Second Life Events: 10 Bad Habits To Break

Written by Kim Smith

Thursday, 05 June 2008 09:01

We need to raise the bar on SL event production. There, I've said it. These days, the SL business, institutional and grassroots communities are kicking out a plethora of events with potentially broad appeal. Serious stuff is being discussed. Serious presenters and audiences are assembling, inworld, on a daily basis (many of them new to the environment). So we need to start setting appropriately-serious standards.

To this end, here are ten things we need to STOP doing, if we genuinely care about audience and experience:

Don’t plan text-only events. Yes, text is the lingua-franca of SL, and using it sidesteps ALL sorts of issues. Text is part of the platform. It's free. It's not complicated. It provides back-channels and side-channels for orderly comment. And everyone can use it. And that's GREAT! Text should be a part of every virtual world production. (In fact, regardless of what you do with audio and video, text will always be there -- people use it by preference, and you should never try to limit that ... to do so kills one band of immersion and participation.) HOWEVER … SL Voice and other approaches to audio, even given their technical complexity and expense, provide a better audience experience, elevate planned content to more dignified delivery, and enable more fluent transmission of ideas.
Don’t assume casual seating is for everyone. Keep in mind that people immerse themselves in their avatars, and resent the imposition of seating postures they may consider undignified, inappropriate, or uncool.
Don’t build viewing obstructions into your program -- in particular, don't use slides that take more than 10 seconds to resolve. The ability to view presentations in PowerPoint or video streamed into the virtual world is important to inexperienced Second Life event attendees as well as seasoned veterans. DO hand out notecards with concise instructions on how to use the camera and media controls for best viewing. Ensure instructional signage appropriate to the event is easy to see and obvious for those new to Second Life. Provide assistance before and during the event as needed.
Unwieldy space is not okay. DON’T cram your event space with furnishings and objects that impede avatar movement to seating. DO ensure your seating provides a view for every person. Consider avatar movement in your event space.
Don’t use Robert’s Rules of Order. Virtual world events have evolved in a very exciting and collaborative mold that generally abhors the "Producer to Consumer" and "hold questions for the end" paradigms common to academia and formal conferences of the old school. All events in SL to evolve rapidly into conversations. This is a good thing, and most good presenters adapt very quickly to the more collegial SL format. (See 6, below, re. speaker prep).
Don’t ignore speaker preparation. Rehearse with your speaker(s) at least a day before the event using the same technology you’ll use DURING the event. Ensure your speaker will be using the same computer, same network, same environment as that of the rehearsal. It’s amazing the differences and problems that can be encountered just by switching to or from a laptop, for example. DON’T overlook the type of telephone, quality of conference bridge and speaker familiarity with how slides will be advanced or media will be shown.
Don’t assume media and Second Life work together. DO check the PowerPoint presentations for content at least a week before your event. Ensure it contains no animation or video because they don’t convert to JPGs (note that JPGs are used in Second Life for PowerPoint). Give the presenter time to make changes if necessary. Check them again when you receive them.
Don’t overlook concierge or security staff. If you choose to hire either for your event, make sure they understand the rules of engagement with your audience. Review your rules with them and give them a notecard with the rules clearly spelled out. DON’T assume they know that some of your guests will be new to Second Life. It can be a dreadful experience for those new to virtual worlds to be confronted by an avatar in uniform and interrogated to determine if they might be a griefer. This is an excellent way to lose a community member.
Don’t start late. Starting late ensures you have a restless and moody audience. Require speakers to be on-site or on the audio bridge 10-15 minutes before the start of their session whenever possible.
Don’t send your audience away. There's nothing wrong with simulcasting to the web, but don't use weird proprietary systems that impose their own availability and ease-of-use issues on web attendees or your in-world audience. Keep in mind we’re discussing simulcast too. The presentation should be taking place in-world. If it’s not, why do it in a virtual world to start with?

Comments (9)

My own virtual worlds event series, Metanomics (http://metanomics.net) is simulcast on the web, and we quite actively "send our audience away"--far more people watch the event on the web than in Second Life, and this summer we expect to have far more people watching from event partner locations around second life than on the sim where the event is actually taking place.

I am not quite sure what you mean by "weird proprietary systems, etc."...but I do have an answer to your last question. You ask "The presentation should be taking place in-world. If it’s not, why do it in a virtual world to start with?" One answer is that virtual worlds allow the audience to communicate with one another and with the speakers--even if all are in different worlds. They provide excellent opportunities for serendipitous introductions and networking, and active backchat and crosschat. After the event, people can follow up by visiting inworld locations pertinent to the topic of the event.

All of these are advantages over pure webcasts.

Keep in mind also that giant 4-sim amphitheatres that supposedly seat 200 usually have fairly serious quirks, and it is hard to get the social benefits in such large groups. By encouraging Metanomics fans to go to event partners, they can form intimate and meaningful groups of 20-50 each, and still communicate with the larger audience through group-based and web-based chat channels.

Rob Bloomfield/Beyers Sellers

p.s. Metanomics starts up again on June 23rd, Noon SLT.

In item 10, above, I was referring to an event I recently attended where Second Life was used as window dressing -- a place to host the bodies, while conference content (and such meagre interaction as was possible) was entirely transmitted through a separate, web-based data-conferencing system. In that situation, for most of the audience, many of whom were new to the environment, SL ended up being a distraction, instead of the locus for an authentic social experience enriched by suitably-presented inworld multimedia. This is, in a sense, the point of my post. Low production values produce negative impressions -- particularly on new users -- because they fail to clarify the essential value of the medium ... making SL, in effect _inessential_ to whatever experience they have. In all other ways, of course, I agree. It's important, and socially beneficial, to distribute audience. And these situations compel one of the best and most essential uses of SL text chat: a unifying group-chat can be used to let a globally-distributed audience assemble in one 'place' for comment, questions and critique; and those onstage can share, in realtime, this aspect of audience experience. Web simulcasting seems an irreducible exception to the SL-centric framework proposed above. If you want to reach thousands of people simultaneously with SL-sourced content; and if you want to welcome and allow participation by folks behind firewalls, on underpowered office PCs, or who simply don't want to subject themselves to the not-inconsiderable time investment of account and character creation and the user-interface learning curve, using web media is essential. As you know, we use it at virtually all our events (most recently, this afternoon), in combination with audio streaming of SL voice and realtime web-to-SL widescale chat.

I've recently discovered Mogulus TV. It provides a chat channel (text only) alongside the video stream, allowing the remote participants to participate through a unified interface that builds community around the video session. There are even dev teams broadcasting their build sessions on Mogulus. It's worth considering for achieving large scale.

Peter--good comment. We'd recently been introduced to Mogulus and may begin using it as well. Currently we use Ustream and a proprietary chat bridge that provides a two-way stream of communication between the website and in-world attendees. The web attendees are able to participate and interact with the audience and speakers inside the virtual world without the barriers of entry often imposed due to firewalls, older technology, or work environment, for instance.

This is an excellent list!

I'd bump (5) up to first - I think the absolute top priority in running a virtual world event is to understand that it is *not* an atomic world event, and that importing atomic-world conventions will engender a lot of ill-will and defeat the purpose of holding a virtual-world event in the first place.

An important caveat to (1) is that it's *much* easier to hold a bad Voice event than a bad text event - and, if in doubt, hold a good text event instead.

I've rarely been to a Voice event where technical/etiquette problems didn't take up as much time as the speaker - from bad conditions on the speaker's side to audience members with their microphones on. For people without a lot of virtual worlds experience and a very good tech team, KISS should dictate text-only events.

We've taken (2) and (4) to heart, and are using your post as a prod to redo the seating in our Salon facility to offer more and clearly identified seating options, clear traffic flows and clear lines of sight. Thank you!

Now to find some good seating poses for the armchairs on stage...

Funny, I did these in no particular order and I should've known better! If you number anything on a list, it is a priority the further up the list it is. I know that! Good point on 1 regarding the type of technology used at an event. One of the things we've learned is that if we do use tech that's unfamiliar (and we always have tech staff on hand to help those having difficulties), we tend to stay with it if it's a better audience experience--our audiences generally *want* to learn and apply new technology and as time goes on, there are fewer and fewer that need help.

What's resulted, however, is the requirement that we post ahead of time what type of technology for communication will be used at each event (given the fact that no matter how well you plan circumstances sometimes require a last minute change--beyond our control). We've also found it best to have a number of technologies in place to accommodate multiple types of preferences generally driven by their own PCs, firewalls or other special situation.

I agree with most of these but the orthodoxy about voice is curious. We aren't there yet on voice. It's too wonky, it's too crashy, and you can't reliably "put the face with the voice" always in a large crowd where there is a lot of clutter on your user panel and lag and such. I'm glad you're still tolerant of text. But having struggled with the limitations of both, I'd have to conclude that text still does convey thought better, for all kinds of reasons.

Also, I had my own 7 "best practices" y 1. Four-corner sims hold 400, but not comfortably -- but do at least that much, avoiding builds in the middle that make people fall through sim cracks (put up barriers) 2. Have a really dedicated server for streaming video/audio and make sure very visible directions for how to upgrade to the latest Quicktime, turn on the edit/preferences/video/audio option and the video controls on the viewer, and *trouble shoot it* are visible (turn on and off, fly on and off the parcel etc) 3. Share the URL, so that if it is too laggy, people can tune into another server elsewhere 4. If that's not possible, due to limitation of spaces, have 4 or 10 or how ever many available other venues, where people can congregate in smaller groups on less laggy sims to watch the videos 5. Hold the entire set of groups together by having them chat not in "room chat" on that sim, but chat in a group made for that purpose, which everyone is encouraged to join and encouraged -- not discouraged -- to back chat, criticize, comment, second-guess, etc. -- but which is moderated, so that no one can derail it with obscenity, griefing, bullying, etc. 6. Have audio stream as a back-up if video stream craps out 7. Make sure you have gotten the bandwidth at your RL site nailed down -- this was the failing of SLCC Chicago, for example. These events eat LOTS of bandwidth. Ask for, and get it, in advance.

Prokofy, Agreed on the voice--that's why we generally stream it into our sims if it's not working perfectly--the recent upgrade seems to have fixed most wonkiness (crossing fingers), however, we never run anything without a backup system.

Your other best practices are wonderful Thank you so much for adding to this (and yes I remember reading this from you some time ago and I thought it was well thought out and well written. Thank you again.

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Last Updated ( Friday, 06 June 2008 21:11 )

“...before I leave, on behalf of Sun Microsystems I would like to thank John and Rissa for such a fantastic, interesting and thought provoking event this week, and to everyone who has attended the sessions, it just proves what a fantastic environment SL can be for communications”

Fiona Gallagher, Sun Microsystems

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