The New Entry Points and Mentors

It's a matter of delegation, I think. It takes more people to monitor the mentors and greeters. I understand the volunteer brigade to be a relatively flat structure. Perhaps it would be more efficient to start structuring it, making it taller as well as broader.

Yes, we need more volunteers to cover losses from attrition (not everybody sticks with being a volunteer. Sometimes FL gets in the way), and we need a corps of volunteers that is sufficient to handle whatever our weekly average intake is. But perhaps we need to evolve some supervisory roles. LL don't seem to be able to spare the bodies for it, but perhaps the volunteers themselves can.

Just thinking out loud.

LL needs to back track and take inventory of LL personal and how better use them instead of just adding them. Adding bodies does nt always insure the product to grow, but instead it can cause even more stress for current mentors/ and greeter( and live helpers). We are growing WAY too FAST! We need better order before we get in any farther deeper in problems.

Agree. I don't think it serves anyone for the greeters or mentors to feel like they're being inadequately supported. They support everyone, making a better environment for everyone, and I don't want them to feel bad about what they do.

> DIGRESSION
I understand that LL is a business, and as a business it has responsibilities to try to get the most output for the least input. And in a business sometimes you cannot be very agile responding to changing circumstances, because money is involved, and anything involving money takes too much time and too many people to do quickly.

I don't begrudge LL the way they're doing things. That this grand experiment is working at all is an amazing thing in itself. Sometimes they're going to make decisions that are not obviously in our best interest but in theirs...and that's as it should be. If LL can't pay the bills, meet payroll, turn profits and make the investors happy, then there is no SL for us. That's not carte-blanche to do things on a whim, but the fortunes of SL and LL are tied together. One does not exist without the other being a success.
< END DIGRESSION

We all know we'd be doing what we are doing, with official sanction or not. I don't think many of the volunteers are doing it for the ellz. They're doing it because they believe it's what must be done. It supports newbies and oldbies, and makes our Second Life a better life. It's a mission, a calling, and a responsibility.

I know that LL are thinking about all the aspects of the introductory experiences. That's why we've got the current experiments in place. It all takes time to plan, put in place, measure assess and plan again. You and I know that on the 'ground' in SL, things move a whole lot faster than that. SL evolves at a giddy pace compared to the real world, and that's hard to adapt to.

So, how do we monitor the quality of our greeter and mentor experiences? Do we follow each-other around? (seeing how someone else does something isn't a bad idea anyway) Do we create ad-hoc supervisors in some sort of hierarchy? Do we find some other way of measuring and improving what we do? Do we need LL to help us? If so, we probably need to give them some tentative solution or plan, rather than a problem on a plate

I would like so real answers to these issue. nino is bring up some good issues.

Well, Travis (Hi Lars!)

I guess I am glad for update days.. I come to the forums.
I was shocked, being am mentor, that there were more entry areas than the Welcome Area. I never received notice of it. (altho i regularly sent people to TheShelter as a newbie-friendly club). Where are the other places?

I am often online between 4:30 and 8am and will make it a point to stop by.

I have some stationary tutorials on contents, inventory,building and texturing if you are interested. Sounds like you have gone beyond the dance club from when I first walked in as a newbie a year ago.

IM The Sojourner (Soj) if I can be of help.

IMNSHO, Between mentors, greeters, live help, and now the new landing spots, roles of all have been hopelessly muddled.

I often hang at the Shelter because the environment is so welcoming (if you keep your camera off the epilepsy inducing dance floor ) with my LH tag on and multi-task.

I only became aware of the Shelter upon its selection as an entry point and think Travis and Crew are doing an excellent job.

As for the Ahern Welcome Area, to quote some other Travis, "someday a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets"

Hiya! The New Entry Points program started about a week and a half ago and in addition to the Welcome Area new residents were given a choice of The Edge, Abbots Areodrome, and the Morris Sandbox. The Shelter was rotated in place of The Edge and just a day or two ago Lusk replaced The Sandbox.



As a new Shelter Host who has been volunteering on the "graveyard shift" I would like to give my thanks for your kinds words. Your Live Helper experience has come in handy many, many times when someone asked me a question I did not have the answer for.

oh well