Past, Present and Future of Open Science (Emergent session): Beyond the Meeting: Building a Permanent Space for Professional and Social Interaction Across the World

[jsheunis]

Beyond the Meeting: Building a Permanent Space for Professional and Social Interaction Across the World

By Savannah Cookson, University of California, Berkeley

• Theme: Past, Present and Future of Open Science
• Format: Emergent session

Abstract

The Club Night on gather.town was a fantastic experience and facilitated a virtual experience that was uniquely organic. While the Club Night was a defined event, we can use this new experience to allow for a completely new type of interaction that is not constrained in space or time. Let's build a worldwide virtual lab space - a place anyone can be in anytime no matter where they are to hang out, work with others, and do literally anything we want it to. What would that look like? What features would be useful? What would get you to log on when you get to work and just have it running in the background in case a fellow lab member says hi or has a question for you? Let's discuss how we can build a space that not only fixes the virtual conference, but transcends it. Example space in the Useful Link to explore the gather.town platform and how we used it for Club Night.

Useful Links

https://gather.town/frTlLiUYG2B44pjz/mytestspaces

Tagging @savannahcookson

[savannahcookson]

Seems reasonable to have this follow on Aina's discussion in the 6pm PST slot today, can also do the last session. prefer not 2am heh

[CooperSmout]

Great idea! I'll miss this session unfortunately due to timezones but keen to hear how it went. Definitely a challenge in these times to work out how to connect socially, but also a great opportunity to use the internet to facilitate connections that otherwise wouldn't happen.

[robertoostenveld]

I came across A10dee, an online virtual space that resembles gather.town. Note that I have not used it myself, but it is mentioned on https://mritogether.github.io/timetable