Many solo entrepreneurs rely on coffee breaks, lunch and serendipity for social contact and the experience is hard to replicate online. Luckily as a gamer I’ve practiced my whole life doing meaningful things together staying at home. This combined with experience in building professional communities, I’m experimenting bringing the serendipity of a coworking space, including the break room, online.
I’m using Discord, the de facto standard for voice communication in gaming. The continuously available voice channels can be used much like physical rooms where you can join without explicitly calling people.
Community rules:
- This is an open community for people to co-work and connect, be nice
- Use your real name as your nickname on the server
- Keep chat in english
- Feel free to speak any language you want if everyone on your voice channel is ok with it.
If you already use Discord, join me directly here:
https://discord.gg/57WRtYk
Discord has 2 types of channels, voice and text. Text channels are tranditional text based chats, similiar to IRC, Slack and other text based tools. The voice channels are for real time communication over voice, which has been the main focus for the tool since the start. The voice quality is extremely good considering the small bandwidth it takes. My favorite feature is the automatic lowering of volume for other applications when someone is speaking, so you can listen to music without it interfering with the discussion. Recently they have also added screen sharing and video chat on top of the voice channels, but I haven’t tested those features personally.
Installation Instructions
- Go to https://discordapp.com/ and download the app, or use directly on the browser on desktop.
- Create your account.
- The username is the same across all servers, so you may want to use a nickname here. You can set a different display name on each server you join, but the username is always visible to everyone.
- Some servers allow accounts without an email to join them, mine requires a verified email to avoid spambots. So complete creating your account by setting your email and clicking the link in your mail.
- Click my invite to join the Interbeing Discord: https://discord.gg/57WRtYk
Using the app
The app has 3 columns:
- Server and channels
- Chat
- People
On mobile, you can access these columns by swiping left and right. If the server has text channels, there is always one of them visible in the middle column. In the left column you can see all the voice channels available and people on them. On my server there are a few channels for group chat and 2 channels created for people to have a 1on1 discussion. You can be on only one voice channel at a time. Joining a voice channel by yourself is a simple signal to tell others on the server that you would like to talk with someone.
See the #announcements channel for the latest information.
