UNDER THE MANGO TREE--Tamsin Barzane

SL's first African Festival has come and gone, and now it's time to reflect. The three-and-a-half day affair brought a lot of visitors to Saminaka, some of whom have chosen to be residents, regular loiterers (in a good way!), or merchants. The crowds and interest were gratifying, but the work was substantial. So--some reflections on the festival itself, but also on the idea of organizing a big event, which might help those doing something similar.

Suggestion #1. Imagine how long it will take you to create all the components, then multiply by three. There are bound to be rl interruptions, technical glitches, problems and unanticipated situations of all sorts. If you are creating things (builds, prizes for a treasure hunt, slide shows) begin months in advance! It won't molder on your computer, and you don't even have to schedule the event until there's only a smidge left to finish. Do you really want to (ahem) make your stiltwalking masquerade costume the day you're going to wear it?

Suggestion #2. Don't hire a publicist. I didn't, because I heard too many horror stories of people who paid lottalindens for pr, with few results. Did I get any better results? Probably not, but I had passion for the project, and some really helpful friend. Oliha Yiwama had lots of great ideas, and send out notices to tons of groups, as did I; Firery Broome hit the SLED lists and places academic, Charity Richez dug into her endless friends list and brought people regularly to events, and Kabaka Kwaszes tweeted and notified throughout the weekend--and those are only the ones I knew about. No reporters interviewed me, but I contacted some. However, an enquiry about radio ads to Khitten Kurka (aka DJ Flashback on Ground Level Radio) brought me into a discussion with Ground Level's Bryson Capalini who ran constant public service announcements for us on his excellent R&B station throughout the weekend. Fabulous people WILL help out in wonderful ways.

Suggestion #3. Regard your first big event as an experiment. So nobody entered the writing contest? Two of the photo contests were a bust? Perhaps the wrong contacts, too little publicity, or too much of a good thing. Only one person in the canoe regatta, and the durbar petered out? The first turned out to be terrific fun, while the latter has potential. Shake it off, and consider how each could be a dedicated event you can give full consideration to. Durbar will happen later, after Nigerian style horse trappings are made at leisure.

And as for the regatta? Ah, Saminaka WILL have an Olokun festival and pull out the stops! We'll supply usable decorated canoes, have a slide show about water deities in Africa, and invite SL's mermaids to make free with an enhanced underwater paradise. Plus the rideable hammerhead shark and manta ray will return! Saminaka looks so great circling round the perimeter, and the outer islands provide some marvelous opportunities for perilous steering!

As the only entrant with a decorated canoe, Feretian String won the regatta contest, but we had fun with resident Fox Foxdale and the fabulous water spider, Oronoque Westland! In short, don't let any aspect get you down.

Suggestion #4 Where your plans involve other people, inure yourself to disappointment and have a back-up plan. No need to be disappointed when people can't do what they said they would--First Life had BETTER have priorities. Be flexible. We almost had a great live performer, but it didn't work out. A DJ who agreed, then never showed up or even said sorry (no requests to you again, sir!). Some vendors said they were ready, but ultimately weren't (have your stalls up and rent boxes ready when you ask!). It was all good. Fallbacks fell in place. As luck would have it, a fave DJ, HarleyMC Homewood came on just as I was in despair we would have an opening party at all--and from his superkind heart, stepped into the breach immediately. No live performer, but live DJs everyday. A couldn't-be-helped late show? African music videos in the meantime. It'll all be fine if you keep despair at bay and can please the gathered with something.

Suggestion #5. Don't let the technical problems stop you. Saminaka's Sultan, Oliha Yiwama gave two fabulous talks. The first, on African music, would have included the greatest of demo drumming, but the mic was too "hot" and the feedback interfered with the drums (and had been nonexistent in an earlier soundcheck). Everyone enjoyed the talk nonetheless, but there was a hunger to hear the drumming, so Oliha was going to work some drumming, voice and percussion into his talk on African Spirituality. But sound did not cooperate. For some unknown reason, static metastasized, and he philosophically abandoned his original plan, went to typing, and soldiered on. (We will make sure he gets a chance to shine in future, because he is a terrific speaker and performer). Both talks were very well attended and made the sim new friends (I also gave a talk on African art).

Suggestion #6 Bring new groups together and collaberate. As Bryan Mnemonic suggested at the launch of SL's group Ananse's Web, our sims can be like a blogroll, with links to sims that complement our interests. Ananse's Web (Ananse is the Ashanti people's wise trickster, the spider) is a group of those interested in promoting African and Diaspora studies in Virtual Worlds--an academically-oriented group whose launch included fascinating data on Africa's digital leaps by Khoisan Fisher, and a keynote address by Bryan (Prof. Bryan Carter in rl). These stimulating conversations energized the members, who followed the University of Delaware opening with a tour of Virtual Africa, the Middle Passage Experience, Indea Vaher's Remembrance, and Virtual Harlem (the latter Bryan's project). Discussion afterwards was at Saminaka, but drew several treasure hunters, who quietly absorbed the group's broad range of topics.

Suggestion #7. Relax and enjoy yourself. Have spontaneous events, chat with visitors, make new friends, and listen to people--that will help you propel things forward and realize that those many rl hours were well worth it.

The festival closed with a splendid party, and some of us continued to linger there, reluctant to leave the happy companionship that had developed throughout the weekend. Nigerians who didn't know Saminaka existed found it, as did folks from all corners of the world. Satisfying, indeed!

UNDER THE MANGO TREE--Tamsin Barzane

I'm hoping my university will get me a sim so my students and I can work together on exciting projects without prim worries--it won't have any effect on Saminaka, and I will issue you all an invitation for any interesting things we do in future. It would provide a permanent home for The Middle Passage Experience, and a hoped-for expansion of the Experience as well. Oooooh, the thought of landscaping without prim concerns is very exciting!

But my Fall seminar with the students will involve virtual worlds in general, so it seems necessary to explore other ones as well. Interesting scholars on SL are helping me feel my way around these complicated new arenas, and have been telling me about open-sourced sims accessed through Second Life alternative viewers. There are several, and I'm going to take my closest looks at New World Grid, a French construction (http://www.newworldgrid.com/) and OpenSource Grid out of California (http://www.osgrid.org/). Apparently you can move between some of these grids, and there's even a 30 Euro program that will back up your SL inventory, making it accessible (though, for full perm items, not necessarily legal) in these other worlds.

I'm going to report more on this after a tour, but let me give you a little preview. Neither is as professional as SL--New World's registration website had several non-working links, making it a little tricky to get inworld. OS Grid was equally problematic at first--it used the same external viewer as New World, and, not being as savvy as some, even a second download continued to open New World for me, not OS Grid.

Why bother exploring either? They look much like SL, but supposedly have less of an economy--and land ownership can come via the astounding number of 45,000 prims per sim! In some cases (no, I don't know the details or which of the grids this applies to), if you have your own server, you have free land--you are your own Lindens, in a way (it takes, according to advisor Khoisan Fisher--interview with him next week and more on these matters--a computer with a 2 gig processor and 1 gig RAM can do the job).

I decided to remain Tamsin Barzane in the New World--I didn't even check to see if I could use my own RL name--a curious psychological displacement, I suppose! The new basic Tamsin was an embarrassment, with her crewcut and herky-jerky walk.

It was strange to get on, pick up some freebies, and feel very much the noob--I didn't know where to drop and open them. Why? The search interface directed me to SL spots, but when I clicked them for a tp, they told me those SL locations no longer existed--a glitch, certainly, for one was Saminaka! I haven't explored much yet, but my first map foray let me to Tropical Paradise, where a quarter region granted the owner 2000 prims at 10? a month. That ? is not a typo, but the character that appeared--presumably euros, but I'm not sure.

There is a virtual Venice, because I saw it in this Flickr photo by Olish Newman (Newman is this world's surname counterpart of the Lindens, the world's administrators).

Both NWG and OSG are considerably smaller than SL, which limits social interactions--at least so far. But if you have a school or some other project, it might be just perfect. Both call for over-18 year old participation, and low numbers: New World has only 3623 users, and 228 regions--just over 500 are on right now. Its blog began February 2008, when this opensourced world went online. It will be interesting to see how it differs from SL--I was interested to see that several persons of color were among the default avatars (though no Asians seem to be defaults, here or in SL--odd indeed).

Khoisan tells me the OS Grid has about 2500 regions, but neither comes close to SL's over a million users, alts or not.New World seems to survive on charity; UPLOADS ARE ALL FREE! For creators, this is enticing, but SL is also about appreciating the work of others, and their personalities. I haven't run into anyone on New World yet--though my first weeks on SL were much like that, too! I look forward to tours from Khoisan, and if any of you have used these or any of the other grids, please let me know your observations and thoughts.