Event Changes in SL

Have you tried Slingo?


No seriously, I think all we are asking for is a little variety. Unfortunately, without some event support it's just not there....

Back in the Good Old Days(TM), we filed an event report which listed all payouts (how much to whom), and LL reimbursed up to $500 of that. Very easy to enforce, as LL can check the money transfer records to verify. It worked quite well.

I see. Sounds good to me!

I honestly don't know if anyone who has come to one of my Lightshow events read these forums, but i might as well thank them here for coming.

Now, the sad news! (And the part that is actually on topic)

I've given up on doing alternate events, at the start, it was good, i held a few events a month, and saw an avereage turnout of ...10-20 people. sadly, the number has decreased to around...6 at my last event. One more event will be coming, but if it's less than 10, it's closing, as much as i love doing them, i don't have the time to hold events that nobody will visit.

(Ramble rant over)

Oh for where is the money? Right into the playing and working peoples hands, not mine. I own a club and this month alone it hase cost me 286,000 lindens to run. Every event give out monies. Pay workers for being there and working so hard . Yes I do enjoy the laughter, the jokes, the teasing, and the friendships I have obtained.

Now, also with the fun comes the childishness of bombings being paid for by other clubs (names not named), fighting SL couples, childish people that like to just be down right rude, etc.... I am the mother and I have to be a babysitter in here while just trying to have a place for people to have fun. My 21 and 19 year acted better than quite a few of these people when they were six years old.

You ask why the events are so sterile? I ask people every day what they would like? I get the same answers and the same events. I have held events where I was the only one there and dancing to the great music. Well i didn't lose any money for that event at least.

Yes I do love to host, referee, matchmake, get bombed (that is so funny), but for someone who wants to do the same thing and has no money well? No money / No peeps

So as you have read, I am not in this to make money, for if I was I think I would cry.

So if you have ideas, pass them on. I would love to have something different, something refreshing, and something that doesn't cost me every time i have an event.

like i say, just my opinion

Ive read some other posts elsewhere and i think there's two options.

1.To make money you have to charge for events, good events with good prizes.

2.LL should maybe offer the top xx amount of events support, chosen by how unique it was and how many people turned up.

I respectfully disagree, Jon. Sorry, this is going to be long... but I have a lot to say on the subject. Here's why I disagree:

1. Any event that charges an admission fee puts itself at a disadvantage. As long as there is at least one other event going on at the same time that's free, you're going to have plenty of broke folks that won't attend. That doesn't mean you won't get paying customers - I just mean that you're going to reduce the number of attendees if there isn't a direct value-add.

There are other ways to fund your events, rather than expecting your patrons to foot the bill. Think out of the box.... advertising/sponsorships. I started doing that shortly after the event host changes, and its definately kept me afloat.

It *is* more difficult for me to give an incentive to my volunteers/hosts to post events now - I can't afford to reimburse folks the way LL did. My volunteers graciously donate their time for free - but back when LL reimbursed hosts for their prize costs, and gave them $250 for hosting an event, I could almost religiously count on plenty of events throughout the day. Now, at best - I can reimburse hosts for a fraction of their event costs, and struggle with that. Still, I have fewer, but a decent number of events every day regardless.


2. The problem with your suggestion to "offer the top xx amount of events support" - is that the definition of "top" is subjective. In my opinion, my events are unique and creative. I'm sure that you would believe yours are as well. Having someone else decide based upon their own values and perceptions that one event is less creative than another event seems very unfair. The cries of favortism and inconsistency would abound, unfortunately.

If LL is going to bring back event support at all - allow me to suggest this: Offer support for X number (like 1 or 2) of supported events per day per *land parcel owner*, per person. Any host can claim the support - but if you hold your event on Travis Lambert's land, or even the "Yellow Group's" land - that counts against the event support for that parcel owner, and is your supported event for the day.

My biggest complaint with event support in its previous incarnation was that the system could be gamed in such a way that one venue could potentially have 12 fully supported (yet different) events in a given day - through the use of many different hosts, each claiming their reward independently, or posting different coordinates for the event location if its a very large venue. This gives an unfair advantage to very large establishments - and creates an entry barrier for smaller start-up venues. Back in August, I was a small tiny startup myself, and it was a tough struggle to compete with folks that had more resources than I had.


Personally, I think we have a culture of complaining out there - people are going to be upset no matter what the rules are. People are complaining today that there isn't enough diversity in events, and blaming the lack of event support. Back when we had event support, people complained that every event was a Sexy Thong AV contest.

IMO - people are going to find fault in whatever solution is proposed. Its a lot less stressful for me to just find creative ways to work within the system du jour, rather than try to lobby against it But if its changed - fine - I'll work with that too


Travis

Yeah i already thought point 1 was never going to happen soon. Some interesting thoughts on point 2

I suppose it will come down to how much you enjoy events, if you really like um then you will host um. If people really like they will attend even if theres not prizes

I went to a "give newbies free stuff" event at Travis' place a few days ago, and stuck around to watch a later Payment Podium event at the same spot. I'm not a club go-er, so it was an interesting experience for me to basically spend an evening in one entertainment venue. I definitely enjoyed it (it helps that Travis is a very good host). I think the one hour event length is good for classes and hosted games, but there may be an opportunity to use longer event periods to draw people in and coax an admission charge out of them.

When someone spends an evening at a club, generally they have their choice of activities, which could include dancing, games, gambling, flirting, sex, etc. If you're into that sort of thing it can be a very action-packed evening.

I think that model could apply to other events as well. Imagine three hosts getting together to host three thematically-related activities in the same venue, all for one admission fee. You could not charge a lot at first, but at least you could begin to get people accustomed to paying an admission fee, and a multi-event event would offer better value for $ to the savvy SL event enthusiast.

I mentioned poetry readings in an earlier post. What if someone hosted a 3 hour poetry-themed evening?

Hour One:
First, the audience will participate in a bad poetry contest. Host #1 will lay out the ground rules for the contest; the participants will then have the first two hours to compose their bad poetry, which will be submitted and read out loud in the final hour to close out the evening. After setting up the contest, a half hour of poetry readings (MC'd by host #2) follows, ending the first hour.

Hour Two:
A half hour break for socializing and working on bad poetry, followed by another half hour of poetry readings (MC'd by host #3). (The poetry reading themselves could be themed, like a half hour of haikus or limericks.)

Hour Three:
The bad poetry is submitted to host #1 and read to the audience by the authors. Audience members are given rotten tomato guns in order to give proper tribute to the worst poets. The evening ends in mild chaos.

I just cobbled that together, but you get the idea. Instead of going to an event you're now going to a "capital-E" Event, and maybe something worth paying for. I would dig attending something like that, and though it's a lot of work for the hosts, suddenly you have three hosts assisting each other, filling in for each other as they do those administrative things (like collecting bad poetry contest entries) that usually make things grind to a halt.

I will pay you half the dwell and you can keep all you charge at the door. sound ok? I would love to help out with such an event as well. I imagine I could muster some pretty tortured prose if i put my pen to it. . Tell me when you want to host this, and I will be happy to do the publicity (that's 2.5 hours of hosting work you won't even have to do. just run the event)!

Where once they held events they now go playing Tringo.The fact is that LL took away your average players best way of earning some money.

Why dont clubs charge an entry fee for events? It's simple really - there will always be in this place the have and have nots.There are people who can pour real life money into SL and never have to charge players for anything,they can pay event hosts $250 an hour,Dancers, and even people to greet you at the door. I own a club and know for a fact that these people are losing money hand over fist for the privilage of having a 'top' club & to be popular.

Event funding put everyone on a more or less equal footing, you stood or you fell on how good your place was and not on how much you paid people.

As for the content of events you should go out and try it. You can put on as many imaginative and interesting events as you like but the simple fact is that a 'Dare to Bare' or a 'Sexy Undies' event will beat them hands down EVERY time, quite simply it's what people like.

Ordinary dance clubs in SL do not, and never have, made L$'s, they were there for the entertainment value and nothing else.The money I get for being a top 5 club does not even cover my land tier let alone make me money irl. But then again it was always about the fun for me,thats why I did it and I could compete with the club owners who had more real life money than I did because LL funded events and so I was able to run a place just for the hell of it.

We also have a quite a busy mall at our club - we never charged a vendor rent and we gave space whenever we could only to those making a start in business in SL - all for the fun of it. We pay our land tier,we pay our Stream fee's with no complaint because we actually loved the place and the people that it brought together.

More often than not the 'theme' of events is irrelevant and people turn up because of the other people who will be there - just like a real community.So now we just run what events we can manage, we have no income in SL so we buy from GOM when we can afford it and rely on the generous donations of people who come to the club.

We never cared about L$ or real $ it was just a good time and a chance to get together with people who you would NEVER meet except through a superb medium like this.But that all changed and thats why we'll soon be moving on because,to me, Second Life has ceased to be an entertainment medium and turned into 'Stockbroker Online'.

I already have a job - I dont NEED another one - I do not need the stress of running a business, online or otherwise, and I certainly dont need to be worrying wether or not people will turn up for the fun or go play another game of Tringo just to earn some L$'s.I treated everyone as equals - such a shame LL couldnt do the same.

It's a generous offer Cherry, but I'm not interested in hosting that specific kind of event. The reason I went into the detail I did about the three hour poetry event was to show that the idea of a simple poetry reading could be turned into something much more ambitious, and to hopefully get potential event hosts to think outside of the one-hour-event box.

I don't know that people would pay for long events more than they would pay for short ones, Pol. Many of my events have lasted 2-3 hours. I tell folks that if they have fun, donations would be appreciated as the cover charge (since it is true that a cover charge seems to discourage attendees) and still get very very few donations. Not that some few people don't donate lots. I really really appreciate the support of those fine folks on the donor silk, and waves and tang who have donated stuff and cash to the spa. But generally, people kinda see it as LLs job to entertain them, so don't see why they need to pay for events hosts. And events hosts encourage this situation by saying they work for fun, they do it for their good friends, etc etc. Long, intricate events have tended, in fact, to lose me more $L. This is the time and $L it took to host the last event, for example:

Time: 2.5 hours Advertising time (writing the copy for 2 notecard invitations and the events posting) & sending the notecard out, then reminding group members of the event 55 minutes prior to the event; 4 hours making the settings and getting the poseballs to line up; 1.5 hours answering questions about the event prior to its beginning and recruiting known quantities to roleplay; 2.5 hours of pure fun at the actual event. Total time invested = 10.5 hours (note that this does not count the hours i spent making the prizes with my own two little hands so as not to be out more dough! )

Money: $800 for properties, $100 for staff support at the event (not counting the $L I paid for scripts to make the items I gave away as prizes, nor the $usd paid for tier).

So, I guess what I am saying is, I invested 10.5 hours in time and $900 for the last event. Amount I am likely to make from dwell for the evening? $150, tops. Total $ lost on this event? $750. Donations, aside from the donation of a prize given to all roleplayers? $0. Host paid $750 to entertain folks, in other words, instead of being paid to entertain other folks. (oh! though I do plan to keep the exam table so maybe it works out that i mostly break even, just having a justifiable reason to buy that little device. hehe)

True I didn't beg as much as usual... but one gets tired of begging after awhile. So... Why do we do this again? oh yeah. fun. to have fun. that's right. fun. hehe. (looks around for the men in the white coats).

ps. I really did have fun, but that kinda fun is expensive! Sure as heck can't do it every night. Not unless I get another RL job to subsidize my SL job. =(

D'oh! I should have donated...completely spaced out on that (must have been that big spherical prim I was wearing on my head, blocking my thought waves). Even though it's tough to do, definitely ask for donations. Just mentioning it would have reminded me and I'd have sent some $L your way.

I would not advocate hosting a long event for its own sake. What I am saying is that longer events, executed strategically, may be one way to indoctrinate people into paying an admission fee, because it becomes more than an event...it becomes an evening (or morning, or afternoon) out. My feeling though is it has to be a tightly run project, and would be almost impossible to do without multiple hosts working in coordination.


But, on the plus side, some of this investment of time and money is recyclable. You have a format for event announcements, you have some stage sets you can re-use, and some ginchy prizes you can give away again in the future. I think your next step should be to recruit someone to write & deliver those event announcements for you.

I did a Show and Tell event yesterday (just for fun), I gave out L$ 350 in prizes, 7 people showed up, 4 people entered. Could be better, but I didn't give people too much time, I announced the event only a 3-4 hours before.

I 'got' some promotion maybe for my shop, but possibly not much (it's near the event place, on my land), and L$ 10 of metaadverse banner money.
Not much.

Well, I did it for fun anyway, which it was, but the only way I could do around one-two of these events a week if I can sell enough to make around L$ 350-700 for event prize money. Or I could find sponsors maybe, I still have one banner place. But sponsors seem to be lacking. (Does anyone have tips?)

Anyway, I do have to tell, event hosting is fun, but I still feel competitions (like this one) need to give out L$ prizes to motivate people, for example, to be creative. So the money has to come from somewhere.

P.S - Pol,I'm sorry to say this but what your suggesting has already been done.Certainly 'follow on' events have been utilised at my club and I know the same is true of The Edge and more than likely at other places too.

Some random thoughts from this thread.




I went to a couple of auto races in the 6 sim driving/flying area which includes Oak Grove. The deal there was you had to use the car provided by the host. You could watch though I think it was frowned upon if you flew around following the race. To play you had to grab a car from the host. Which as I recall was free, and dissappeared after the event. I could see a paying model working. The car physics were less than ideal. I finished one race at the bottom of the river. But everyone had the same limitations.





Good god, your paying something like US $1250 a month to run your club? That's a chunk of change. What club do you run?




One of my favorite events was a bad poetry contest that was held regularly. Sadly I'm spacing the host's name right now. The times were much shorter though. The host had 10 words he gave on a notecard at the beginning of the contest. You then had 15 or 20 minutes to make some really bad poetry using those words. It was a hoot.

=====================

I think if people hosted unusual events and 20 or 30 people showed up many people would continue to host them even with out any L$ incentives. The question I think about is why for so many of these events no one shows up? Is it bad design of the events listings where non tringo events and the like are hard to spot or something else?

LOL you want to know the realities of running a club?

We began our club as a little place in Alta just for our friends,no DJ's just streaming stations,no events,just friends getting together......and then it took off lol.

We made it a bit bigger but it still wasnt enough so we moved to Brooks where we now have a club,a mall and a huge lagoon/fair area.The land tier is $125 a month,Radio Station was $200 to buy and is $38 a month to stream - REAL money - not Lindens.

Now onto Linden dollars - we usually pay L$500 per event in prizes although our beauty contests(male AND female) have prizes of over L$1000.ALL the people at our club do it for the fun of it so we dont pay hosts or dancers or DJ's nor do we charge our vendors(many of whom have been us since Alta as begginers) rent because we always believed it was all about the 'gathering' and interaction - the fun.

Neither of us had any skills in SL - although Malakira has just opened a shop now where she sells her creations - so the only thing we DID have was event support.Our Vendors have donated prizes,the clubbers have made donations and we kept our heads above water but with the advent of event support vanishing it became impossible to compete with those who can pump real life money into SL by going to GOM & IGE to pay hundreds of dancers and staff.

We were rarely out of the top 3 but now we are winding the place down and soon no doubt it will vanish.

We used to love it and we did it for the fun of it and that little bit of help from LL made it possible, so now you know the realities of running a club.It's a shame to see an endless stream of Tringo events on the board now because thats not what SL was all about for me - for me it was always about people.

In the hotline to lindens section, Robin had something interesting to say about event support perhaps still being under consideration. My understanding is that they will be numbercrunching events numbers and types... ( so in fact, it may be disadvantageous for events hosts to be bankrolling events and skewing the numbers). They will likely release this information to the folks on the forums to see what reaction is. If I hear one more person, in the context of that discussion, call Events Hosts welfare grubbers I will scream. i swear. hehe.

In any case, my master instructor for my mfa in arts administration was called upon to consult with arts organization in New Zealand in face of anticipated governmental arts funding cuts. They asked him what they could do when the ax came. He said don't play dead until you are, basically. Why assume only one paradigm? Question the elimination of the cuts and bring it to the attention of the public. In other words, people keep speaking as if this decision were irreversable. I don't think it has to be. But we need a sympathetic public for it to work! Maybe a steady diet of bingo, slingo, tringo, and blingo or whatever ingo comes next would be just the thing to ensure compliance! (insert albyesque evil laugh here)

~Cherry

We have found a way to offer less money and more prizes, as to not lose quite asa much money hosting events. We started making prizes, and more prizes so we could offer really nice things to the winners of our fishing tournaments. And the response has been great, people don't miss the money at all. Maybe if more events offered unique builds, clothes, or other items you can't get anywhere else, they would do better. I just wanted to offer up a few ideas.
Thanks,
Loki

Ive just opened up a place called The CAVE. Now i dont intend this place to be a top club or anything im jus gonna have the place so i can hold events, listen to music and watch video etc. My events wont appeal to all but those who wanna come will come, if it's empty ill still enjoy it.

I think original events will attract people even if there is no prize money involved

Why are you sorry? What you're saying bolsters what I'm saying. It's all good.



Dude, I've got mad bad poetry skilz, and the prize money to prove it.

One point about the "3 hour event" idea...

Multi-hour events are good in theory, but not so good from a marketing perspective. The primary reason this is so, is because the event calendar in its current format isn't well suited for multi-hour events.

Say you post a 3 hour event, from 4pm-7pm. On the event calendar, that event will show up as "4pm", and nothing more. Typically when folks look for something to do, they look for the next closest time to the current time, and see what's going on. Rarely will people take the effort to click on "older" events and see in the event details if they have a duration beyond 1 hour - its just too much work. The exception to this rule - is in the middle of the night, when there are fewer, if any events going on to choose from.

So for this reason, if you're going to have a 3 hour event, and get the full impact of "marketing" with the event calendar, you need to post the event as three seperate 1 hour events. Yet, this introduces another problem - officially, according to the rules - multiple events you post must be completely different. If you post several events in the same day that have a similarity to each other in any way, it is in jeoprady of being deleted. (It's extremely frustrating, and its happened to me many times - not to mention the definition of "similar" varies from Linden to Linden).

Ideally - the event rules would be laxed somewhat, and the event calendar would be reworked to better show time durations "at a glance". My Outlook meeting calendar at work comes to mind, for example.

Not to say multiple-hour events can't be done.... I went to a 6 hour audiobook reading of "Snow Crash" over new years that was *incredible* (4-5 people showed). But - going with the 4pm-7pm example, you're likely going to pull your "crowd" at 4pm... and not get many "new" people at 5 & 6. What's more, you better have a creative way of making people want to stay, or else your crowd will get rather thin by the time 7pm rolls around.


Trav

Don't know if your actually allowed to do this Travis but when i held a poker event i started at say 5pm (dont remember exactly now). Then nearing on 6 i edited my original event post to 6pm. That way in theory you only have one event up on the calender. Not ideal for people who plan ahead as they wouldn't see it but fine for people who look up the events to see what to do there and then.

I've experimented with doing that before, and yes - that is one effective way of getting around the time length issue. I doubt Lindens would look favorably upon the practice, but its not that easy to enforce either. Use at your own risk

It took a lot of energy out of me to always be on guard that my events might be deleted - so here's what I do now:

1. I post the same slate of events, every day, with the exception of "special events". I do this because:

a. After a while, people will hopefully "expect" that there is something going on at the Shelter at that time every day.
b. After doing the same set of 4 events for months without deletion, I acheived a reasonable amount of confidence that they were "OK" by linden standards.
c. A lot easier for me to post - I simply make a template for my events in notepad... since its the same 4 events every day, I can just paste in the event details without retyping them each day.
d. Makes it easier for me to advertise for my events outside of the event calendar with billboards and notecards.

2. I started posting my events with no more than 12 hours advance notice.

a. As much as it sucks, the reality is that different Lindens have different interpretations of the rules. They're just doing their job - but posting your event early leaves it open to a lot more scrutiny than it does if you post late. You can be 100% certain that your event fits within the stated guidelines, and it could still be deleted. I just don't take that chance anymore.

b. As long as you post with at least an hour advance notice, I haven't noticed any adverse effect on turnout. The exception is a special event, where its beneficial to provide as much advance notice as possible.

Rumor has it that there is some re-work of the event posting rules, and the event calendar itself. I'm hoping that whatever new system is introduced resolves some of the issues we've all brought up.

Things I'd wish for.....

-Change to the 1-similar event per day policy (C'mon - like its enforced evenly now!)
-Start & End times should be clearer on the main event calendar listing
-Make the event rules simple enough to leave little open for interpretation
-The ability to copy/paste events to a future date (or set recurrance)

Its also important to note that I've noticed a lot lighter Linden policing of the event calendar over the past month or so. Possibly because a new system is around the corner? We can only hope