Haiyoo! We meet again in this article about Gather Town Tutorial. Its still about the newest update from Gather Town. Previously I made a tutorial about adding pet to your Gather Town space. But right now we are not gonna speak about pet, we gonna speak about Event-type Space on Gather Town. For me personally, I never use this type of space, I always use Remote-office-type space for majority of my space — you know, because only on remote office we can use Go-kart, which is super cool. And event-type space? Not my type! But its not anymore after the last update. My perspective about using event-type space for my Gather Town event was totally changed. Want to know why? So here I share 7 Impressive Reasons Why You Need to Choose Event Type for Your Gather Town Space.

Basically there are three types or categories that you can choose while making a Gather Town space. Based on the type, there are Remote Office, Event, and Social. Based on the usage, there are for Set up a Workspace, Organize an Event, and Explore Social Experiences. PS : Although when we name the space, actually there are more for Education, but Gather not placing it into the main dashboard. FYI, each type of space have a different feature that stick on it. I dont know exactly why Gather Official made a decision to separate the feature for each type. Because in some case you want a feature from first type, and also want some feature for the second type. Its kinda painful sometimes, but just enjoy it! Gather already give us many cool feature on the platform.

Back to the types, You can see 3 types of space by clicking Create Space on the upper right side on Gather Town dashboard. To make an event-type you can choose the middle one. Back to topic, I will give you 7 main impressive features that I found while researching about event-type space. The first two are already there for a long time, and the last 5 features came from the last update, as far as I know, please correct me if I wrong. So check it out!

Moderator Role

You can only find Moderator Role when you choose event-type space. When you choose Remote-office-type, you will only find Admin and Builder. Moderator can help to manage the event, managing information board, chat, giving spotlight, but still doesn’t have full access to the space like Admin Role. I think its one step below the Admin, in the same rank with Builder, but for a different jobdesk. Its kinda cool, because sometimes you need someone to manage the event, but you dont want to give them full access for the admin. Because somehow admin can kick another admin, so giving a change to hi-jacking the space. Use moderator role, its the easiest solution!

If you are configuring event session, you will also found different taxonomies called Owner and Editor as collaborator. Here Editor can only edit the event session checklist (adding session, changing event time, and changing event landing page), but can’t publish and delete the event.

Information Board & Pinned Message

Information board will be on the bottom panel of your interface. Here you can store as many information for the participant, so new participant can read all the information about the space. Only Admin & Moderator can edit this Information Board. You can change the order of information easily. You can put the most important one on the first list and so on. Also you can give a live Pinned Message that will be broadcasted to anyone on the entire space. Using this feature, moderator can easily giving information to the participant. The information willn’t sinked like when we use a normal chat like on the remote-office-type space.

Scheduled Session Panel

We jump to the new feature, the first one is Scheduled Session Panel. Here you can make session that happen on specific Room and time on your space. The session panel icon will be on the lower panel on your interface, beside the information board icon. This panel can only be access by Admin and Moderator. Attendees without role cant see this panel. Also your avatar needs to be on the exact room and time when the event takes place. Lets say you set a session on room X at 1PM, so you need to go to room X after 1PM to see the session panel icon. When you go out from the room, the icon will be dissapear. When you have many event that takes place at the same time but different room, you need to have many moderator also to manage each room.

On this Scheduled Session Panel, you can manage your session. From allowing speakers to customize room (maybe they need to change tile effect or add object while doing their speech — to allow this make sure your speaker already familiar on Gather Mapmaking), Mute all attendees, Enable room chat, Enable Q&A, and setup whether the Question need to be approve by moderator first before it published.

Configuring the Scheduled Session is little bit tricky. Me personaly spend almost 2 days just to figure out where the panel on because its a new feature. So I make a separated tutorial on how to configure this that you can access here. Please enjoy reading it after finishing this article.

Chat to Room, Chat to All Moderator Only, and Q&A Feature

When on the remote-office type, you can only chat to Everyone, Nearby, and Direct Message. Everyone is for the entire space, nearby is only for people 5 tiles around you, direct is for exactly one person. On this update, we can do a chat only for one room. And we can also download the room chat record. When you dont want people asking through room chat, just disable the room chat on the Scheduled Session Panel, and inform them to ask through Q&A only. When you are outside the session area, the Q&A chat doesn’t appear, it will start to show up when you go to the event room as you can see on the second image above.

Also there are a feature that we can chat to all moderator. Its like a group chat for the commitee, finally the commitee can easily communicate each other, not using a direct message anymore. And of course without being read by the participant. Its a good way to do coordination to make sure the event goes smoothly.

For the Q&A, previously when we want to do Q&A session, participant can just chat on the chatbox, or go to the Q&A podium that already have a spotlight tiles there so everyone can hear them. While using normal chatbox, sometimes some question sink, and the answer will be separated from the question. While using Q&A podium, sometimes people confuse on how to go there — ya it sucks, but it happen — and sometimes naughty participant can go to the Q&A podium out of the Q&A session, and being spotlighted, and ruin everything. We tackle it by making impassable tiles on the spotlight tiles before the Q&A session. Using this new Q&A feature help a lot. See the picture below,

When someone ask, we can choose to make the question need to be approved first or not. If its need, so when someone submit a question, moderator will see the question first and choose to allow it or dismiss it. When its allowed, then the question will be on the Open panel, if its dismissed, it will be gone like nothing happen, so click carefully you moderator! After it goes to Open panel, it can be answered live or by type.

Maybe the best practice is speaker answer it live, and then moderator can transcript the answer into word, and choose to answer it by type on Gather. So all question will be recorded. Because you can download the recorded chat after the event done on the Session Panel. When a question already answered, it will be on Answered panel. You can also give thumbs up to the question. I think the most thumbs question will be on the top list, I’m not quite sure. But its cool, right?!

Photo Mode feature

Why you need photo mode when you can easily press screenshoting on your keyboard? No, its more than that! You will see photo mode icon on the lower panel on your interface. Click the > arrow button first, and photo mode icon will appear beside the minimap icon. When you click photo mode icon, a pop-up panel will be show up in the lower left.

Dont click Take photo yet, click the photo setting first. You can choose to adjust the canvas zoom from 25% to 400%. So more people can be on the photo. You can also choose to hide the video so its only shown the avatar. After you set up everything, you can click Take photo and and 3-seconds countdown timer will be on your screen. I dont know yet if its shown to the entire people on the same room or just for the “photographer”. After it you can download the picture. Easy peesy!

Mass Mute Feature

Mute all attendess is also my favorite while using event-type space on Gather Town! You will see this on the Session Panel Icon on the Room Contols. While managing my previous event, many participant get disturbed by another participant who doesn’t mute their microphone while speaker doing their speech. Its frustating actually, even though we can disable others microphone for us only, but who want to be busy disabling many people while actually you want to listen to the speaker there. Using this mute attendees feature, moderator can shut off everyone, except the speaker, admin, modeator of course, with just one click. All participant will get notification that they are muted by moderator.

Self Spotlight & Raise Hand Icon

For this feature, I think its improving the previous feature. Previously when we want to spotlight ourself, we need to left click our name on Participant panel, then choose spotlight. Right now, its as easy as clicking one icon. It will be on the lower panel, and also shown to the admin and moderator. Participant without role cant see this icon, but instead they will see Raise Hand Icon.

Previously when we want to raise hand, we need to go to emoticon, and choose the sixth emoticon (default) to raise hand, when we want to lower hand, we need to choose another emoticon because sometimes when we choose that sixth emoticon again, it will raising hand again rather than lower hand, I dont know exactly. Right know, clicking this raise hand icon will make the icon green, click again to lower hand, super easy. Good job Gather team!

So thats all about why you need to choose event-type space for your Gather Town event. I will use this more, if its not makes you interested, I dont know how to do it anymore LOL. Its really impressive, and I think you need to do that. Again I say, setup-ing this Scheduled Session will be so tricky. So I also made an article about how to configure it for you. You can access it here. If you want to check a demo space that using event-type space, you can check it here.

So thats all about 7 Impressive Reasons Why You Need to Choose Event Type for Your Gather Town Space. If you still have any question related to this article, just left a comment and I will be happy to answer if I can. Also if you want to give appreciation, you can go to my Ko-fi site to give me some coffee, it will be appreciate so much. See you next time in the next article! Sampai jumpa lagi!