought up after the first Connectathon, but always run into roadblocks.
Elliot Silver (Sep 14 2021 at 15:54):
@Sandra Vance , @Mary Ann Boyle, have you looked at the Grip platform? I've used it for a couple of conferences and from what I've seen, it's got the least awful experience.
Sandy Vance (Sep 14 2021 at 16:15):
Elliot Silver said:
Sandra Vance , Mary Ann Boyle, have you looked at the Grip platform? I've used it for a couple of conferences and from what I've seen, it's got the least awful experience.
Thanks Elliot! We will explore that, too.
Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC
