How we created an extraordinary virtual event using Gather.town
The situation in the Czech Republic has been pretty severe in recent weeks, with the country recording among the highest COVID cases per million in the world. With this in mind, we have taken all necessary steps to stay safe in the office, adopting practices such as no in-person meetings, no communal lunches, no gatherings at all. At the same time, we are fully aware that this lack of interaction has taken a toll on our mental health.
So, to bring a little joy back into our lives after such a difficult few months, our amazing Workplace Experience team — David, Míša, Martin, and Matej, with external help from Petr Janoušek — prepared an awesome online event for our Europe-based Productboarders.
Introducing the Productboard virtual pub!
The mission for this event was simple: To bring some cheer to our awesome team through a communal event where they can let their hair down and discuss something other than work. We wanted them to enjoy themselves, spark up conversations with colleagues, have a giggle, and enjoy their favorite treats and drinks. In other words, we wanted to avoid yet another boring Zoom-style meeting.
We understand that a virtual platform reduces the opportunity to have those chance encounters and hallway chats that often take place at in-person events. So we prepared a packed and entertaining program using Gather.town!
If you’re wondering how to enhance the social aspects of your online events, here’s some information on how we used Gather.town — and the lessons we learned along the way.
What is Gather.town?
Gather.town is a location-based video conferencing tool. Rather than your standard video conference call, each person is represented by an avatar on a virtual map. Users can move around the online space, and once they are within close proximity of another user, Gather.town automatically connects them via a video call.
The idea is to get as close to the experience of a ‘normal’ in-person event as possible, with all the chance encounters, small talk, and relationship building that comes with it. Granted, the virtual map has a somewhat retro feel (the characters are generated in a 2D, 8-bit world), but it’s the social aspect that matters here.
Gather.town allows you to choose from pre-designed maps or create your own. Users can also customize their avatars to make them as lifelike (or not) as possible.
Designing an extraordinary event
As previously mentioned, we wanted to organize a truly extraordinary event with a jam-packed program to keep people entertained. We came up with the following ideas:
- Meet our founders — Hubert and Daniel joined the fun and chatted with attendees.
- We hired a magician — Richard Nedvěd — who jumped from group to group to perform some crazy tricks.
- We also had a real fortune-teller, who forecasted the lives of our colleagues.
- We had a designated games room, where people could play poker, old arcade games, or go an egg hunt.
- We had a live band — Drama Queens — who interacted with people and took requests.
- We were joined by the brewer from our favorite pub, Dva Kohouti, who talked about the brewing process and shared some interesting beer-related facts.
All of the rooms in our virtual space were designed to enable people to interact naturally. Most of our attendees stayed for about three hours, which represented a great success. When it came time to close the event at 2 am, after moving from the office and studio to home, there were still ten people chatting!
Creating a virtual experience like no other
Gather has a growing selection of pre-configured maps, but we felt that none of them were exactly what we wanted. For example, to make our virtual pub agenda work, we needed a podium where our hosts and the live band could interact with everybody. So we decided to design our own space from scratch.
We needed a space where people could play poker and other games, meet the fortune-teller, check on board profiles of new hires, go on an egg hunt, and so on. We opted for a large open space with tables and several breakout rooms, including a meeting room with a printer, which was occupied most of the time by our engineers (the same usually happens in the real world in our office.) We designed the space to be the same as our real office in Prague. In total, it took 25 hours to create our virtual pub.
To ensure a slick, seamless virtual experience, we rented a studio, used green screens, and made sure that we had people on hand to handle any technical challenges relating to audio and video streaming.
We supplied the band with two monitors — one to see the avatars moving around our virtual pub space, another to watch the communal chat and receive song requests. We even had a behind-the-scenes live stream from Míša throughout the event.
How much does an event like this cost? It depends on the number of participants and the program you design. For us, the most expensive part was renting the studio and ensuring that we could handle all technical hurdles. But a ballpark figure would be in the thousands of Euros.
It is important to note that we produced the entire event by ourselves, designing it from scratch. We hired one external person to extend our production team, Petr Janoušek, who helped us arrange the studio, set up greenscreens, and send packages. We got the whole event ready from the scratch in 3 weeks.
Internal pre-marketing
To help people feel like they were in their favorite pub, we sent out special packages prior to the event. To cover all tastes and preferences, people could choose from alcoholic or nonalcoholic drinks and meat or vegan food. These packages made their way to anyone in Europe who filled in the questionnaire (the only failed delivery was to Tenerife due to restrictions on bringing alcohol onto the island).
We communicated all info in advance on Slack, created the event in our Google calendar, and asked our CTO to invite people there as well.
How did the idea for a virtual pub come about?
I have been at Productboard for only a few months, and in the beginning, our team was working mostly on COVID-related stuff only — organizing testing, setting up restrictions in the office, etc. We decided to do something fun, exciting, and a little bit crazy for our people — and so the idea of a virtual pub was born! David Petříček
Some tips for hosting your own virtual pub
- In general, think small and plan for much fewer people than you would first imagine. This will help create a social space that feels lively and busy.
- Don’t underestimate the technical equipment and support — audio, video, sound engineering, studio, etc. Go for quality above all.
- Prepare an effective communication plan — send instructions, infographics, and details to participants well in advance.
- Don’t be afraid to come up with crazy ideas — our fortune-teller had a long queue!
- Explain D&I to external vendors — make sure that all performers understand what your company culture is about, how they should behave, and what jokes and topics they should avoid.
- Plan the program in a way that prompts people to interact and strike up conversations. Avoid making any part of the program mandatory.
- Invite all of your colleagues, newcomers, and possibly potential candidates in the late stage — they will appreciate it.
- Prepare people for minor awkwardness — there are naturally some psychological challenges when approaching other people and joining conversations. More than once, we noticed an avatar running around the area where videoconferencing pops up, seemingly unsure about joining the conversation. In these cases, just like in real life, these issues are easily solved with a friendly “Hello” and a smile.
- Recyclability and a global approach — you can create a different package with different snacks, invite different artists, and create a different program, and people will have another awesome experience.
- Get ready as a host to provide guidance for participants.
- Filming a behind-the-scenes video gives attendees a glimpse into the work and effort that goes into designing such an event.
All in all, Gather.town was a great choice and served our purposes well. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, although we wished even more people had joined. We hope the lessons we learned will help you plan your own virtual event with Gather.town. Let us know if you think we’ve missed something important or need any help.
Interested in joining our growing team? Well, we’re hiring across the board! Check out our careers page for the latest vacancies.
