On September 2nd during common hour, the SGA hosted the first ever virtual online Club Bash. Club Bash is usually an event where clubs set up tables in the Campus Center Atrium where students could walk by to discover what each club has to offer.
To accommodate for most of the students not being on campus, Club Bash took place on a platform called Yotribe. Yotribe is much like video conferencing platforms such as Zoom. Yotribe is different because you can choose whom to start a conversation with rather than being stuck in one large chat room.
The ability to move from one conversation to another allows talking with others to be more natural. It helps avoid awkward silence that often happens when a conversation ends and both people talking cannot leave the chat room. Another benefit of using Yotribe is it gives you more options connecting with people one on one, rather than conversing in a large group.
Overall, I thought the event was fun and efficient. Using this platform most closely resembled the interactions and conversations that would transpire if everyone were in person. Throughout the event, I noticed that most people were in smaller groups rather than the traditional large group waiting to join in. I think the reason for this was because there was no physical circle of people which usually excludes those, inadvertently, who want to join the conversation.
Even though Yotribe seemed like the best platform to use for Club Bash, it is tough to say whether it would have been better than meeting in person. “I don’t know if it would have gone better in person because we had no time to get ready for an in-person club bash,” senior Rob Walter said. “The best way to find out is to compare it to a non-virtual event.”
If you want to learn more about Yotribe and how it works, the link is below.
Photo Credit: https://www.yotribe.com/
