Speaking and the centre

Only one person holds the centre at a time. Everything about speaking is really about who holds it and how they got there.

Taking the centre

Press the space bar, or click the control in the middle of the screen. What it does depends on where you already are:

Your situation	What the control does
Nobody is speaking, you are not queued	Takes the centre
Someone else is speaking, you are not queued	Puts you in the queue
You are queued but not speaking	Takes you back out of the queue
You are the speaker	Ends your turn

If people are waiting when you end your turn, the next person in the queue takes the centre automatically.

During a round the space bar means something slightly narrower — see Rounds.

The queue

The queue decides who speaks next. The person at the front is the current speaker; everyone else waits in order. An empty queue means nobody is speaking and the centre shows the scene.

Your microphone follows the centre

You do not unmute to speak. Taking the centre unmutes you, and losing it mutes you again. See Sound and camera.

The three layouts

Your host picks one of three layouts per room. They change where the speaker appears, not how speaking works.

Centre

The speaker moves to the middle for everyone, including themselves. Their place in the outer ring is empty while they are there.

Centre with talking stick

Everyone else sees the speaker in the middle. The speaker does not see themselves there — they see the centre media or the talking-stick image instead, so they are looking at the room rather than at their own face. Their place in the ring is still empty for everyone else.

In place

The speaker stays where they are in the ring and their circle grows. The centre does not show them at all, and keeps showing the scene's centre media if there is any.