From the Nirtual Litchfield County Zine Fest page…
The Litchfield County Zine Fest is a rural zine fest based in Connecticut, USA. It’s Connecticut’s only zine fest, and ran in 2018 and 2019 in Kent, CT, a town in Litchfield County. Due to the pandemic, there was no in-person Litchfield County Zine Fest in 2020. There probably won’t be an in-person Litchfield County Zine Fest in 2021 either… but! I, as the organizer of the Litchfield County Zine Fest, am planning to run a virtual version of the LCZF online sometime in the upcoming months, using a combination of a platform called Gather (http://gather.town/) and potentially Zoom for workshops.
Gather is a video platform with a spatial element. It allows you to create 2D maps that visitors can move around using the arrow keys on their keyboards. When your avatar moves closer to another person’s avatar, your video feeds fade in and you can talk to each other! There are also interactive objects, private and public text-based messaging, and private spaces where only those in the space can hear each other.
The way tabling at the fest would work is that each tabler would have an assigned spot on the map at a “table”. These “seats” are in private spaces that are inclusive of the seats behind a table and the spots in front of the table. That way, you can only hear and speak to the people at your table or in front of your table while your avatar is in that space, to avoid overwhelm.
While you are at your spot, attendees would come up to your table and talk to you, and you could show your zines to them over video and talk about them, then use private messages to send links to where they can buy the zines or arrange trades. Tablers could leave their assigned spots at any time, like at an in-person zine fest.