Oktoberfest Recap, comments, suggestions

[Rose Springvale]

While the event is still fresh in our minds, I wanted to open a thread for people to post comments and suggestions, both about the festival just finished and any ideas you come across for next year. I'd like to know particularly your thoughts on the rides and games that were set up in Altenstadt, to see if we want to try to make room for them in the future.

Thanks for any input you can give. It will be helpful for who ever runs Oktoberfest next year (and if you are interested in the job, let's talk!)

[Jamie Palisades]

First off , thank thank thank you again to Rose, for all of her work to coordinate this two-week event.

I will post my own comments later on 'lessons learned' from our separate little Burning Life camp, which ran simultaneously with our second festival week. In general? Good idea, worked, would do again. In fact, we should continue to look for things to do, in-world or with SL journalists, to cross-promote our in-world events.

As for lessons learned from events this year? Here's a very rough first take from me:
-- Triathlon fun but needs more testing
-- Floats BIG fun, but needed longer lead time. I do not think I did enough to solicit entries. And we might want to schedule the parade right next to another event to guarantee an audience crowd. (Read "concert." )
-- Weekday afternoon concerts to accommodate EU time zone do not seem to draw CDS residents from EU. Too bad, but makes me doubt whether future CDS events should emphasize that time slot.
-- The big concerts -- AND the fun mid-week 'open mic sessions' squired by Cindy -- went VERY well. Lessons? (a) we like music, (b) announcements to the SL Events calendar do work, and draw visitors.
-- Football was fun as always -- many thanks to Brian and Lilith.
-- The carnival rides got a lot of use, and were photogenic in a nice way for publicity. Definitely consider using again.
-- However, don't mix the Ferris wheel and the larger size Beer Stein. See http://blogs.reuters.com/oddly-enough/2 ... ederhosen/

In addition to the organizers and many vendors & performers, I want especially to thank the *citizens* who were regular attendees and good neighbors, making the experience more fun for all by their company. I know I will forget some, but just at first mention. a bg thank you for frequent cheerful participation and cameraderie to: Lilith, Bells, Gwyn, Moon, Sonja, Sudane, Brian, Arria, Pip, Ulysse, Delia, Rose, Cindy, Symo, Rain and AbaBrukh ... wherever you people are, there's a party! Of course, some of our citizens prefer the politics and eschew the fun. Which is fine too. It takes all kinds to tun a democracy. At the close of our big anniversary event, though, I'm especially grateful for those who turn out.

Regards Jamie

[Sonja Strom]

Thank you to everybody mentioned above, especially to Rose for her work on the Oktoberfest (once again!), and Jamie for his work on the CDS display in "Burning Life." Both of these were very well designed and executed.

As all parties seem to go, a few things did not work really well at the Oktoberfest. One of them was the large beer stein/beer dispenser on the Marktplatz, which looked *super* but to everybody's confusion did not actually dispense the beer it tempted us with. My understanding is it was a contribution from the lovely Dianne Mechanique, and hopefully was not (although that would be understandable) a form of quiet revenge. Another non-functional item was the dunk tank, which Sudane and I could not get to work, unless maybe we simply had enjoyed too much beer by then to understand it. The Carousel looked *great,* but went around *way* too quickly for me, especially in relationship to the beer-drinking I mentioned. As Rose herself stated, we had a fair amount of confusion getting the parade float participants all together (kind of like herding cats), which made it require patience on the part of the viewers to watch all of it (I know this from the guests I invited who kept asking me what was happening). This was our first parade, and it really was much more work to organise than I had anticipated, so I imagine next time - at least if Rose is organising it again - it will go much better.

I do have two organisational suggestions for the future. One of them is to put the carnival rides, booths, music, and dancing together in one place somehow, if possible. Would doing that cause too much lag? Would the ferris wheel not fit into the Marktplatz in any way? I don't know - but if they could all be together I think that would be more fun. My other suggestion is to try to organise our Oktoberfest working with the couple of other Oktoberfest celebrations that are organised on other sims, especially Munich sim. Maybe we could have a common schedule, and booths from each participating sim could be at each location offering teleports to the other party places. We could also invite those sims to put together football (or soccer) teams and play in Neufreistadt. Having said this, I do believe we should insist that the CDS remain where the parade is held, unless possibly we would like to continue the parade in their sims as well and if they would like for us to do so.

So, just some thinking.

Thanks again to everybody who was there and made it fun in 2008!!

[Jamie Palisades]

Thank you, those are all great suggestions.
Sonja, I'd like to talk to you more about leveraging our Alpine theme to reach out, both to Bavarian-themed and German-speaking SL communities. Wir sind sehr dankbar für ihre hilfe, denn sie sind immer einer unserer besten botschafter.
Also, I really like the mental image of a slightly drunken Sonja and Sudane trying to operate the dunk tank.
Vielen Dank! JP

[Rose Springvale]

giggles, sonja, sudane, lots of people were successful with the dunk tank I think we made about 300 lindens from it.. 5 lindens at a time.

maybe it was the beer...

[Sonja Strom]

Jamie, bitte sehr!

Rose, must be, lol

Here is a picture I took at one of the concerts:

[Sudane Erato]

Just a reminder... here are 71 pictures that I took....

http://picasaweb.google.com/sudane.erat ... erfest2008#

Sudane....................................