Again a Question of Priorities

The committee was much larger than originally expected...

The Kick-off ceremony yesterday was very high energy and big on Ronco style hype.

During the ceremony - as part of the ceremony as one of the "But wait! There's more" pitches - came the details of a special resource HUD from which we could receive fundraising tools.   Right then group notices came through with the HUD.

Let's break this down...

The USA had just experienced a similar occurrence in which their president - a TV personality - held off denouncing hate crime incidents until he had everyone's attention at a nationally televised appearance during primetime.  His moral compass was called into question because exploiting these incidents were more important than addressing them as soon as they had occurred. Imagine a shooting not mentioned or condemned or an offer of support expressed to grieving families by any past US president in the past 40-plus years.

The Relay For Life of Second Life committee - which by its very name exists as a commitment to serve Relay teams and Relayers - is responsible for providing team captains and volunteers with fundraising tools. Captains must have these before kick-off as part of their booths to get the ball rolling collecting donations. These have always been available at least a day before kick-off weekend to give everyone time to load vendors of salable items and place kiosks. Why?

- Because this is what these tools are for,
- Because this is the purpose of team spots at a kick-off,
- Because the objective of every team is to get tools and collect donations, and
- Because it is the role of the committee to make it all happen FOR THE RELAYERS.

You'd think the parallel with America's State of the Union would have been obvious, and possibly something in someone's head may have clicked after strong feedback and thought: "You know, maybe holding off supplying something to our relayers..." because the fact is we're not the committee's followers "...just to put on a big show and hype basic equipment as mannah from heaven ISN'T the right approach or in their best interest."

It was just in the committee's best interest to put on a show while everyone was tuned in.

Add to that the fact that this HUD supposedly offers many clickable items for different resources.  The only problem is the graphic is poor quality. You can only read about half of the clickable spots clearly to know what they are. (Click to see it full size)

Image not resized or retouched. Anyone know what the upper right stamp says?

On the plus side, clicking TOOLS on it offers you several buttons from which to choose.  It is a definite improvement to contain vendors, kiosks, and auction supplies in each of their own folders and not get dumped with anything you won't need.


Their hype over the HUD would have been better pitched at last month's Relay Rap to give volunteers something to look forward to, with them coming through via group Notices this past Thursday or Friday, then spiel in-depth about new features during the ceremony to bring people not entirely with it back into the fold while volunteers in the know extoll the virtues of the new stuff around them.


The committee just can't get past the "they mean well" and "they're trying" phases. They just don't think things through, and as long as they think of themselves first and place priorities on the wrong things in the guise of acting in our best interests -while representing The American Cancer Society - there's always going to be a problem and a rut to crawl out of.

Addendum to previous post: Is this a Relayer-friendly option over ceremonies set at sim borders?

Also if they think cancer shaming volunteers or extorting them with RL info is going to be an answer to criticism...  Let's hope NOBODY sees that ever again.