Monday, December 8, 2014

2014 HELP: BIZ: Virtual world welcome points. Littlefield shows features to consider

Virtual world welcome points. 
Littlefield shows features to consider  

Every virtual world needs a welcome point.  I will report on grid welcome points and their features from time to time.  Perhaps someone will build a full-featured model and sell it on the Kitely market or offer it open source as a freely available OAR.  
Litttlefield Welcome Point
Click image to enlarge
Some of the choices 
at the Littlefield Welcome point
Click image to enlarge

Noteworthy features

  • Early triage
  • Walk-in teleports
  • Mentor on call (button)
  • Intro zone for newcomers
  • Grid members group
  • Grid calendar
  • Grid guide 
  • Social networking
  • Classes 
  • Free condos
  • Hangouts
  • Public sandbox--24 hour auto return
  • Freebie zones

Early Triage

Intro gate for newcomers 
  • Early triage.   
  • A walk in teleport leads to an area where signs instruct newcomers.
  • Newcomers can get there without knowing how to teleport.
  • They just need to know how to walk.
  • There are other doors for experienced people with specific interests.  
  • Triage conventionally applies to sorting medical cases.  
  • But virtual worlds are unconventional.  

Walk-in teleports

  • Doors are walk-in teleports to areas made to fit specific interests or needs
  • The door for newcomers leads to an area with instructions for beginners
  • Walk-in teleports let new people go places without knowing how to teleport.
  • Yes-butter: Yes but SL takes care of that.  We get 'em already trained
  • Vulcan: Is it logical to tie our future to the future of Second Life?

Mentor on call

Call button for mentor
Click image to enlarge

Intro zone for newcomers

Intro gate for newcomers 
  • A walk in teleport takes you to an area where signs instruct newcomers.
  • Newcomers can get there without knowing how to teleport.
  • But they do need to know how to walk.
Walk instructions
  • I suggest that this item be given on web pages used for entry.
  • And repeated several times on the entry path.
  • For example on a sign in the place where the person first arrives.
  • People need to know how to walk before they can walk to signs.
  • Even for a walk-in TP, you have to know how to walk.
Click image to enlarge
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Free stuff, buy for nothing, 
how to find it in your inventory

How to fly
Click image to enlarge

Grid members group

  •  You see that there is a grid members group that you can join.  
  • A grid members group can put new people in contact with experienced people.
  • A query to the group will go to all the people online.  
  • Visitors can usually get help when they need it.  

Grid calendar

Social networking, calendar, 
other community notes

Grid guide  

  • There is also a guide to the grid.  Not responding to click when I was there.  
  • I would expect it to give a notecard with names of places or of communities.
  • With landmarks to venues and community hubs.
  • It may be failing to deliver to people arriving via hypergrid

Social networking

Classes 

  • Blender Lessons Live with Aaack Aardvark
  • 1:00 PM - 2:10 PM  Oct 26, 2014  Weekly PST 
  • Classes bring traffic to your grid.

Free condos

  • Need a starter place to set home and rez?
  • Free condos available.
  • Contact Amy Storm or a member of the Admin Team for information.
  • The freemium model builds traffic.  Give away a starter package.  
  • Land costs are low in Opensim.  Give people a reason to come back.

Hangouts

  • Hangout for tech-minded folk
  • Every Saturday night at 8 PM Pacific
  • Hangouts bring traffic 

Public sandbox--24 hour auto return

  • Good idea.  I can't report on the sandbox because the LM I got would not open
  • The LM came in a notecard. Could not move to inventory:
  • "Not allowed to transfer this item"  Maybe because I came via Hypergrid. 
  • I have seen notecard items fail before when travelling via hypergrid.  
  • Especially when I try to activate them in another grid.  
  • But in this case I was clicking them in their home grid.

Freebie zones

  • I could not report on the free shops either.  Those LMs would not work, either.
  • But free shops are a good feature to have accessible from a welcome point.
  • In this case, walk-in teleports would have been better than LMs
  • I favor a multi-pronged method for giving locations
  • Landmarks, teleport gates, and something like the the SLurls of SL.
  • The ideal Hypergrid address form--almost there in Firestorm
Recurring events

  • Answer to "What do people do around here"

Related


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News and Notes

Contests and dated calls/invitations/events

Newcomer Help in Virtual Worlds

Education

How to handle a Hypergrid address 

From any Hypergrid-enabled grid, paste the address into the address bar of Firestorm and press enter. Or paste it into the world map search bar of any viewer, search, and click Teleport when the destination is found. If it doesn't work, don't give up. Try again in couple of minutes.  Sometimes the first try fails (probably times out).  And try again a few hours later. Some hypergrid destinations are offline part of the day. 
If you get an address like this: 
 hg.francogrid.org:80:Residence-09:/119/128/190     
paste it into the address bar of Firestorm, see if it takes you to the exact coordinates. 

******

Video-Machinima in virtual worlds
*****
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