Join us today at the Kitely Community Meeting (September 6)

[Ilan Tochner]

Today's Kitely Community Meeting will be held at 1:00pm PDT in Kitely Welcome Center.

(See timezone information here: http://www.greenwichmeantime.com/time-z ... ific-time/.)

The meeting will be a social gathering with an opportunity for newcomers to ask questions and old hands to exchange information about projects and events.

We'll start by answering any questions that you may have about the Kitely grid and our Organizations (virtual grids) offering.

We'll continue with discussing our upgrade to support large multi-world events.

If you haven't seen this already, please view the video in this blog post that demonstrates the results of our optimization efforts.

There will then be time for Kitely and non-Kitely members to discuss whatever else meets your fancy. Please join us.

[Dot Matrix]

Some interesting discussions in yesterday's meeting about hosting large-scale events via the Prime Organisation system Kitely is developing.

It made me think back to the old Premium accounts for individuals and how the cost of hosting events could be estimated in those days (basically 1KC per user per minute; ready reckoners here). Is that a way in to thinking about costs for this new offering?

The other potential cost is that of land. Would the costs currently associated with Stored Worlds provide a starting point? From https://www.kitely.com/services to copy an existing Kitely World (including Stored Worlds) into a new Stored World costs 150KC ($0.50 if buying KC at max. discount). So that gives a hint for the baseline cost of creating multiple worlds for events.

What about the time-based cost of worlds being active? Is that covered by the 1KC per user per minute (assuming current costs are around the same as those back in 2014!)? Or does that need an additional land factor put in place?

Then there is the underlying cost of running the Organisation. Perhaps pick up this from the cost of a Standard Organisation (which explicitly has "advanced features" not included in Starter Organisations) -- $100 (-5c) for up to 400 users and 40 worlds. Stored cost is half the full cost, paid daily in KC -- approx 500KC per day (roughly $1.67 per day). See https://www.kitely.com/virtual-world-ne ... ual-grids/

[Ilan Tochner]

Hi Dot,

We've discontinued the Premium Account, time-based billing, options you're referring to years ago (other than for a handful of remaining grandfathered accounts). We provide customer tailored pricing for Prime Organizations based on the specific customer's needs. This new system leverages more than 12 years of R&D and its operational cost structure is different from that of our historic consumer offering.

To give a slightly less vague answer, we usually bill per user per event day, somewhat like a real-world venue would charge. But, again, it really depends on the usage scenario, with the event duration, the desired number of people per world, and the number of "user tickets" being a factor in pricing.

The Starter Organization and Standard Organization offerings we provide are the entry point for our organization-focused services. They are limited in the number of worlds and users they allow, they don't have the same capabilities as Prime Organizations and their pricing model is different. Prime Organizations are a special type of Custom Organization that has capabilities that are better suited for large-scale events.

[Graham Mills]

Hi Dot,

We've discontinued the Premium Account, time-based billing, options you're referring to years ago (other than for a handful of remaining grandfathered accounts). We provide customer tailored pricing for Prime Organizations based on the specific customer's needs. This new system leverages more than 12 years of R&D and its operational cost structure is different from that of our historic consumer offering.

To give a slightly less vague answer, we usually bill per user per event day, somewhat like a real-world venue would charge. But, again, it really depends on the usage scenario, with the event duration, the desired number of people per world, and the number of "user tickets" being a factor in pricing.

The Starter Organization and Standard Organization offerings we provide are the entry point for our organization-focused services. They are limited in the number of worlds and users they allow, they don't have the same capabilities as Prime Organizations and their pricing model is different. Prime Organizations are a special type of Custom Organization that has capabilities that are better suited for large-scale events.

Not the first time I've been called a bit of a handful.