Call for collaborators:
Making video meetings weirder
Are you interested in doing experimental and wonderful things on video conference calls? Ready to leap into a video call and rescue people from endless tedium and dread? Have weird ideas? We need you! Reach out!
What is this?
A video-conferencing marketplace with weird services for hire. It's still forming.
Examples
Early ideas (for inspiration):
- Hype friend: A hype-person for your meeting (or for just you).
- The Bard: A special guest composing music about the meeting.
- Human timer: A guest who enforces equal speaking time for all.
- Techno party: A special guest who can't stop won't stop dancing (optional: music on or off).
- Critic: Are you surrounded by yes people? Here is someone who will say no.
- Art window: Original art made during your meeting.
- Translator: Guest who translates jargon, linguistic posturing, and obfuscation.
- Human sounds: Guest who makes sounds on demand to communicate on your behalf ("hmm? hehe? whoa!").
- Half-time show: A special musical guest for your mid-meeting break.
- Chatty Gary: A video background with bubbles that show each face. The more you talk the bigger your bubble gets and the smaller the other bubbles get
- Move it out: Interpretive dance to augment your point/pitch.
- Tea Time: A person who enforces tea time as soon as 50% of the people have requested it by DM.
- The diversion: Two guests have a special moment during your call.
- Finisher: A guest who makes sure the meeting ends on time - by any means necessary.
Why do this?
To poke at:
- “Business as usual”
- Problems in video calls (tedium, privacy, the inhumanity, gary talks too much)
- Dead design metaphors
- Gig economies
- Art + Work
To invite:
- Unimaginable possibilities
- New ways of relating
- Art work
- Valuing emotional work
- Trickster trumps troll
Ways you could help:
We need help with:
- Ideas!
- Setting up (code, writing, art)
- Performing ideas (music, art, code, performance, other)