private text and voice chat with a non-group of non-friends

Sorry about the wierd subject text, but let me try to explain my issue....

I am setting up a group speed mentoring facility where we will have 12 groups of 4 people (1 mentor with 3 mentees) all text chatting and voice talking at the same time in a relatively small area. So, the only way to do this is with a group voice chat or friends conference.

However, after a few minutes of chatting, the mentors will be switched to a new group of mentees for another round of discussions... thus the term "speed mentoring"!

So, there will be one big group created for all the participants for large group communications but none of these people will be SL friends... nor is it appropriate to ask that the mentors temporarily take on 20+ new friends just for this session.

And therein lies the problem... I can't use friend conferences OR group voice chat to facilitate this!

What I need is an ability to initiate a private text/voice conference with avatars sitting in front of me who are not my friends (and obviously public spatial chat cannot be used in this case due to close proximity of others).

Or, it would be great if the mentors could use the large group list to pick the three avatar names needed and start a private chat text/voice conference with them that way... but this isn't possible as far as I can tell.

Does anyone know if this can be achieved in SL somehow?

Thanks for any help you can provide!
- Watty

You could have them exchange calling cards, You can start a conference by selecting multiple ones in your inventory.

I'm not sure what you can do about voice chat, since it carries over much greater distances than typed. But, You can 'physically' layout the area to take advantage of chat distance limits even on a small parcel of land. By building vertically, you can take advantage of huge amounts of space available, even for a 512M parcel, and even with 1-prim solutions for platforms by using properly hollow+cut tubes. (^_^)y

Sounds wacky. I'd hate it if I were just getting into the meat of an issue and my mentor (or my students) were snatched away and replaced with new ones.

Do calling cards continue to work for grouped private chat without being included in the friends list? (o.o)

If you parcel out the area around each group you can use a private voice channel per parcel and you don't need to bother with private conferences for voice.

Thanks for the suggestions everybody... much appreciated. I didn't know about using calling cards so that's good to know. However, I think the land parcelling certainly provides the easiest environment for everyone during the event. No special actions would be required by anyone to set up conferences etc. Just walk on to the correct land parcel and engage!

Thanks again,
Watty