EA coworking/​lounge space on gather.town

Arepo26 Apr 2022 10:57 UTC
191 points
21 comments2 min readEA link

PSA: I’m trying to build a community of online EA coworkers with longer-lasting connections than Focusmate and more flexibility than Discord. To this end I’ve created a general EA gather.town space.

My hope is that it can eventually become an always-active meeting grounds for anyone who wants to both cowork with and actually get to know other EAs to join at any time of day—perhaps like a neverending EAGx.

To help build up the community vibe, some of the hardcore users are keeping it open in the background whenever we’re working to increase the probability of you finding at least one person in there. So if you see anyone with a ‘happy to chat’ status or similar, feel free to come over (username and indeed real name = Sasha) - and if you want to support it, it would be great if you could just hang out on there yourselves! Hope to meet you there soon ❤

Update

We’ve had very positive feedback so far, and seen surprising growth over the past week, so here’s a more in-depth look, to encourage more people to join and keep the snowball rolling!

Features & Norms

The setup and norms are constantly evolving, but at the time of writing, here’s a taster (though there’s plenty more easter eggs to explore):

Pods of connected desks have a private area for 1,2, 3, 4, or 6 coworkers. You can join an existing coworking group at any time if there’s a free desk, and we usually make sure we’re working somewhere where there’s at least one open space (though when entering, please respect the timer ;). Requesting to split a 4+ group is actively encouraged if anyone thinks they’d prefer it.
Press X to interact with the monitor on your desk to access a customisable pomodoro timer that’s synchronised by all monitors in the lit-up area.
A section for focused work where no one can interact with you. Useful for people who just want to simulate an office background feeling or support the space while working alone.
Some areas are designated as “social” (the vase marks these sections); staying in them implies that anyone should feel welcome approaching you to chat or hang out. This removes uncertainty/​anxiety for newcomers wondering who to talk to.
A portal room that connects other EA or interesting Gather Towns. Can be expanded as we discover more—so if you have a local gather group that you’d be happy to link to ours, please let us know!
The east-side desks of the garden area and some desks in the library have solo focus-zones, and you can customize them via the Build Menu if you logged in. Customising other parts of the map is also possible, but please sanity check with someone if you want to make major changes!

Plans & Support

We have started expanding the space to make sure we have plenty of room to grow without feeling crowded, and we should be able to source funding for more users so please spread the word!

We have two loci for talking about the project: a Facebook group and a subchannel of the EA Co-Working Discord. Feel free to use these places if you want to schedule coworking with people ahead of time. We also have some terminals set up in the actual town that links to google docs with information, and where you can add suggestions and introductions.

We also want to encourage people to host talks or other virtual events in the space, both to help spread awareness of it and as a convenient forum for discussion afterwards:

People in either orange megaphone tile can broadcast themselves and their screen to the rest of the room.

Please get in touch if you wish to help out or have questions, comments or suggestions! :)

Arepo26 Apr 2022 10:57 UTC
191 points
21 comments2 min readEA link