  Virtual environments (VEs) can create collaborative and social spaces, which
are increasingly important in the face of remote work and travel reduction.
Recent advances, such as more open and widely available platforms, create new
possibilities to observe and analyse interaction in VEs. Using a custom
instrumented build of Mozilla Hubs to measure position and orientation, we
conducted an academic workshop to facilitate a range of typical workshop
activities. We analysed social interactions during a keynote, small group
breakouts, and informal networking/hallway conversations. Our mixed-methods
approach combined environment logging, observations, and semi-structured
interviews. The results demonstrate how small and large spaces influenced group
formation, shared attention, and personal space, where smaller rooms
facilitated more cohesive groups while larger rooms made small group formation
challenging but personal space more flexible. Beyond our findings, we show how
the combination of data and insights can fuel collaborative spaces' design and
deliver more effective virtual workshops.
