
Homenauts – Resources for explorers who stay at home during Covid-19 - arboc
https://www.homenauts.com/
======
arboc
I and five other volunteers, with backgrounds in customer relations, UI/UX
design+engineering, medicine, digital design and psychology formed a team and
created a website in 48 hours during the weekend:
[https://homenauts.com/](https://homenauts.com/)

The goal is to inspire people who stay at home during the COVID-19 pandemic
and to share tools for making the most of the time.

We did the challenge as part of the the HackCorona hackathon:
[https://hackcorona.world/](https://hackcorona.world/) This was my first
hackathon and it was an amazing wild ride! I had signed up for it just a
couple days before the start date and only got confirmation I was to
participate a few hours before kick-off. Going into it I didn’t know if I
could do much to help, since I’m a psychologist with a kind of mixed bag of
other skills, instead of say a straight-up data analyst or programmer. I feel
incredibly lucky to have met the others, who welcomed me and found ways to
make use of everyone’s skills. Coining the term “homenauts” is probably my
biggest contributions - otherwise I mostly tried to do some research and write
content for the website, while the other members collected content, wrote,
made illustrations, built front/back-end functionality, acquired the domain...
Every time I checked back in there was something new to see. Exhausted, we
finished the hackathon in second place out of more than 30 teams and received
a lot of positive encouragement for the idea.

We plan to continue work on this project, albeit at a less intense pace. So I
and the others would love to hear what ideas you might have for the user
content sections, or any other feedback! We all want the project to help our
fellow homenauts as much as possible :D You are also very welcome to submit
links to be added to the site if you want - in that case, check out the icon
at the top right of the site.

~~~
gregsadetsky
Congrats! Small note, your custom icon font is not loading for me, making all
icon images look like squares (it's the unicode character used by the font,
actually). See: [https://imgur.com/a/708lUBr](https://imgur.com/a/708lUBr)
(they're now loading again)

To support more traffic, you could look into dedicated hosting / a CDN (such
as cloudflare) for your static files. As you're using Digital Ocean &
WordPress, you could use Digital Ocean's CDN offer like this:
[https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-
spee...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-speed-up-
wordpress-asset-delivery-using-digitalocean-spaces-cdn)

Another option would be to use dedicated wordpress hosting (wpengine.com or
any other well known one) which offers caching and a CDN service -- that could
remove some of the hosting / growing concerns.

~~~
arboc
Thank you for the heads up and the tip! A team member got the same issue as
you yesterday but then the icons started working again, just like it was for
you. I'll pass this on to the rest of the team.

------
fonosip
Here's one more site for staying home. WebRTP, no install, no registration.
[https://ba.net/screen-share-party](https://ba.net/screen-share-party)

~~~
arboc
Thank you! If you want to submit the link to be shared at Homenauts, you can
use the link at the top right on the site:
[https://homenauts.com/](https://homenauts.com/) (as you can see in the
comment by panoramas4good above, you need to be on a desktop computer at the
moment unfortunately) If you want me to add the link directly - because I
definitely think it fits - just tell me :)

~~~
fonosip
Yes add it to homenauts. Thanks.

~~~
arboc
Done! Thank you so much for creating the service and for sharing :) You can
see the link here [https://homenauts.com/social-contact-and-
communication/](https://homenauts.com/social-contact-and-communication/) (and
at the main page of course) If you want you can upvote your link there, I
already did ;)

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BrowserMeeting
Super impressive resource for home bound and self quarantined people. It looks
like remote work is going to become the new normal!

Thank You for putting together such a great list of ways for people to be
productive and positive during this global crisis.

Stay healthy, happy, and productive in these uncertain times!

~~~
arboc
Thank you for the kind words! :D

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danielbarla
Very nice, I think we can certainly use more knowledge sharing around these
topics!

I definitely hear that many of my more extroverted colleagues are taking the
isolation and lack of social interaction quite hard. As a more introverted
person (who has done long stints of working remotely in the past), I find
coping with this part less problematic. Instead, the "co-homenaut" problem is
harder to deal with, as I have two young children. (In this sense, I wonder if
"co-isolation" would not be a more appropriate phrase, as "isolation" doesn't
quite capture it!) Are there sections of the site more focused on this aspect,
or could it be made more prominent?

~~~
arboc
Good point! Even as we did the presentation of the project at the end of the
hackathon, one of the judges immediately mentioned how he needed loads of
tips, as he was at home with two teenage kids.

We unfortunately haven't found a lot on this topic (if you do, please submit!)
but a team member did find this article that you might find useful:
[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/the-family-
loc...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/the-family-lockdown-
guide-how-to-emotionally-prepare-for-coronavirus-quarantine) I actually
thought we'd already self-submitted it to Homenauts but seems like we missed
it, so I just added it. I put it in the "Mental Health" section for now. But
creating a separate category/tag for living with co-homenauts, as you suggest,
sounds like a good idea.

Stay safe (all three of you!) and hope you find any of the links useful

~~~
danielbarla
Thanks for the link, it seems useful. Luckily our own situation is quite good
at the moment in this sense, so no need to worry. We're about two weeks in to
moderate self-isolation without any major meltdowns, and that's with a fairly
intense study schedule for the kids that the school prescribed. But I
definitely see the current situation continuing for many more weeks at least,
so it's good to be proactive and smart about it. Especially with an
interesting mix of introverts in the house (my son and myself) and extroverts
(wife and daughter). Keep up the good work!

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panoramas4good
Great idea. Not sure if you're accepting suggestions?

We are running educational virtual exploration lessons for children around the
world (think guided tour of Everest, the Amazon rainforest, etc.).

More here: [https://www.trekview.org/blog/2020/treehouse-academy-
emergen...](https://www.trekview.org/blog/2020/treehouse-academy-emergency-
timetable/)

Would be brilliant to have it listed on Homenauts.

~~~
panoramas4good
Ignore that, can see the submit link on PC.

Note, the submit button does not render on mobile.

~~~
arboc
Did you already submit? I definitely think your site deserves to be linked! I
can't see your link in our list of links pending approval. I can add the link
directly if you want, but then it'll look like I'm trying to take credit for
finding it ;p

~~~
arboc
panoramas4good - Thanks! I approved your link and it can now be seen at
[https://homenauts.com/kids-playtime-and-
schooling/](https://homenauts.com/kids-playtime-and-schooling/) (as well as
through the main page of course). But there isn't that much information at the
link you submitted
[https://treehouse.trekview.org/](https://treehouse.trekview.org/), especially
compared to the link you posted here
[https://www.trekview.org/blog/2020/treehouse-academy-
emergen...](https://www.trekview.org/blog/2020/treehouse-academy-emergency-
timetable/) Would you like to change the link, or will more info be added soon
to treehouse.trekview.org? :)

~~~
panoramas4good
Yes -- please update. And thanks again for producing this great resource (from
everyone here in my local community).

~~~
arboc
Done! I also slightly changed the wording to emphasize that it's educative and
free, hope that's OK. Good luck teaching the kids :)

------
michaelmior
This is great! I've got my own collection of tips I'm sharing on social media.
See links below.

[https://facebook.com/socialapproaching](https://facebook.com/socialapproaching)
[https://instagram.com/socialapproaching](https://instagram.com/socialapproaching)

~~~
arboc
Nice!

Since there's no better to place for it I'll mention one thing about gathering
resources (like at your FB page), hope that's okay: I think there are a lot of
people like you and our team who try to gather inspiration and resources right
now. For instance, a homenaut submitted a link to this tumblr account
[https://pandemicjoy.tumblr.com/](https://pandemicjoy.tumblr.com/) The tumblr
account has actually linked to us I see, but I'm a bit uncertain about that.
People might get confused if we link to one another, since they probably
expect to come to a resource when following a link but instead come to another
list of resources. I'm thinking it's best if we all draw inspiration from each
other but try to keep our own styles/niches, since different people have
different tastes and what gets their motivation going :) I'd imagine the
"homenaut" theme might make some people cringe for instance :p

I saw on your Instagram that you have a WIP at
[https://socialapproaching.com/](https://socialapproaching.com/). When it's
done, if you think it fits in the "resource-itself" category, please submit it
for the "Social Contact and Communication" category at Homenauts if you want
:D

~~~
michaelmior
Also, since you're here, if I find any good tips on Homenauts.com that would
be suitable for the bite-sized social media I'm aiming for, would you mind if
I ripped them off? I can certainly find ways to give credit if needed.
(Although this is a bit of a pain on Instagram since individual posts can't
directly have links.)

~~~
arboc
You mean links or any of the text/original content on the site? When it comes
to the links, you of course don't need to explain that you found them through
our site (unless you'd e. g. grab all of the links from one of the categories
in one go I guess). For the original content, if you want to use material from
us word-for-word then please do your best to link to the site or otherwise
explain where you got it from. If it's just a general idea (like "try to keep
up with your routines") that you got from us but describe in your own words,
you don't need to credit us. If it's any help you can also look at the content
policy [https://homenauts.com/our-content-policy/](https://homenauts.com/our-
content-policy/)

Btw, you can also refer to our Twitter account if you prefer
[https://twitter.com/homenauts](https://twitter.com/homenauts)

~~~
michaelmior
Thanks for clarifying :)

------
matt_morgan
This is great, but the big block of graphic at the top of the page is
incorrect. Start with the "See by Topic" stuff and make them lots bigger.

~~~
arboc
Thanks for the feedback! When you say incorrect, I guess you mean that it's
basically wrong to have the big block of graphic as it goes against sound web
design/layout principles, making it harder to navigate et c? I can see what
you mean and I agree that we probably should emphasize the browse by topic
links more than we currently do. I'll send this on to the rest of the team.
Please note that it might take some time before we use all the feedback we're
getting because we all have day jobs (I'm gonna have to compensate later for
today hehe), but we greatly appreciate it :)

------
_curious_
Neat idea. What do you foresee your greatest challenge being?

~~~
arboc
Thank you, and there are a lot of challenges! The greatest one I think is
making sure that users find content that's a) relevant, b) more than just some
quick-fix temporary entertainment and c) something they'll want to do and feel
ready to do. We don't want the site to be something that people only use to
passively ease the pain for a while (though that is of course helpful
sometimes), we want them to also find things that engage them. We've talked in
the team about this quite a lot and how difficult it can be.

Ideally, in time, there would be some kind of system that lets users input
some basic info about who they are and what they like, and then the site would
make suggestions with say a) what content sections/tags that might be
relevant, b) a specific link/site that might be interesting, and c) a specific
activity that the user can try, that wouldn't take much time or effort and
still be interesting. We want to help people get the ball rolling with getting
more active in their homes.

Speaking from clinical psychology experience and from I guess just general
experience of being a human, I know how hard it is for people to start new
habits. You want the person to get started with something that's meaningful
while also being fun/interesting enough to compete with watching another
YouTube video - which again, is totally fine in moderation, it's just when the
passivity becomes too much of a pattern that it's a problem.

Do you see a particular challenge we should keep in mind? :)

~~~
_curious_
You're welcome, thanks for elaborating on things.

"Do you see a particular challenge we should keep in mind? :)"

Yes, making enough people aware that you exist in the first place.

~~~
arboc
Hehe, good point.

