This Friday sees the first day of May, which traditionally marks the coming of summer… judging by all the bluebells that have been evident on recent solo walks, it appears to be well on its way! While our options for celebrating its arrival may be more limited, let us welcome in the summer with a variation on our virtual socials!
Rather than creating one “virtual pub” as in previous weeks, this time we will be attempting to recreate a pub crawl within our own homes! The idea is to periodically move from one location in your home (representing a pub) to another during the evening, probably each half hour. These can be different rooms, your garden if you have one, or even different views of the same room if you have limited space – you could also change props, accessories, lighting, clothing or drinks to increase the sense of change…
Unlike a real pub crawl though, you can take an unfinished drink with you to the next venue rather than downing or leaving it, if you prefer! And finding us part way through should be easier as well, if you can’t join us from the start.
Please email the organiser by noon on the day if you’d like to attend, and you’ll be sent the link to join the virtual pub crawl!
We’ll host this on Jitsi Meet, which you can run either in your web browser on a computer (Chrome or its derivatives appear to work best), or as an iOS or Android app on a smartphone or tablet (the web version won’t work on these). If we have multiple “tables” then moving between them will be a case of changing from one meeting URL to another, which should reload quickly.
A few pointers to get you started:
- Once connected, please click the menu icon (three dots in the bottom-right corner), select “me” at the top of the menu and give yourself a name (this is especially helpful if we can’t see your video for any reason). If you’ve used it before, then it may already remember your name.
- If the connection quality seems poor, try going to “Manage video quality” from the same menu, and reducing to standard or low definition – this can make a big difference; you could also try turning off your own camera, or as a last resort low bandwidth mode, which is audio only. Moving to a location in your house with a better wifi signal (or using a wired connection on a computer) may also improve things.
- You can switch between seeing everyone at once, or just the current speaker with thumbnails of everyone else, via the “tile mode” button (bottom right) or menu item on the smartphone app.
- There’s also a text chat facility, if you’re having problems with sound – click the speech bubble in the bottom left corner.
Please contact the organiser separately if you’re having problems getting it to work.