Reading Room

Accessing the Room

It's quite simple. The room is created in Gather.town and is always open. You access by clinking this link and typing in the password.

Don't know the password? Ask on Circle.

Gaining Access

When you click the link for the first time, a password is required. Enter the password and click Submit.

Video and Audio

Depending on your browser, you'll be required to give the service video and audio permissions. Click and permit.

Setting up

You may sign in (1) if you want an account. This is, however, not a requirement. What you probably would like is to check that your audio (2) and video (3) settings are correct.

If you fancy, you can edit your avatar (4) and enter your name before joining the room (5).

And so it begins...

Welcome to the Reading Room! You navigate by using the arrow keys. Before walking around, let's have a look at your options.

In the bottom tool bar, you can edit your profile and various options (1), (de)activate sound and video (2), share screen and send reactions, such as raising your hand (3) and see other participants (4).

The sidebar can be changed by using the buttons below (5) and contains a notice board, calendar, chat and participants list.

Writing each other

Speaking of chat, in services like Zoom and Teams, you're probably used to just being able to write whoever you're in a room with?

Gather is slightly different. Here you can write everyone in the room (1), but also just the people nearby (2).

What does nearby mean? Well, Gather is proximity based, but as a rule of thumb, it's the people in the same space (here: just think at the same table)

Meeting other people

Now, using the arrow keys, we walk to the middle table (2), where two other people have joined us.

Right away we get access to their video feed (1) and a shared chat (3) - great!

Let's all see each other

It's all nice and cozy seeing the Reading Room, but the video is a little small. Let's fix that using the switch between video and room (1). Great, now we can see the feeds (although them two people seem to have forgotten turning cameras on. Oh well...).

An important note here: When in gallery view, you can't navigate around the room. This includes interacting with objects (foreshadowing a bit here...). Remember to switch back, if you want to navigate.

Interacting with objects

Ok, so let's close that gallery view and try something cool. In Gather, you can interact with certain objects - you do this by pressing X on your keyboard. Let's try that.

Behold! Something happened! The table has a website embedded. It's the Book Club meeting notes! You can either type in the password (1) or close the window to return (2). Let's type the password and click submit.

Quick notes on a Kanban board

Ok, that's a little overwhelming! To clean it up a bit you can toggle the toolbar (1), the chat (2) and the user list (3).

To get a better overview, you can also toggle note descriptions on and off (4).

Now, what is this board all about? Well, there's a general comment section (5) for ideas and notes. And there is a list for each of the tables (breakout rooms) where notes can be added (6). New notes are added to either the top (7) or the bottom (8) of a list.

Please, do yourself and others a favour and add new notes to the top.

Let's note something

I've now added a new note, "Just testing", and clicked the little pencil next to the title.

Here there's the option to add content like images, links and code.

Also, we can add tags. These are great for filtering notes.

If you fancy, you can colour code notes. There's no real procedure here yet.

Let's close the kanban board for now and go back to the room.

Breaking out in groups

So... What if we want to break out in rooms for chatting on different topics in groups? Well it seems "Techy" here has done just that. Using the arrow keys she simple walked over to the orange table (1). Since she's no longer at my table, her video feed has stopped (2) and she's no longer part of the mid table chat (3).

She's now a part of the orange table "break out room" with it's own video feed and chat.

What's all this about?

Well, the general idea is to meet up and each quickly share what we found resonated the most in our reading. Just one thing, one sentence.

Whomever goes first picks someone new to say their thing and it popcorns about until all have said their piece.

The things are written as notes in the kanban board as this goes on and sorted into the lists, giving people subjects of discussion to choose from in the following breakout discussions.

Agenda

Meeting starts on the clock - do meet up early to chat though.
Everyone says what resonated the most with them
1. Keep it short, write it down
Divide out to discuss as you feel like
1. Swap tables as you want, or stay put
2. Add notes, links etc. as you go along (in the appropriate list)

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