How to Gather

tbd/con runs on Gather, a 2D virtual world where each attendee is a small avatar walking around a pixel-art map. Think video game crossed with video call. Or what the Metaverse would look like if Zuckerberg were a decent person.

Conversations happen by proximity. Walk up to someone and their video and audio fade in. Walk away and they fade out. That makes spontaneous hallway chat possible, which is the thing flat video calls cannot do. Talks, breakouts and mingling all happen in one space.

Getting in

Gather runs in your browser, no installation needed. Chrome works best. Use a desktop or laptop if you can. Click the event link, allow microphone and camera access, pick a name and avatar, and you're in.

[Event link will be added here on the day of the event!]

You arrive in a short corridor that teaches you the controls in four signs. It takes about a minute, and it ends at the welcome desk, where a person in orange will answer anything. Been here before? There is a side lane that skips the corridor.

Moving around

Arrow keys move your avatar. Step into a group and you're in that conversation. Drift away and you're out of it, just like a real room. There is a text chat panel, a participant list you can use to locate someone and walk to them, and a minimap if you get lost.

Objects are interactive. Walk up to a schedule board, a poster or a link and press x to open it.

Useful keys:

• x interact with an object
• g ghost mode, walk through crowds without joining their conversation
• z confetti

Sound, and the one rule of the venue

Audio works three ways. Out in the open, you hear whoever is near you. Inside a room, a lounge or a stall, you hear everyone in it, however far apart you stand. And when a speaker is on a podium spotlight, they are heard by the whole floor they stand on.

Gather does not mute anyone automatically. When you are in a room, your open microphone reaches everyone in it.

So the one rule: stay muted unless you are speaking.

Everything else on this page is optional.

The venue

The venue is five floors. The main floor holds the arrival, the lounge, the stage and three session rooms. Four doors lead off it: to Tamale Hall, the beach, the night market and the gallery. Each door is a portal, so you just walk through.

Finding your way: Colored paths are painted on the floor of the main hall. Gold leads to Mooncake, plum to Purple, green to Teak, sand to the beach, brick-red to Tamale Hall, amber to the night market and teal to the gallery. Every path ends at a striped pad. Step on the pad, you are through.

The arrival hall is where you land. The welcome desk and the information point are straight ahead of the corridor, with the programme, the running order and the code of conduct on boards you can open with x. To the left is a lobby with two sofa pairs and a bar. Sit down with someone and you have a private conversation. The tip jar sits on the desk band: tbd/con is free, and the tip jar keeps it that way.

The Lighthouse, on the left side of the hall, is support. Walk in if anything is not working. Volunteer HQ is the matching room on the right.

The central space is the hallway of the conference. The welcome stage at its head, with three tiers of benches in front, is where the opening and closing plenaries happen. Along the right edge are promo stations where projects show their work. Between sessions, this is where you mingle.

Three session rooms open onto the central space, each behind a wall with one door. Once you step through the door, you hear the whole room.

• Mooncake Room, top left, is the big one: a podium at the head, rows of seats, a centre aisle.
• Purple Room, top right, is a ring of chairs around a rug. No podium. Sessions here are circles, not talks.
• Teak Room, below Purple, is the small one: couches, low tables and a whiteboard. Workshops and working sessions.

Each room keeps its name and its colour all day, so "Purple, 10:20" is all the direction you need.

The Corkboard is the corner beside Teak. It is where tomorrow's unconference is planned: pitch a session, pin it up, find people who want it.

Tamale Hall is a separate floor through the door on the left, and it is the one place at tbd/con that is recorded. Sessions in Tamale Hall are recorded and may be published; speakers choose it, nobody is recorded by accident. A banner at the entrance says so, and if you would rather not appear, step back through the door. Tamale has a podium with a spotlight, rows of seats, a recording crew corner and its own running-order board.

The beach is through the door below Mooncake. It is the after-talk floor: two coves, Mango and Papaya, each with a barbecue pit and benches, a tiki bar between them, a bench at the end of the pier for quiet conversations, hammocks, a volleyball net, a jukebox and a bottle with a shared note in it. There is a photo spot under the driftwood arch. Stand there and press z.

The night market is through the door on the right. It opens on 24 September for the unconference: nine named stalls around a lantern-lit square, the Lantern, the Anchor, the Kiln, the Press, the Aviary, the Ledger, the Orchard, the Signal and the Vault. A crate in the middle of the square is the soapbox: stand on it to pitch, and your voice carries five tiles. On day one, peek if you like, then go plan your session at the Corkboard.

The gallery is a small room behind a door in the lower right, below volunteer HQ. It holds the gratitude wall, portraits of the people whose donations and tickets pay for the conference, and a lounge for the review crew.

How talks flow

The podium is formal. One speaker at a time, no interruptions. The beach is informal, conversation shaped.

When a speaker finishes at the podium, they walk to the beach. Anyone who wants to keep talking follows them to a cove. Meanwhile the next speaker starts at the podium. After-talk conversations run in parallel with the program, not against it.

At the end of each block, the speakers from that room converge on the beach for a closing conversation with everyone who followed.

You do not need to remember any of this.

If you can play a simple video game and join a video call, you already know how to use Gather. Join five minutes early to get comfortable. Headphones make everything sound better. Use Chrome. We'll already be there if you have questions and you can reach us anytime at tbdcon@gazzetta.xyz.

This page is updated as the venue takes shape. Program details live on the program page.