How to manage chat at event

Hi,

Im hosting an event but havent got a whole lot of experience.

Theres going to be an audience of around 50 people, who will be asking questions to a guest.

What is the best way of managing this in order to avoid a lot of people speaking at the same time?

thanks a lot

Brian

Have them submit their questions beforehand to a "host" who will read them out and namecheck the person who's question he reads.

thx for the fast reply.

Which method would you recommend submitting the questions to a host? It needs to be real easy, as the audience will not be able to figure out a lot of complicated stuff.

Also it would be best if people could make up questions during the event. We´re screening film clips people havent seen in advance.

Thanks again

Have them submit questions to the host by IM during the event. host screens the nonsense out, and asks the questions to the guest on behalf of the audience.

Ok, thats sound like a good solution.

Is it possible to disable chat for everyone but the host and the guest? Or how would the host ask the questions?

There's no way to disable chat generally, but if you're feeling bold enough, you could kick anyone who talks out of line too much.

The host can ask the guest the questions directly, either in chat, or, if you are feeling up to it, on a voice channel, by setting up a radio broadcast (yep, Internet radio isn't just for music!) and setting the land audio stream to that radio's url.

I am, of course, assuming that asking the audience to press the play button for the audio stream isn't too techie

For the Linden Town Hall meetings, there are several groups which help manage communications. Host and guest should be able to focus as well as see audience questions...

1) Linden Town Hall Questions: Join this group to ask questions during text-only Town Halls. Please do *not* use this channel for casual chatting during a Town Hall; there's a separate group for that purpose, "Linden Town Hall Discussion", which you can join.
2) Linden Town Hall Discussion For Discussion during town hall meetings. Please keep the regular town hall groups clear of chatter during those times.
3) Linden Town Hall Closed Captions: Join this group to follow along with Town Hall transcripts, which are broadcast via group IM. Please do *not* use this channel for casual chatting during a Town Hall; there's a separate group for that purpose, "Linden Town Hall Discussion", which you can join.

Perhaps this sort of arrangement would be helpful? Please be aware that voice is only a minority of the interested, and that for some like the hard of hearing it is not an option.

I absolutely would NOT use voice for this kind of event, simply because the sound volume trails off fast as you move away from the avatar who is speaking. That's why I specified radio, and not voice earlier.

I sort of like the idea of doing it by voice. How would you set up a radio broadcast?

I´ve got an external provider streaming the video, but the audio i would need to stream myself. We´ve got a 10mbit connection so that probably wouldnt be enough.

But how is the streaming actually taking place. Would I stream to everybody, or only to Second Life, which then takes care of the distribution to all the guests...?¨'


Again, thanks a lot, this is GREAT!

If you end up doing this via text chat, I'd suggest that you have your Host speak using a 'chat repeater'.

This will make the Host's text-chat show up in Green text, and be easier to discern from the audience's white text-chat.

I know some folks sell them - they're also extremely simple to create yourself using a simple listen script.

Good luck on your event!