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Comment by mwcampbell | Hacker News Reader

Just wondering, what is the appeal of doing a video chat with no audio? Thanks.

I did a mystery murder on Zoom yesterday where only the organizer/host had audio. It had the feelings of an IRC chatroom but with video. More people could actively talk (30+) than on a regular Zoom call, which are rife with interruptions in even very small groups.

I'm really interested in this, as we are building something to enable more people talking in different groups: joinvoiceplace.com

Would you be available for a couple of questions: - Are you planning to repeat it? - Did you use one or many rooms? - Do you know about break-out rooms in Zoom? - Have you thought about how giving attention/directing speech would work in "IRC + Video" ?

Yeah, gonna repeat it next weekend! Everyone had a lot of fun. TO answer your question: we did indeed use multiple (break-out) rooms. As for speech/voice... I spent a lot of time on Omegle as a teenager, so video + no audio is natural to me but may not be for some people. Feel free to ask me more questions via email: cbswishes at gmail.

What do you mean nobody had audio but 30+ people could talk?

I'm guessing they mean everyone else could talk via text chat, which is the same with Chatparty.

Potentially allows for more people to be in a video chat at once. Beyond that though.. no idea. Thought it would be interesting to put it out there and see what happens :)

I think some business meetings could be run really well with visuals but no audio. I think Jeff Bezos does a silent meeting thing where everyone reads the brief. Something like that.

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