{"id":1953,"date":"2020-06-29T21:56:46","date_gmt":"2020-06-29T19:56:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.movr.com\/?p=1953"},"modified":"2020-06-29T21:57:09","modified_gmt":"2020-06-29T19:57:09","slug":"how-to-organize-a-meeting-in-vr-with-120-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.movr.com\/en\/2020\/06\/29\/how-to-organize-a-meeting-in-vr-with-120-people\/1953\/","title":{"rendered":"How to organize a meeting in VR with 120+ people"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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For over six years, Virtual Reality (VR) hobbyists and experts in Germany have been organizing themselves into local groups to exchange information about the technology, opportunities and experiences.<\/span><\/p>

MOVR has been actively supporting the <\/span>Cologne VR Meetup<\/span><\/a> in its roles as the main sponsor and organizer right from the beginning.<\/span><\/p>

Not only did the international exchange<\/strong> with VR-focused Meetup.com groups emerge early, but also are the organizers of the German groups in close contact.<\/span><\/p>

So the idea arose between the organizers of the largest German VR Meetup groups from the cities of Berlin, Bremen, Dresden, Erfurt, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hanover, Cologne<\/a>, Leipzig <\/strong>and Munich<\/strong>\u00a0to organize “Virtual Germany\u201c – the first virtual VR&AR Meetup for the whole of Germany.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The technical (social VR) platform on which the event was to take place was an important point in the organization right from the start as more than 350 participants<\/strong> were expected to register, due to the size of the individual communities.<\/span><\/p>

Besides <\/span>Altspace<\/span><\/a> (a startup that was bought by Microsoft in 2017<\/a>) other platforms like <\/span>Mozilla Hubs<\/span><\/a> (social VR platform of Mozilla the company behind the <\/span>Firefox Browser<\/span><\/a>) and <\/span>Highfidelity<\/span><\/a>\u00a0 (startup of the former co-founder of Second Life <\/span>Philip Rosedale<\/span><\/a>) were taken into consideration.<\/span><\/p>

In the end the choice fell on \u00a0Engage<\/a><\/strong>,<\/strong> a platform for further education, training, meetings and events in VR \/ AR<\/span><\/p>

Since Engage only allowed 50 people per virtual room<\/strong> at the time of the event, we divided the event into several rooms and distributed the program from the main room to the other rooms via YouTube stream<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>

During the event there were <\/span>over 120 users simultaneously<\/b> connected in up to five rooms (moon, earth, Mars, etc.)<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\"Engage_Tablet_2020-04-28_19-55-18\"<\/figure><\/div>
\"Engage_Tablet_2020-04-28_20-45-12\"<\/figure><\/div>
\"Moon_Talk_engage_WhatsApp<\/figure><\/div>\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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Learnings<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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As our later survey confirmed, it was <\/span>important<\/b> that the platform also allowed <\/span>access without VR glasses\/<\/b>equipment. In addition to a desktop client for interactive access, we also provided a <\/span>YouTube stream<\/span><\/a>, which <\/span>significantly increased the range of the event<\/b> and also granted access to participants with smartphones or tablets.<\/span><\/p>

The <\/span>number of people needed<\/b> for the organization of a virtual event <\/span>is at least as high as for physical events<\/b>, in many cases even significantly higher.
The technical requirements<\/b> for accessing the platform should be set as low as possible<\/b>. It can also be assumed that the participants\u2019 technical experience with such tools is poor or nonexistent. The requirement of installing an access software <\/b>can already be a criterion for not participating<\/b> in the event.
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It needs a central point of contact for participants<\/b> (landing page \/ hub) e.g. with a chat support<\/b> before and during the event, that is as easy to reach as possible and offers help with the onboarding<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>

Virtual reality does not automatically solve the <\/span>different challenges of physical meetings<\/b>: e.g. if more than a dozen people come together in one (virtual) place, <\/span>enough space or rooms<\/b> are needed to enable good and quiet conversations.<\/span><\/p>

Since we have also made it our task in the organizational team to <\/span>gain valuable experience in a wide range<\/b> with our events, we will carry out the <\/span>Virtual Germany Meetup # 2 in August 2020<\/b> on a new social VR platform.<\/span><\/p>

Together with Altspace, the public platform Mozilla Hubs<\/strong> is also under consideration, whose core technology forms the basis of MOVR Hubs<\/b><\/a> and offers simple, browser-based access<\/strong> to the VR world with and without VR glasses<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t Questions about events in VR or MOVR hubs?\t\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tWe are happy to help with any questions about online meetings, VR events or virtual collaboration.\n\nIn addition, we would be happy to show you examples of commercial use cases in the areas of B2B and B2C.\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tClick here\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\tDemo ready\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Together with the largest VR Meetup groups in Germany, we organized the first edition of the “Virtual Germany Meetup”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1926,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,51,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-featured-en","category-vr-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.movr.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.movr.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.movr.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.movr.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.movr.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1953"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.movr.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1987,"href":"https:\/\/www.movr.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953\/revisions\/1987"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.movr.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.movr.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.movr.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.movr.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}