How I spent NYE 2021

It’s been such a peculiar year. I wanted to experiment with an online platform like gather.town partly for curiosity, but primarily for (1) giving people something to do on NYE, (2) introduce a new experience, and (3) serendipitously reconnect with people. I figured this might be too weird for most people, and thought a few of the regulars would drop by to chat till the countdown, but we were well beyond the free tier for the entire 2 hours.

There were so many people that I was pretty bad at keeping track of all who dropped by, and the setup definitely took some getting used to. I’m also just not naturally good at being social, so I often drop out or sneak away from group conversations (which is much more disruptive when doing that in a 2-d space).

Here are some lessons learned:

1. This doesn’t work well on mobile, and a few people had camera/mic issues.

2. It also doesn’t work on all browsers, and was laggy for some.

3. People joined at different times, so some didn’t overlap with friends.

4. It definitely took getting used to managing the disruptions.

5. We weren’t sure whether to have people put their full names.

6. There were just so many people that we couldn’t keep track of who came.

7. It can be awkward for people who weren’t sure if they knew anyone.

8. People naturally crowded at the spawn point at the front door.

Here were the highlights:

1. We were able to make the custom map look like our house.

2. People made use of the conference rooms for group catching up.

3. People left really sweet messages on the whiteboards.

4. People found the games scattered around and had some introvert time.

5. Lots of people met for the first time with great conversations all around.

6. The count down from the podium worked out ok.

7. We had friends joining from as far as Serbia, India, and Australia.

8. People stayed and mingled well past the party time.

Overall, it was a pretty special experience, and the biggest regret was not being able to catch up with all the people that were there. We’ll have to do it again. Definitely for NYE 2022, I’m thinking we do the London countdown, so people can still party afterwards in a hopefully post-pandemic new year.