Frankly, LL, we don't give a damn?

SLCC (SL Community Convention) was this last week, and according to Reuters, attendance was half of what it was last year, which is pretty dramatic:
http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2008/09/07/users-gather-for-a-smaller-less-corporate-slcc/

Yet, concurrency figures continue to inch up.

Why is SLCC attendance down? Vote or suggest your own rationale.

Edit: DAMN! forgot how to add a poll. Anyway, here are the choices I came up with:

1. Residents are no longer an early adopter community, they just aren't tight with each other.

2. Concurrency stats are all bots, there are MANY fewer real residents than there used to be.

3. RL economic conditions make travel prohibitively expensive. Also, there be hurricanes thar in Florida!

4. Virtual worlds are yesterday's toy, nobody cares about them anymore.

5. SL is washed up, the new leader in virtual worlds will be: <add your own>

6. Pie.

SL has conventions?

Besides your first theory, that most of us don't care, which works for me, perhaps the fact that it was held in Florida in the midle of hurricane season may have something to do with it?

Never mind. Your edit covered it.

Yes, to all of the first three choices.
I certainly don't think virtual worlds are washed up -- they are only beginning and SL is still in the forefront of that.

And I'm avoiding carbs, so no pie.

Even though I prefer pie, I think number <2> is the answer to this non-poll poll.

well ..

There definitely is a sense of people enjoying Second Life in SPITE of Linden Lab, and the vision of the virtual future ...

rather than because of it.

This has been a shift from the 2005 time frame.

1. I live in Arkansas.

2. Price of gas is up.

3. Price of airfare is up. Fees have been added.

4. From Tuesday night to Friday afternoon = no electricity. Thank you, Gustav.

5. Did they even freaking announce the thing on the blog? I know it was the connection MTD. Which I didn't read.

6. I'm broke.

Yeah, that pretty much sums up what happened to me. If the first three hadn't conspired to make me #6, I might have been in hotel room for #4.

Sooo, they were thinking those name-brand companies were gonna put in an appearance? Since when were many of them actually a part of the community? (I'm not talking ESC, just something like Nissan.)

*runs a search on the blog* I don't think they did announce the SLCC on the blog. If they did, they couched it.. which meant it didn't get mainlined. I begin to feel that LL doesn't give a rat's behind about the community.

Ebay's convention thingy in Chicago, Ebay Live I think it's called, also had lower attendance than usual. They're not having one next year I believe. Maybe the credit crunch is kicking in or maybe it's just that people aren't excited. I don't know but I'm sure last year I saw more hype about SLCC than I did this year.

You did see more hype for it last year than this year. Search SLCC on the blog. I found it mentioned for LAST year. Nary once for this year.

Frankly, it's a great idea, but with the cost of everything rising except the paycheck... it's not going to be as big. Did they have anything for it in world? I would have tried to attend if I had known about that part.

Caledon had its first real live meet in Stratford, Ontario (Canada) this year, with people flying across oceans to attend.

Roughly a dozen made it, and it was a resounding success, with more expected next year. It was called "CaleCon" - and this was just the week prior to SLCC.

What I think we are seeing is a shift from the old "oldbie whole world community" that used to exist, to a zillion smaller communities all over the map, getting together.

Some Caledon folk also made it to the Pennsic (sp?) war organised by the Society for Creative Anachronism, and also to this remarkable event: http://www.dancesofvice.com/DOVFII/index.html

Also, ComicCon and DragonCon recently.

Most of the people attending these had little interest in SLCC itself, but all have the common thread of SL - meeting grid friends at these events.

Yes, they did. However, I didn't learn about it inworld, but only today by reading a thread on SLU, and didn't attend. (Probably wouldn't have if I'd known about it, anyway).

You're right, I saw only incidental Blog mentionings of it this year. They DID have a note about it during login for quite a while.
.

I live in FL and could have driven there but:

1. Gas is too expensive for me to make non-essential trips

2. No one I knew was going (as a former poster said - everyone I spoke to didn't even know about the convention)

3. And I didn't have any interest in it.

Besides Lindens and the obligatory SL media, who went to SLCC when it was a big deal? Like, SL in-world tycoons? SL socialites? RL business people assessing the platform?

Personally, as much as I've met really wonderful and talented people in SL, meeting them in RL seems somehow a little too "pragmatic." Frankly, SLCC could have been next door and I wouldn't have gone. Actually, in that event, I think I'd have made arrangements to be out of town. (But that's just me, and it would have been the same last year.)

I too didn't hear about the convention until this thread, but wouldn't go anyway for all the previous reasons.

My #1 problem with SL is all the dang server trouble they have. Not being able to get to the dance is one thing, but is quite another when there is essential work to do an a rental sim and can't get in -again- and -again- and -again-. and -again-. and -again-.
#2 would be the primitive graphics and
#3 the amount of resident turn around. What is the average avatar active life? Two months?

That's in addition to what the OP said.

I wanted to go, but cost would have been way too much
there would have been maybe a handful I would have known there, but I think it might have been fun

I think cost is the major factor, then you bring in timing (hurricanes/florida)

You didn't make your thread title one of the choices.

Anyway, I'd give 1 & 3 about equal weight for me. I'm actually still looking for this "community" everyone keeps talking about.

Without a doubt, this is it. I never attended a SLCC but when they first started it was all about close friends in-world who wanted to meet in the real world and SLCC facilitated that.

I think what Desmond is saying is right on the money. As SL grows more communities will hold their own meetings/conventions for the same original reasons SLCC started - whether they grow past their initial groups is something to see, but most real social networks do not grow exponentially (social being actual friends, not people just trying to link up pages like on FaceBook or MySpace), so I really do not see these conventions growing unless the people attending all have serious issues in common linking them together.

I bet you SLSC (SecondLife Sex Convention) would be a hit forever.

Why would I want to fly hundreds of miles to meet a bunch of furries, vampires, goreans, bots and sexual degenerates?

In other words: pie.

Wait, they already had SLCC?

I think that 1) is a strong answer, compounded by 2) and not helped by 3).

I mean, many of us here are invested business owners or otherwise ingrained into SL and feel like: so what? You have to be a hardcore fan to open up your wallet to go to these things and you get fewer of those, proportionately speaking and often times in raw numbers as time passes because people move on and do different things. And then there is the 7. not caring to meet these people in real life because you want to keep your lives separate.

For me it was the economy and price of flights. Ive been in world almost 2yrs now and active 12-14hrs a day when not working (Working is new for me lol, 3yr vacation was enough, Thanks bush ) but anyways thats why I did not go

I went last year and had a marvelous time. For this year I wasn't thrilled about the location of Florida and perhaps it was one of those things that was great but I had no interest in doing it more than one time.

1. If LL could overcome the ridiculous limitations on the number of avatars that could gather in one sim, we could do this in-world.

2. Hosting it in the F-state is asking folks to travel just about as far on average as possible. Why not have it somewhere cheap and in the middle?

3. What is the point, exactly? What does one do there? Marvel at the unattractive people behind most avies?

Not. Cool.

Kinda hard to have a real life get together in-world.