For this year’s Adventures in Clean we are using an online platform called Welo, which is designed to simulate the experience of being with Caitlin and Shaun in their house in West Kirby.
Here is how it works
Getting in
You will receive an email invitation, entitled ‘marian invites you to join WELO’ that looks like this:
Please accept the invitation!
You will be taken to the Welo website and should see a message like this:
Look out for another email from Welo, entitled ‘Login to your WELO account’:
Please sign in. ✒️
There will be a short pause while the system is setting up. You should see this message:
It’s worth saving the link as a bookmark in your browser.
If you logout, you will be asked to enter your email and request a new link to re-enter.
What you will see when you enter the house
You should see this map of Caitlin’s house 🏡 :
The house has several rooms of different sizes:
Hall - 6 seats
Office - 24 seats
Oak Room - 16 seats
Snug - 15 seats
Clean Cafe - 25 seats
White Room - 22 seats
Plus a large outdoor space - Back Garden - which can accommodate 57 people.
There are also many smaller ‘outdoor’ spaces, between 2 and 8 seats.
You will see a note that says:
When you arrive, please double-click on the Back Garden. This is where we will meet to start with. (Click on the green space, not any of the benches.)
Each person is allocated an avatar with your initial:
When you are in a room, you can talk to the others there via video / audio link (similar to Zoom). When you arrive in the garden, will see the avatars of one or more people from our team there ready to greet you.
In the top left of the screen are buttons that allow you to zoom in and out, so you can explore the environment in more detail:
The bottom button that looks like a luggage tag allows you to switch the room names on and off.
Please note that each bench or small group of outside chairs is a separate space and you can only talk to people who are in the same space as you. For example, if we say, let’s all meet in the back garden, the benches around the edge are NOT part of the back garden within the WELO system. You would have to 'stand’ on the lawn.
In the label Back Garden you can see a clip board icon and A Midsummer Nights’ Clean coda doc link. You can use this to access the schedule from this area.
In the Clean Cafe you can see Open Resources tab, this opens a clock, or A Midsummer Nights’ Clean Coda doc link.
To join a conversation...
To join the conversation in the kitchen, please click the microphone and camera buttons at the bottom of the screen:
When you first arrive, the buttons will look like this:
Top right of the screen, you’ll see these buttons:
To change your avatar from your initial (e.g. M) to a picture of you, click Settings and choose My Settings. You can also change your email address and choose various other settings - feel free to explore.
One setting you may like to change is in the Media tab which relates to whether your microphone and camera are switched on when you move to another room:
You can change these settings at any time.
Please note there are currently no recording facilities within Welo.
Moving around the house
To move to a different space and join a conversation there, simply choose the space / room / bench you wish to go to and double-click. Your avatar will go to that space and you will be able to join in the conversation there.
To see who is in the house...
...click on an avatar. A larger version of their avatar will appear on the right of the screen, with their name.
OR - click on “Find Users” (top left) and a list of who is in the house will appear. Click on the three dots by their name to locate them.
If you would like to speak to someone who is elsewhere in the house / garden, you can ask them to join you or send them a message. See below.
Ask someone to join you
To invite someone to join you, you need to have designated the room you are in as your ‘home room’. Right click on your avatar. A menu will appear which will include ‘Set Home Room’. Now you can:
Right click on the person’s avatar and ask them to join you.
OR
Choose their name in the “Find Users” menu and choose “Ask to Join”
The person will be sent an invitation and can choose to come to join you.
The invitation will stay on the screen for 15 seconds. If, as the recipient of the invitation, you miss that time slot, you can still join that person, by double clicking on the room they are in. (Use ‘’Find User” if you don’t know where they are.)
Send someone a message
When you are in a video conversation in a room, you can use the Chat function (bottom right of the screen) to write to everyone in the room.
If you want to send a private message to someone anywhere in the house, you will need to:
Locate their avatar, right click and choose “Send a Message”
OR
Choose their name in the “Find Users” menu and choose “Send a Message”
Video settings
When you are in a video conversation, there are a number of settings available - see the little panel top middle of the screen and have a play!
One fun setting is ‘show videos inside avatars’. 😀
When you are in gallery view, you can ‘pin’ someone by simply clicking on their picture.
More Video Settings
To get the best picture quality, choose “Settings” from the menu top right:
Then choose ‘My Settings’ and you will see this screen:
Now choose Media:
And then from the Video quality level menu choose Very High.
Feel free to play with the other settings here as well. :)
Notifications & sounds
You can be notified when someone send you a message, enters the room you are in, asks you to join them in a room, etc. Some of these are currently turned on by default and include sounds that you may not want to hear. To adjust these settings, go to the main Settings menu, choose My Settings and then Notifications. You will then need to Enable Desktop Notifications. This will bring you to this screen, where you can choose which notifications and sounds you would like:
Screen sharing
Screen sharing is available. Click on the far right button of the set at the bottom / middle of the screen:
You will then be given the option to choose what to share: Entire Screen / Window / Chrome Tab.
To share slides that are open on your computer, you can either choose ‘Entire Screen’ and then go to your slides OR you can choose ‘Window’ and choose the open slides.
It’s a good idea to inform participants that they can pin / enlarge the slide show by clicking on that part of their screen.
If you are using a Mac and find you are unable to share your screen, then, on your computer, go to:
System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Screen Recording > Tick the box next to Google Chrome to Allow
Want to print your doc? This is not the way.
Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (