During an unprecedented time we are all dealing with a variety of challenges including isolation which some may find unsettling. It is human nature to communicate and socialise which we should all do as much as we can. This community is wonderful and sharing, providing a space for disparate people with some common interests to discourse. I wonder whether anyone might be interested in having a “club night” where we meet up (virtual) and have a chat via video conference? It could be like a social gathering you might have at a pub or café or a tech-meet. A chance to chat live, informally about Zynthian or other things. A chance to meet these lovely friends we have made. Maybe it could become a regular thing - Zynth Club.
Okay, a bit of interest for this so let’s start off by finding a day and time that suits as many of us as we can. Will you please respond in this topic if you are interested in a meet with:
Preferred day/s
Preferred time (in UTC)
We can then choose a day and time to best suit us all. To start off, here is my preferences (though I am fairly flexible):
Ok - looking at Zynthian Boxes in the World (which I know may be out of date - add yours by requesting here) I see the highest concentration in central Europe and North America so I will schedule our first Zynthian Club night for 19:00 UTC on Tuesday 7th April 2020. Some of our American friends may be at work and our friends in Australia, New Zealand, Asia, etc. may have a rather early start to their day if they want to join - a true test of your devotion to the cause . To be as democratic as I can I gave the time in UTC which almost no one is currently using. (UK are currently on BST (daylight saving).) However, to assist you here are the local times for a few locations that may be near you:
London, UK: 20:00
Barcelona, Spain (central Europe): 21:00
New York, USA: 15:00
Los Angeles, USA: 12:00
Melbourne, AU: 05:00 Wednesday 8th April
Wellington, NZ: 07:00 Wednesday 8th April
Tokyo, JP: 04:00 Wednesday 8th April
Kirov, RU: 22:00
I am sure you can figure out (or ask a friendly search engine on the Internet) what your local time is at 19:00 GMT.
I want to avoid “Zoom bombing” so will not advertise the meeting invite here. I will send an IM on this platform to each member who has voiced an interest within this topic, including the URL and p/w. To further avoid unwanted visitors (there is a current trend of bad behaviour from trolls) I may limit invites to established forum users initially. If that is an issue we can review. I would prefer to be more inclusive but want to avoid this social gathering being attacked when we are all trying to be nice .
We can use jitsi like Baggypants suggested for our initial meet to see how that works. It is limited to 40 minutes for non-paid members so we have a time constraint imposed on us - which I think feels about right.
So post your interest here and let’s raise a glass and chat about the Zynthiverse on Tuesday.
How strange! I am sure I read about the 40 minute limit yesterday whilst investigating but maybe I was reading about zoom (which I am familiar with because our company has been using it for a while). Oh well - we may get bored with each other after 40 minutes anyway… .
I will send out the link on Tuesday via IM. This will let me send a single message to everyone who has registered interest. I can send individual messages to late-comers .
Invites sent. Please message me if you haven’t received an invitation and want to join. There is no limit to the quantity of participants. (There is a limit to the quantity of recipients for a Discourse IM though, hence the need for multiple invitation messages.)
Just left the meeting blaming my network connection, I couldn’t hear anything correctly (sound or video were constantly freezing). The dark side of leaving at the countryside at the very end of the transmission line.
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