Diaries of Viki Silvansky – Planning and conducting a workshop, February 22, 2009

Dear Diary
Another interesting thing happened in my life today and that was my first ever official workshop.
As a part of my MUVEnation activities, I had to design a workshop and manage everything else around it…
For me choosing the topic was not that hard as I had some ideas in my mind…
I had a very good feedback on my hypnotee so I though I can teach everyone else to make one.
The planning and preparing took quite a time specially considering my virtual disabilities (not having WIKI) but I managed to finish everything a day before with the help of my amazing friends (specially Anna).
I build my own platform, wrote my workshop materials, create an evaluation form, take photos of my step by step creations and putting them as slide show.
Everything was ready and at 1:00pm people start to arrive at my skybox…
It was a great feeling… everything was going so smooth that I was wondering is this for real?
It didn’t take much until I make a disaster… not exactly a disaster but something wrong and funny…
I deleted my own platform ) Imagine that…
Why may ask how that happened… and why that funny…
Story started days back when I attended Cvetka’s workshop. Someone mistakable deleted her platform which created a bit of unwanted break. Seeing and knowing that, I decided to lock my platform to prevent that… and I did…
After the first session of the workshop, i gave a short break to everyone else and in the mean time i decided to turn back the wings left from other participants. Now you can imagine what happened next..
I clicked and choose delete…
Got a message telling me “the object is locked, are you sure you want to delete it?”
And my answer was “YES”
The next second I was watching myself falling down from 400m above the ground and laughing out loud as I did such a mistake…
Anyway… as we were in the break and everyone else was sited nothing serious happened and I was back on track after 2 min with a new platform.
But all that though me something… it’s better to have your feet on the ground
Most important thing was how my brain fooled me… thinking that I have locked the platform and nothing will happen to it make me be so sure about deleting even though I saw the message…
Other than that most of things were just great…
Participants were my best friends who I always enjoy working with them and we all managed to do a great job.
I guess everyone learned a lot… and that includes me too…
I have realized some many new things….
For example, as part of event discretion I mentioned that all levels (newbies, experts) are welcome and I really included all the instructions necessary for every level…
But during the workshop I realized that is not they day to do it because those participants who were experts might get board of my detailed instruction that I was giving newbies and the pluses within the workshop. On the other hand, newbies are ever feeling worse, getting anxious that everyone is building quickly and they don’t even know how to drag an object.
After all everything went on and we ended up with 5 wing trees for session one and 4 flexi wing trees for session two…
The results were amazing, and I am really happy about them.
It was another day in SL to remember

The Hypnotree

Basically it happened…

We were going to have MUVEnation fashion show (“MUVEshow as I call it”), so I bought a dress designed by Nicky Ree which was absolutely fantastic. In matter of seconds I fell in love with its wonderful texture and for a while that was all I could think about. After some days I realized that the dress is modifiable, meaning that I can make something out of the pieces of the dress but I would not have the textures that I loved so much….

I thought to myself “why not?, I have already worn that dress, so better to create something new out of it” (recycling J). But even thinking what will be possible to make with such texture was hard….

In the following week, for MUVEnation, I saw a highlight of an in-world session to make trees for near future and that was the trigger for me to make a tree out of the pieces of cloths that I had.

So I started delinking the dress into pieces and change their shape to get the best look of the textures as I could not access the texture itself. Anyway, after long long hours of struggling with both transparent and flexible objects I ended up creating my first ever tree….

I have to admit I am really PROUD of myself…..

I put one in MUVEnation Island but somehow tree was not in harmony with the environment, so I though I can make something for that… went back to Surrey Island and made what I called it as “Fantasy Cube” in dark navy blue colour and that was the time that I really felt everything is all right.

Then it was time to find a name for the tree…. my first feeling about the texture was “water lily” to me and I was thinking to name it like that but then I thought my tree is not looking like a Lotus, so why name it that and next minute I myself building one. After 2 hours wondering how to make best of features, I have my water lilies which could serve even as seats to complete the glory of the fantasy Cube.

Now everything was getting together, the tree, its cube, water lily seats, ghost lights, but still something missing to make this place prefect…. MUSIC…. as I didn’t have the mode to deal with that one I just bought some of the ready in-world and add them to the combination of the items in fantasy cube.

For a day or two that place was only a personal experience to me until friends are started commenting about it J I was really thrilled when people were telling me that “we come to that place to distress ourselves” and “it makes me feel relaxed and happy”. Other than the comments, design of this tree brought me the Title of “Virtaul Designer”; something that I was dreaming about it for a long time J

However, days passed and the tree was only “the tree” for me and others until, my friend Cvetta Nacht put the picture of the pink version of the tree writing the following lines:

“I’m obviously obsessed with this tree…. so much so that I found myself floating among the layers leaves of its fuchsia version. ”

And that was the time when i came up  with the idea of “hypnosis” and been conformed by Cvetta as:

                                 “The Hypntree”

As its put people in a position that they find themselves even not believing the feeling that a simple tree can create within them

So now the tree has a name and a home: you can visit “the hypnotree” and “fantasy cube” in Surrey Island