You bring up a really point here, and it's something we haven't spent nearly enough time on. What are the kinds of body language that you think are really important in real life, that make it easy to break into a conversation?
I had the same thought in my use of Gather and I think there are (at least) two separate scenarios.
One is when someone is alone. Are they actually still physically present? Are they waiting for someone? In person, I can see if someone is actively scanning the room and appear open to a conversation.
The second is when a group of people are already engaged in a conversation. Are they discussing something a bit more private? Are they speaking my language? Do they appear open to having more people join the conversation. In real life, I can hear parts of a conversation from a distance and look at how those in the conversation are positioning their bodies relative to one another to make some judgements on this.
Remember accessibility. The avatars are already quite small. I'd suggest something obvious like you could highlight yourself green or wear a green hat if you want to talk. You don't need to imitate real life - leverage the fact that you can manifest obvious queues in the digital world. If only we could make instantly make ourselves bright green in the real world when we want to meet people (sometimes people use wristbands or necklaces to do this IRL)!
That green ring sounds cool. Conference groups, where one tries to enter a group, but doesn't know anyone in it, are one the biggest challenges of a conference.
If you could simulate open shoulders, closed shoulders, that would be a way to make this, better than reality.
If everyone in a group has closed shoulders, it appears obvious they are not interested in anyone new joining. And also as in real life, a more welcoming group will stand slightly differently, but a newcomer can feel the difference. A slight opening of the shoulders in the group circle, allows one to enter, without feeling rude.
Simulating that feeling, by making a switch, sign, or setting, may be a breakthrough? Very exciting program. Going to try soon.
I like the idea of having some sort of easy-to-see marking. The specific realization in terms of a green hat might be non-optimal, because green hats have an unfortunate symbolism in Chinese culture.
I have a suggestion to make on this regard, not related to body language.
In scientific conferences, typically at the end of the day (e.g. after dinner, with drinks) you have "poster presentations". These presentations look pretty much like these images from Google [0]. Everyone goes to a big room, and the presenters stand in front of their posters which are ~90x120cm. People walk around looking at the poster titles figures, and when one of them catches their interest they stop to listen to the presenter (if they are already taking to a group) or ask him about it.
The fact that you have these big posters at all ends up being just a cue so people can identify who is working on which kinds of subjects/projects, and go talk to them about it. My advisor had this really funny idea of having "microposters" at a conference, where he just taped an A4 paper with one figure and the project title and his name to his back, and that is all it took to start conferences. It worked super great, it was exactly what it took to "break the ice".
In these conferences people will typically have read your papers, but they don't know your face, or even that you were in a paper (at most they will remember first author or last author, which is the professor). So just having a small cue "I'm Bob and I work on X" is already sufficient to break the ice.
My suggestion would be two things:
1) For mimicking the poster presentation aspect of scientific, to allow people to upload an image which gets displayed on an area of the map. Then the presenter can stand there, and interested folks just gather around him to listen.
2) Allow some kind of mouseover view that shows additional information about the person, eg a bio, a description of the projects, or a picture/link to a description of the projects.
I haven't yet seen a good virtual scientific conference, and it is exactly this aspect of the social interactions that is missing. In the end of the day, the primary reason why scientists move halfway around the globe to gather in a hotel for a few days is not to so much to listen to the speakers as it is to gather in small groups at breakfast/lunch/dinner/happy hour/breaks, and exchange ideas and get to know each other. Academic conferences allow people to put a face to the names they see in papers, and it really helps make science feel more humane and prompts you to exchange more.
Yes. This, this, and more this. Basically, having a way to see someone's table or booth could work for scientific conferences or trade shows or many different conferences, and also for informal conversations as well. I would love this feature.
As another commenter mentioned, we support this already! It was one of the first features we built, because our first paid customers were academic conferences. You can check it out here: https://gather.town/app/p4B9DUqB8NAazd3t/DemoConference
