My fellow citizens:
Oktoberfest is fast approaching and it is time for us to get our ducks in a row now and not wait until the last minute. This year Oktoberfest will be held from Saturday September 22st through Sunday September 30th. Oktoberfest in RL runs from 09/22/2012 through 10/07/2012. I’d rather have 8 days of active festivities instead of spreading the festivities out over a 15 day period with a lot of dead spots in between.
Oktoberfest is our time to shine folks. If you do nothing else for your community throughout the year, this is the time where everyone’s help is needed. Not only in the planning and arranging of festivities but actually being in-world during the events to make the hundreds of expected visitors feel welcomed and maybe even fall in love with our wonderful home.
In our community, whenever the topic of increasing traffic comes up, the number one response is we need to hold events on a regular basis. So in my last term and current term I have worked hard at bringing in different types of events. Our St. Valentine’s Day Ball was a huge success with other 150+ visitors to our home in a single day and a maximum at one time of 42 visitors. The bad news was that beside me and Tor there was no one else to greet visitors and work the crowds throughout the day. I had visitors making rude comments in public chat about there not being greeters in attendance.
I’ve brought in the 7Seas Fishing Game and this Friday night at 9pm SLT will be the fourth weekly contest that the CDS is hosting. I have to pay an individual who doesn’t live in our community to run these events for us because not one of my fellow citizens stepped up and volunteered to do it. Each week we’ve had 25+ visitors at these contests and sadly besides myself there has been 3 citizens who have shown up to either participate or at least greet our visitors. And this hasn’t been 3 citizens at each event this has been 3 separate individuals attending at least one contest over the past three weeks.
This past weekend we held two tribute band concerts, one for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young on Saturday and one for The Rolling Stones on Sunday. CSNY had a low turnout, probably around 15 – 20 visitors for the entire event. The Rolling Stones went over well the next day with 35+ visitors in and out during the event. Again the turnout from our own citizenry was disappointing with 4 of us in attendance on Saturday and 7 of us in attendance on Sunday. This coming weekend we will have Queen on Saturday and Iron Maiden on Sunday, both at 2pm SLT. Both these acts draw a decent sized crowd, a crowd that would look even more impressive if we had a decent amount of citizens in attendance.
While expressing my frustration to a fellow citizen this weekend about the lack of volunteer greeters, even after I put out a notice well in advance, he/she pointed out to me that a lot of our citizens don’t particularly care for tribute bands and that may be why they didn’t volunteer. That’s bullshit people. Yes events are held to entertain our citizenry but more importantly events are held to increase traffic to our sims and expose our community to the SL grid. Whether you like the content of the event or not, be there for your community. What’s it say about a community whose own citizens aren’t attending their own events? Where is the “community” in that situation?
The one event that did seem to have a decent citizen turnout, as well as outside visitors, was the beach party hosted by Shep and Razzy with Calli playing the tunes. Was this a success because I wasn’t the one holding the event? If that’s the case than I have no problem, and even encourage any of our citizens to hold and host events on the governments’ dime within reason. Why am I the only person who is actively working on bringing events into the community when everyone agrees that we need events? If you have any ideas on events that you’d like to bring into the community than get together with me and let’s make it happen.
Let’s get back to planning Oktoberfest. What I’d like to do is have a schedule of events planned throughout the week. Two ideas I’m thinking about is maybe a German themed or Oktoberfest themed exhibit in MoCA. Also I’d love to promote a new event for Monastery during this week also. Here is what I’m working on so far. Lilith has a friend who is a DJ of German folk music. We are trying to book him for Wednesday the 26th at 2pm SLT for a 2 hour show. The opening weekend I am trying to arrange for the SL TSO (Second Life Trans Siberian Orchestra) for a performance of their Beethoven’s Last Night. If you ever have the opportunity to see the real life Trans Siberian Orchestra I strongly urge you to go and enjoy the show. http://www.trans-siberian.com/
We are also trying to book for the closing weekend, date undecided, SL Ramstein, a very popular German band in RL there SL show produced by Draco Productions is impressive. So now I turn everything to you my fellow citizens. The earlier we have everything in place the sooner I can advertise all of our Oktoberfest events in the SL calendar and reach out to some of the in-world publications to get us some press. Also please like I mentioned earlier, if you have any ideas for events that you’d like to bring into the CDS let’s work out the details and make it happen.
Trebor
You have been a great asset to CDS and I think there are lots of folks that would agree with me on that.