Join us today at the Kitely Community Meeting (June 14, 1pm PDT)

[Ilan Tochner]

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

(See timezone information here: https://greenwichmeantime.com/time-zone ... 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.

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

[Dot Matrix]

The discussions at the meeting on Sunday 14 June were enjoyable and wide-ranging, touching on time travel, organ and choral concerts in churches and cathedrals (how the medieval architecture enhances the acoustics), inworld voice replacement, Storylink Radio, ...

Later in the discussions, two themes emerged that the group thought worth pursuing as a community:

• Reviving use of the forums
• Retro Kitely

Encourage greater forum use
There's a wealth of information in the Kitely forums, on all sorts of topics written by knowledgeable and thoughtful individuals since 2011. Well worth an explore!

As Ilan said in the meeting: "I love reading back some old threads, it reminds me of all the great things people have done in Kitely."

Discord is fine for short format messages and ephemera, but the forum supports longer format, more considered writing.

Retro Kitely
OK, this term wasn't used in the meeting, but it usefully captures several ideas:

• Kitely has a long history of community builds, starting back in 2010 -- might it be good to revisit and explore those worlds to appreciate the skills of community members past and present?
• Several people at the meeting have Kitely histories of 10+ years or so, and have OARs stored on their computer of historic builds; we could similarly reload them for present-day exploration
• "Less can be more". One of the joys of the earlier, pre-mesh days was building in-world with prims -- being able to work side-by-side with others, appreciating and sharing ideas and problem-solving, finding compromises to create good-enough-looking worlds. With mesh taking over, that joyful sense of shared creativity has been lost. What if we revisited the idea of prim-based worlds, and again built side by side as a community?

Anyway... that gives you a flavour of how the meeting went. Everyone there enjoyed it immensely.

And what a wealth of ideas for future forum threads and inworld projects — anyone want to take one up?

[Cooper Swizzle]

I read this and had to smile a bit, as it seems to overlook some of the discussions we've had in the past.

Earlier this year, we were told that Kitely does not typically operate as a community-focused environment, and it was mentioned that participation in most events was limited, with many being described as "one-off" activities. When efforts were made to ask Kitely residents what they wanted to see and participate in, there was very little feedback.

Regarding Discord, it is simply another communication tool designed to help people connect, collaborate, and share information. Unfortunately, it appears that some of the efforts made to strengthen communication and bring people together are now being undermined by personal differences.

A healthy community is built on cooperation, open communication, mutual respect, and a willingness to support collective efforts, even when opinions differ. When personalities become the focus rather than the shared goals, it becomes much more difficult to create the kind of community many of us would like to see.

[Koshari Mahana]

Hi Elspeth,

We worked extremely hard to help Kitely move into the future and had some success getting people from other grids to come over and participate, but there was a shortage of Kitely residents willing to join in. I was told at one of the meetings that Kitely residents just don't like events. I felt that our efforts were unappreciated and that I was banging my head against a wall. If Kitely residents can't support each other by participating in events, what is the point?

I've seen Kitely residents work very hard to put on events only to have a few people show up at best. I don't know why you believe that bringing back 10-year-old builds will suddenly attract Kitely residents if they don't like participating. Going back in time to the "good old days" isn't the answer, but time will tell.

[Kimm Starr]

Just my two cents:

Preserving historic Kitely builds and sharing old OARs could be a good idea for say, a Kitely celebration. They're part of our collective memory. But nostalgia is usually strongest for those who were there the first time around.

I'm less convinced that "Retro Kitely" will bring in significant numbers of new users. Most newcomers aren't looking for a virtual world's past. They're looking for reasons to invest their time and money in its future.

If the objective is community growth, I think you should ask: "What would make someone who has never heard of Kitely want to log in tomorrow?"

The answer is probably not a recreation of what existed ten years ago. It's more likely to be active events, creative collaboration, learning opportunities, unique experiences, and welcoming communities that are happening right now.

Discord at this point is a Godsend to the community. It's how we will communicate via voice now.

While we did build in-world years ago with prims, it wasn't only with prims and only in-world, we used outside programs as well, like Photoshop and programs to make sculpties

Honor the past, but you should build for the future.