Fashion Consolidated

Hello my sweets! This is a rather tired but happy notecard to update you frighteningly fashionable set with some new STUFFZ now that the new application system and HUD has rolled out. Read on for exciting new FashConnish things.

New Designers

Ok, the first news is that I’m so happy that so many new designers have joined, after the ginormous wait while I got the new system ready. And I’m amazed and pleased to say it works! Thank you everyone who’s joined, I’ve been overwhelmed (with work too, but that’s a good thing!). Expect to see a LOT of new designers showing you what they can do this week. Check out the new list on the Who page – the new additions are at the top, and as you can see my new system allows me to track and list SLurls (store locations), shop websites, website links like Onrez and SLX where you can also buy from them, etc. The system allows designers to update all these themselves, with changes updated by me at the weekend when I add new designers. SO! what this means is that any designer with a new kiosk has up to date details on the FashCon website now. Thank you new designers and welcome!

As there are so many, I’ve sent out a schedule for them to introduce themselves and show you what they have, staggered through the week. I hope this means you can all take a look at what they do without being swamped.

Secondly, thanks to the existing designers who have also joined the new system. Some have asked me if I can add them to the HUD (see below), or website with full details. The system just doesn’t allow this manually: I don’t have any way of tracking SLurl, storename, trader link changes manually across so many designers, and the HUD isn’t updateable manually at all. The new system is designed to handle exactly this problem. Existing designer can purchase a kiosk from the links below, and they’ll be added to the new system, HUD etc. on the following weekend. I’m very happy that some already have, and if you feel FashCon has helped you with sales during your membership, please consider the new advantages you’ll get, as it’s going to be tricky for me to run the old system in parallel forever.

Kiosk available at the FashCon Cafe and at Onrez and SLX.

If none of this makes any sense, you missed my last entry.

HUD

OK! I’m getting lots of reports of people telling me they love the new FashCon HUD. If you don’t know what a HUD is, it’s one of those visual icons that sit on your SL screen. The FashCon HUD gives you instant access to find any of the listed designers, or do a random tour of shops (which is a great way of finding new designers and getting broke really fast), and some more stuff too.

To get a FashCon HUD (for free of course), click on any FashCon kiosk you see in world, or visit the FashCon Cafe and click on the Tour HUD boxes below the kiosk vendor. I made them more obvious now. Once you have received it, search for “FashCon Tour HUD” in your inventory and “wear” it. You can click on the little box any time to get a menu.

Well the news is the HUD just got better. I’ve added all the new designers to it, so it just grew in size by 3, AND! it now supports two new features. Please bear in mind they are still under testing, but they work for me:

1. Searching. Now you can search all listed designers for anything they list: their store name, designer name, what they list themselves as selling, even their sim! To do this type /55 and your search term on the normal SL command line, e.g.
   /55 Fairy’s Fine Frocks
   Wait a few seconds and your search results will come up in chat history (press control-H) to see it. If it found matches, it will print out the SLurls in blue and you can click them and whizz to your store.
   This will probably be improved in time and a proper results interface be provided. But it works! No longer hunting for lost landmarks – and these are always up to date.
2. Autotour. OK, I’ve just suggested this get renamed, and it might do because it’s really a FASHCON TOUR BUS! Here’s the idea. When wearing the HUD click the “Autotour” button. You just got on the FashCon tour bus. Every 5 minutes, your HUD will zap a new random location to you via the map, and offer to teleport you there. But wait! The reason it’s a bus is because these tours are synchronised for ALL users. So you’ll meet FashCon friends, share sandwiches, and bitch about prims with them as you tour the shops together. You can hop on and off the tourbus anytime by clicking “Autotour” again. I hope you like it! Just don’t leave your bag behind.

To get the new updated HUD all you have to do is wear your old one. A little box in my house will ping you and send you a new one – just unload your old one and load the new. All updates will be automatic, no need ever to pick up a new one manually.

Me

Please all note that I moved over to providing help via notecard, not IM. I just get swamped and when I crash, your IMs that are queueing will be lost, and I get capped overnight. So please don’t IM me for help, send me a notecard. And please read the FashCon website before IMing me! I love to chat and could talk you into the floor, but chatting to 4000 people at once hurts my hands. My office hours are 7am-3pm SLT (yes I’m a pesky Brit), please don’t contact re. FashCon outside of that as I need some fun too. Thanks!

Stuff

Two quick things. Group IMs are really broken again. All out of sync and delayed by up to 30 minutes on a large group like FashCon. They make NO sense at all and resemble the gibbering of a squirrel with a poor grasp of Albanian. So please don’t use group IM at all for a while. And please don’t reply to someone who does with “i hate spam, u suck” etc. It propagates the problem. Stay silent and IM them politely privately if you want to help.

I keep getting asked why I don’t ban IMs, change policy, etc., please see the FAQ for answers.

Some of you know that I’ve been trying very hard to get a mute IM button added to all our viewers (and other group additions like banning spammers) for nine months now, and a lot of people have been great support. It’s still not too late to do so, see https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-64 (and all the following URLs up to MISC-72). The news that some of you may have heard is that Linden Lab have decided finally to address these issues and are rewriting groups for the next major viewer update. The way they first stated they would do this was worrying to say the least for community groups, but they seem to be seeing sense now. So, look out for changes that may solve the group IM problem properly soon (if they don’t break it).

Secondly, I’ve been asked by a few people about other groups with “Consolidated” in the name and this is causing some confusion. At the time of writing, no other active group is in any way connected to Fashion Consolidated other than Fashion Consolidated Cafe. Others have chosen to brand fashion groups with the same word or name after FashCon took off, but these are unconnected. I’d respectfully ask that you consider not using the name “Consolidated” in your new group name if it’s linked to how FashCon operates, it just causes confusion. I would ask that you consider if it’s in your better interest to launch your own group with a unique non-associated name, showing your own unique concept and individuality. Please do get in touch if this is an issue for you.

Numbers

We just passed 4000 members.
FashCon’s rezday is in 2 days (30th) – a year old! We need some balloons.

Thank you all for your support and patience over the last year! Bedtime.
Honey <3 U zzzzzzzzz