Remote & Hybrid Experience for ATmosphereConf

Last year’s ATmosphereConf was the first global community conference around the ATProto network that powers Bluesky and now hundreds of other apps. We had 180 people attend in person, 300 remote sign ups with peak stream viewers of over 200 during the two day, single track conference.

This year’s conference takes place March 26th - 29th in Vancouver, BC, Canada. We’re aiming for 300+ in-person attendees, have two workshops and side-event days, are expanding the conference to three tracks, and all three will be streamed through our video sponsor Streamplace .

Remote tickets will go on sale on Monday, Feb 2nd, with a $10USD suggested amount, and option to buy a conference t-shirt that will be sent to you. No one will be turned away for lack of funds, we ask that you register, accept the code of conduct, and join us across the microblogging skyline, Roomy, Streamplace, and the rest of the Atmosphere.

Sign up to be notified of remote tickets going on sale at atmosphereconf.org .

Remote Atmosphere

With the power of interoperability we aim to make the remote experience nearly as vivid as being there in person.

Streamplace being an AT app means we can mix & match it with other atmospheric applications to create an expansive Virtual Conference Space.

The first such coupling we're focusing on to begin with is Streamplace + Roomy .

From Streamplace Live Chat to Roomy Thread

On the advanced end we’ve got the various ways in which we could sync and embed across these two apps, and maybe we'll get to some of it.

For the Roomy MVP there will be a one-way exporter of Streamplace chat data imported to Roomy.

A live talk takes place digitally on stream.place, with its own live chat

Talk concludes; the chat of the talk is forwarded (and linked) to roomy.space

Talk-specific chat can be continued as a thread in Roomy's atconf space.

Streamplace is the primary feed of the conference, since the streamed talks are the main connection point between the physical and virtual attendees. Meaning, Streamplace is the main event, while Roomy makes space for the afterparty.

A 20min talk will have 20-30 mins of live-chat, and then on to the next one.

For Roomy, that 20 min talk and its transcript is a thread that may be now continued asynchronously with further questions & answers related to the talk topic.

On Streamplace, a link can be posted that people can follow along to continue in the thread. Devs can follow the technical MVP discourse here .

Hybrid Organizing

What we mean by "hybrid" is that for those attending in person, there is also a digital, online component to the conference.

All attendee are welcome to drop into the chat. What we found last year is that our chat backchannel was very quiet during the conference for those people that were in person: they were busy paying attention to talks (aside from posting to Bluesky on their phones), and meeting people in person.

But there's "hybrid" coordination to connect before and after the conference.

We've got a variety of activities leading up to the conference, dinner plans, coordinating travel and lodging like Train Jams, and more.

Join the Roomy space at roomy.space/atmosphereconf.org which is live now.

Remote / Hybrid Co-Leads

Two people are volunteering as co-leads of the remote event experience. Here are their intros:

Erlend

I’m @erlend.sh , a small-town guy who found a community of fellow weirdos on the big-world web through cozy IRC rooms and Internet forums. I’ve been obsessed with online space-making ever since, and the last few years I’ve been pouring all of that energy into Roomy , an AT-based community platform.

Managing the remote portion of this conference together with @psingletary.com & friends is a perfect opportunity for us to transition out of our deep-tech work of the past year and finally move into real-world use. We believe the months leading up to the conference will demonstrate like never before the unique affordances available to us as community builders when we can coordinate a multiverse of interoperating applications around a shared standard of identity and data storage.

Patrick

Some might say PSingletary.com is just some person on the internet, and I would agree! 👋 Patrick here! Virtual Community is important to me for many reasons, which is why I was too quick to volunteer last year with helping remote participants. While remote participation isn't the same as being there, I'm hoping we can craft new ways of interacting with people.

Not only will stream.place and roomy.space be useful in decentralized conversation, but I also think we can have some fun activities for hybrid participation.

We will be sharing more updates on our progress in the weeks to come. Meanwhile you're most welcome to join the roomy.space/atmosphereconf.org space.

Thanks Erlend and the Roomy team for supporting the conference with new features, thanks Patrick for always having our back on every platform and in person.