Casual Observations from a Developer

[Doc Falworth]

Hello, and friendly greetings citizens of Kitely

Today was my first day exploring what I believe to be the Kitely Welcome Center
I am a Developer in both real life and virtual worlds, I qualify my observations with experience.

You may observe my previous work at http://lpgrid.com a grid hosted by Cloneu Inglewood which was rated #1 in support and featured in several e-publications to include Hypergrid. I am the creator of the Lost Paradise Welcome Center named "A Paradise" and several other regions.

At Kitely there seems to be a rather large staff, and presumably group meetings, and minutes posted in the forum. All great sturcture. Please consider my blog as merely an open venue list of suggestions to help you grow your grid.

Here are a few notes to describe what I observed entering Kitely. Please DO consider these as friendly suggestions and remember they are from a fresh pair of eyes using the grid for the first time.

1. The tourist hud is an excellent idea. I wish I had thought of it myself.
1a The problem is not with the hud but the locations it directs the user.
2. Several large but empty Malls void of any content.
2a It is customary to offer at the very minimum a free shape with edit options, a bald hair base for both sexes, and maybe some optional clothing, and yes an A/O to get rid of the default duck walk with which every new avatar is blessed.
3. One Mall is plenty to show all creator content available from the grid. As the grid grows content creators will likely have their own display regions.
3a I see there is consideration for a marketplace. That is a large undertaking but well worth the effort. That combined with land to display creations goes hand in hand.
4. Some things I expect to find immediately in a Welcome Center are:
4a A note card or List of Landmarks to place in my inventory (Including a LM for the Welcome Center)
4b Free Avatar Accessories (they don't have to be great but quality reigns)
4c I want to feel at home there. (check http://lpgrid.com for an example)
The design does not have to appeal to everyone... but you still get that "homey" feeling
4d I like to be greeted by someone or something... "Welcome (Avatar Name) to (XYZ) Grid"

Some things i really do not care for in Welcome Centers and Grids in general (and many others feel the same way)

1. Automatic or pesky Group Joiners. (Give the newbie a chance to adjust and explore)
2. Lack of Theme, or random eclectic mainland. (That is fine for LL Second Life Mainland, but if we liked that we would still be there)
3. No way to contact anyone in charge. (Not the case at Kitely)

Successful Virtual Worlds are made up of three things in this order:

1. Eye Candy... it has to look Awesome.. not good, or okay.. Awesome
2. Content (There must be plenty to offer, the higher the quality the better)
3 Social Networking (you really need friends)

I name any grid that sells space (land for monthly tier) a production grid.
If you do not have the aforementioned items you will not grow.
Kitely is "newish" and has potential.. I would love to see it grow.

Doc Falworth (Same name many grids)

[Ilan Tochner]

Thank you for your candid feedback Doc.

Kitley doesn't have a mainland and is made up of a collection of worlds. Each world is made out of 1 - 16 regions and is located on a separate private island on the Kitely grid. Kitely now hosts more than 3200 regions on its grid. Due to the nature of this setup there are many small communities on Kitely but it's hard for new users to find other people inworld if they haven't been directly invited to a meeting by someone.

The Kitely Plaza is intended to serve as a main greeting area for new users and as a place where a more unified community can start forming. Lacking a better alternative, we're already directing new users to it but it is far from being done and hasn't been officially opened yet. There is a Kitely Volunteer group that is being formed to provide a more welcoming first experience to new users. The buildings, which are community built and still under construction, have yet to include the shops, art, information and other content that they will eventually include. If you visit this world again in a few days, you should see that it continues to evolve at a fast pace.

Different people are interested in different things so, I believe, there is no single theme that can make everyone feel at home. The design of the plaza is intended to reflect the theme variety that exists in Kitely in the hope that a new user will see some of the things that exist here and feel a connection to at least one of them. This should be explained on a sign near the landing point (which at this time it still isn't).

With so much variety in Kitely, the best way to find what you are looking for is using our Public Worlds page: http://www.kitely.com/search - the plaza should point this fact out to new users in a prominent location (which at this time is still doesn't).

I completely agree about not sending people group invites when they arrive at the plaza. I'm not aware of any being sent, did you get a group invite when you entered the plaza?

I completely agree about the plaza needing to look awesome in order to give a good first impression. There are parts of the plaza that I would already categorize as such and parts that still need a lot more work. If you're willing to help, we'd be very happy to have you contribute to this community building effort.

[Marstol Nitely]

Hi Doc - I saw you at Kitely Plaza tonight. I said "hi Doc'" and would have been happy to welcome you to Kitely and maybe pointed you in the right direction if you'd stopped to chat. But you just flew right by. Oh well, maybe next time.

[Bladyblue Bommerang]

Hi, I approached Ilan with the telehub idea last month. I wanted to show folks outside of Kitely that there is a thriving community here and we can work together to build something for the community by the community. I have been an active large-scale event space developer in Second Life since 2005. I bought along the best practices I learned (from trial and error) during that time.

At Kitely there seems to be a rather large staff,

Those are customers at those meetings providing feedback.

1. The tourist hud is an excellent idea. I wish I had thought of it myself.

Thanks. I felt the need to get something like that in place since this is a 4-sim region. I would always hate arriving at a sim to go to an event and miss parts of an performance because I couldn't find the event.

1a The problem is not with the hud but the locations it directs the user.

Dennis Albion scripted the HUD for me. He is working on the direction issue. It's not all on him. We keep building and turning things around on him:-)

2. Several large but empty Malls void of any content.

We aren't quite done yet - and the malls tie-in with the upcoming opening of the online Marktplace. We provided the plaza in a soft opening now.

2a It is customary to offer at the very minimum a free shape with edit options, a bald hair base for both sexes, and maybe some optional clothing, and yes an A/O to get rid of the default duck walk with which every new avatar is blessed.

I have Linda Kellie's free avatars in the Greeter's Clubhouse at the end of the plaza. Perhaps I should make them a bit more accessible. There are plans to have live volunteer helpers on the plaza to help new folks get acclimated.

3. One Mall is plenty to show all creator content available from the grid. As the grid grows content creators will likely have their own display regions.

The idea was to create themed areas. Also, when new users come in, they may not have enough minutes left to go to some other islands to shop casually. This free area that will host a little bit of everything for sale will allow the new people to get the things they need without using their minutes.

Also, when Hypergrid is enabled, and people without Kitely credits start teleporting into Kitely Worlds, they will be able to land in Kitely Plaza without being charged.

4a A note card or List of Landmarks to place in my inventory (Including a LM for the Welcome Center)

we opted for the Tour HUD. You can wear the HUD anywhere in Kitely and use it to teleport back to areas in the plaza.

4c I want to feel at home there. (check http://lpgrid.com for an example)
The design does not have to appeal to everyone... but you still get that "homey" feeling

I believe that people will find the place in the plaza that they feel is their hang-out spot. I like hanging out in a shabby chic couch in the Blogger's Cafe during the mornings. Some may want to sit at the outdoor cafe in the Gallery District up the hill.

4d I like to be greeted by someone or something... "Welcome (Avatar Name) to (XYZ) Grid"

'Bot' is always a bad word to Second Lifers - but there are plans to create a greeter program for the plaza.

1. Automatic or pesky Group Joiners. (Give the newbie a chance to adjust and explore)

We don't have any of those. We have signage along the plaza that people can touch to join a specific group or see a google calendar for classes and events.

2. Lack of Theme, or random eclectic mainland. (That is fine for LL Second Life Mainland, but if we liked that we would still be there)

I have a 20-sim megaregion in an medieval theme. Once I am finished terreforming I plan on inviting in my old role play clans to come live there.

There will be huge megaregions in Kitely with themed communities - I believe once hypergrid is enabled you will see more of that emerging.

Successful Virtual Worlds are made up of three things in this order:

1. Eye Candy... it has to look Awesome.. not good, or okay.. Awesome
2. Content (There must be plenty to offer, the higher the quality the better)
3 Social Networking (you really need friends)

The Kitely Platform offers users the ability to send invites to their facebook friends from in-world. Also, you can set a Facebook group or Twitter Followers as having free access to your island. Since Facebook is the largest social network on the planet - I see these as a very promising feature.

[Danko Whitfield]

Hi Doc,

I am not a Developer in both real life and virtual worlds but I believe my life experience qualifies me to recognize a pompous ass when I see one.

"At Kitely there seems to be a rather large staff..."

Well, I guess they must be doing a bang up job here to leave you with that impression. I don't know how many people work for Kitely but after several months as a user here - not just one day - I'm guessing you could count their employees on one hand and not use all your fingers. I may not have that exactly but I'll bet you my estimate is a lot closer than yours.

I'd go through your list of suggestions one by one to show you how vast your lack of knowledge of Kitely is but I have other things to do today. Look around a bit Doc. Just a little bit. Kitely has all the stuff you mention. Mucho times over.

And, when you get a chance, could you add a place to unpack boxes at your Welcome center, A Paradise? It was more of A Nightmare for me. It is a very attractive sim, no question, just not functional at all. I couldn't wear any of the freebies since I could not unpack the boxes. Maybe there is a place but I couldn't find it. So I gave up and decided to go somewhere else. I clicked on the NC giver to get the LMs of the places on the board but it didn't work. The other option was to click on the photos to TP. That didn't work either. I tried the other boards, no luck. If I was a VW newbie, I'd be done right there - "What do I do now? I can't do anything!"

(By the way, I was clicking on pictures I couldn't see clearly. I'd been in your sim for 35 minutes but some things still hadn't rezzed. And there was no one there to greet me either. The only greeting I got was when I opened the About Land window and saw the misspelled welcome message.)

"Please consider my blog as merely an open venue list of suggestions to help you grow your grid.... Kitely is "newish" and has potential.. I would love to see it grow."

Darn nice of you Doc. I think Lost Paradise has potential too. And considering Kitely has 10 times the number of regions and 30 times the number of users, I hope to see LP grow too.

(My numbers come from Hypergrid Businesss. You know, the e-publication where Lost Paradise won that survey a few months back. What did you guys do, stuff the ballot box? It looks like you got more votes than you had users. In fact, that survey is the only time I've seen any news about LP. That same e-publication is always writing stories about Kitely. You might want to read a couple.)

Danko Whitfield
(same name, many grids...but I don't usually issue a list of how those grids should change until I've visited them a few times and read up on them and have some idea about what they have already done. that way I don't look like a complete idiot.)

[Ilan Tochner]

Thank you Danko for jumping to Kitely's defense but, and I may be wrong, I believe Doc's intentions were well intended.

It was hard to find a lot of information in the link he gave, so I'm not sure about this, but I think he doesn't own the grid he linked to but was rather the person who designed its welcome center.

In any case, we're happy to take advise from anyone willing to give it. We don't always incorporate it into our plans but we always welcome constructive feedback.