When the first isolation period started here in Melbourne, I was worried that even reclusive people like myself would have trouble with the emotional impact of it. At first glance it seems fantastic for an introvert like me: cut off from physical interaction; no travel; spending my time at my computer or workbench.

Even so, we're all social and we depend on interaction to some degree. Without it our state of mind suffers. For some, it's a little. For others, it's a lot.

So when the first isolation period started, I began a weekly 10am Sunday morning livestream where I spend 2 hours interacting with viewers and talking about mostly tech stuff. Obviously there's a strong home automation orientation to it, but I also talk about software, UI paradigms, satellites, networking, security, robots, hardware design, Arduino, and stupid tricks with a Raspberry Pi and party poppers.

It's not quite what you and Rick have mentioned as a virtual LUV meetup, but my main goal with it is to interact with people. I've been doing it for many months now and I've had a few people contact me privately to say it's something they hold on to as being important for their own mental health in this period. It allows them to engage with other people and chat about fun stuff, and think about something other than their immediate situation and the isolation they're feeling.

Anyway, I didn't intend for this to be a sales spiel for my livestream. The point is that we can use tools like livestreams as a way to overcome the isolation, and it doesn't take much organisation at all. To do your own livestream can seem quite scary at first, even if you're an experienced public speaker, so if that's not something that you're comfortable doing then attending other livestreams and interacting in the chat is a big help too. There are many regular viewers on my livestream who greet each other at the start of the stream every week, because they see familiar names and build relationships over time.

When it's not practical to meet in person, this is just about the next best thing.

I'd also love to have guests on my livestream. I have a Pro account with Streamyard so I can bring in external guests onto the stream. If you're interested in trying it out or you have some specific topic you want to cover but don't want to do your own livestream, get in touch and we can see if it would be suitable for you to jump on my stream one Sunday morning.

For anyone who has read this far: https://www.youtube.com/superhousetv (previous livestreams are a little way down that page)

Cheers

Jon