The call that never happened

On 16 September I wrote in the #meetups channel of a small makers' Discord: we could have weekend calls, Friday or Saturday evening, to talk about something random. I'd rather it had no agenda.

A thumbs up came in. Then the replies started.

Someone said he'd love to join, but weekends were almost impossible for him. I asked which days would work. The next morning Thomas wrote that it would be super cool, that we had talked about it a few weeks earlier too, and that he couldn't promise to be there at weekends either. "But we can try!!"

Then the line that made me laugh, because it was the whole problem in one sentence: he had been about to create a survey for the day and the hour, and then realised we were all in different timezones.

He suggested we share our favourite times in a thread instead. The thread got four messages. Nobody booked anything. The call never happened.

What was actually wrong

Nobody in that thread was lazy or uninterested. Everyone wanted the call. It failed for three boring reasons:

• Nobody owned the time. Picking an hour for five people in four timezones is homework, and nobody volunteers for homework.
• Nobody wanted to be first. Opening a Meet link and waiting there alone is a small, real embarrassment.
• "Maybe" is not a plan. "I'll try" from four people adds up to nobody showing up.

What I built instead

Let's Hang turns those three things around.

You set a table and say how many people it needs. Everyone marks the hours they can make in their own timezone, and the table picks the hour that works for the most of them. Nothing is booked until enough people have sat down. When they have, the lights go on, everyone gets a calendar invite in their own time, and the room opens with video, chat and a game.

If it doesn't fill, it's called off, and nobody waited alone.

I put the first version live the day after that thread. If your group chat has its own "we should really get on a call", set a table for it and send the link.