The World According to Jennyfur

As a co-founder and now officially retired member of the Future United Board and SLCC Organization team I started thinking about our collective successes and failures over the past three conventions. Without further ado, here are my suggestions for those of you who will continue to be involved, those who will be and those who may be considering it. They are in no particular order and are not intended to incite drama or to offend anyone.

- The first recommendation I can make is to clearly define roles and responsibilities. Board members should not be lead organizers and/or track leaders. Their responsibility should be minimal and for official proceedings only. In most non-profit settings, board members are a group of consultants who tap their respective contacts for funding for special events and other fundraising opportunities. Often, they participate in different committees. They are the decision makers and advisors, but not the doers. I would also recommend a process for hiring board members, organizers and track leaders. Define lengths of terms (Two terms (conventions) should be the maximum). It is easy to get burnt out on such an endeavor.  PS. Hire an accountant.

- The SLCC is a labor of love. Once involved you cannot “sort of” be involved or try to maintain (especially on site) other priorities. You may end up not spending any quality time with your friends or getting much sleep. Its just what you have to do. The more involved you are the more it will dominate your free time and your life. The time it takes on all parts to coordinate a growing event of this scale is monumental. The Catch-22 is that the more people who are involved the more people you have to manage and the coordination effort becomes much like herding cats.

- It is nearly impossible to be all things to all people. This may call for a segmenting and separation of “tracks” in the future. Perhaps, for instance, the educators hold their own SLCC – Education Conference and the companies have SLCC – Business Conference etc.. There may be a need to have multiple events or some sort of restructuring. Education conferences are different from Technology conferences, which may be similar and divergent at the same time to business conferences.

- One of the things I regret the most even since its inception is the problematic nature of streaming audio/video to Second Life for the “mixed-reality” portion of the in-world convention. This is one of the areas where we have failed massively though not for lack of trying. I think this year that the in world convention management and structure held its own and that Vivianne Draper and Zatzai Asturias did an amazing job with it. The number one problem will continue to be the stability, scalability and feasibility of streaming media.  Hotels and conference centers often promise you a Prius and give you a Hummer. Sure, its a vehicle, but not the same caliber and performance. Second Life has become more and more mainstream along with interactive media technologies. However, the universal understanding of the persons who staff the events management teams at hotels and conference centers do not fully understand the kind of technological demands involved with Second Life. My advice in this area would be to 1) contract with an off-site host for audio/video streaming that can handle the technological demands. 2) finding a conference location with proven technological capabilities for large scale tech events. Perhaps, the corporate headquarter or campus of a large tech company would be ideal. 3) research other high tech conferences that stream media on the internet or into virtual worlds. 4) have a back-up system in place. 5) emergency whiskey is critical and absolutely non-negotiable.

- For the time being, the SLCC is still a non-profit volunteer run organization. No one is being paid to do this. At best, you can expect some complimentary drinks or meals. The SLCC may have to become a for-profit entity like most professional event organization groups in the future.  Sitting at a registration desk for a couple hours won’t guarantee you a free pass. Even sponsors are responsible for making their own hotel and lodging plans. This is what makes it affordable for as many participants as possible. Everyone chips in a little something. As much as I wish it were owned by some company and had paid employees even though I think it would lose the community vibe. I’d also think that it would be a good idea to hire a grants researcher and writer for alternative funding opportunities. -This may afford paid employees and volunteer compensation without having to be owned by a corporate entity.

- I really wished that we did not use the word community in the title. It made sense for the time and we needed something to call the event. Second Life Community Convention sounded decent. Plus community was the theme of the first convention. It may be too far along on the non-profit processes and branding to rename it and remove the word community. Its such a vague term anymore. What community? There are a vast array of communities in Second Life. There really isn’t one singular community of residents. Perhaps, network is a better description than community. Network is very Web 2.0 New Media oriented term.

- Ditch the live music, machinima viewings and art type events as a official events coordinated by the convention events management team. This is not to say that those groups should not be involved or should be overlooked. I think they should be organized by their respective communities separately from the organizers of the convention or with as little involvement as possible. Stroker Serpentine did an amazing job organizing the masquerade ball with very minimal involvement from any of the organizers and board members. I think this should be the model for extraneous involvement from different subsets of the community.

- Where possible have signed contracts for EVERYTHING even for on-site volunteers. Conventions are hard to run when people flake out, take on too many responsibilities and then falter or flat out leave the organization abruptly. This will happen. Heck, I’m guilty of it myself. All legal contracts should be written by an attorney and not cut and pasted from boiler plate documents found on the web.

- There needs to be one person on the team whose sole responsibilities is press/media relations. This is the person who posts and comments to all SL related forums and blogs. They should handle press releases and dissemination of all pertinent information and should assemble press kits to have on hand year round.

- There needs to be more involvement from Linden Lab. It was a huge honor for the SLCC to be named the official convention of Second Life by Linden Lab per their sponsorship terms and contract this year. Keeping in theme with the convention being resident run is fine. There involvement should, however, be beyond sending the executive staff to present and filling panels with moderators. This assistance should extend to contractual negotiations, non-profit dealings, financial management and press/media releases etc.

- You are never ever ever going to please everyone. You can do your best – it may or may not be good enough. Some bridges will inevitably be burned. You have to have faith that in the end it will all come together and work out as best as possible. There will be drama. There will be technical glitches. The facilities will never deliver on the tech needed to pull off an event of this magnitude. More and more people will be clamoring for a piece of the pie and the visibility that comes with having said pie. You can do you best to accommodate, but not everyone will get exactly what they want and many of them will piss and moan up a drama storm of epic proportions. It may seem dire, but things have a way of working themselves out in the end.

- Areas of interest and topics that should have more time devoted to them: Fashion, Technology, Libsl, Open Source, OpenSim (Competitive Platforms), Virtual Worlds, Web 2.0 applications and technology, improved interface design, Second Life as a green technology, grid stability and Subcultures/Communities (Furries, Gor, BDSM etc). Less focus on big business. Its been done to death at this point. Second Life is MUCH more than just a business platform. If you want that sort of thing there are a multitude of business and marketing based conference focusing on new media and virtual worlds.

- Never lose site of what the Second Life Community Convention is about – its about the people who make Second Life what it is – The Lindens, the content creators, the companies, the educators, the furries, the vampires, the sex industry, the machinimists, the artists, the musicians, the scripters and the residents far and wide. The SLCC is about bringing those people together in the real world.

Lastly, many thanks to everyone over the years who has persevered to make the SLCC what it is today. Special thanks go out to: FlipperPA Peregrine, Randy Moss, Nethermind Bliss, Jeska Linden, Jerry Paffendorf, Nexeus Fatale, Taco Rubio and Phreak Radio, Moo Money, Buddy Sprocket, Fizik Baskerville, Jeremy Kabumpo, Crucial Armitage, LilyEliska Kralmoc, Misty Rhodes, Stroker Serpentine, Baccara Rhodes, Valadeza Anubis, Vivianne Draper, Zatzai Asturias and Hiro Pendragon and all our sponsors whomever else I have omitted by mistake.