Comments on: Primer on Organizing a Mixed Reality Event

By: Kwame Oh

Kwame Oh — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 12:40:55 +0000

Having hosted a few more social than conference events, I must agree with both Doubledown, on staff issues both inworld, and organic, and with Sioban on the Wifi issues.

Have not yet found solution for supply, of WiFi for Organic users in venue, as the last meetup my system slowly came to a crawl after I could not refuse password for punters to hook up.

But like all things we plug away by trial and error till we strike a balance that works.

By: Sioban McMahon

Sioban McMahon — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:24:04 +0000

We’ve partnered with a number of groups now to bring RL conferences into SL. You offer some good advice in your column. We handled much of what you describe above, the in world parts that tend to be mysterious to the RL group. The RL group doesn’t have to learn about things such as in world security or how to distribute conference materials in a virtual world. We have that all set.

The potential weakness, though, tends to be the connection to SL. Not all conference facilities have wired in internet, instead relying on WiFi and the wireless system can be stress by the number of conference participants using it. You can do any number of trial runs/tests of your set up, then as the event starts and the audience members start connecting via WiFi to check their email and you start having issues.

By: Doubledown Tandino

Doubledown Tandino — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:20:04 +0000

Very interesting stuff. Personally, I’ve taken a completely different approach to producing a mixed reality event (or being an aspect of one).
For me, getting the right people was my top priority, and pretty much all I think about.
Having the right RL staff and the right virtual staff in place, where everyone “gets it”…. that is what has made my mixed reality events successful.

By: IYan Writer

IYan Writer — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:02:04 +0000

9. Hope that SL will work at the time of the event.

While the grid / logins are down fairly rarely, Murphy dictates that it will happen exactly when you want to have an event. Happened to me twice..

By: Prokofy Neva

Prokofy Neva — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 13:56:33 +0000

You don’t need to hire consultants and fancy security companies, you just need to put on autoreturn to 1 and make sure that you have given permissions to someone in the group to eject avatars and return non-group objects. It’s not rocket science, it’s like putting a filter on your email.

I used to have a more detailed help list of events organizing on my blog, can’t find the link now, but I had at least one point that is HUGELY important, and that is provide very clearly visible instructions inworld, and vocally, as to how to get the movie screens and sound working. This vexes people no end, and you have to spell it out in baby steps with troubleshooting tips.