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Show HN: Have voice-only virtual coffees with fellow HN'ers (discord.com)

10 points by meowtastic ↗ HN
I'm running several voice-only virtual coffee events on the Discord server in the URL, only for today. The rules are pretty simple: 1. Wait for the "event" to start (see times at the end) 2. If there are no tables with 1 participant, join any one. 3. If there is a table with 1 participant, join that one. 4. When the event ends, all the voice channels are deleted and you have to wait till the next event starts.

I initially wanted to build my own web app but then I realised it would be so much easier to just leverage Discord's infrastructure. I also built a bot in a couple hundred lines of Go code (love the language!) to bulk create/delete voice channels.

I intentionally left it super basic to validate if there's a need. I personally would love to have virtual networking events, but then again I know I'm somewhat odd as I come from a sales background.

If you're interested/want to take part in more of these events, check out my profile where I have some contact options.

Anyway, here's the times (each lasts 1 hour): - 8 AM GMT / 1.30 PM IST / 12 AM PST - 11 AM GMT / 4.30 PM IST / 3 AM PST - 2 PM GMT / 7.30 PM IST / 6 AM PST - 5 PM GMT / 10.30 PM IST / 9 AM PST - 8 PM GMT / 1.30 AM IST / 12 PM PST - 11 PM GMT / 4.30 AM IST / 3 PM PST

16 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 46.7 ms ] thread
meowtastic
Will be posting my learnings from each session on this thread.
meowtastic
1st session down. 3 people joined the server, but no one wanted to have a chat T_T. I probably should've set up a website as many will be turned off by the direct link to Discord, but ah well, wanted to get it out there for today. And someone actually upvoted this submission, I'll take that tiny win!
meowtastic
2nd session over, looks like this is turning into a majestic fail as no new people joined the server T__T.

HN seems to still be pushing the post to viewers since I have some comments on the post (thanks sanity3141 and cloudking!) and upvotes (thanks random strangers!). But I think the lack of a website is the major turnoff. I initially thought that the allure of the title would be enough; clearly I was wrong :D

meowtastic
Another round, another fail. Had one person joining the server and :gasp: waving at me, but they disconnected afterwards :sad_trombone:

While a very small sample size, even those who did end up joining weren't interested in having a chat. So it might be the case that this isn't as needed as much as I thought it would be.

On the flip side, I'm glad I didn't put that much effort into it. I had some friends who suggested a much more sophisticated bot.

meowtastic
Nothing new in my latest update, crickets can be clearly heard on the server. I'll keep the server alive until tomorrow, won't delete the tables anymore.
quickthrower2
It could be shyness. I would be nervous using this. What do you say?
meowtastic
Hmm, it depends on whether you do want to talk to others over a call. If yes, then I need ti figure out a way to force people to get together and talk. If not, then the project would probably not be useful for you.
rjh29
It's difficult to know, but my gut feeling is even if you had a website, not that many people would have come and you'd have spent a lot of effort for nothing.

Even if the site immediately starts a video call when you open it (like Omegle) you'd probably get a lot of people disconnecting immediately and generally wasting your time.

Personally I'd be more interested in a large group chat you can just hop in and out of, less social pressure that way, and easier to keep going.

meowtastic
Interesting, thanks for the feedback! What would you want to get out of a group chat? And I'm guessing you wouldn't want it to be time-limited to like an hour right?
sanity31415
It's very interesting to see Discord used in this way, along with other uses like MidJourney.

Makes me wonder if a service custom-designed as a "general purpose user interface" might be useful to people, it's something I've been thinking about building for a while but need to validate the need first.

meowtastic
Greetings first commenter! I agree, Discord is pretty amazing because it gives you a lot of features for free that you'd need when starting out. The flip side, just from observing other servers, is that you constantly have to manage the channels. Too many, and people are barely posting in them because they can't find them and/or they're too niche; too few, and you get lost in the torrent of messages in a single channel.
cloudking
Why is MidJourney integrated through Discord though? What is the benefit? It seems a bit odd that all the generation prompts are made in public channels, when it could just be done through the web app privately.
meowtastic
I think they went with Discord because it's by far the easiest way to get started. And it still kinda works, although you can get lost in the flood of messages.

The reason they have the generation prompts in the public channels is to generate free marketing around how many people use them. It's like how levelsio only replies to messages on Twitter.

meowtastic
Alrighty, this little project didn't really work out so I'm going to log off for the day and go to bed. I'll keep the coffee tables open until tomorrow morning, in the off chance anyone wants to chat. And allow everyone to message on the text channel, go crazy. Thanks again for checking out my submission!