You've got to tell people about your event. If they don't know it's on, they won't come! So how and where do you advertise your event? We're here usually talking about events listing, blue notices, group IM and in-world chat.
Before you do anything it's a good idea to make an event flyer and save it you a notecard in your inventory. If you do that you won't have to type out the same old thin
g every week when you come to post your event and send out notices. Here's mine for Early Birds and Night Owls:
"Lotus and DJ Chantal are the early birds with 20 questions, and maybe more, paying 25L for each first correct answer. We'll have Dingbats and money for typos, and Chantal spins her tunes and takes your requests. European larks, North American owls, kiwis, emus and any assorted avians, start the trivia weekend at Friends Best!"
If you don't know, and most of you will, you get at the events listing from the "search" button at the bottom of your viewer. Click the "events" tab and type your "trivia" into the text box, and that brings up events with "trivia" in the title. Try "quiz" and you'll get a few other ones, but my perception is that "trivia" is the crucial keyword.
Thurina Susa, fully clothed, at Chaos Truth or Dare. Sharon's Diner, Saturday 2030
Once you've done your search you'll also see a "create event" button. Click this and it takes you to the Second Life events web page. Click the "submit new event" link under the calendar, reassure LL you are not going to breach their terms and conditions, and you're there!
Fill in the fields, most of it you can edit later if you get it wrong, what you can't edit is the date, time and venue so make sure you get those right. Make sure to use trivia in your title because most people search on the keyword "trivia". The difficult bit can be the location. Understandably venues don't want any old person submitting events, and often you have to be in a fairly select SL group before you can post events. If you can't find the venue, ask the sim owner to post the event for you or to give you access.
I usually only send out one blue notice for each event, in the group that the venue belongs to, but it's up to you what you do. Blue notices relate to a particular SL group, and your group role needs to allow you to post notices. Most owners will be happy to give you a special host tag and allow you to post notices. You create a notice using the group info screen. You should put a date and time on your notice, with a landmark attached at the bottom.
Hosts normally spam group IM just before an event starts, and maybe at half-time. Click on the map button at the bottom of your screen, then click "copy SLURL to clipboard", which copies your current SLURL (so don't do this from a some embarrassing location before you teleport)! Then open the group IM you want to spam, type your message and paste in the SLURL. Copy your message before you send, then send. Open the next group and paste in your message, rinse and repeat.
Which groups should you spam? I usually spam the venue group, Buccaneer Bowl, Sharon's Diner, Trivia Fiends and Nellotus. Trivia Fiends is a general trivia group and I'm sure the owners will agree that any reasonable person can use their IM. The others are related to particular venues or events. The group owners of Sharon's Diner and Buccaneer Bowl are keen players themselves, and are delighted to support other hosts and events, and only too happy for other people to advertise in their groups. But do be tactful, and please don't spam Sharon's group when she has her own events running!
Nelly Swindlehurst is Queen of the Beavers on her rezday!
Oh yes, Nellotus! Most groups discourage group IM chat because it really can be very irritation. Nelly and I thought that there was room for an SL trivia group where IM chat is encouraged, because we like our trivia friends so much. We have the Friday Challenge winners tags in this group, and the Dingbat Queen title, and I'm sure we could find a King one if any men show an aptitude for Dingbats. Anyone is welcome to join Nellotus, if the chatter annoys you close the group Im window and it's gone. And spam it to your heart's content.
Finally you can advertise your event in local chat at events. Again, please be tactful. Some venues don't welcome this, and you'll end up on the long list of banned avis. Please don't say I didn't warn you.
Some venues and hosts welcome it and will ask if anyone else has events to promote. Speaking for myself I'd love to see the calendar packed with good events, and I really want to let people promote events, and to help new hosts, if I can. That's why I'm writing this, of course! But it's polite to ask hosts if you can promote your event. Most will say yes. And to the host who arrived at Sharon's Diner giving out event flyers yesterday, if you'd asked Sharon she'd have been only to pleased to let you. Ask first sweetie, it's always best.
Next time I'm going to talk about running the event itself.
