through a door off the rotunda · the sun through the water
through a door off the Town Hall · for anybody on the CB
The Fishbowl
A room for community Fishbowl Meetings for anyone with CB access.
How a fishbowl goes
A fishbowl is a conversation for a lot of people that only a few hold at a time. A small circle in the middle talks. Everybody else sits in a wider circle round the outside and listens. One seat in the middle is always left empty, and anybody from the outside can come in and take it; when they do, somebody in the middle gets up and goes back out, so there is always a seat free. Nobody is called on, nobody is on a panel, and the circle is never closed.
It suits a big group with one thing to talk through, because it keeps the talking small and the listening wide. James Carrier’s introduction at PeopleShift is where this room started, and it also says that some people find a format this loose and this level a little daunting. That is a fair thing to feel, and the outer circle is there for it.
How it goes here
- The middle is whoever has their microphone on. Everybody else is the outer circle, and listening there is a whole way to take part.
- There is always an empty seat. To come in, raise your hand in the call or say so in the chat, then unmute when there is room.
- When somebody comes in, somebody goes out. Stepping back is a thing you choose, and nobody needs a reason for it.
- Typing is talking. Something written in the call’s chat can be read into the middle, if you ask; you do not have to speak to be in the circle.
- Nobody is put on the spot. Nobody has to come into the middle, and nobody is asked to.
The circle
The call in here is for people signed on to the CB. Anybody can come in and look around; to talk, and to be in the circle, you need the CB, and the Community Center says how to get on it.
You are not signed on to the CB in this browser. Sign on at the Community Center, then come back and the way in is here.
The call is run by 8x8’s Jitsi as a Service. Your camera and microphone start off, the name you are called by goes to 8x8 inside your pass into the call, and we keep nothing about a call. What goes where.
Why a bowl on a sill
Because it is a fishbowl: a small round world you can see all the way into from outside, with a ring of stones on the gravel that always has one gap in it and a wider ring of shells round the foot of the glass. The sun comes through the water and lands on the gravel and the sill in bright tangled lines, and that is all the light the room needs. Nothing in here moves, at any setting.
Whose words
The room’s line is Ryan’s, from his brief for the Town Hall. The fishbowl format is described in our own words and credited to James Carrier’s Fishbowl Meetings: A Simple Introduction, PeopleShift, 2019, which is theirs; the ways it goes here are ours. Grandstander is Tyler Finck’s, with ETC, and Signika is Anna Giedryś’s, both under the SIL Open Font License; the bowl is ours. More in the liner notes.
Job marker — a flake of fish food, fallen on the sill
You have found a job marker. The Adventurer’s Guild is a shopfront on the street, and it posts jobs that send you round these rooms. Take the code below to its board and that job is done. Nothing here is scored, nothing expires, and one is a perfectly good number of jobs to do.
The job: The seat nobody sits in
Before the code: What does the middle of a fishbowl always keep?
Hint 1
It is in the first paragraph of How a fishbowl goes.
Hint 2
Look at the ring of stones in the bowl.
Last hint
Nobody is sitting in it.
Give me the answer
The answer is An empty seat. One seat in the middle is always left empty, so anybody from the outer circle can come in and take it; when they do, somebody in the middle goes back out.
Taking the answer is a real way through this, not a lesser one. Nothing is watching and nothing is written down.
Quest code: EMPTYSEAT
That is the one.
One seat in the middle is always left empty, so anybody from the outer circle can come in and take it; when they do, somebody in the middle goes back out.
Quest code: EMPTYSEAT