Making the CDS more Interesting

[Sonja Strom]

Could we make the CDS more interesting?

In conversations with other citizens about what might interest people more in our community, somebody gave me an idea I think is a good one.

The CDS could sponsor newcomers to Second Life, in the way some businesses and organisations in SL do. Naturally we could consider how we might like to do this. One way might be for us to be one of the communities people are invited to join SL through, as the democratic option in the SL registration process. Another way might be for us to have small advertisements on democracy- or culturally-oriented websites, inviting people to register for an SL account and visit us with their avatar. If somebody saw one of these and already had an avatar, they might be inspired to learn more about the CDS.

This is an idea more for bringing interest in from the outside than for actually making the CDS more interesting, but I think it could lead some interesting new people to our community, and they might add a lot to who we are and what we are doing. It could also be a project we could have for our community that might be interesting for us to participate in.

[solomon mosely]

i think becoming a gateway community would be a great opportunity for cds and offering to the sl community in general. in the marketing for sl they mention governments as one of the more interesting developments users have brought in, and i think we are the finest representative of that. of the existing gateways so far, i have not found a democracy so it is a good opportunity to be the first to market with it. i think the potential boost to growth and diversity is obvious.

as far as what this can do for us as a community, it feels to me (as a yet un-jaded noob mind you) that there is a fresh excitement and commitment taking root here and many ideas pushing their way up through our system. i am still not certain of long term goals of our game are, but this seems like a chance to add a level of depth and realism should we wish it. i know i get the feeling of company coming from this idea, and would like to help with the long list of housekeeping chores and upgrades i know many of you have.

after reading through the requirements, i think we are very close to being eligible already.

just thoughts......

this is a link to the official submission form: https://docs.google.com/Doc?id=df3m72fq ... mailImport

here is the requirements outlined in a letter from the ll rep for this:

Hello John,

Thank you very much for your email and the interest in the Linden Lab Community Gateway Program.
Please find the upfront information and criteria further down in this email.

This program is currently designed for themed or language oriented communities, that contribute to the Second Life environment and welcome new Residents with Greeters and the needed support to help them find their way in the Second Life environment, as well as offering events. The average number of new registrations that are brought into Second Life by those community is currently around 500 users per week.

In case your community is not meeting the criteria yet, I would also like to inform you about a great project that is run by Residents. It is called the Sister City and Friends project and it is a group of communities, that focus on themed environments, events and represent RL cities in Second Life. Please check out this link: http://www.sistercitiessl.com/
It might be a good idea to contact them and see if your community fits into their planning.

Here is the upfront information for the Linden Lab Community Gateway Program:

Attached you will find the Community Gateway submission form. Currently this is still a Word document, but should be available as on online form on the Second Life Grid web page very soon.

If you meet the criteria described below,please send the completed submission form to: [email protected] and I will review it. I will then schedule an in-world interview with you and also check out your welcome area and tutorial. If this interview goes well and I have received all submission form information, I will set you up in our CG Management tool and you should go live as soon as the server rollout 1.25 has been completed (currently scheduled for January 22/23)

Kind regards,
Katrin

- Planned go-live with the updated Community Gateway program
We need to roll out server 1.25 before we can go live with the updated registration and CG process. Currently our teams plan to have this rollout done on January 19th and 20th 2009.

- Criteria to become a Community Gateway member:

1) Community Gateway Criteria for new members:
* You need to have some volunteers/greeters that welcome new Residents to Second Life
* The welcome area for new residents must be a PG region (at least welcome area, no adult content anywhere)
* Landing area can't be Open Space or Homestead - it must be a Full Region
* If you offer more than one language, you need to submit a Community Gateway request per language
* One region should not have more than 2 welcome areas (if different languages are supported)
* Show evidence of community growth during last 9 months (this can be done by member lists, blog posts or other material that shows that your community keeps growing)
* Offer classes, training or events on a regular basis (at least weekly)
* Have a welcome area with tutorials/help content - please use the Knowledge Base article: "Best practices for building an Orientation Island" as guideline when you plan to create a welcome area.

2) Business criteria
* Land owner/CG owner at least 1 year old
* At least 4 regions owned/adjacent
(if adjacent, own at least 2 of the regions; for countries for which LL has not localized web pages - own at least 1 region + offer a localized website and help)
* No verified Abuse or DCMA claims against the CG owner
* No payment issues on file for last 9 months
* Install either DirectSLURL and/or regAPI on your web page to offer Second Life registration possibilities to new users
(If you would like to use the regAPI, please make sure to apply for the regAPI program on: http://secondlifegrid.net/technology-pr ... ld-api/reg and state in the description field of the submission form, that you are a CG requester)

3) Metrics (Based on the weekly CG metrics, we will check the following data):
* Active use
* Monetization
* Size of community
* % of country registrations

4) Program
* Have to attend at least one SL meeting per quarter
* Respond to quarterly survey
* Keep information in application/listing current
* Meet all LL trademark and logo guidelines on your website(s) and products and apply for the InSL logo.
* Be member of the in-world group "CommunityGateway" (You will be added to it as soon as your submission has been approved)
* Subscribe to the Community Gateway mailing lists (You will be added to them as soon as your submission has been approved)

Please note:
Submitting your CG Submission form means, that you have read and agree to:
- Community Gateway Criteria as shown above (Linden Lab can change the criteria for the Community Gateway program at any time)
- Second Life TOS: http://secondlife.com/corporate/tos.php
- Linden Lab's Community Standards: http://secondlife.com/corporate/cs.php
- Linden Lab's Trademark Guidelines: http://secondlife.com/corporate

Next steps after your Community Gateway submission:
- We will check your submission and see if you meet the criteria
- If yes: We will contact you to schedule an in-world interview and take a look at your welcome tutorial area. After this has been done and all is ok, we will set up your community into the Community Gateway listing and add you to the respective mailing lists and in-world group.
- If no: We will send you an email and inform you why your Community Gateway request was denied.

In case your community would

Katrin Janssen

European Business Programs Specialist

Linden Research UK Ltd.

---------------------------------------

Second Life Name: Katrin Linden

Skype: Katrin_Linden

Email: [email protected]

---------------------------------------

[symokurka]

Solomon,
this sounds VERY interesting.
S.

[Cindy Ecksol]

i think becoming a gateway community would be a great opportunity for cds and offering to the sl community in general. ...

this is a link to the official submission form: https://docs.google.com/Doc?id=df3m72fq ... mailImport

here is the requirements outlined in a letter from the ll rep for this:.....

VERY interesting. But I think that rather than being very close to the requirements for this program, we are NOT very close Perhaps a matter of perspective, but here's what we'd have to do to be accepted (I think):

1. Build a welcome/tutorial area
2. Recruit greeters to handle 500 new users a week and a mechanism for scheduling them
3. Demonstrate more community growth than we have been over the last several years. I think we've added, what, maybe 10 or 12 net new citizens in that time? Surely that isn't what LL has in mind as "growth."
4. Schedule events more frequently (at least weekly).

Not sure what the targets are for those metrics they mention, but I'll be surprised if we are currently meeting them.

Now that this program exists, perhaps what we OUGHT to do is think about whether we'd like to develop ourselves in a way that will qualify us to participate. Number one on my list of things we'd need to do is growth: we cannot possibly support a greeter roster to handle 500 new users a week with a resident population of 80, at least half of whom have not been seen in some time.

Cindy

[Jamie Palisades]

Cindy's quite right. I looked into this as well. I doubt we'd be able to execute it well, just yet. And it needs programmatic support, as well, once open. We should consider it, but at a time when we could do a first class job.

Go look at some examples. I recommend Dublin sim (look in the courtyard of their Trinity College scale model) and Caledon Oxbridge (that's what he added the whole sim for).

You can see that building it would be on a scale with a sim opening -- except that we'd have to deliver this one on a schedule.

Also, it's interesting to note that some of the big estates who DID sign up have delayed their launch, for months and months. Linden Lab's expectations for the program apparently have varied over time. If the "gateway" concept stabilizes and becomes reliable ... and if we grow to be able to do a good job supporting it .. then I suggest we take another look.

Regards Jamie

[Ranma Tardis]

Do you really want to do this in the future?? I can see hordes of griefers/children arriving in the CDS. Most of them will have only one thing on their tiny minds. Yes from my time as a mentor where my avatar was speared, burned, shot, etc by the new residents. We were not suppose to intimidate these new ones since they startle easily!
Doing this will turn the CDS into a battlefield and a new area of babysitting.
*giggles* Lets see what your idea becomes of new residents after you have seen your first 100 of them! They will be uncontrollable and even banning them will almost ensure a steady stream of new griefers. (takes 5 minutes or less to make a new alt).
*more giggle* There is nothing worse than letting the Lindens use you for their own gain!

[Sonja Strom]

There have been a lot of good points made here. Among those I really had not thought of are the griefing problems. Thanks, Ranma!
I must say, whenever I have been in "newbie" areas I have run into griefers. I have always wondered why they are doing that, but then I have never understood what could be fun about griefing in general. My way to deal with them was to get away from them as soon as possible, although after a while I learned how to report harassment to LL and have done this a couple of times. However, I can see how introducing such a social problem into the CDS could make my experience of it quite a bit worse than how it now is.

Perhaps we could still consider the second option I wrote of:

Another way might be for us to have small advertisements on democracy- or culturally-oriented websites, inviting people to register for an SL account and visit us with their avatar. If somebody saw one of these and already had an avatar, they might be inspired to learn more about the CDS.

We could have these only very selectively, for example in places where university students in particular areas of study could see them.

[solomon mosely]

okayy.... so my eyes were bigger than our stomachs, BUT i think it is an exciting long-term goal that could serve to unify and strengthen the community including some of the m.i.a. c.d.s.'ers.

i like sonja's outreach ideas, we definately have a unique and increasingly high quality "product" to offer. and i would ask any who would contest that to toss in some suggestions with the rebutle. that said, i think this thread was intended to gather ideas to add to the unique qualities we have here; how do we spike the punch a bit?

i think we can all agree that the holidays were filled with wonderful, well populated events, but i know there are lots of us out there with lots of great ideas for lots more, i personally can't wait to see the romantic exhibit at the monestary. but, i am wondering if there is a more coordinated effort that could be made to develop and execute an event schedule, even a combination of cds and citizen lead events that could be scheduled and orchestrated to compliment each other and make the most of resources might be good.

is this a task (if deemed worthwhile) that would be taken up by the tourism department/committee/thing, a chamber of commerce, or a night down the pub?

i guess my point is that some cohesive format and executable plan might be far more satisfying and successful to our goals of developing an exciting culture of creative growth, as opposed to a few random, isolated events, regardless of how excellent they might be.

as far as events, i like the sculpture garden idea i've heard about, especially as a competition for sl sculpters since we can squeak a few events and noteworthy releases out of that. a bicycle or horse race through the sims, splashing through rivers and hurdling felled, mighty timbers and a glorious grand ball awaits the horses and riders where a magnificent trophy is presented to the winner. a cds pub crawl with a some live acts at the venues might be fun.... or a cds singles night.....? hmmmmmm? speed dating? lol. k done.

[Sonja Strom]

Woaw, thank you Solomon!! These ideas definitely sound more interesting than government meetings!

And yes, my intention for this thread was for it to be about how we could make the CDS more interesting. Thanks for bringing it back.

One idea I have is, if we would have a road designed so that vehicles could go on it through the sims, we could have a race of different kinds of vehicles, or maybe a parade of them. Some people might enjoy having this ability at other times too. For a while I was able to drive with my Mercedes from NFS to CN, and it was fun!

[Rose Springvale]

smiles at solomon.

i have a job for you.

History, budget and long term plan are things you need to review though, to add to your enthusiasm. I promise there is nothing "Random" but it is good to know that's how it appears.

best,
rose

[symokurka]

Sonja said

One idea I have is, if we would have a road designed so that vehicles could go on it through the sims, we could have a race of different kinds of vehicles, or maybe a parade of them.

I do absolutely BAN motorized ground vehicles from Alpine Sims and Historical Centers unless they are Solar or Wind powered lol

[Timo Gufler]

I do absolutely BAN motorized ground vehicles from Alpine Sims and Historical Centers unless they are Solar or Wind powered lol

Maybe you, Symo, then permit us solar-powered vehicles like this?

http://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?na ... ID=1165419

[Cindy Ecksol]

Sonja said

I do absolutely BAN motorized ground vehicles from Alpine Sims and Historical Centers unless they are Solar or Wind powered lol

Aw, c'mon Symo! Be a sport! Early on in my CDS experience Sonja took me for a ride in her Mercedes from AM down through CN, and I have to tell you she was absolutely hell on wheels, and I was terrified! We ended up in the Forum, surrounded by a crowd of admiring avs...that car is definitely a magnet for attention when occupied by two beautiful female avs.....

Cindy

[solomon mosely]

i guess my point is that some cohesive format and executable plan might be far more satisfying and successful to our goals of developing an exciting culture of creative growth, as opposed to a few random, isolated events, regardless of how excellent they might be.

i'd like to begin coughing up this shoe by both apologizing to and thanking all those who volunteer their personal time to organize and orchestrate all the exceptionally entertaining and invaluable events and festivities that have and continue to enrich the the very real experience here in the cds. my remarks _were_ poorly chosen and ill-informed. i will gladly take any task put to me and when asked, contribute as best i can to any ongoing and future cds social endeavors.

in reference to the above remarks: i think a cross-cds rally race would be a blast...

[Rose Springvale]

smiles again.

i'm serious. I have a plan for you. see me after elections....

we NEED you!