Gather Town

Joining Gather Town

We will be using Gather social networking during the course. You can join using the link and password below. You will need a desktop/laptop to do so.

Password: SingCell

If you haven’t used Gather before, this brief guide provides some tips for moving around the space.

When you join Gather:

Please ensure your display name is the full name you registered with
Please close any other apps using your camera and microphone
If you are having trouble connecting, check this troubleshooting guide and/or use the Slack channel #technical-support

There is one room in the Gather Town – this is where you will appear when you first enter the space, and where the posters can be found.
EMBL-EBI staff will be on hand to help near the podium in the centre of the room, or can be contacted via the #technical-support channel in Slack.

Gather is a video chat platform that has avatars move around a map. As you get close to other avatars, your videos will pop up and you will be able to chat.
Move around the space using the arrow keys.
By moving your avatar around you can have spontaneous conversations with those around you. These can be either one-on-one or small groups depending on how many people are around your avatar.
When your avatar moves closer to an interactable object, it will glow yellow and there will be a notification that shows up saying ‘Press x to interact with -object-’.
You can find a guide to interacting with others in Gather Town on their website here.

Icon explanation:

Screen sharing ability

Change your avatar character and clothing

Opens the settings menu, where you can:

Participants panel

Chat

Not so obvious features:

Here are some things you might find useful but aren’t immediately obvious.

There is a messaging feature that allows you to message people including:
- individually by clicking on their name in the participant panel,
- locally to the people you are video chatting with,
- globally to all the people in your map.
There is a locate feature to find others by clicking their name in the participant panel.
Interaction distance is also sometimes altered by designated private spaces. This allows conversations to only include people inside that space.
Want to full screen someone else’s video? Just click on their video.
Talking to a group of people? Click the down arrows below the videos to shift into grid view.

Gather requires a desktop/laptop and works best on Chrome or Firefox.
We recommend using headphones if you can, to help prevent feedback.
If you are connecting via a VPN, you may need to switch this off in order to join Gather.
If your avatar, sound, or video freezes, refreshing your browser is often a quick way to fix this problem. If this doesn’t work, try muting and unmuting your mic, and switching your camera on and off.
If you get lost in the space, clicking on your name in the menu bar (bottom centre of the screen) and selecting ‘Respawn’ will bring you back to the starting point.