While we had some major difficulties (more below,) if we consider our goals for Oktoberfest as publicizing our project, using our resources and providing an interesting and hopefully fun event for our citizens, I think the first weekend was successful!
1. First event was a soccer match, technically the teams were NFS and CN. It was, as always, silly fun with the CN team (more experienced!) But the interesting thing is the press coverage given from Friend of CDS Apollo Manga: http://www.examiner.com/x-4734-Second-L ... ccer-match.
2. The next item on our agenda was to participate in the MunichSL parade. We tried. I guess when we "grow up" we can have an Oktoberfest that covers several sims and is so popular that visitors can't log in, can't tp, can't move .... Needless to say MunichSL had a blowout first day... zaphod reports that even HE couldn't get in! I'll send a notecard today with landmarks.. please go visit them when you have a few minutes (and steal any ideas you want us to incorporate... hehe)
3. Then there was the parade. Apollo came out to report on that too, and his story is here: http://www.examiner.com/x-4734-Second-L ... e-problems. Several other photographers (including the incredible Lilith Ivory, here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/_cds/) were around; as i get more urls i'll try to post them. For those that were not there.. we got a dozen really gorgeous float entries, all creative and well done. I spent hours making sure that there were engines ready for each, and that all the people who got them in early had gone through the process...so all should have gone well. But it was Sunday, and it was Second life... and four of the floats were delivered to me after 6 am on Sunday (when i went to bed from saturday!) and another changed drivers...As i was going through the set up process, we were joined, as you'll see in pictures, by several horse riders, car drivers and airplane flyers... all terrific btw, but the resulting script overload is what i am assuming caused the parade to malfunction. Only 4 of the 12 made it to NFS, and there was significant time between those.
However, everyone was in good spirits, and when we gave up for the day we still had time to enjoy Naftali and Boris who gave us just the right amount of polka and dixie music to get the crowd in the mood for beer! The Virtual Live Band performance followed, again popular, and i think i only crashed three times... not bad for NFS in a busy event.
We WILL try the parade again before Oktoberfest ends, don't worry. In the meantime, floats will be on display in Al Garnata, (on the library plaza). Pictures and sponsor details will be posted ... soon.
4. We'll be setting up games over in Altenstadt, and carnival rides are still looking for the right location... Carolyn Saarinen has placed an En Garde Piste for us to try out over there. We've been asked by other sims if we want to do En Garde Tournaments... so if you get time, check it out and report back! There is a video with instructions.. all the info is on the signs next to the Kendra Memorial garden. Thanks Caro!
Other tangibles so far:
1. I've got more stall requests for the market than i have stalls. This is a first!
2. We had only 5 floats in last years parade.
3. We've had several people join the CDS group this week, and several firm leads on land sales.
Thank you to all of the people who made the weekend the success it was... and thanks to Jamie, Lilith, Keila, Naftali, Solomon... for keeping me sort of sane.
THIS WEEK... We have the first "Oktoberfest Mini Folk Festival" ... which is Cindy Ecksol's brainchild, the return of Metanomics, (take a look at their glossy new website... CDS through what I assume is a quirk of alphabetization, has first billing in the event partners list: http://www.metanomics.net/event_partners/) a day at Wunderbar sims, and super music culminating with the Tiroler Eck Show Band on Sunday. PLUS all the great shows at the Theater of the Clouds, Al Zahra theater (smile, we'll see if Joaquin can play Polka Flamenco?!) and the Old Bowl! Everyone should be able to find something interesting and entertaining in CDS this week!
