CREATING A CHAMBER

Fresh from her lauded appearance at SLCC, Chili Carson is convening a meeting tonight to generate support for a Second Life-based Chamber of Commerce that would serve the thousands of in-world businesses in operation-- and by extension, the customers who depend on them.  Considering all the controversy and acrimony in-world commerce often provokes (accusations of texture and design theft, scams, and so on), you have to think some kind of self-governed business organization is amply needed.  Details on attending Chili's call to form one after the break.

Update, 8/23:  SignpostMarv Martin has a transcript of the event here.

Chamber of Commerce Discussion with Chili Carson

Time: 7pm SLT (i.e. PST)
Place: Gonick Amphitheater on the island of Learning (120, 99, 26).  Direct teleport here.
RSVP: IM Poinky Malaprop to reserve a seat.

Comments

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

What a pity it's at a most Euro-unfriendly hour, even for the late-nighters like myself...

I deeply encourage Chili Carson's very hard task to set up a Chamber of Commerce in SL — without a legal system to support it. I wish I could be at the audience providing some experience on how something like that *can* efffectively work *under* a legal system — and has worked well for over a year and a half — at the self-governed sim of Neufreistadt. Naturally, its jurisdiction is very restricted!

But fortunately a few of our citizens are awake at that hour and hopefully they'll be able to attend and provide some input. In any case, the hard part is the enforceability of a legal system... setting up a Chamber of Commerce *after* having a workable legal system is much easier :)

Good luck to Chili — it will be the fifth or so similar attempt in SL, so I hope she's aware that this will be a daunting task. But having a lot of publicity and the whole media looking at her might make it succeed this time, where others have failed!

[Chili Carson]

Thanks Gywneth for your kind words.
Apologies to those that are interested but can't make it tonight. The invitation to present came up suddenly late last weekend by the Kuurian Expedition and after I accepted, it was decided to open it up to others outside of the group. If there is interest, I look forward to setting up another date and time to present this information, taking into consideration the needs of others in different time zones.

I am very interested in what you have to say Gywneth, based upon your experience and will follow up with you in the hopes that you will be willing to share that.

I know it is a big job. Needless to say, this is not up to one person alone, but I believe this community has the capability even if there have been some false starts.

Thanks, Chili

[Torrid]

I'll be really interested to learn about this as well. I mentioned on an episode of Secondcast how much something like this was needed in SL but we were pretty lost on how it might come together.

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Chili,

Thanks for doing this. From my side, you can only expect encouragement and the help that I might provide — at the very least, I can "spread the word", and have been furiously sending emails and IMs and posting on many forums, to try to get you as many people on the audience as possible :)

Also, thanks to the Kuurian Expedition for giving you this opportunity. I'm sure that more will follow — and I'll be certainly happy to host and promote a few ones as well.

I'm also quite sure that former organisations which "failed" might still feel encouraged by your "new energy" and come to "join forces". At a SL-wide level, (former) members of groups like RATE, the SL Better Business Bureau, or the Metaverse Justice Watch, are still active and very likely willing to come together and at the very least discuss why their projects fail, transfer their know-how to you, and provide feedback and contacts. At smaller scales, there are lots and lots of tiny, local "merchant association", sometimes covering small communities, sometimes sim-wide groups — still, no matter what their size is, most of the smaller groups are effectively working on this area and they might have very good feedback to share.

So, yes, people like Torrid and so many others are definitely eager to see at least one of those projects to *succeed*, and I'm quite sure most will be willing to *try* — again!

Timezones are indeed a big issue, forcing even Linden Lab to schedule multiple events when they want to make sure that people from around the globe can participate. But that is sadly the only thing that can't be avoided on this virtual world — we're limited in our lack of a RL tool to move the Sun iRL to the time that would be more convenient to all :) Were this event set on a Friday or a Saturday, for instance, there would be certainly many more non-US residents participating...

[Tao Takashi]

Right, weekennd might be better but still sort of problematic to many. I think the only way to go probably to do at least two meetings.

Maybe on weekends though it might at least an option to do it like 12pm or so.. But then again some other folks might be left out.. Dunno what the best time of such events might be when it's e.g. on a weekend and people don't need to go to work (hopefully :-) ).

As for the project itself I would be interested to learn more about it. So looking forward to another event :-)

[Chili Carson]

Hi Tao,

Yes, I am planning to give the presentation multiple times -- and will do it on a weekend (in 1 - 2 weeks) when it will be more convenient for more folks. I am glad to hear of your interest! Thanks, Chili