Welcome Skype potluck guests!

In hopes of making the Skype Potlucks more fun and making you more comfortable, we’ve described the general structure below.

About the potlucks

Potlucks are informal talks based on mutual respect between all participants. They generally follow a loose interview style with Basekamp hosts getting the ball rolling and the floor open to questions from everyone on the call from the start. The call uses audio chat on Skype. Invited guests: If a different format would work better for you, please feel free to discuss it before the chat so we can prepare.

Start & end time

While potlucks officially begin at the specified time (example: Plausible Artworlds chats started at 6 PM ET), we rarely start exactly on time… generally it takes a few minutes to get set up, wrangle dozens of people from around the world etc. But no matter how late we start, we always - without exception - end precisely on time!

Voice chat

Potlucks will take advantage of Skype voice chat and will generally be (loosely) transcribed into Skype text chat for those who cannot do voice chat. Download from skype.com if you don’t already have it.

Contact us by text

In Skype “Add a contact”: basekamp. Send a message when you want to join the chat, by selecting us from your list and clicking ‘Start chat’. We’ll add you to the text chat, and when everyone is ready we’ll start the conference call.

Starting the call

Basekamp will take care of initiating and maintaining the voice chat. Please DO NOT initiate a voice chat otherwise as it will confuse everyone. Basekamp will add you to the voice chat when we begin.

Mute your microphone

For everyone on the voice chat except the invited guest: PLEASE mute your microphone (there is a microphone icon that you must click which will become a crossed out microphone) unless you are making a comment or asking a question. If you do not, the combination of background noise and feedback can ruin the call for everyone.

Request voice chat

Basekamp will add all those interested in voice chat at the beginning of the call. If we miss you or if you get online after the voice chat has started, please type [ADD AUDIO] into the text chat. We will add you as soon as we have an opportunity.

Asking a question from text

If you are not part of the voice chat but wish to ask a question of the invited guest, please preface it with [QUESTION] so that we are able to notice your question and, hopefully, ask the guest when an opening occurs.

Who are you?

This applies to everyone on the voice chat, including the invited guest: please identify yourself if the person speaking is switched. If you are asking a question, please start by saying “This is [Your Name]” or some other identifier. If the invited guest responding to the question is not the same person previously speaking, please do the same. This will make it easier to transcribe for the text chat and it will make the voice chat a better audio recording for those who cannot be present.

Invited guest consideration: video

If the invited guest would like to have live video, it is not possible to have a Skype video chat with multiple parties. Instead, we can work with you to set up a ustream account (http://www.ustream.tv) that will allow you to broadcast live video from a webcam.