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Post by slowscape on May 6, 2020 19:00:22 GMT
Hey everyone, I thought I'd try this out, see if there was any interest.
I created a live chat server on Discord for the AEM community.
What is Discord? Discord is a free chat service that runs both in browser or by a smartphone app. It can allow us to text chat in real time as well as facilitates live voice (audio) chat.
Why not just use the forums?
The forums are great for broad questions, sharing content, public service announcements, getting community input, and more.
Forums lack in the area quick creative inspiration and collaboration. I feel the community could come together closer and collaborate easier on projects and patches in real time. Plus the ability to live audio chat could facilitate things like "hey I'm working on this patch right now, what is it missing?!"
Chat would also be great for things that you don't necessarily want to hang around on the forums forever. Things like: "Hey everyone, I'm streaming live on YouTube right now if you want to see!", or "I just posted something about AEM on Reddit if anyone wants to go chime in over there".
How do I join? You will then be asked to either sign up (free) or sign in.
See you there!
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Post by admin on May 7, 2020 1:54:18 GMT
Hello slowscape, thanks for taking the initiative with this. I am subscribed to a few discord servers most notably the one from BoBeats which is super active. However I find that with timezones it's not always easy to be part of a longer conversation. Here in Australia I'm 8 hours ahead of Europe, 14 hours ahead of US East Coast and 17 hours ahead of US West Coast. With this I find that I always come late to an interesting topic and as there's no threading in discord I can't chip in later. That threading of conversations was one of the main reasons I chose a forum to kick start the community so that people can be involved in a discussion no matter when they log in, even months later. I also wanted to concentrate communication to the forum as there weren't many people active and to not diffuse the available content. However I think that we are now a big enough community with enough going on that we can test the waters with a more real time medium and I am super happy if you can take it on to moderate it. I might drop in from time to time and pull out interesting bits and mirror them here on the forum for us people that move a bit "slower"  All in all I totally endorse this server. Please try it out and if it leads to more interaction and more music making and more knowledge sharing then that's a good thing! |
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Post by rodney on May 7, 2020 5:08:14 GMT
admin Carsten, I have had a few beer and coffee meetings across time-zones. I prefer meeting friends in Europe because then I can be the one with the beer in the evening while it's coffee time for Europe. With USA friends, I'm usually the one with the coffee but, being a rural Tasmanian at heart, I wake up pretty early. 
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Post by admin on May 7, 2020 5:29:20 GMT
rodney, you're right, I wouldn't mind doing a meeting in a chat room, even using audio chat would probably be fun. My days are usually pretty full so maybe we organise a few meeting times and people try to get online for those?
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Post by rodney on May 7, 2020 6:49:22 GMT
rodney , you're right, I wouldn't mind doing a meeting in a chat room, even using audio chat would probably be fun. My days are usually pretty full so maybe we organise a few meeting times and people try to get online for those? I've been playing around with Mozilla Hubs and seriously would recommend it for larger groups because you can walk away from the main group to chat with someone.
Also, I'm building a drone world there. Here is a sneak preview (more fun in VR but definitely needs headphones)
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Post by martynaudio on May 7, 2020 8:43:37 GMT
I use Discord a fair bit, although I too find it sometimes hard to keep up with! That said, I think it might be a nice extension of the forums as long as it doesn't become really hard to navigate. Some of the servers I used to be part of had so many channels I gave up!
On another note - what is a drone world?!
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Post by slowscape on May 7, 2020 19:37:22 GMT
Coming from the IRC world, Discord looked like a complete disaster to me at first. I had no idea where to start, channels were filled with channels! Weird. So I plan to keep it as simple as possible. I also feel the AEM group is not super huge, and is very respectful. I don’t think missing convos will be an issue, or bringing up an old topic even. It’ll be more like low traffic IRC where it’s not uncommon to see simple convos lasting days with a message here and there. I guess for now I mostly see it as a more relaxed place for general and even nonsensical conversation that doesn’t necessarily belong on a forum Meetup times is a great idea! |
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Post by rodney on May 13, 2020 16:04:00 GMT
On another note - what is a drone world?!
try the link and see/hear
It's an interactive 3D world in which you can wander around and hear looped audio that changes simply by being near or far from each source. It's nicer in VR, such as Oculus or Vive, but also works fine in a browser with earphones on, or using Google Cardboard to turn your phone into a rough VR set. more than one person can log in to it at a time. you can voice char there too but that's hard because of my, erm, relaxing sounds (if you wander up the hill, it's quiet enough for people to talk though). type /fly if you want to fly around the world, but there is not a lot to see at present.
I was hoping other people could add audio files but there are still teething problems. They can add sounds but it seems that they don't fade or have direction when added straight from the browser. I built it in Spoke, mozilla's tool for making Hubs 'scenes' to load into a Hub. I'm still getting my head around it all. So far, I have not found a way to set up the spatial audio on-the-fly without rebuilding and reloading the world each time. you an add sounds and geometry but the sounds just play all over the world and don't have direction.
Hubs are really nice for voice meetings with up to about 20 people because you can wander around and chat just by moving, like at a party. I'm trying to subvert them into being communal musical instruments but with only limited success so far. I imagine it will be better when they finally introduce scripting but I think they have a way to go getting everything else running smoothly first before opening the gates of chaos for users to hack around with. |
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Post by slowscape on May 14, 2020 16:48:18 GMT
Very happy with the Discord chat so far! Each day we have new members joining!
It's been fun chatting with you all "live". If you haven't joined already, definitely make a point to do so.
Ps. just a quick tip: Get the Discord phone app. It makes it so much easier to pop in and join the drivel! Pps. It looks like we've officially "made it". We've got a chat link up on the forum navigation, woo!
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