Better product launch events

Hello dear owls, especially @DarkForestCapital and @verto0912,

First of all: Thank you for the awesome work on MVI, the newsletter and the podcast. You guys are the bomb!

After attending last night’s MVI launch party, that we were kind of looking forward to, we would like to offer some feedback we came up with over breakfast this morning. Please excuse us for being quite frank, as we’re sure you had a lot of things to juggle in the run-up and may be content with just having had a launch party at all - and that’s okay.

But here goes the feedback: We left last night’s (:wave: from Europe) launch party feeling rather empty and disillusioned. It very much felt like we were lured into a casino just to eventually buy chips and make the casino some money. Yes, there was music and a DJ, so it sort of was a party, but there was no discernible connection to either the Coop, the MVI or the metaverse. It felt cheap and sleazy and made us question if this metaverse thing is really something to spend time and energy on.

Last but not least, the whole night resolved around gambling - and as a financial services DAO, we’re not sure that’s an association we want to leave our customers, clients and partners with.

In the end it was just a casino night, nothing more. And as such really a wasted opportunity to educate, inspire and be meaningful, arguably three qualities you want a launch event to exhibit.

The metaverse can do better and we can do better! Here is a list of suggestions that we think could improve such an event:

  • Speakers. There is a reason why we have speeches at events in real life. They help frame an event and help kick it off, top it off or end it (depending on the positioning of the speech and the event design). They can inspire, educate and give meaning to an event, depending on who the speaker is. Invite someone dope.
  • Token/project/company booths. It would have been really cool to have each token in the index have a booth with a banner/poster with an executive summary of what it is about. Maybe even a video screen with a teaser/explainer video and a representative answering questions. Yes, very old school, but really informative and educational. And how often do people ask “Which tokens are included? What is token xyz all about?” This would have been an excellent opportunity to showcase them and to give them a platform.
  • What makes events IRL special? It’s the spontaneous connections with people you already know and that you meet for the first time. There were no meaningful interaction happening last night. Three easy formats to foster interactions are:
    • Experience sharing in small groups of three. Length: 10 minutes. Provide guiding questions à la “What was your most intense experience/moment in the metaverse?”, “What do you look forward most to in the metaverse?” etc. Possibly rotate attendees for a second round. Do this further away from the booths and the main area to allow for some privacy.
    • Open-to-anybody pub quiz. Length: 10 minutes. Ask in-depth questions about the metaverse, individual projects, relevant pop culture, the Coop etc. Have a voting and scoring mechanism, so someone can win in the end. Have prices for the top three, either some amount of MVI or NFTs.
    • World-cafe style discussion. Pick a couple of intellectually stimulating topics or questions, e.g. “Where do you think the metaverse will be in 5 years time?” or “What will be the most common jobs in the metaverse in 10 years time?” or “To which degree should we replicate IRL government structures in the metaverse?”. Each topic/question has a room or point in the space associated with it and people can just float freely between them and jump into any discussion. Limit to two rounds of 15 minutes or so.
  • A booth where people can buy MVI, metaverse, pop culture, Coop and DPI themed merch and NFTs. And MVI itself, obviously.
  • Finish the night with an open-end hangout and music by a live DJ.

We feel that these suggestions, paired with proper execution by some skilled hosts/facilitators, could have made for a much more engaging and exciting evening.

We love what the Coop is doing and becoming, and would like to contribute to making it a success. Top-notch talked-about product launch parties in the metaverse could be a factor distinguishing us from the competition.

Should you consider hosting further community events in the future, we’d be more than happy to support - be it with conceptualisation and/or hosting.

What do you guys think?

Cheers
faenor and avogagi

Thanks for the feedback and sorry to hear that you felt empty after the event. Certainly everyone we’ve spoken to/received feedback from had a great time. I was personally really impressed with Decentral Games professionalism running the event and letting us use their Casino for the launch.

Perhaps it’s a case of mixed expectations but the launch party was supposed to be just that, a party! There was no real money involved (it was a freeplay event) and it was more a place to gather for people who are into crypto/the Coop but perhaps haven’t experienced this side of the space. We’ve seen that with a lot of DeFi natives that they can interact with Etherscan but have never been inside Decentraland!

I think if we had been attempting to arrange an event as you describe then yes we would’ve failed miserably, but again it seems like a case of setting expectations. We looked at this as a way to blow off some steam for everyone who helped get MVI through the door, and an open invite for others excited to join us. From your feedback it’s clear you have decent experience in events, if we are doing something more formal in the future we will be in touch to tap into your knowledge.

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Hey man, thanks for getting back to us so quickly. Yes, I think you’re right, expectations probably had a lot to do with the effect it had on us.

I guess my expectations were rather high, due to the Coop’s high professionalism I experienced in the last weeks. Because, and running the risk of gushing, you guys are slaying it! Communications (newsletter/podcast), the products, design (including that competition just now), organisation (from what I can tell from the outside), branding, culture, openness to newcomers, partnerships, etc. It’s all amazing, across the board! So I just expected the event as well to be… grand! :smiley:

It may also have to to with the fact, that I had zero experience with events in the metaverse, neither attending nor organising. And as it’s probably a lot of work to set up events incorporating the suggestions I listed (maybe even custom/new code?), I guess I did have exaggerated expectations. Especially considering the limited time to organise and that you must have had a lot of other things on your plate.

I am sorry that we projected these expectations upon you and measured you against them!

But regardless of expectations, this is the magic of a DAO, isn’t it? If the Coop would be a traditional company, we would just had shrugged it off and carried on. But since it’s a DAO, we really leaned into what we experienced and how it made us feel, recognising that we would like the Coop to have better events. And seeing an area where the current roster of owls may be lacking experience or skill, we would like to offer a hand.

So yes, if the need ever comes up, we’d be happy to help. :slight_smile:

3 Likes

I’m an etherscan guy who had my first experience in Decentraland and I had a lot of fun but also a mixed bag. I came with similar expectations as DFC describes and the concepts were all in place. We were in VR using the tech rails allowing all the fun stuff on ethereum and there was recognizable NFT art on the walls, super cool!

The actual experience of spending time in the casino felt like a half finished implementation, especially people moving through the tables and other obvious glitches. I spent most of the session in silence since I couldn’t control the level of the DJ and the music overpowered the voices of the visitors. I think free gambling being the only activity to engage in and needing to hold a button to speak encourage sparse conversation. Everyone was giddy because we’re close to the MVI narrative but I’m not sure I would have gotten into it as a random visitor.

All of faenor’s bullet points are good ideas. Maybe several of them can be activated by visitors choosing which channel to listen to so we can have a dance floor at the same time as some others are listening to stand/up comedy or a lecture, I’m just guessing what’s possible here.
Edit: The interface we were in before heading to Decentraland was very inspiring. Old-school isometric adventure game style with different areas you could move to to be a part of different chat groups and a stage where someone can be heard by all. Having similar things in Decentraland would make the experience denser.

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Hey @blurb, thanks for chipping in!

Do you mean “VR” as in “VR googles”? That would’ve been something different, I agree! Also, I didn’t hear anybody speak, not sure if that was connected to there being different realms or something.

Maybe several of them can be activated by visitors choosing which channel to listen to so we can have a dance floor at the same time as some others are listening to stand/up comedy or a lecture, I’m just guessing what’s possible here.

Yeah we were thinking about how to do that… We’re unsure how much control scene hosts/admins have, but one solution would be to limit the audio that’s emitted in certain spaces to not carry beyond certain boundaries. Let’s say you have a large square painted on the floor and if you stand within that square, only attendees within this square can hear you. Something like that.

I guess a main goal would be to really make use of the space, as every abstraction such as “channels” is sort of violating the “shared time and space” mantra of the metaverse. Sure, only being able to be heard by people in a certain zone is still magic, but Harry-Potter-like magic not Zoom-like magic, and I guess we as humans can feel the difference. :wink:

But “channels” would also work of course and may very well work better depending on the situation, and probably would just have to see how difficult these different kind of implementations are.

I just saw your edit now: Which interface was that? I wasn’t aware people were pregaming! I am starting to feel I missed half the stuff! :smiley:

Do you mean “VR” as in “VR googles”?

No, I just meant that we were in a virtual reality.

Yeah we were thinking about how to do that… We’re unsure how much control scene hosts/admins have…

That’s a hurdle. We are dependent on the tech of the hosting project and unless we happen to have someone experienced with each project we are at their mercy and should adjust expectations.

It would be very useful to have some sort of information on the visitors so that we know what they might respond to. Is it a simple task to make statistics over the wallet addresses? Could we have some sort of questionnaire in one place or questions spread out in the environment?

Clearly visible areas with different sound really could work! How open are the hosts to changing the environment for a launch party?

I just saw your edit now: Which interface was that?

I don’t know the name… I hope someone else does. :slight_smile:

Off-topic: @verto0912, @DarkForestCapital Congratulations on already having passed 2.5M! :partying_face:

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That’s a hurdle. We are dependent on the tech of the hosting project and unless we happen to have someone experienced with each project we are at their mercy and should adjust expectations.

Agreed.

It would be very useful to have some sort of information on the visitors so that we know what they might respond to. Is it a simple task to make statistics over the wallet addresses? Could we have some sort of questionnaire in one place or questions spread out in the environment?

That would definitely help. But it would probably have to be a couple of days in advance to allow for adjustments in event/session and space design.

Clearly visible areas with different sound really could work! How open are the hosts to changing the environment for a launch party?

I actually think that scene owners (is that the correct term?) would have to basically give admin permissions to the events hosts. The same way it’s for IRL events, where hosts basically just take over the venue for the duration of the event.

I can already imagine two trends in the metaverse playing out to account for this.

Event venues will most likely develop very granular permission sets for the various roles of event staff: The key note speaker will need different permissions than the session facilitators, who will need yet different ones than the roadies building out the stage and booths and such.

Event agencies will develop (custom code) their own “event primitives”. Different kind of stages, booths, visual and sound effects, and more intricate stuff like “audio-limited-to-zone” overlays.

Haha, I love it!

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Hey @faenor, thanks for the feedback. I certainly second everything DFC said above.

I think your suggestions are great and organising an event as you describe would be mind blowing.

But I’m not even sure these could be organised in a metaverse :slight_smile: We have talked to the Decentral Games team about communication within the casino/Decentraland and what are some of the tools for people to talk to each other, etc. and there’s no tools available. We all know that a lot of the functionality in the metaverse is still half baked. So I’d just like to point that out - a lot of things being described were, unfortunately, outside of our ability to influence.

To be frank, we talked about a launch party in Decentraland like a month ago and neither DFC nor myself even knew how to pull that off. So we were very excited to work with the Decentral Games team to make it happen. We certainly didn’t consider trying to make the event comparable to a launch party in the real world.

PS. you could adjust music volume in the settings, bottom right corner.

PPS. the other interface was gather.town

3 Likes

Hey @verto0912! Right, in that case we’d have to pare it down and improvise for some of the things, although I think most of them would still be possible to pull off.

I am really intrigued, what the level of possible customisation and depth of the toolset is for scene admins. I will try and see if I can find any documentation on that, surely there must be something. Probably sufficient and easier than buying a piece of land just for this purpose.

And of course it will be exciting to see what the different platforms will start offering in this regard…

In any case, thanks for taking our feedback so well! :blush: