“Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in.”
Michael Corleone in Godfather III
Sit back, grab a cup of your favorite brew, because this one could be a long one. I will be referencing two forum topics in this post; the proposed tier increase topic and the “what should we do” topic.
First I’d like to clarify the issue of what the CDS has in reserves. The amount of L$ 3,188,422 that Tor referenced in his post was the total current amount of money CDS had as of May 31st 2013, both reserves and working capital. The reserves of the CDS as of June 30th 2013 is L$ 2,485,235. I’d like to point out that this amount has been the same since September 30th 2010. What has changed in almost 3 years; the linden dollar exchange rate. September 30th 2010 the exchange rate or revalue rate was 277 while the revalue rate on June 30th 2013 was 249. So our reserves were valued at US$8,972 and they are now valued at US$9,981.
Tier was reduced in the CDS in August 2011. There were three main goals to the tier restructuring plan. Reduce tier to a more competitive level with other estates, have a uniform tier across all 5 sims, and have a double-prim parcel’s tier be exactly double that of a single-prim parcel. Two of the three goals were accomplished.
Nineteen tier pricing models were compared against ours for this study. Over 120 hours was spent gathering and analyzing data, calculating different pricing models and preparing and presenting the study to the CDS citizenry. Out of those 19 pricing models the CDS was above the median point in its tier. With income on a decline due to a decreasing population base the citizens voted to endorse this new tier.
It is fiscally irresponsible for us to continue to operate in the negative. For those who say that the CDS isn’t a business I have to politely disagree. We may not be a business in the true sense of the word but in many ways we have to conduct ourselves as if we were a business. If you had a business in the real world and each year you generated profits of over a million dollars and then suddenly you had a year or two of losses of close to a quarter of a million dollars would you not take corrective measures? Of course you would.
So after all that is said I for one do endorse Tor’s proposed tier increase. Personally I’d rather see it at the rate of 0.0300 instead of 0.0325 but it’s not worth arguing over. Our current tier for a 512sqm parcel with 117prims is US$3.25, under Tor’s proposal it would be $3.80. A candy bar costs more than fifty-five cents people. I will also remind everyone that under our original tier using today’s conversion rate of 250 was US$ 1,719.04. Tor’s proposal will put us at US$1,542.96. That’s still a savings of 11% and that alone is good enough for me.
The other hot topic of the day is whether or not we should keep Locus Amoenus (LA). It would be foolish for us to do away with LA. For one thing you’re not going to have the land that is currently being rented in LA all of a sudden be rented in one of our other sims. I may be wrong but I welcome you to ask the current landowners if they would or not. The most difficult to transition over would be the Time Machine. The only other sim that this business would blend into would be CN and unfortunately CN is a single prim sim so the Time Machine would need double the land it has now in order to have the same amount of prims. I love the idea presented by Calli of turning LA into Tuscany.
I will strongly support the idea of discontinuing the sale of parcels in the CDS by the government. However I disagree with requiring new citizens to pay 3 months of tier upfront. Make it one month of tier and discontinue the refund of tier upon early vacancy for everyone. If we’re trying to make it inexpensive for people to join our community why hinder them with requiring them to come up with 3 months of tier?
Ranma, I found your comment about the restrictions in CDS being too harsh and than your use of Caledon as your example rather contradictory. Caledon is owned by one individual who makes all of the decisions; everything goes through him, including the nice profits. In the CDS “we the people” are the ones who make the decisions. If we want something changed we gather amongst ourselves, debate it and majority rules.
I agree with you that some of our covenants could use some amending. I for one wouldn’t take issue with lifting the restriction on the amount of land one citizen can own. If you’re interested in a sim that is less restrictive, where you don’t need approval for every little thing than gather some supporters and submit your proposal for a new sim. All kinds of ideas have been tossed about in regards to new sim proposals from islands that allow sailing, to America around the 18th to 19th century time period all that’s needed is the population base to support it.
One more thing Ranma that I personally took great offense of; your little snide remark directed towards Sudane, “Caledon has a lot more lots changing hands. Somehow the Guvnah is able to keep up with the workload.” In my opinion you owe Sudane an apology. She is one of a handful of citizens in this community who actually “do” something and not sit on the sidelines bitching about everything. If you think the responsibilities of keeping the CDS in operation is such a simple, non-time consuming task, than I invite you to volunteer your services. Yes “volunteer” because unlike the “Guvnah” we don’t fill our personal bank accounts with CDS revenue. I’ll remind you of my earlier post where I mentioned the 120+ hours I spent on the first tier proposal.
I couldn’t agree more with Calli’s statement “so let’s focus on what we are or want to be and how to achieve that.” We know who we are, we’re the Confederation of Democratic Simulators, the oldest self-governed community in Second Life. The historical significance of that was shown to me during the SL10 Birthday Celebration where during the historical walk area put on by Linden Labs one of the placards mentioned the beginnings of our wonderful community and the significance of it.
Callie wrote “Where did we advertise the available land, the attractive tier rates, and CDS as a whole? Did we invest some money in banner ads on the Marketplace and the SLuniverse, did we buy some ads inworld and web magazines about SL, or buy ad space in high traffic areas – how much did we actually do and invest and was it enough. The flyers coming to my RL house every week tell me that a great deal isn’t much use if no one knows about it.”
Personally I don’t think “we” did a damn thing. I think a better question would be to ask each individual citizen what they have done in reference to your above question. I’ll be more than happy to share my experiences.
As preparations were being made by Delia Lake to showcase a new exhibit for MoCA I reached out to various media outlets in an attempt to get us some press. We had a very nice article published in one of the most popular magazines in SL, The Best of SL.
After someone explained to me (I honestly don’t remember who) that when we place a parcel up for sale if words used in our description matched search terms someone looking to purchase land would use on the marketplace than our parcels would show up in the search results. So I redid the descriptions for the four full sims and forwarded them to Rudeen who was kind enough to place them into the parcel descriptions.
Even before I was Chancellor all I heard was that we needed to hold events, activity, generate more traffic into our community. I wasn’t shy about spending money during my two terms in office if I could justify the cost. The sad thing is that for most of the events that were held during my two terms in office, not only were volunteers hard to come by, very few of our citizens even bothered to attend the events to show their support or at least welcome the attendees to the events. Valentine’s Day 2012 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.
Sadly, Floralia 2012 was never held and it seemed like no one even cared. In fact I think the only person who even brought up the topic to me was Guillaume Mistwalker and I had to inform him that there would be no Floralia 2012 because I had no assistance in planning and carrying out the event.
During my term the CDS was able to book four acts over two weekends at a substantial discount. So we had one concert on the first Saturday and one concert on the first Sunday. Attendance for Saturday was lacklustre with 15 – 20 visitors with 4 citizens in attendance. Sunday drew a larger crowd of 35+ visitors with 7 citizens in attendance. The second weekend I don’t have the counts available. I also had citizens bitching because they didn’t like the TEMPORAY set-up in place for the event.
During my second term I studied the popularity of the 7Seas Fishing Contests across the grid. I made the decision, for a minimal investment to bring 7Seas Contests to the CDS. I put a call out asking for anyone in our community to volunteer one hour a week to host the event. Not a single citizen offered to assist and I ended up paying an outsider L$500 to host the contest each week. This WEEKLY event drew on average 25+ visitors into our community every Friday night.
Another issue that was addressed during my two terms in office was the lack of traffic for CDS merchants to sell their wares. “There’s no money to be made in the CDS, no one visits us.” The CDS purchased an Alli & Ali Hair Affiliate Shop. The business was opened in LA at the Insulae. Classified advertisements were placed on the marketplace and we were linked directly with the vendor through their contest board. Our first month, we had a minimum of 38 individual visitors and 31 sales and over the time period that it was in operation and I was managing it, before I took my 5 to 6 month hiatus, the store generated over 300+ visitors. I don’t have the sales figures in front of me for that time period but in all honesty it’s neither here nor there. The point is I proved that traffic could be generated in our community. Instead of our merchants capitalizing on this increased traffic and opening shops within the vicinity I had people bitching and complaining about the type of business it was and how much space it took up.
During my term the CDS invested in its infrastructure. One purchase that was made was a printing press. One idea that was discussed to a good extent was to publish a Welcome to the CDS Book that could be used for promotional purposes as well as given out to new citizens to acquaint them with the CDS. Unfortunately to the best of my knowledge this book has yet to be published. A welcoming committee was also formed at the beginning of my term. Our land scanner was set to send an email to the members of the welcoming committee whenever a parcel changed ownership. During the early months of this committee I know for a fact that we had three new avatars join our community and none of them were welcomed by anyone on the committee.
During my two terms I took the time to explore the sims that were consistently on the top 25 list of most visited sims not including the sex sims. Sims like London City, Franks Place 2, London City 3, Brasil Rio, Jaded Island, sims that had an average of 40 to 60 visitors at any given time day or night. These sims offer billboards where you can advertise on and with most of them not being heavily residential sims would not have a conflict of interest with us advertising our community. I was never able to get this project off the ground because I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to be bothered in making the textures for me.
So what’s my point you might be asking at this moment? My point is that the CDS is what each and every one of you makes it. No matter if one individual or a small handful of individuals devote hundreds of hours of their time, energy, and other resources into this community not a damn thing will truly get accomplished in the long term if each and every one of you don’t do your part. Ever since I joined this community it has been 95% talk and 5% action. Enough talk already. Set your differences aside and work together. We can all contribute to this community individually but in a group setting to turn this community around and make it better than it ever has been and continue the legacy of SL’s oldest self-governed community. Until we all come together not a damn thing will be accomplished.
I suggest a visit to Urquhart to get a hint of what can be done with themed prefabs for rent (there the theme is the Scottish Highlands). There are seldom any unrented houses there, and the tier is 3,85 L per prim/week.
