Supporting Communities to Go Online
Published on April 26, 2021

In our effort to support developer communities around the world, we’re excited to announce ways in which we are helping groups host events and engage with their community members online:

  • Social Cafe, an open-source demo for communities to build their own online environment which we also host an instance

This answers a core challenge in running online events - having meaningful conversations between attendees instead of just broadcasting.

Using the Social Cafe Demo

Image showing the structure of a social cafeImage showing the structure of a social cafe

The Social Cafe Demo is an open-source project ideal for communities wanting a social space or study groups. You could use it to run a networking event for your tech community (or after an online event), host study groups for your educational community, or simply host separate conversations for your local community who still wants to talk in a time of isolation.

Every event lobby has several tables, with each table being a video call, powered by the Vonage Video API. People can freely move between tables to chat with different community members.

You can submit a pull request to our repository to add your event to our hosted version at no cost or follow the steps to host your own version in five minutes. We’ve also written a tutorial if you want to know more about how the Social Cafe demo was put together or build your own from scratch.

Have questions? You can send us an email at community@vonage.com. We are continuously inspired by the work done by our community and hope to support you in moving your activities online.

Myrsini Koukiasa

Myrsini is a Senior Community Programs Manager at Vonage. She helps the Developer Relations team support, engage and connect with developer communities where they are.

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