Kitely Mentors Group Meeting, 27 March 2013: summary

[Marstol Nitely]

Anna Adamant
Dennis Albion
Dot Macchi
Elizabeth Burleigh
Ferrator Montoya
Ilan Tochner
Marstol Nitely
Mat Mahogany
Minethere Always
Ruby ODegee
Savino Van Meirhaeghe

Kitely was recently featured in an article in Wired.com: http://www.wired.com/geekmom/2013/03/vi ... y-is-keen/
Ilan said it received nice responses from quite a lot of people. It can be helpful as a reference for people who haven’t heard of Kitely yet or that need a credible source to endorse Kitely before they give it a try themselves..

The discussion about a makeover for the transfer station continued. The group consensus was for the station to be “floating” in a star field, in space. Mat Mahogany and Dot Maccchi both have transfer stations that could possibly fit within Kitely and the group parameters, with some tweaks. Ferrator Montoya may rework one of his builds to submit. The Kitely group may be taking a field trip next week to look at alternative stations.

Following a question about the texture requirements for the station, Ilan explained that the existing station has one texture for the sky sphere (used as a dynamic texture in three semi-transparent layers), one for the floor window, one for the sign and three for everything else. Any alternative station can’t use more textures than that, and fewer textures will be preferable. As for resolution, the textures can be as high as 1024x1024, but 512x512 is preferred if the smaller size can be used without reducing sharpness.

Ilan responded to a report about two things causing confusion with teleports for people using Kitely for the first time. The first concerned the Teleport Failed message people receive when they first try to teleport to a world that is offline. The prefix to the message (“Teleport Failed”) is added by the viewer so it can’t be removed, but the rest could be rephrased if it would be helpful.

The other problem occurred when a person pressed the Enter World button when the viewer was already running but that viewer was not logged into Kitely. This would fail to get the viewer to log into Kitely because Kitely can’t transfer its grid login information to a viewer that is already running. Kitely will look into ways to eliminate this limitation but, in the meantime, people that want to use the Enter World button to visit a Kitely world should either make sure their viewer is logged into Kitely before they do so or make sure that the viewer the Kitely Plugin is configured to use is not already running.

The next item concerned how to allocate space in Kitely Plaza for the people who want to sell items there. Eventually the shops will be rented. As it stands now, some of the area is allocated to Featured Merchants. “… but we want to provide some space for merchants who don’t qualify for featured merchant status,” said Ilan. Kitely Plaza Coordinator Bladyblue suggested to Ilan having a lottery for the available slots. The winners would then have use of the store space until September. The exact number of spots available won’t be known until the plaza is complete, but he estimated 15-20, 512m slots.

One of the questions that needed to be answered was if people given the slots should be required to offer some of their content for free or just let them sell all of it for KCs. Many of the merchants in the group stated that it would be a good idea to make freebies required because it is a good marketing practice. Some people argued that while it is a good marketing practice, making it a requirement may upset some potential shop owners. As a compromise, the group agreed to suggest rather than require free items from the people who win slots in the plaza.

The next question was whether to make some preference based on the merchant's reputation or have a blind lottery.

Anna Adamant: lottery is fair. Basing it on merchant reputation will make it impossible to be objective and those that didn't get the slots will give you a very hard time over it.

Mat Mahogany: ... the bad builders will be recognized by the other people who won’t bu? It might just spur them on to improve?

Minethere Always: reputation does not mean they are any good anyways.

The group agreed that a blind lottery would be fair.

Ilan suggested the free slots in the plaza be viewed as good promotional spots for merchants to direct shoppers to their own worlds and for sales to arriving newcomers.

How long should lottery winners be given to set up shop? The majority agreed on 2 weeks for new merchants/lottery winners to set up shop or lose their slot.

Should vendors be provided to merchants or should they set them up themselves? Should there be areas be set for the merchandise/vendor to be placed? During this discussion, Ilan mentioned that there would be “prim limits”. Mouths fell open as some mentors had never heard that combination of words mentioned in Kitely before.

Dennis Albion made a point about the vendors, “Anna and I have run shops and malls before in SL, and one thing to take into account is vendor script lag, so make sure the 20 vendors don't rezz 10 laggy scripted vendors, or it'll slow the entire world down.”

There was discussion, but a consensus was not met. The meeting was past two hours at this point, so Ilan called it to a close. After the meeting, Ilan mentioned an increase of inworld activity in the Kitely public worlds since Kitely Plaza opened

[Marstol Nitely]

Thank you for writing another great meeting summary Marstol

[Dinero Outlander]

My thanks to Marstol for writing of this one and Ilan for encouraging the summaries of the town hall events.
It does make it easier for us that are absent, beyond the desire of such absence, to keep up.
Also I thank those that attend and contribute. You are the difference between Kitely and just another grid.

[Constance Peregrine]

My thanks to Marstol for writing of this one and Ilan for encouraging the summaries of the town hall events.
It does make it easier for us that are absent, beyond the desire of such absence, to keep up.
Also I thank those that attend and contribute. You are the difference between Kitely and just another grid.

I had to come in to bug Ferrator, an old friend who has a good sense of humor, which just makes me want to have fun with him-)) hehehe