Open Forum: How Can Second Life's Relay Raise Over $500,000 in 2010?

According to the American Cancer Society's Second Life Relay page, SL Residents raised a grand total of $263,361 in Linden Dollars this year. That's roughly $50,000 more than last year, and absolutely excellent news for which everyone who participated, especially the main volunteers, who deserve huge praise. At the same time, as this graph of year-to-year donation data shows, the rate of increase has slowed some, in the last couple years. To be sure, that's due in large part to the slowing growth rate of active SL users during that period, but at the same time, there's probably a number of additions and improvements that would grow total donations. As I mentioned Sunday, for example, I tried to make a last-minute L$ donation, but the Relay track was already so laggy from so many runners and supporters, the in-world donation kiosk was unidentifiable amid the unrezzed gray. (And far as I can tell, the official website only accepts direct US$ contributions, not Lindens Dollars.) So a ready list of SLurls to donation kiosks all over SL would be an enormous advantage.

What other improvements would you suggest for next year? And do be constructive, this is a community effort operating toward the same goal.

Comments

[Loki]

i think the relay should be set out across a week, and that residents should sign up to a specific day in the week to run the relay. This to try and even out the amount of people making it a better experience all round.

[Rusalka Writer]

I absolutely agree that it should last longer than one day. I barely had time to see the builds, had no time to explore, and was finally driven out by the lag.

I joined SL two years ago, and at that time the relay did last longer (see the big jump in earnings in 2007). I loved the relay and looking through the builds at my leisure. It was a big part of my wanting to build in SL. Leave it open, for the good of both the ACS and SL!

[Net Antwerp]

RL donations have a "Tax Rebate" feature in some countries where a portion of the donated money is returned to you. Perhaps a similar approach can be taken with Virtual World based donations.

[Crap Mariner]

Agreed with Net Antwerp. Tax deductions will convince people to route contributions through SL.

Perhaps something on the website allowing people to send large contributions that meet the requirements for a deduction?

-ls/cm

[Dedric Mauriac]

I tried to visit the RFL sims, but was inundated by lag. I decided I would skip the weekend crowd and come back during the week to avoid the lag.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Having a big event over a long period of time is a standard tactic for SL, but that goes against the "a RFL event is 24 hours" tradition that comes from RL. Well they'll have to get over that, because SL is not RL.

Which leads me to the fact that in RL you can have people along side the track cheering on survivors and caregivers and walkers, but that doesn't work very well in SL. Those Avilion folks in Tree of Life meant well, but they were making things worse! Somebody should have ejected most of them.

Having the track double back or overpass itself through sims was a bad bad bad idea because it increased the number of avatars in a region. That's what killed Overcome, because you had a bunch of spectators at the track that passed through the Northern edge of Overcome. Besides those walking through the southern part. I never did complete the Survivor-Caregiver lap because Overcome took down SL three times. Support, Remember and Stride were also bad. it took me 10 hours to do 4.46 laps!

They should have kept the camp and build sims away from the track. I remember in 2006 how you had to walk quite a bit to get to camps to visit RFL vendors, while this year you could spot vendors right from the track. Bad idea, which also made it harder for those who didn't want to walk but just wanted to get some of those RFL specific releases.

In past relays the relay regions stayed up for days or weeks after so that people could go in and explore all the neat builds and shop at the vendors and donate yet more L$ to the kiosks. This year, no dice. They're taking them down today!

If you go here: http://slrfl.maintree.com/

You can compare the # of avatars participating and the laps/distance traveled. 2008 was king, participation wise. The track was shorter, meaning that it's easier to do for those who don't want to spend over 2 hours trudging their way through, and it was better designed. I bet the 2009 might have had better participation without the major lag. I'm talking worse than an old Dazzle LE event. I figure some people popped in, found out they couldn't move well or see, and popped right back out. It was so bad in some places that you couldn't TP out, you had to quit SL and then come in at your home point.

If you take a look at the top 15 walkers you'll notice that 7 of them are from Team Caledon, and even they/us were crashing. I know a few of us got stuck in regions that were were moving as slow as treacle in while they were rebooting. It's only people who were that dedicated to the cause who were willing to put up with the overall experience.

The RFL sent Survivors and Caregivers a survey link.

[Doreen Garrigus]

Don't forget that the RL economy is hurting a lot of people right now. I suspect the change over last year would have been bigger if people weren't scraping by in the real world.

Certainly, changes in the presentation of the event would help. Tax deductions should be a given. A longer event run time would be useful. SL doesn't handle crowds of thousands as easily as RL does.

Additionally, I'd like a way to donate Lindens via Xstreet to avoid the inworld lag. There are a few designers (plus a Linden) who made commemorative items and donated the proceeds. That's a good start, but I mean an official donation process via Xstreet, with the ability to donate in various denominations all the way from L$1 up to L$lots-of-zeroes. All it would take is a magicbox and a bunch of thank you cards set at different prices.

Even better would be a single donation item with a way to select a "Pay what you want" option, like you can with some objects in world. Can that be done via Xstreet?

[Jilly Kidd]

A growing number of people are worried that donation boxes on SL aren't secure and are too open to abuse. With such large amounts of money being raised by charities they feel, and so do I, that it's bound to attract fraudsters. Under UK law only people authorised by the charities can collect using locked donation boxes in RL, and yet anyone can set out a donation box on SL with no way of checking where the money goes. If charities want more money to be raised these worries will have to be addressed, people will want to make donations to official phonelines and websites, and money paid in SL would have to go direct to avatars managed by people from the RL charity directly. Or convincing explanations of how safe the donations boxes are would be needed.

[Jilly Kidd]

Venue and event organisers are also troubled by this when asked if they can put out donation boxes, so we need to be convinced too. Many venue and event organisers don't want to take the responsibility unless they can track where the money goes with full transparency and accountability.

[Samantha Poindexter]

To be honest, given the RL recession, I was sure this year's total would be lower than last year's. That it's gone up at all is a very pleasant surprise.

[Stingray9798 Raymaker]

I think this forum is a great start to the planning process for 2010...and I thank you for posting it. We will definitely monitor the ideas shared in this forum, and consider them when planning for 2010.

Please let us know if it is alright for us to contact you in-world if we have follow-up questions to your ideas. I have read them all up to this point, and think that they are definitely worth investigating.

I can assure you that the committee also agrees that lag was a major issue this year. We will definitely not make the track loop back against itself...and are already working on solutions to minimize lag next year...while also making the track "shorter" so you can walk more than 3 laps. That being said, all of our ideas must also take into consideration that we plan on growing participation even more, by allowing more teams to register. This year, we had 125 registered teams (up from 80 in 2008). And we hope to have at least 150 next year.

The tax-deductible idea is another one that we can explore, and just need to figure the best way to implement.

As for XStreet, this was the first year that we used XStreet, and will continue to explore expansion possibilities...but there are many security issues that we need to work out while also adhering to legal finance issues within the American Cancer Society with regard to online fundraising.

I LOVE the idea of posting SLURLs on the event website. That is an easy solution that we can implement!

Length of the event: The sims actually opened to the public early this year...but yes, we did close them off early, too. The actual event (opening ceremony to closing ceremony) was indeed 24 hours, just like in RL. The primary reason that we aren't "open" as long as other SL events is due to the cost of sim rental. The longer we stay open, the more we pay. The more we pay, the less money goes to fund our mission. However, our philosophy for Relay For Life is that it should take the form of the community. And if it makes more sense to have a longer event (than 24 hours), we are open to that...but keep in mind, that adds to the Activities/MC duties. Currently, planning 24 straight hours of activities and entertainment is a daunting task. So, this would be something that the entire committee would need to iron out. But a neat idea, nonetheless.

It is truly inspiring to see so many passionate ideas coming up this soon after the event. And again, we thank you for sharing your constructive feedback...all of which will be considered. We thank you for your continued support in the fight against cancer.

[Rusalka Writer]

Idea #1 -- Get LL to sponsor the sims needed and leave them open for at least a week!

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Of course, you can contact me Mr. Raymaker. (that actually applies to any reader of NWN) My e-mail is also in my SL profile.

It's a bit of a surprise to me that LL makes you pay for the sims and doesn't donate them to the cause.

I'll say this, if you get 150 teams next year and I don't doubt that you will, you'll need more sims. My guess is 50% more than this year at minimum, double the number would be better to be on the safe side. Of course, that depends on track design. If you keep the track out of the podiums/stages/campsites sims away, you might be able to make do with fewer. It's pretty much axiomatic for any large event in SL, that it really needed more sims. And there's no real good way to field test a track layout except under the full RFL load.

The walk n' talk scripted thingy also needs an update. It would be nice to be able to choose between the standard SL walk and run. It used the walk, which was way way too slow for a 11km track. Some folks were using rocket skates and whatnot to "cheat".