Guidelines for Gather

Gather offers virtual spaces to host social events via video calling. It is most easily accessed via a Web Browser.
Gather works best on Chrome or Firefox, but can also be used in Safari (beta version).
In Gather, participants create an avatar with which they can move around and interact with others in the virtual space.
In the virtual space, participants communicate via video call, similar to Zoom or Google Meets. However, there is the additional component of the virtual space to move around in. Gather more accurately imitates real life events.

Some time before our session on Tuesday, please visit the Gather link (this will be emailed to you) and set up a profile. You will design an avatar and give your avatar a name. Please use your first and last name so that you can be located more easily by other participants.
If you have not used Gather before, you will click “Next” after creating your avatar. You may need to give Gather access to certain features on your computer such as the microphone and camera. Then click “Join the Gathering,” and you will be given a Tutorial on how to use Gather. After the Tutorial is over, you will be prompted to walk through the door to join our Space. From there, feel free to look around the Space. To leave the Space, close your browser tab.

Use the link to join with your avatar and full name.
If you have already done the setup detailed in the “Before the Session” section, you will appear in the main room. From the main room (pictured below), you can move through a doorway into a breakout room for pop-up mentoring, or into the lounge for networking. More will be explained below.
To move around in Gather, use the arrow keys. To share video/audio with others, walk up to them. Once you are close enough to a person/group of people, you will automatically share video/audio.
To mute or unmute or turn off and on your video, hover your mouse over the video of yourself in the bottom right of your screen. You should see a microphone and video camera icon. Click to toggle the mic and camera off and on.

There is a chat feature on the left hand side-bar of the screen. It looks like two overlapping speech bubbles. You will have the option to send a message to:
- “Everyone”: all users in the entire space
- “Nearby”: those you are seeing/speaking to at the moment
- Individual users: select a name from the list to message a user individually.
There is also a participants tab on the side-bar below the chat tab. Open the tab to see a list of participants. To find a participant in the space, you can click on the participant name and select “Locate on map” and a path will be drawn from where you are to where they are (it will look like a colored line on the floor). To stop locating, hit any key or click “stop locating on map” at the bottom of your screen. Optionally, you can click on the participant’s name and select “follow” to follow the person wherever they go. To stop following, hit any key or click “stop following” at the bottom.

Please use the map below to find the lounge or the correct breakout room for your mentoring session if you signed up for one. See labels.

For networking, please move from the main space to the lounge. It is through the top doorway on the left side of the room. Walk to the top left area of the main room and walk through the door on the left side to enter. See label on main room map and a picture of the lounge below.
To have a conversation with a group, walk up to a person or group of people. The best option is for all of the group members to move into a “private space.”
Private spaces, denoted with a purple or blue rug on the floor, allow anyone on the rug to have a private conversation with everyone else on the rug. That said, anyone can walk into any private space. The private spaces are used to ensure that all people in a conversation can see and hear each other to the exclusion of others in the room who are not a part of the conversation. For this reason, it works well for networking.

See below for an example of a breakout room used for pop-up networking. Each mentor will have a breakout room labeled with their name on it on the main room map (see above).
Refer to the main room map to find the appropriate breakout room. Mentors will go to their room, as will their mentees. Once in the room, mentors and mentees will be able to interact.
To have a group conversation with mentees, everyone in the room should move close to each other. To have a one-on-one conversation, the mentor and one mentee at a time should stand close to each other while the other mentees keep their distance.