On tuesday, I was one of 250 attendees of the first virtual „European Networking Day". This event was brought to life by the organizers of the European Cloud Conference and European Collaboration Summit. I spent almost 5 hours in virtual reality (the event was organized using AltspaceVR) and really had a great time, so I thought it would be nice to do a quick recap for everyone that couldn’t attend or for others planning to do such events in the future. Because apparently, Covid-19 will stay around for some time (sigh)!
Stage and Open Space during Networking Day (credit: European Collaboration Summit)
The Good
It was really a great pleasure of “seeing prople”. Although you didn’t really see people in real life, real faces or anything. But still, avatars in virtual reality were so much better than digital conferences (where you got mostly video streams of presentations) or Teams meetings. Although the latter have greatly improved their experiences over the last months (Together Mode), virtual reality just feels so much more natural than any meeting you could have, be it Teams, Zoom or others.
For example, I discovered that in VR, it suddenly became possible to join a group of people having a conversation without suddenly being “on the stage” like when you join a Teams call with video turned on an instantly get noticed by everyone already in it. Just like in the real world, you could approach a group of people standing around, talking, and start with listening for a while before eventually joining the conversation. The “sound concept” in AltspaceVR – you can hear people talking when you’re close, and the volume of their voice reduces the more you get away from them; also the direction where it’s coming from when you turn around – greatly improves the feeling of having a natural conversation with people around you. I noticed that avatars even moved their eyes to the person speaking at a given moment – very cool!
In addition, the organizers came up with a quite cool room design (indoor/outdoor, bars, stage, great floor) and some good ideas: at noon, there was a (prerecorded, but still) “live” concert, the video being displayed on a virtual screen at the main stage. At this time, the room limit was hit and no newcomers could enter the main event room anymore. Luckily, I was there from the beginning! At the end of the event, organizers and some guests gathered on stage to have some kind of panel discussion (topic, of course: how well does a virtual conference like this work?). And in the end, a virtual snowball fight – great fun!
As with real expos, the organizers tried to maximize sponsor interaction by challenging the attendees to collect “CollabCoins” at each sponsors booth (= virtual room) by scanning a QR code (one CollabCoins) and speaking to them (has to be confirmed, two CollabCoins). I heard from several sponsors that this worked quite well, better than they had expected.
The “Bad”
The initial setup was quite a challenge. You have to register for yet another account – no possibility to connect your AltspaceVR account with an existing Microsoft, Azure AD, Google Account or some other existing identity. I addition, you cannot create your account on the AltspaceVR website, but have to download the (in my case, Windows) App and create your account in there. In my case, I was shown error messages multiple times in a row when trying to do so – just to discover that my account had been created when I came back some hours later. By the way, feedback to the creators of the registration form: having to choose you country by clicking left or right through a list of all countries on earth, instead of using a dropdown control where you can scroll, like everybody else in the internet does is just AWFUL. Very bad user experience at that point.
As I said before, you also have to download an app from the store – no browser join, no mobile app. As I do not own VR glasses, I couldn’t test the experience on those devices. In order to get accustomed with the whole VR environment, you have to invest some time to see how to move, speak, grab things etc. But that is pretty much the same with every new app you use, right? As someone who has played many first-person computer games in his life, that was not a big problem.
When it comes to sound quality (see the positive aspects above), I noticed that many people apparently used their laptop speakers and microphone instead of a headset or similar. This led to echos and could get quite annoying when standing close to multiple avatars with this “problem”. But hey, it was the first time for nearly all of us. Also, conversations with more than two people became difficult because of the slight audio delays, which oftentimes led to people interrupting each other unintentionally. In that kind of situations, you where reminded that you’re still not back in the “real” world yet (not talking about people on mute… 😁 ).
Talking about the setup of European Networking Day in particular, some things can still be improved: for example, getting into the event the first time was quite a challenge for me, until I realized I had to click a graphic on their website that in turn opened up the AltspaceVR app on my PC. On the AltspaceVR website, you could also set the event as your favorite. However, that didn’t help, because once inside the AltspaceVR app, you couldn’t see your favorites anymore 😑.
With regards to sponsor rooms and collecting CollabCoins, I found the teleporting experience a bit annoying. Everytime you wanted to get into a sponsor’s room, you had to teleport there, which took approximately 2-5 seconds each time. For 40 sponsors to visit (and go back to the main lobby each time), this adds up. Also, you’d always come out at the same space in the main looby, not where you started from. Collecting CollabCoins by scanning QR codes led to constant switching between PC and smartphone. And oh boy, you better have autocomplete ready in your mobile browser – filling out the same form for each sponsor manually would have killed it for me (thank you, Edge on iOS!).
Picking a Country by clicking left and right? Like…why?!
The Resumé
Although the above section about “The ‘bad’” is a bit longer that “The good”, ‘bad’ is put in quotation marks for a reason. Overall, it was a fantastic event and a fantastic experience. I really loved seeing so much people at one place, and despite some flaws, it really felt “real” most of the time. For me, the best part of it was to see how good conversations within a group of people worked in the open spaces of the main rooms. Of course, some things can still be improved – on either side (see “using a headset with a dedicated microphone” above…). But in summary, I really enjoyed the day and didn’t notice time pass.
So, I wanted to thank Adis, Margit & the whole CollabSummit and CloudSummit team for their great work, and all the sponsors for making this possible. Great job!
Oh, and by the way – very cool prizes! Did I already mention that I won a FREE ticket to Cloud Summit next year? See you there!
Hanging around at the Bar - just like in real life!