This article is another in our series: The Avatar's Guide to Gatherings  Subtitle: You don't have to be a geek to use Second Life.  You may use it for:

• classes (as teacher or learner), 
• conventions. (The Second Life Community Convention could be in Second Life.), 
• symposia (ADVANCES IN GREEN SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY).  

This article gives suggestions on how to help groups of non-geeks get into Second Life.  Without trying to remake them into geeks.

(Disclaimer: I am half geek.  I speak both geek and English.  Here I try to keep everything in English. The instructions here are written for novices so you can copy them out and give them to your supervisor.)

Gathering a flock of people in SL

This job starts with a leader, preferably somebody who has experience managing such a gathering in the physical world.  So we start with advice to the leader. 

Networking is what triggered this topic.  I saw a question on the Vio business networking channel about the possible limits on meeting sizes.  That's how networking operates in Second Life.  I could answer that question, so I did.  But I realized that other people would want that information, too.  I put it in an earlier article and in the Hobo Kit (intermediate section), too.

But there are other things people need to know about how to produce meetings in Second Life.   And the conversation in the Vio channel made me think there are people around who would want to have that info.  So I made a list of the main problems that I have seen in connection with running meetings in Second Life.   And, because I favor problem solving over problem listing, I turned the list into actions that a newcomer could take to tame those problems.