Playing the Market

Our first visit this week was to Neverworld Grid and as usual the group assembled at the clubhouse on HG Safari to pick up the travel pack by clicking on the Giant Prim, which is super low tech and includes a very brief Notecard, and the necessary LMs. I love low tech, it rarely breaks.

People begin showing up about 10 minutes before Go time, (12 noon Pacific) and that gives them a chance to read the notecard and say hello to all. Many arrive last minute, oor even after we've started, so they just rush along to find us at Destination 1. It all works!  Anyone can join us, we are not an exclusive club, but I can't promise Forest won't gently tease you though.

Taarna Welles: Hello peeps

Tosha Tyran: hello, hello

Taarna Welles: Hoi Forest

Forest Azure: and yay, tosha! finally I get to tease you again!

Ange Menges: Bonsoir a tous

Forest Azure: hi Ange... wow, the tour this week includes a marketplace!

Thirza Ember: there will be a video explainer i think, and dancing... the first hour quite peaceful, the second will be more manic

Tosha Tyran: good, I love videos and have the popcorn ready here

Taarna Welles: Hi Nara

George Equus: Evening all

Tosha Tyran: uff... finished eating and hands free for typing again :)

Forest Azure: virtual life is tiring

Thirza Ember: It's 12:00 so when you're ready, TIME TO GO the Neverworld people are waiting for you

Tosha Tyran: oki, seems good

Dolma Dollinger: Hello Am I intruding?

Thirza Ember: of course not dolma you are always welcome!

Dings Digital: Hello, guten Abend

Tina Bey: Hola a Todos

Thirza Ember: OK we are all here

Joshua 7: Hola Tina

Tina Bey: Hi everyone, I see you all cloudy...hehehe

Govega Sachertorte: Good to see everyone. A few months ago we rolled our Neverworld Marketplace. Its an inworld delivery system  web based. I give all the technical kudos to Gundahar Bravin, who beat PHP until it complied and made it work. so basically anyone with a Neverworld account can go online, order items (ALL FREE) and have them delivered directly to you here.

Thirza Ember: sounds like a time-saving idea

Govega Sachertorte: It's very convenient. I hate shopping!

Tosha Tyran: wow, that sounds cool

Govega Sachertorte: Really great you can search by category... or type in a search, or vendor. We have most of the usual categories. And being a vendor is really easy.

Thirza Ember: so, every type of asset from houses to hair?

Govega Sachertorte: exactly

Taarna Welles: It is possible to find the items inworld or on the webpage only?

Govega Sachertorte: Most of them can be found inworld also we have about a hundred if not more shops

Tosha Tyran: one has to be registered in Neverworld, right?

Govega Sachertorte: Yes, right now we are just inworld for Neverworld, and all free

Tosha Tyran: fantastic

Govega Sachertorte: we are working on Paypal intergration. In fact, we could have finished that but charging money is just not what is a priority here

Forest Azure: but do you have plans to make it available on HG?

Govega Sachertorte: Good question Forest. We hope so. Its all steps and this was a big step buidlinlg this from the ground up

Forest Azure: that saves a lot of bothrering friends with THE question: do you know where ...

Tosha Tyran: I think it is a fantastic idea, really

Govega Sachertorte: Exactly. Its easier than searching for hours or searching on OSW

Govega Sachertorte: In the meantime I wanted to pass out a little gift

Tina Bey: And what things do people generally buy in these worlds?

Thirza Ember: I think the things on the website are free Tina

Tina Bey: I meant that more is downloaded, whether it's paid or free.

We never got an answer to this very interesting question - what do people look for most when searching for assets? If you have an opinion, feel free to share in the comments below what you think are the top 5 items people search for in Opensim. 

Gundahar Bravin: I can run one now if you like, it is a testing video

James Atlloud: where will we look for said videos? ... whoa - things emerging from the ground

Forest Azure: is it a scary video? do i need a scarf?

Tosha Tyran: lol Forest... how does a scarf help?

Forest Azure: over my eyes :)

Tosha Tyran: ah, good idea

Taarna Welles: Is it possible to use the marketplace to find the shop in-world in order to still take a product with you as a hypergrid user to your own grid?

Govega Sachertorte: At this point no, although you can search the vendor inworld and if they list their store locations then yes. We could do inworld store links, but as you know from SL they expire quickly

Govega Sachertorte: Ah another great feature. This multi media presentation is great here

Gundahar Bravin: This video on Media right now is from our testing days

Those of us arriving from outside the grid had a bit of trouble getting the Media on the screens to work, it took quite a long time to finally show an image, which is one of those things that those who are permanently on the grid do not experience, and so don't plan for. Just a reminder that while life is always a subjective experience, life in Opensim is even more subject to subjectivity!  Luckily, Govega also gave us the link so we could check out the video independently.

Govega Sachertorte: link for the first video incoming

Tina Bey: Thank God the screens are working better and better; they're synchronized, which is really useful for music synced with images... awesome!

Forest Azure: /me has a lot of popcorn left

James.Atlloud: Nice narration voice - AI I think.

Tina Bey: Do you teach people how to use this? It's not your patent... and it's exclusive to Never. I'd like to learn...

Tina Bey: hahaha... I think this is the future of shows here in the metaverse... I'm already imagining one...

eva Nowicka: Tina, and you haven't even seen Gundahar's media shirt :D

Govega Sachertorte: so we can go to the Marketplace sim when you guys are ready. it is called the NW Design Center. This sim is usually only open to vendors, I opened it for everyone today just to show you. When you first come here  you can get a copy of the marketplace box and instructions. The box is like the old x streets boxes in SL.

If you, like me, didn't know what "X street boxes" were, luckily Google remembers such stuff. X Street was a precursor to SL Marketplace. You put the things you wanted to sell into a so-called Magic Box, edited the description, posted an ad on your X Street account, and kept the box rezzed somewhere on your parcel in SL. This pic comes from a Torley video from 16 years ago. 

Govega Sachertorte: except, unlike the old X Street system, you don't need to have a house full of boxes, you will only need one, and they will live here so its easy to keep track of them. Gundahar and I are admins so there is more to it than what you see inworld but we can fix some things on the website side

Thirza Ember: so only Vendors come here... people who want to 'buy' - get free things, they don't need to come here

Govega Sachertorte: Exactly,  I wanted to show you the behind the scenes so if anyone has shareable stuff please feel free to make an account here and become a vendor; we have our boxes set up on shelves here

Govega Sachertorte:  Each avatar has a box, some have several, I am going to list an item real quick to show you how fast... for example, I have a opera curtain. When you touch the box a menu comes up.  Mostly we just hit sync after you load an item in the contents I loaded it, and now to the website I go You have to be logged in with user name to the website

Gundahar Bravin: If you are familiar with the old XStreet system in SL years ago, this is very similar, but all of the code is written for Opensimulator and I coded it to deliver straight to Inventory, with No Bots.

Govega Sachertorte: in that time I found my pending item and listed it already with a picture. Its that fast!

Tina Bey: brilliant

James Atlloud: wow

Govega Sachertorte: I didn't add much details but... Gundhar you want to get a copy? Its the Opera Curtain and we can rez it here

Govega Sachertorte: You will get a delivery notification just like you do in Second Life

Gundahar Bravin: It is real-time, and purchasing from the website is very fast as well. After you make a purchase, there is the usual checks being made, so a couple of minutes, sometimes just a matter of seconds and it delivers to your inventory.

Govega Sachertorte: All of this was implemented by Gundahar he is brilliant

Thirza Ember: so am i right in thinking that at the moment, delivery is just to neverworld avatars?

Govega Sachertorte: most of the stuff is CMT so you can in theory buy here and bring anywhere but obviously we wanted a perk for our residents here. Its been my dream for well, 10 years

Tosha Tyran: one question I have, supposing this system is liked ( I am sure it will be) - will you not be swamped with avatars here? might that cause a problem for you?

Govega Sachertorte: No worries, we have room ... If it really takes off, we can always expand thats our goal anyway.  We are creators here and this is our passion to share

Gundahar Bravin: At the moment, it gets all of it's information from the NWG database, so, yes it is isolated to NWG. To expand it without the use of bots, to other grids, we would need some sort of way to read and write to other databases.

Taarna Welles: Is this the first delivery system in Opensim or are or were there more?

Govega Sachertorte: We believe it is the first besides Kitley

Gundahar Bravin: It wouldn't be a problem for us, per se, but would be a security nightmare for other grids, that is why we kept it isolated for now, to NWG.

Thirza Ember: well the proof of concept is important - if people can see it working, they may ask their own grids if there's a way to participate

Govega Sachertorte: Thirza, thats why we have not implemented it yet .... although it would attract creators

Petlove Petshop: you could have a grid consortium

Tina Bey: While this is great and makes things easier, if some items are traded for money, the spirit of OpenSim will be lost. What do you think about this?

Govega Sachertorte: we could say all vendors MUST offer a percentage of free or something. Force them to be good. There are alot of greedy grids out there.

Govega Sachertorte: The only thing that MUST be in a box is scripts, so it does not mess with the marketplace box scripts. You log in fill out a very short form and you are ready to go... come here, get a box, and start filling it up with stuff... the longest thing that takes time is taking pictures. You can add up to four pictures an item, oh, and if you need to change anything, you can edit your product,  absolutely anything you want... also here we have a spot in the sky, creators sandbox to take pictures.

Gundahar Bravin: We have a studio and full sandbox upstairs for preparing your items for sale.

Thirza Ember: Anyone who has already made vendors for a inworld shop can use those pics, right?

Govega Sachertorte: I used a lot of my vendor pics from my stuff on the marketplace

Forest Azure: absolutely great, this!

Govega Sachertorte: We have over 600 items and growing every day. But please we need more vendors so please feel free to join up

Tosha Tyran: I sure will!

James Atlloud:  Awesome!   

Taarna Welles: <<<<<< APPLAUSE>>>>>>

Tosha Tyran: it seems very cool for buying and selling! it was really interesting!

Govega Sachertorte: Thanks everyone for listening to me babble  on this :)

Nine Zero: thank you govega and gundahar for making this

Dorena Bree: Thanks for sharing

Govega Sachertorte: He did a brilliant job !

Gundahar Bravin: Thank You. We are still adding features all of the time, and more things in store for the future!

Dolma Dollinger: Thanks for the tour!

James Atlloud: Thank you Neverworld folks

Petlove Petshop: Bye Neverworld!  Awesome spot!

HG Address hop://hg.neverworldgrid.com:8002/Neverworld%20Events/130/104/35