My Top Digital Tools for Learning 2022

One of my 2022 top tools for learning: an illustration made by MidjourneySince 2007, Jane Hart has compiled an annual Top Digital Tools for Learning List from the results of public surveys. Looking at the trends over time provides a useful overview of the tools that people are using to learn. In addition, her lists and annual analyses allow readers to discover new useful tools. Here’s my contribution: my ten top digital tools for learning in 2022, with brief descriptions of why and how I use them, plus some additional tools I’d sorely miss and a promising newcomer.

1. TweetDeck

Although the glory days of Twitter have passed, it still remains my best source of breaking news and interesting content from interesting people. It’s also the social media platform where I have the most visibility, with 1,000 – 10,000 tweet impressions per day.

And the tool I use to tweet and read is the web app TweetDeck. It’s a set of customizable columns that I’ve set up to show the tweets of a private list of accounts I follow, mentions, notifications, direct messages, and several customized search results for my various Twitter accounts. I love how easy it is to create temporary custom columns on the fly and tweet (immediately or scheduled) with automatic URL shortening.

Here’s a screenshot of five of the columns’ contents while I was writing this:

TweetDeck top tools for learningWhile there are plenty of ways to work with Twitter, TweetDeck is my favorite.

2. Feedly

I use the RSS web feed reader Feedly to stay informed about new posts on many different websites that interest me. Feedly lets me know about new content, so I don’t have to check the sites to see if anything has changed. I use it on a web browser and the IOS app.

3. WordPress

For the last 16 years I’ve posted one, occasionally two, blog posts per week on the privately hosted WordPress website you’re reading now. Sharing my thoughts by writing about interesting things is probably the best way I learn.

Interacting with my readers on the 700+ posts via 1,800+ comments to date, plus our online conversations on Twitter and LinkedIn is a great way to build connections and explore content deeper. WordPress plugins allow me to sell my books and workshops on the site. No question, WordPress is an invaluable tool for learning, sharing, and controlling your content.

4. Zoom

Over the last couple of years, Zoom has become the standard way, at least in the circles I travel, to connect with others online in real-time. It’s rock solid and has the core functionality I need to chat with a group or lead an online workshop. And just about everyone who goes online knows how to use it.

5. Evernote

I am interested in so much, and can’t remember more than a tiny fraction of what I read and see anymore. When I read an interesting article about meeting design, facilitation, a technical hack, or a tasty-looking recipe, I know that I’m not going to remember how to find it again in a week, month or year. So I capture it in Evernote. When I want to make chimichurri sauce again or remind myself about the myth of learning styles, it’s easy to retrieve that saved URL, set of client meeting notes, diagram, or memorable quote with a few keystrokes.

6. YouTube

Whether it’s a Sparks performance of How Do I Get To Carnegie Hall a track I fell in love with watching the end of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, an instructional video on how to fix my dishwasher, or a clear explanation of how an N95 mask actually works, YouTube delivers!

7. Preview

Sometimes, humble operating systems contain little gems. In my opinion, Apple’s Preview is one of them. I like to illustrate my blog posts with pictures, and Preview is the core tool I use to manipulate and convert images. Yes, I use other tools, but Preview will do most of what I need.

8. Google Chrome

The web browser. Can’t do much with the internet without it. I have both Chrome and Safari open all the time on my desktop Macintoshes, but I use Chrome more.

9. Merlin

Merlin, what’s that you wonder? It’s the latest addition to my learning tools. I live in the countryside and am surrounded by birds. Yet despite years of trying to visually identify them I am simply incapable of remembering birds from one week to the next. The Merlin app has a visual guide to identify birds, but I don’t use it. Rather, I use its wonderful Sound ID, which listens to the birds around you and shows real-time suggestions for what’s singing.

Merlin top tools for learning

I love using a different learning modality in place of an old one that hasn’t been very effective for me.

10. Dropbox

For a long time, I’ve needed to live in a world where my digital data is available to me anywhere and anytime. Where it’s protected from device loss or damage or hacking (I hope). I keep cloud and onsite backups of my desktop computers via a separate service, but Dropbox is the digital tool I use to store and access my critical data at any place and time.

Runners-up…

Here are four more digital tools that I frequently use.

  1. Besides Keynote‘s core use as excellent presentation software, it’s a wonderful tool for creating simple graphics. When Preview isn’t enough, Keynote usually has the added functionality I need.
  2. Sometimes Evernote is overkill; it’s a big slow-loading app. I use Apple Notes to quickly store and retrieve common information that I can’t load permanently into my brain.
  3. When I walk in the woods surrounding my home I often see flora I don’t recognize. (After 40 years living here, I’ve learned the fauna pretty well!) The Seek app is great for visually identifying plants.
  4. A very recent addition to my toolkit is Midjourney, which I’ve started to use to create illustrations for my blog posts (including this one).

…and a promising newcomer

I’ve occasionally used Slack over the past few years for event planning and real-time production. Midjourney (see above) is integrated into Discord, which I’ve started to enjoy using for group synchronous and asynchronous chats. Time will tell if this becomes one of my top tools for learning.

Free online Participate Lab — May 11, 2022

Participate LabA rare opportunity! Hosted by CSAE Manitoba, this free one-hour online Participate Lab will introduce you to the design of participation-rich events through the direct experience of participatory meeting techniques and formats. All are welcome to attend this event at no charge (both CSAE members and non-members).

Registration is limited, so register now!

Where & When

Online on Wednesday, May 11, 2022 — 12:00 – 1:00 pm PDT • 1:00 – 2:00 pm MDT • 2:00 – 3:00 pm CDT • 3:00 – 4:00 pm EDT • 8:00 – 9:00 pm BST • 9:00 – 10:00 pm CEST.

What We Will Talk About

We’ve known for a long time that lectures are terrible ways to learn. Today’s attendees are no longer satisfied sitting and listening to people talking at them. If you want to hold meetings where effective learning, connection, and engagement take place, you need to build in authentic and relevant participation.

Our time together at this Participate Lab will cover:

  • Why creating participation-rich meetings is so important.
  • Human spectrograms: a simple tool for learning about other participants.
  • The Conference Arc:
    • Building connection while uncovering wants, needs, and resources.
    • Creating the right program.
    • Consolidating learning.
    • Facilitating individual and community growth.
  • Ask Adrian Anything: using a fishbowl sandwich to facilitate group discussion on meeting design and facilitation.

This workshop is limited to 100 attendees, so register now!

Ask Adrian Anything — a free online participant-driven workshop on the future of events

Here’s a rare opportunity to ask me anything about meeting design and facilitation at a unique, free, online workshop. Join me next Thursday, March 10th, 2022 at 12:00 pm EST for Ask Adrian Anything (AAA): an online participant-driven workshop on the future of events.

Though the central core is the AAA session, this is an active learning workshop. During it, you’ll experience some of the practices I use to support and build participant learning, connection, engagement, and community.

How long will the workshop last? That’s up to you! I’m willing to keep it going as long as you have questions and concerns to share. When it’s over, you’re welcome to stay and socialize online, and I’ll stick around for informal chats.

If you want to join us, it’s important you’re ready to begin at 12:00 pm EST. We’ll open the workshop platform at 11:45 am EST so you’ll have time to do the usual camera/microphone online setup boogie for a prompt start at noon EST.

Register for free
We’ll meet online, using Gatherly [1, 2], a platform designed for online social interaction and learning. [Apart from being a fan, I have no affiliation with Gatherly, and am donating my services.] The Gatherly platform will allow us to learn about each other and about top-of-mind issues, concerns, and questions through small group work, human spectrograms, and fishbowl discussion.

Ask Adrian Anything

This is an opportunity for you to experience one of my participant-driven workshops. You’ll learn through doing, both about other participants and how to implement what you experience into your own events.

  • Experience a participant-driven online event.
  • Learn by doing participant-driven methods that increase event engagement, connection, and community.
  • Meet, workshop with, and learn from other event professionals.
  • Take this opportunity to ask Adrian anything about meeting design and facilitation.
  • Enjoy time after the session in an online social environment that closely mimics meeting in-person socials. You’ll be able to find folks you’d like to talk with and hang out one-on-one or in small groups for public or private conversations.

Register for free

Solving the Tesla Powerwall frequency problem

TLDR: Useful if Tesla Powerwall frequency shifting during outages is affecting appliances like clocks, furnaces, uninterruptible power sources (UPS), etc. Want to skip right to fixing the Tesla Powerwall frequency problem? Click here.

In February 2018, we installed a Tesla Powerwall 2.0 on our Vermont home. We get around thirty outages a year, and for the last 7 years this device has provided us with a reliable automatic backup electricity source capable of running our home through outages of up to two days. (Read more about my experience with our Tesla Powerwall here.)

Whenever there was a lengthy outage, I noticed that my old-fashioned digital clocks would run a little fast. I’d reset them to the correct time and didn’t think much about it.

Until one day…

Houston, we have a problem

Earlier this year, I reluctantly dismantled our 38-year-old solar hot water and space heating system and replaced it with a gas boiler. (One of the system’s large, expensive solar storage tanks had sprung a leak, and I would have had to replace all three tanks. Our solar collectors were still working flawlessly, but I worried that they might not last much longer.)

The gas boiler, a high-efficiency Alpine condensing boiler, was installed to heat a new stainless steel domestic hot water tank and the two existing radiant floor heating systems. After dealing with the inevitable teething troubles, the system was working well.

Until we had a power outage while the boiler was running.

Passing the small utility room that contains the heating system, I noticed a red glow that was definitely not normal. Going in, I saw that the boiler’s touchscreen display had turned red. The boiler had shut down with a “hard lockout.” Looking up the displayed error message “Fault 23” told me that the boiler was unhappy with the Tesla Powerwall’s power.

This was not OK. First, the boiler would not operate during a power outage. Furthermore, it would not turn on automatically once utility power returned. That’s because you have to manually reset the hard lockout using the boiler’s touch screen.

So if we left our home for a few days and a power outage occurred during that time, the boiler would not operate until someone entered our home and reset it. Having our plumbing freeze and plants die while we were away was not acceptable.

Diagnosing the problem

It wasn’t hard to figure out what was happening, once I remembered the previously ignored clue that some of our clocks ran fast when using Powerwall power. These clocks are the old-fashioned kind that keep time based on the national electric utility frequency of 60 hertz (Hz). Clearly, the Powerwall must be providing backup power at a higher frequency.

To my surprise, a quick Google search told me that Powerwalls supply power at 66 Hz when they are at full or close to full charge! My furnace was shutting down because, unlike the rest of my appliances, it would not operate correctly at 66 Hz. But why would Powerwalls do this?

Well, it turns out that many Powerwalls are used as storage for photovoltaic (PV) solar panels. PV systems also use an inverter, like the one in a Powerwall, to generate household power. And when the house’s electrical needs are being met with the Powerwall charged to or near full, there’s nowhere for additional solar-generated electricity to go. So the Powerwall is designed to switch to 66 Hz under these conditions. PV inverters, like my furnace, see the frequency out of the normal spec and shut down. The Powerwall supplies the home until it has spare capacity to be recharged by the solar panels, and then drops its frequency down to 60 Hz. Until then, the solar inverter (and my furnace) will shut down.

Ok, so I understand the problem and the reason Powerwalls are designed this way. But I don’t have PV panels, and I want my furnace to work when there’s a power outage! What could I do?

Fixing the Tesla Powerwall frequency problem – Option 1

Luckily, as you might expect, I wasn’t the first customer to have this problem. More Googling indicated that I could call Tesla and ask them to remotely update my Powerwall to reduce the frequency of power it provided under high charge conditions.

So I did. After a long hold time for Tesla Powerwall Support [(888) 765-2489], I spoke with a friendly technician, Manny. He confirmed that Tesla would make this change and placed an order for my system. Manny told me the change usually took 3 – 5 business days, and he would get back to me when they did it.

I waited. After nine days, I called back to get an update, and Andrea told me the queue was currently running 10 – 15 business days. So I waited some more.

Sixteen days after I’d spoken with Manny, he emailed me that Tesla had made the change. Great! Now, I wanted to test to see if the fix worked.

Testing that Tesla’s update worked

I didn’t want to wait until a power outage occurred while my furnace was running. So I decided to manually switch our home to Powerwall power.

I hadn’t done this before, so I investigated my Powerwall installation. It’s mounted on an external wall, so it’s easy to see the components. Please note that there are several ways to install Powerwalls — don’t assume that your configuration will be the same as mine. Here’s a photo, with the components labeled, of my setup.Tesla Powerwall frequency problem: A photograph of my exterior-wall-mounted Tesla Powerwall with the components labeled
Grid power flows through my utility meter through the gateway to the Powerwall disconnect, which is hooked up to both the Powerwall and my main home breaker panel.

For my setup, to switch our home to Powerwall power manually you simply have to open the gateway box and turn off the grid disconnect switch.

 

After flipping the grid disconnect switch, I went inside and turned up a thermostat so our boiler would fire up. Success! The Alpine now worked happily on Powerwall backup power!

I don’t own a multimeter that includes frequency measurement, but I found another way to discover the frequency that my Powerwall now generates. By logging in via your gateway’s Wi-Fi network, it’s possible to view the operating frequency of your Powerwall. These instructions provide a guide. I discovered that my Powerwall’s output is now between 62.1 and 62.3 Hz. Apparently, that’s close enough to 60 Hz to keep the boiler running.

Fixing the Tesla Powerwall frequency problem – Option 2

Although I solved my boiler problem, that doesn’t mean other appliances or devices are immune from Tesla’s frequency-switching technology. If that turns out to be the case for you, there is another option that should work, though you’d have to pay for it.

The trick is to use an online, aka double-conversion uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to power the troublesome device. (Offline/StandbyLine-Interactive, and Automatic Voltage Regulation types of UPS don’t change the frequency of the power supplied.) An online UPS charges a battery that runs an inverter providing 120 volts, 60 Hz power independent of incoming power quality. When grid power fails, this type of UPS has no transfer time. Plug the problematic device into an online UPS that has enough volt-amp (VA) capacity and you’re all set. Note that the backup time such units provide is irrelevant since they will still be receiving power from the Powerwall.

The only drawback to this solution is the expense. An online UPS costs more than the other types. The least expensive unit I could find via a quick search, the Maruson 1000VA Online Double-Conversion UPS, costs almost $500.

Conclusions

Once again, I’m very happy with my Tesla Powerwall. It would be nice if an installer or owner could make this frequency change, rather than waiting for two weeks for Tesla to do it. But at least there was a fix that only cost some time for research and a couple of phone calls, and my boiler power problem was resolved.

I hope this article will help anyone else who runs into the same problem. Please share your experiences and suggestions in the comments below.

The liberation of ignoring sunk costs

ignoring sunk costsAre you stuck in a career or life that you are reluctant to leave because it would involve ignoring sunk costs? I frequently meet people who are, and I certainly understand the temptation. Here’s the story of how I liberated my life by ignoring sunk costs. Perhaps it will inspire you to do the same.

The first twenty-five years of my life

My early education environment fed me a fire hose of information that my schools decided I should learn. Somehow, I maintained an intense curiosity to understand the world. So it’s not surprising that I gravitated to studying physics. I ended up with a Ph.D. in experimental high-energy particle physics at the tender age of 25.

I could have stayed in the field, probably got tenure, and been a physicist the rest of my life.

Instead, having fallen in love with Vermont, I left the world of high-energy particle accelerators and multiyear Big Science experiments, never to return. Although some of my experience prepared me for subsequent careers in computer science and consulting, I spent perhaps five to ten years of my life studying and working in fields I have, by now, largely forgotten. Five to ten years of sunk costs.

But no regrets. Although nothing to do with my absence, the field of experimental high-energy physics yielded little interesting progress over the last forty years. I’m glad I left it.

A visit to Korea

In 1996, my family and I visited Korea. Everywhere we went, people asked about my profession. They were astounded when I told them I had recently given up being a college professor to concentrate on information technology consulting. In Korea, being a college professor was the highest status you could have. (The two college professors with whom we were staying had their graduate students pick us up at the airport and ferry us around.) The idea that I would give up college teaching to pursue a different career was incomprehensible.

Perhaps if I’d been born Korean and followed the same educational path, my high status would have seduced me, and I would never have left academia. Status is a big reason why people cling to jobs that they hate. Knowing more about myself now, I’m glad I escaped such a fate.

Solar, teaching, and consulting

New careers followed. Abandoning each one required ignoring my associated sunk costs. Yet, in retrospect, there was always learning that fed my future. Managing a solar manufacturing company taught me much about business, which proved vital to my later consulting career. And teaching computer science for ten years helped me slowly become a better teacher, eventually discarding the broadcast-style teaching modalities I had experienced and unconsciously assumed.

Meanwhile, in my spare time…

Ever since I was a graduate student, I’ve felt drawn to bring people together around topics and issues they had in common. I spent most of the next thirty years doing this as an unpaid volunteer in my spare time. My only reward was the mysterious pleasure of feeling good about what I was doing.

What I didn’t realize was that, during these decades I was learning a great deal about successful and unsuccessful ways to facilitate group connection and fruitful learning. Figuring out ways to make the fundamental human act of meeting better, motivated by nothing more than the pleasure it gave me, led me to write a book about what I had learned.

To my surprise, when I published Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love in 2009, I found myself professionally involved in the meeting industry.

It took me half a century, but I finally figured out (for now) what I love to do. And organizations pay me to do it!

Are you stuck?

Are you stuck in a career or life choice that you are reluctant to leave because you would have to ignore sunk costs? Ultimately it’s your choice, of course. For me, being able to walk away from the learning, experience, and status I’ve achieved in various realms has been worth it. If my story hasn’t convinced you, I’ll close with Seth Godin’s thoughts on the subject:

“‘Ignore sunk costs’ is the critical lesson of useful decision making…

…Creativity is the generous act of solving an interesting problem on behalf of someone else. It’s a chance to take emotional and intellectual risks with generosity.

Do that often enough and you can create a practice around it. It’s not about being gifted or touched by the muse. Instead, our creative practice (whether you’re a painter, a coach or a fundraiser) is a commitment to the problems in front of us and the people who will benefit from a useful solution to them.”
Seth GodinSunk costs, creativity and your Practice

Have you ignored your sunk costs, and walked away from a career or life choice? Share your story in the comments below!

Image attribution: Flickr user Falco Ermert, under CC license Attribution 2.0.

December ebook sale

I’m happy to announce a special Conferences That Work December ebook sale, featuring my lowest ever ebook prices!

My ebooks are only available from my website. I’ve never put them on sale before — and I may never again.

Here’s the deal.

During the month of December — buy any ebook for only $9.99! Or buy all three for just $24.99! Immediate delivery on payment.

This December ebook sale ends on the stroke of midnight, December 31, so don’t delay, order today!

But that’s not all…

Spend more, get more, and save more by buying any of my paperback/ebook combos (includes free shipping in the U.S.) Save the most by buying my one-of-everything combo — 3 paperbacks + 3 ebooks — for just $74.

And finally, perhaps the best deal of all, remember thirty minutes free consulting are included with any first time book purchase from this site.

 

Gatherly and Rally comparative review

Gatherly Rally WonderI first reviewed (1, 2) three online conference social platforms: Gatherly, Rally, and Wonder (the new name for  Yotribe since September) in 2020. Since then, the Gatherly and Rally developers have been hard at work! [2023 update: Wonder went out of business in 2023.] So here’s a review of updated versions of Gatherly and Rally, including comparisons with the former Wonder service.

If this is your first exposure to online social platforms, the “First, some context…” section of the Gatherly/Yotribe review explains what they’re all about, and why they are important new additions to any serious online meeting. (For another, surprisingly neutral, perspective check out this Rally blog post.)

Also, read the above earlier reviews in full, so you understand the basic features and scope of these online social platforms.

As in my earlier reviews, I’ll focus on different aspects of the platforms, and provide information and commentary on each.

Requirements

Not much has changed here since Gatherly and Rally rely on the same underlying WebRTC technology. Both vendors recommend attendees use Chrome on a laptop/PC, not a mobile device. The platforms all work to some extent in Firefox, but Safari is not recommended.

One tip is to access Gatherly and Rally in an incognito/private window. This minimizes conflicts with any installed browser extensions/add-ons.

In addition, using these platforms on corporate LANs may require asking a sysadmin to allow the platform streams through a corporate firewall. Test before your event!

Bandwidth requirements are typically higher than those needed by, say, a Zoom meeting, since the fluid video-chat connections involve multiple video streams to each device on the platform, rather than the single consolidated feed used in platforms like Zoom and Teams. However, I’m in a rural location with only DSL and cellular connectivity and have only had a few transitory problems using these platforms.

Setting up and customizing meetings

When I last reviewed Gatherly, the platform required Gatherly staff to set up and customize each event. Rally and Yotribe, on the other hand, were usable as soon as you had a venue.

Gatherly

Gatherly has since added extensive capabilities to build and customize your meetings, via their VESTA tool. This is welcome news since the lack of a “plug-and-play” online meeting setup was a barrier to holding meetings on the platform. The following screenshots illustrate many of VESTA’s useful new features.

Gatherly Rally Wonder

Gatherly hosts can now create multiple events with open/close times, and use PowerPoint to customize an event’s floor backgrounds from a variety of templates. The VESTA portal also provides convenient links to the latest Gatherly guide, tutorial videos, a customizable event brochure template, and a speed test. Later in this post, I’ll describe the pricing model and event analytics included in VESTA.

Soon after my June revue, Gatherly added unlimited “floors”, akin to Rally’s rooms, with “elevators” to move between them.

Rally

Rally has added multiple new customization features since my June review. You can now change the background of your Rally venue and each of your rooms. Rally now allows multiple venue hosts, so it’s easier to collaborate when setting up rooms and features. A convenient drop down makes it simple to transfer between rooms. In addition, rooms and venues can be edited on the fly, making it easy to add/remove/close/open rooms, while an event is going on.

Formerly, Rally’s “improve connection” feature removed the attendee from the meeting so they had to rejoin, answering the same sign on questions as before. This no longer occurs.

Rally can now “archive” a room, so its customizations can now be recalled when needed.

Wonder

Yotribe gave you a room instantly on signing up. Currently, this is no longer true for Wonder. At the time of writing this review, I am still waiting for a Wonder room I requested a week ago. So I haven’t been able to check out Wonder firsthand.

All guests are now in one room, rather than adding more “areas” when the number of people in any area exceeds 36. The home page says: “Wonder rooms can host up to 1,500 guests.” Wonder’s Support FAQ says: “There is no technical limitation to how many guests may fit into one room. If you have more than 2,000 guests it might make sense to run two rooms in parallel.” Either limit is probably ample for most events; the more pertinent issue is how well Wonder works with many attendees.

Wonder now includes room areas, which can be set up by the host. Examples are the Business Tech, Education & Training, and Grant Programs areas shown below. They can be added on the fly, either before or during the meeting.

Gatherly Rally Wonder

 

In addition, you can add a background image to your Wonder room.

Broadcast capabilities

Gatherly

Gatherly can’t broadcast to more than one floor. The company says that the platform handles ~150 people/floor, so broadcasting to a single floor will be fine for many events. Gatherly recommends providing a floor for every hundred attendees. You can, of course add more floors if you want to devote each one to a specific meeting function.

Gatherly hopes to introduce broadcasting to multiple floors in early 2021.

When running a recent event in Gatherly, we noticed that the list of attendees, a very useful feature, showed only the first 60 names. Apparently, this limitation is still in place. I hope they fix this soon since it’s impossible to see and contact every attendee at an event with more than 60 people.

Rally

Like Gatherly, Rally still doesn’t provide a single stage for multiple rooms. This is more of a limitation for Rally, though, as the maximum room size is 35 people. So you can’t currently create a presenter or panel session for more than 35 people. A Rally spokesperson told me that the platform can be set up to support up to 50 people per room, but this requires turning off the background chatter feature. Rally says that people on stage need less bandwidth now, allowing eight people simultaneously.

Wonder

Wonder has added video broadcasting, where all participants see the host’s video stream. While broadcasting is taking place, individual video chats are halted. Up to six people can broadcast simultaneously, and all of them must be authenticated as a host.

Pricing

Gatherly

Gatherly is using two pricing plans, One-Off and Annual, both based on a ticket system, administered in VESTA, that determines the cost of each event you set up. The company is finalizing ticket and annual plan pricing and expects to make this information public shortly.

Rally

Rally has published the following pricing.

Like Gatherly, if you’re planning large events, you’ll need to contact Rally for custom pricing.

Wonder

Wonder pricing is easy; it’s still free! I don’t know how the company can afford to keep providing this service for free, as the bandwidth and server costs for running multiple video stream meetings are higher than services like Skype, FaceTime, and Zoom, and someone’s got to pay them. Feel free to use Wonder for now (assuming you can get a room) but don’t rely on it being free forever.

Limits

Gatherly

Up to 1,000 people per event, ~150 per floor (not a hard limit, but recommended); 5 or unlimited floors, depending on plan; up to 15 people per huddle (group chat); 7-8 on stage; currently, people tab shows a maximum of 60 people.

Rally

“2000+” people per event;  9 people per table; a maximum of 35 people per room (50 people per room is available in beta); up to ~8 per room panel; the number of rooms depends on the plan.

Wonder

1 room per venue; maximum room size 1,500 attendees? (see above); up to 15 people per circle; a maximum of 15 room areas; up to 6 people can broadcast simultaneously.

Security

Gatherly and Rally make similar privacy and data security claims, regarding the underlying data services.

Gatherly events can have a unique, event-specific URL and password, which provides decent security. An attendee will need to know the correct URL, password, and open times for a specific event.

Access to a Rally venue simply involves providing attendees an unchanging URL tied to the venue. You don’t need a password. (Password-protected rooms are “in the works”.) Once someone has this URL, they will have access to the venue at any time it is open. Like Gatherly, Rally allows hosts to choose when rooms are open, so someone with the URL cannot use a venue, as long as you close the venue room(s) when an event is over. If you are using a Rally venue frequently, you could be visited by someone who has been given the venue URL for an earlier event and decided to “pop in” and see if anything is going on. Rally corporate users can request Single Sign-On, which limits attendees to those with the same company domain.

Access to a Wonder room simply involves providing attendees an unchanging URL to the room. You can password-protect a Wonder room. Once someone has the URL and password, they will have access to the venue at any time until you change the password. Frankly, this is like giving people a key to your home that they can use when you’re not there, and I consider it poor security.

Analytics

Gatherly’s VESTA portal includes an intriguing feature: event analytics. Here’s a screenshot of a typical event.

Rally says they can track “time in room per person, what room they visited, how long they were on stage for, how many people were in the room at once, how many uniques, and more”, and provide this information on request.

Conclusion — and an annoyance

Both Gatherly and Rally are fine platforms that are already useful. I continue to be impressed by the fast pace of development from both of these companies. Wonder’s biggest advantage is that, for now, it’s free. I’m not sure that I would pay a significant amount to use it, though.

Gatherly and Rally have one annoying limitation, which, in my understanding, is unlikely to be removed soon. Many online event conveners would like to use a platform like Zoom for their “main” conference, switching to an online social platform for program breaks and socials. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to run two platforms simultaneously on one computer, because each needs exclusive access to camera, microphone, and output sound. Attendees must, therefore, close one platform before opening the other. This is awkward and requires careful pre-event attendee education.

I’m sure Gatherly and Rally have some concerns that a major online event platform will build a good-enough online social capability into their product. Right now, I strongly recommend anyone who wants to provide experiences close to those of an in-person social at their online events seriously investigate these platforms.

 

Review of online social platform Rally

Screenshot of the online social platform RallyAdding to my reports on new platforms providing online incarnations of traditional conference socials, here’s a review of online social platform Rally.

[Added November 23, 2020: after reading this review, see this post for an update on Rally and two other online social platforms: Gatherly & Wonder (formerly Yotribe).]

Two points before we start

First, if you don’t know about online social platforms, check out the introduction included in my earlier reviews of Gatherly and Yotribe.

And second, bear in mind that these platforms are continually improving, making reviews like this one a moving target. For example, Gatherly has significantly increased its platform functionality since I reviewed them two months ago, so be cautious about making direct comparisons between my reviews. Be sure to visit the platform websites to get the latest updates. Better yet, get a free time-limited account and check them out yourself.

OK, on with the review.

Platform metaphor

Unlike the birdseye view map metaphor of Gatherly and Yotribe, Rally does something a little different. Rally provides a venue with multiple rooms, and each room can have a variable number of tables.

Currently, each room can hold up to 35 participants, and each table up to 9. The company says they are exploring increasing room size to 50.

Rooms can be named, opened, and closed by the Rally host (indicated with a ☆ next to their name). Venue owners can make other attendees co-hosts. You can set the duration for a room to be open — a nice feature. Rally can provide hosts with a custom URL for their venue.

Rally’s fixed maximum room size approach differs from Gatherly’s (where the typical maximum room size is larger, and can be increased by prior arrangement), and Yotribe’s (people are automatically split into new rooms when a room size of 36 is reached). Here’s a screenshot of a Rally online social.

We are currently in the Upstairs Patio. The room dropdown menu allows us to pick another open room to visit, as shown in the animated image at the bottom of this section.

My current table, where I’m video chatting with Jake and Steve, is shown below Aimey’s video (she’s on stage — more on this later). Three other tables are shown on the right.

Hovering over the picture of any occupant brings up a menu of potential interactions with that person. I can leave my table and join any of the others, and people can join my table too. Or I can invite anyone to sit with me at a new table (you can see me inviting Aimey to join me at a new table).

Since this screenshot was taken, Rally has added an option to make tables private, so no one can join the table or listen in to the conversation there until it’s set to public again.

Finally, Rally is planning to add room background images and color selection, and music background in rooms in the near future.

Sound

Rally has an interesting twist on the sound you hear during an online social. The speaker icon next to the “All Tables” caption allows you to choose the “background chatter volume”. Like an in-person social, you can set this so you can hear some of the conversations at other tables. There are three settings: medium, louder, and off. Some people probably like this. As an older, hearing-impaired guy who is quite auditorily distractible, I want this setting off. Your choice!

Chat and broadcast

Rally has recently added text chat and broadcast to the platform. Chat with the room is currently available, and Rally plans to add single-person and table chat soon. The host can broadcast a text announcement to all attendees in all rooms.

Presentation & panel capability

Rally includes “on stage” functionality for each room, which can be useful for small gatherings. But it doesn’t provide a single stage for multiple rooms. So you can’t use Rally to create a presenter or panel session for more than (currently) 36 people.

A host can bring themself and others on and off stage. Folks on stage appear in larger video windows on the upper left of the screen. Anyone speaking on stage will be heard by everyone in the room, and presenters can hear audience response at a reduced level, rather like as if they were speaking at a live event. Rally includes functional presenter screen sharing. An unlimited number of people can be on stage at one time, though there can be bandwidth issues with more than four. If there are more than three people on stage, their video windows are reduced in size

A nice feature is that it’s possible to converse with other people at your table while listening to those on stage. Another feature that could be useful when in stage presentation mode is that Rally allows the meeting host to randomly shuffle table occupants into tables of 2, 3, or 4 people. This can be useful if you are using Rally in a stage plus discussion mode. Presenters can deliver a chunk of content, and then small groups, randomized as necessary, can then discuss what they heard or saw.

However, the room size limit to the number of people who can listen to folks on stage currently limits Rally to a presentation tool for small audiences. They say they’re working to include video broadcasting between rooms.

Experience quality and interface

Like the other platforms I’ve reviewed, Rally works best with Chrome on a laptop or PC. Hosts can log in with Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google. A Rally attendee just needs a link to the venue, and only needs to provide their name. If you have multiple input and output sound and video sources, you can choose between them.

I have used Rally a few times and occasionally experienced glitches. There is an “Improve connection” button, which seems to take you out of the room and bring you in again, losing your place where you left off in the process. In general, I judge the quality of the video chat as good, but based on my limited experience, not as reliable as Zoom.

One annoying aspect of the interface is that anyone can invite you to a new table at any time without you being able to decline the request. This can be somewhat jarring. I was able to remove someone who was speaking on the stage by inviting them to a new table. A yes/no acceptance option when invited to join a table would solve the problem.

Rally needs to improve its onboarding process for first-time users. Though the interface is pretty easy to understand and use, the current one-page introduction document is barely adequate. Right now, it’s good to have a dedicated host who notices when new attendees appear and helps them acclimatize.

Pricing

Like other online social platforms, Rally is in beta and still firming up pricing. Currently, they plan to offer two pricing models, one for repeated events, such as regular team happy hours, and another for one-time events. They expect repeated event monthly costs to be comparable to Zoom pricing. Custom events will be “competitive” and use a per-user, per-hour model.

Currently, you can try a one-room version of Rally for free.

Platform focus

Rally describes its current platform focus as follows:

“Rally’s focus is on networking events. Our ideal markets are internal networking events or small to medium size events (10 to 1000 people); however we have been effective with 1000+ events as well. Our goal is to focus less on one time events and more on monthly recurring events. For us it’s better to sell to associations, businesses, corporate marketers, and student clubs instead of large tradeshows, conferences etc. So I’d position us on the more frequent smaller events scale vs. Gatherly or Yotribe.”

Understandably, most online services today prefer steady revenues from subscriptions to one-time purchases, and, based on this statement, Rally is no exception. I’m sympathetic, though purchasing a subscription for an independent meeting designer and facilitator like me is probably not a great fit. However, I’m not Rally’s target market! As usual, my behavior will depend on the pricing model Rally chooses.

Conclusions

I like Rally a lot, and I’m enjoying the company’s continual improvement of its feature set and platform. I still slightly prefer Gatherly’s room map interface, but that’s a personal preference that many may not share. Both platforms offer a highly credible and enjoyable online social experience that is sure to be a permanent game-changer for meetings. (Until such platforms become the new normal.) I expect to use and/or recommend both Rally and Gatherly in the future. Yotribe’s development seems to have stalled since I reviewed it — right now, in my opinion, it’s not a serious competitor.

There is always more to say, but I hope you’ve found this review of online social platform Rally useful. Please share your experience with Rally, new features, and things I’ve missed in the comments below!

COVID-19, in-person meetings, and wishful thinking

COVID-19 and in-person meetings This is not an easy post to write. The pandemic’s impact on lives and businesses has been devastating. COVID-19 has virtually eliminated in-person meetings: our industry’s bread and butter.

In order to overcome the many significant challenges created by the coronavirus, the meeting industry has made valiant efforts to rethink in-person meetings. The goal? To bring people safely into the same physical space, so they can meet as they did before the pandemic.

Sadly, I believe such efforts are based on wishful thinking.

Wishful thinking

It’s nice to imagine that, if we can figure out how to bring people safely together in person in a COVID-19 world, our meetings will be the same as they were pre-pandemic.

But until we create and broadly administer an effective vaccine (or we suffer the disastrous and massive illnesses and deaths that will occur obtaining herd immunity) they can’t be the same meetings.

Moreover, there are two reasons why there is no persuasive use case for holding almost any in-person meetings in a COVID-19 world.

Why in-person meetings do not make sense in a COVID-19 environment

By now we know that in order to reduce the spread of COVID-19, people near each other must:

  • Wear face masks that cover the nose and mouth; and
  • Stay six or more feet apart.

Here’s what that looks like at an in-person meeting.

COVID-19 and in-person meetings

Let’s set aside the significant issues of whether attendees can:

  • safely travel to and from events;
  • be housed safely;
  • move around an event venue while safely maintaining social distancing; and
  • be fed safely.

While difficult, I think we can do all these things. Well-meaning meeting industry professionals are understandingly desperate to bring back in-person meetings from oblivion. But they assume that if they can solve the above challenges, an effective meeting can occur.

But good meetings are not about listening to broadcast content

In doing so, they have reverted to the old, deeply embedded notion that, fundamentally, in-person meetings are about listening to broadcast content. Since the rise of online, broadcast-format content can be delivered far more inexpensively, efficiently, and conveniently online than at in-person events.

As I have explained repeatedly in my books and on this blog (e.g., here) assuming that conferences are fundamentally about lectures ignores what is truly useful about good meetings.

Among other things, good meetings must provide personal and useful connection around relevant content.

Masks and six or more feet separation ≠ connection

Unfortunately, you cannot connect well with people wearing face masks who are six or more feet away!Why? Because we are exquisitely sensitive to body language and facial expressions. With everyone social distanced and faces half hidden, the normal cues of connection, such as microexpressions and subtle shifts in posture, are hard to read. In my experience, it can often be easier to read emotions and responses in video chats than socially distanced situations.

New tools for online connection

In addition, new online social platforms (two examples) provide easy-to-learn and fluid video chat alternatives to the in-person breaks, meals, and socials that are so important at in-person meetings. Do these tools supply as good connection and engagement as pre-pandemic, in person meetings? Not quite. (Though they supply some useful advantages over in-person meetings, they can’t replace friendly hugs!) Are they good enough? In my judgment, yes! In the last few months, I’ve built and strengthened as many relationships at online meetings as I used to in-person.

A depressing conclusion

Right now, the learning, connection, and engagement possible at well-designed online meetings is at least comparable — and in some ways superior — to what’s feasible at in-person meetings that are safe to attend in a COVID-19 world.

Now add the significant barriers and costs to holding in-person meetings during this pandemic. The challenges of providing safe travel, accommodations, venue traffic patterns, and food & beverage all have to be overcome. Even if credible solutions are developed (as I believe they can be in many cases), potential attendees must still be persuaded that the solutions are safe, and your meeting can be trusted to implement them perfectly.

My own example

I’ll share my own example, as a 68-year-old who, pre-pandemic, facilitated and participated in around fifty meetings each year. Since COVID-19 awareness reached the U.S. five months ago, I have barely been inside a building besides my home. I have only attended one in-person meeting during this time: a local school board meeting held in a large gymnasium with the fifteen or so masked attendees arranged in a large circle of chairs in the center of the room. I am not willing to fly anywhere, except in the case of an emergency. Everyone has their own assessment of risks taken during these times. But I will simply not risk my health to attend an in-person meeting at present. Especially when online meetings provide a reasonable substitute. I don’t think I’m alone in this determination.

I do not think that the research initiated and venue upgrades made are a waste of time, money, and effort. There may well be a time when an effective vaccine exists and is being introduced. At this point, in-person meetings may be able to start up again without the critical barriers introduced by universal masks and social distancing.

Until then, I don’t see a credible use case for holding significant in-person meetings in a COVID-19 world.

Image attribution: Erin Schaff/New York Times

Two tools for online conference socials: Gatherly versus Wonder review

Gatherly versus YoTribe review If you can’t hang out with people in person, how can you best meet up with your tribe online? That’s the selling proposition for a host of new platforms that have sprung up over the last few months: creating a compelling online incarnation of the traditional conference socials we all know and love (or hate). Last week I got to try out a couple of these new platforms, so I thought I’d write a Gatherly versus Yotribe  (NB: Yotribe has been rebranded as Wonder) review.

[Added November 23, 2020: after reading this review, see this post for an update on these two platforms and Rally.]

A maximum of around thirty people were present at any one time at the Gatherly test event, which I set up. I estimate there were around a hundred folks at the Yotribe event, which was organized by Anh Nguyen.

First, some context…

In-person conference socials

Imagine an in-person conference social. <sings>”It isn’t hard to do.”</sings> You enter the room and look around to see who’s there.

Perhaps you see people present whom you know. So you go over to them and say hi, or perhaps join a conversation they’re having with others. Perhaps you don’t recognize anyone. So you have to bravely sidle up to someone or a group and introduce yourself. Or insinuate yourself into a conversation. Perhaps you know there are people present who you’ve met online, but short of sneaking a look at everyone’s badge, there’s no easy way to find them.

During the social, you usually have multiple conversations with different individuals and groups. You move from one conversation to the next, as you and others desire. You may meet folks with whom you want to have a private conversation, so you go somewhere you’re unlikely to be interrupted.

These are the processes we take for granted at an in-person meeting social.

The inadequate networking functionality of most online meeting platforms

These days, we can network online via group messaging/text chat, audio chat, or video chat. (OK, yes, virtual reality has been available for a while too, but it hasn’t really taken off.) Just about all online meeting platforms now include traditional webinar style video conferencing, and many offer Zoom-style main room and breakout room meetings.

Many online meeting platforms tout their “networking” capabilities. When you look at the specifications, however, the majority offer only text chat! Some provide one-to-one networking via private video chat. And some describe their capability to support multiple video breakout rooms as “networking” — but this is disingenuous.

As anyone who’s tried to use Zoom breakouts for networking knows, the big barrier is that once someone’s entered a room, they can leave it to return to the main Zoom meeting but they can’t then move themselves to another breakout room. (Unless you make everyone a co-host, which is not a good idea for a meeting of any size, since a careless or malevolent co-host can cause havoc.)

Even if an online platform allows users to move between multiple breakout sessions, you still won’t experience something close to an in-person social. That’s because breakouts are fixed platform units that have to be set up in advance. There’s no easy way for three people, say, to decide they want to video chat about something amongst themselves for a few minutes, and then spontaneously split up and meet others.

Online conference socials using platforms like Gatherly and Yotribe

Online social platforms like Gatherly and Yotribe provide an experience much closer to that of an in-person social. They do this using a map interface that shows individuals or groups of people scattered around a room or rooms. Gatherly versus YoTribe review When you join a social on one of these platforms, you find yourself as an name or photo on the map. You move around the map by simply clicking where you want to go.

If you move near another person’s name or picture, you’re automatically connected to them by video chat. If you move into one of the circles on the map — colored in the Yotribe screen shot above, or numbered (so-called “huddles”) in the Gatherly image below, you’ll automatically join a video chat with everyone in the circle/huddle. Gatherly versus YoTribe review Finished chatting? Click on the map to move somewhere else to join someone else or another conversation! Or click on the map away from everyone else so you can answer that phone call you just got.

That’s the basic interface. All such platforms provide this birds eye view of the positions of everyone in the social and the same mechanism to move around and meet others. Of course, each platform does this a little differently, and they include additional functions, like text chat, which I’ll cover below.

Requirements

Setup on both platforms couldn’t be much simpler. Both are browser based, so there’s no app to download or software to install. Attendees are given a link and an (optional) password to join the social room.

Gatherly requires you talk with their sales staff to set up the meeting. This ensures they size your server correctly. They will give you a link to your room that you can distribute to attendees. Gatherly requires you to use the Chrome browser.

Yotribe can be set up without any input from a Yotribe human. Get your own room from the button on their home page! Once you have your room, you can set up a room background (see below), set a room password for attendees. You can also set up an “icebreaker question”, though I’m not a big fan of these.

Meeting size and conversation group size

How many people can be in a single meeting while supporting multiple on-the-fly group conversations? And how many people can be in a single on-the-fly video chat?

These are key questions!

Just eight years ago, public platforms that provided a stable video chat with a mere ten people (think Google Hangouts) were state of the art. Today, we take this kind of technology for granted. But supporting multiple constantly-reconfiguring video chats for hundreds of people is hard, and costs money.

Most platforms today use open source WebRTC technology, the availability of which allows small companies like Gatherly (a handful of computer science students in Atlanta, Georgia) and Yotribe (a few techies in Berlin, Germany) to create a pretty impressive fluid video chat infrastructure.

In my opinion, the one-to-one private video chat provided in several other online meeting platforms is not sufficient to offer an intimate and fluid social experience. This is a key differentiator for platforms like Gatherly and Yotribe.

Gatherly size issues

Gatherly asks meeting owners to provide the maximum number of people who will be in the room and the largest group video chat size desired. They then host your meeting on a server that can handle the required load. In a test meeting last week, Gatherly comfortably handled spontaneous video chats with ~15 people. This seems more than enough capability to me.

Yotribe size issues

Currently, Yotribe has a different approach. One of the Yotribe founders, Leonard Witteler, explains: “As thousands of participants join a room, we split the room into many areas and serve the smaller areas from a properly load-balanced backend.” In our test last week, Yotribe ran into problems with groups larger than about ten people. Since there’s no limit that can be set on a conversation group’s size, this could cause a problem any time a large number of people try to video chat with each other.

Yotribe’s effort to create a platform that automatically scales to handle varying loads is impressive. The automatic addition of “areas” — each restricted to a maximum of 36 participants in our test last week — as the number of participants grows is an ingenious approach to mitigating the increased demand on the video chat servers they employ. However, such a system needs to fail gracefully when its limits are met. Given that we were able to stress Yotribe with about 100 participants in our test event, currently I’d prefer a platform like Gatherly with known, preset limits that will handle a predetermined load for a production event.

Gatherly versus Yotribe features

There is one minor nomenclature difference between Gatherly and Yotribe. Gatherly calls video chat groups “huddles”, while Yotribe calls them “circles”. Both platforms allow attendees to mute their microphones and turn off their cameras as needed.

Neither platform has much in the way of documentation. That’s probably because the developers are constantly adding new features. Luckily, both interfaces are simple enough that it’s not hard to figure out how they work, though it took me a few minutes, which could disorient and discourage some first-time users. Adding a short, skippable tutorial for attendees to view before entering the room would be a nice addition.

Interface

There are numerous small but sometimes significant differences between the interfaces of the two products. I will concentrate on what I noticed that’s important to me.

Map interface

Gatherly shows individual attendees on the map by name. It displays current huddles as circles with numbers inside, the number representing the count of people in that video chat. Moving your cursor over a huddle shows a list of the names of everyone in it. This is an intuitive interface that makes it quite easy to find specific people in the room: they are either shown by name outside the huddles or one can “search” the huddles by moving your cursor over them.

Yotribe shows individual attendees as pictures, selfies that are taken by the attendee’s webcam before they enter the room. This is great if you recognize most of the people present. If you don’t — my experience at most events — you’ll need to hover your cursor over each image to see their name. This is time consuming if there are many people present. In addition, I didn’t find any way to discover who was in a circle other than joining it and scanning through the participants.

I found Gatherly far easier to use to find specific people, or browse who’s present, than Yotribe.

Yotribe does have one extremely useful feature. The room host can upload an image that replaces the blank room map (see example below).

By creating an appropriate image, you could designate portions of the room as numbered or named breakout rooms, exhibit booths, etc. Gatherly provides this functionality as a service on request. In my opinion, Gatherly should follow Yotribe’s lead and make map customization completely under host control.

Video chat

Gatherly has a Zoom-gallery-style video chat display. As the number of people in the huddle increases, the video windows get smaller, keeping everyone visible. This worked well during our test event.

In addition, Gatherly has what I’d argue is an essential feature that Yotribe lacks: the ability to lock a video chat at any time so no one else can enter. This allows two or more people to have a private conversation. Private conversations like this are impossible in Yotribe, which allows anyone to suddenly join a video chat circle at any time

Yotribe shows circle chatters in a strip at the top of the screen, like Zoom’s webinar view. In practice this means that circles with more than five people can’t display everyone on screen simultaneously. As a result it’s hard to tell who’s speaking in a large circle, and because people can arrive and depart at any time, you’re never quite sure who’s present.

Yotribe does offer an option to share your screen with others in your current circle, which could be useful though there doesn’t seem to be a way to zoom the image to full screen.

Text chat/messaging

Gatherly includes a simple text chat interface that allows you to see the names of everyone present, message another person, or message everyone in your current huddle.
Yotribe text chat includes the above functions, plus a broadcast chat mode that allows attendees to send a message to everyone. Gatherly needs to implement this! Message notifications in Yotribe are easily overlooked though; the only indication is a small yellow circle in the chat window and chat icon.

Pricing

Currently Yotribe is free! (I suspect this won’t last, so enjoy it while you can.)

Gatherly is currently using a $x/head pricing model, where x depends on the size of the event. Right now, I suspect they might be flexible. They were kind enough to offer me a free test event last week.

Quick comparison with Remo

Remo is another platform that offers multi-person, map-based video chat (and a lot more besides). I’ve only seen a brief demo of the product so I don’t feel qualified to provide a review here. The map is much prettier than Gatherly’s and Yotribe’s, and uses a set of various table sizes as a metaphor for conversations. It’s noteworthy that the pricing for Remo is based on the maximum number of attendees, meeting duration, and seats available at a table (currently 4 {$50 – $150/month} or 6 {$400 or $900/month}). This highlights the significant costs for providing the kind of server power needed to support fluid on-the-fly video conferencing.

Security

Gatherly says they use Amazon Web Services servers and end-to end encryption. They do not have access to any audio or video data; it’s briefly held to transmit it, but they do not store it, and employees do not have access. They offer password protection of rooms, and can include a waiting room (I did not see this) for you to vet attendees before they join. Finally, they provide “Kick and Ban features to ensure troublemakers stay out of your event”, which I didn’t see either.

YoTribe also allows a room password. Only guests who are in your circle can participate in your conversation; no one in the room can be invisible to you. Like Gatherly, Yotribe says it does not have access to any audio or video data; it’s briefly held to transmit it, but they do not store it, and employees do not have access.

Conclusions

On balance, I prefer the Gatherly experience to Yotribe, though both platforms are useful and solid enough for small events. Yotribe has a more party-like feel, which could be a good fit for a group that mostly knows each other. Gatherly does a better job, in my opinion, of creating an experience closer to that of a friendly conference social.

However, your needs are likely different from mine, so I’ve summarized what I see as the advantages of each platform below.

Gatherly advantages

  • Being able to lock a Gatherly huddle, so you can be sure of a private conversation is a big plus.
  • Gatherly’s Zoom-like video gallery view inside a huddle works well, allowing you to see everyone present. Yotribe’s scrolling strip of video windows only shows a fraction of the people in a large circle, and it’s difficult to figure out who’s there and who’s speaking.
  • Given Yotribe’s unpredictable loss of video chat functionality, I prefer to have Gatherly’s predetermined limits on event and chat size, allowing the platform to provide adequate power to reliably support the meeting.
  • I prefer Gatherly’s map interface to that of Yotribe. Yotribe’s attendee photo icons are great if you recognize most people. But seeing names moving around the map is more helpful in general. In addition, Gatherly’s ability to show you the names of the people in a huddle just by hovering your cursor over it is much more informative.

Yotribe’s advantages

  • For now Yotribe is free, and Gatherly costs $!
  • A Yotribe room can be set up and used without any communication with Yotribe, while Gatherly requires you talk to their sales staff first.
  • Yotribe has broadcast text chat, which Gatherly did not, though I’m told it will be added any day now.
  • Yotribe creates new rooms automatically when the number of attendees in any room exceeds 36. Gatherly says they will soon have a fixed room feature too, with “elevators” that allow you to move to a different floor (see the image below). I think this will likely provide an easier to navigate social meeting than YoTribe’s extra-room-on-the-fly approach.
  • Unlike Gatherly, Yotribe allows the host to upload an image file to replace the blank map where attendees roam. This is a very useful feature. I hope that Gatherly implements it soon.

Final words…

I hope you’ve found this Gatherly versus Yotribe review useful. I know that Gatherly is being constantly updated. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Yotribe developers are hard at work as well. So reviews like this are a moving target. Please share your experience with these platforms, new features, and things I’ve missed in the comments below!