A Real Tea Party. Virtually.

Readers of my previous post Tea and The Art of Friendship may recall it had a central theme that was a bit mad.

Essentially, it suggested a Tea Party where anyone from around the world could join in at the appointed hour, via Skype.

I chose a date and time – it was actually 6:30am on a Sunday in Adelaide, South Australia where I reside, as this time was likely to be vaguely convenienet in many spots where people I speak to on-line can be found.

I specified a cake recipe and a type of tea (Darjeeling, no need to be more specific than that for this exercise). The idea was make yourself the cake, brew your own tea and then join in, via Skype.

Over the leadup days and hours, I saw a flurry of Skype connection requests and a rash of “wish I could be there but I’m washing my hair/witnessing an execution /receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature / shaving my cat etc.”

Not long before the event started, one of the attendees posted this: The Adventure of The Skype Tea Party.  Amazon V, or Nicole as she’s generally known, detailed the story of her cake until it went into the oven. It was great to read it about 20 minutes before the event.

I signed up for a one-day pass to Skype premium, which allows more than 3 people in a conversation. Up to 10 in fact. I’ve given Skype a bit of coverage in this post, but my view of them is the same as my thoughts on Google, Twitter etc – they give a lot more than they receive.

So, the appointed time came and I pressed the Video Chat to Group Button, over the course of about 30 seconds a bunch of people turned up. Let’s go with Twitter names: @littlemewbrew. @RachelKCarter and @amazonV  appeared on video, with the two guys from @theTeaBlag joining in via audio only.

A tweet from @joiedetea informed us she was just waiting for the kettle to boil, and given that it was 7am Sunday her time, and she is the mother of a small but quite tea-demanding child, a few minutes seemed eminiently forgivable.

She joined us and a few minutes later @leafboxtea and @lahikmajoe (only audio for him) made the tea party complete.

So, what was it like? It was chaos. Here’s just some random thoughts and images.

• The slight delay in Skype that leads to mildly stilted conversations of Skype was in full force. Our two audio-only participants would have made no sense whatsoever of it. Especially as @theteablag had a lot going on, and @lahikmajoe was sitting in a hotel lobby with a guitar, having side conversations in both English and German.
• Everybody’s cakes looked great. @AmazonV’s had just come out of the oven, and having read the story, it was great to see it surface.
• One day, @leafboxtea and I will appear on the same video screen in some sort of completely mad tea documentary / news service / chat show / The Tea Apprentice and you will all love it
• There were kids everywhere.  I’ve met @joiedetea’s little Pippin in real life, but now have met the charming progeny of various tea folk around the world. Additionally we had AmazonV’s grandmother and @RachelKCarter’s cat ( just a quick mention for those who followed the story on Twitter)
• Everyone turned up fully clothed. Although I can’t be 100% sure of the two audio-only guys.
• There were lovely china cups on display.
• Some people think half a world is a safe distance to try and shock me by waving a teabag around. (It isn’t.)

In other words, exactly as it would have been in real life.