Although most of each session will be spontaneous discussion - a happy bedlam of ideas, information, and hypotheses - some material needs to be prepared ahead of time, and may be easiest to manage during the session by judicious use of chat macros.

NB: When you write a maco, it resides on the computer where you wrote it, so you cannot write a maco on one machine, then run it on another merely by accessing the character you wrote it for!  I use four machines - two pairs in different locations - so I need to be especially aware of this!

A macro allows you to insert a prepared question or answer into the chat by simply pressing a single key.  We suggest that session chairs do this for the prepared questions, which are also listed on the wiki page for the given session.  Anyone might want to do this for a literature citation, to make sure for example that they can quickly give others the citations for articles they have published or that they think people would be interested to know about.  In a few cases this might be good for a URL, to make sure there are no typos in it caused by the heat of discussion in the session, although we can also post these ahead of time on the wiki.  Another possible use would be in rare cases when somebody cannot attend all three sessions, but has something useful to contribute - administering a final exam to give one real example.  A colleague who is able to attend the session could be ready to insert a small number of phrases from the absent person, as appropriate, using prepared chat macros.  For example, Edward Castronova has wished us well, but will be on travel and cannot attend.  Thus, we could imagine somebody inserting the following hypothetical text into the second session, beginning with Castronova's name in parentheses, which is a WoW convention to identify alts: "(Castronova) Possibly the initial economic equality of players in many MMORPGS could influence the economy of the real world toward greater equality.  See Exodus to the Virtual World."

First, in a separate file prepare the text you want in a text program like Notepad, reading and editing it carefully.  For the questions prepared for the three formal sessions, we suggest you begin with the word QUESTION in capitals - yes, this constitutes potentially impolite shouting, but session chairs may need to catch people's attention.  (In extreme cases, pressing the key twice may be needed, saying the thing twice and thus dominating the chat, but one would not want to do this with anything less important than the prepared questions and real emergency notices, like "Durn the Hungerer is attacking!" [But, he won't in fact attack.])  In the example shown below, Catullus is making a macro to ask the fifth question from the third session, which he will be chairing:

5. Will virtual worlds create social and cultural alternatives that then thrive in the "real world?"

Then, put QUESTION in front, like this:

QUESTION 5. Will virtual worlds create social and cultural alternatives that then thrive in the "real world?"

Now you need the macro to say the text specifically in the guild chat, so you put /guild (followed by a space):

/guild QUESTION 5. Will virtual worlds create social and cultural alternatives that then thrive in the "real world?"

With your macros all prepared like this, get into WoW and open the macro utility.  There are two ways to do this: either type /macro into the chat and hit ENTER, or click the balloon to the left of the chat and select Macro.

Click the New button, and a window will open asking you to select an icon and a maco name.  Catullus chose a question mark and "Q5." This window assumes you want different icons for your macros, but you can use the same one by temporarily selecting another one, then selecting the one you want again.  When you have completed these selections, you will be able to click Okay and return to the main Create Macros window.  Now paste your prepared text in the field below "Enter Macro Commands."

Next, you need someplace to put the icon.  Use the left-hand action bar at the bottom of your screen.  There are actually six action bars, here.  Scroll though them by using the up and down arrows at the bottom center of your screen, and find an empty action bar for your chat macros.  Using your computer's mouse drag the icon to the cell in the action bar where you want it.  You may now close the Create Macros window, or go on to create another macro in the same manner.

Left: Illustration of writing macros for the questions prepared for session 3 on the future of virtual worlds.   Once you have created several macros, and positioned their icons on the action bar, you can make one run simply by either clicking the icon with your cursor, or by pressing the corresponding number key.  The action bar must be visible for the key to work.   If you decide to modify the text of one, simply reopen it and make the change you want.  There is no need to start over from scratch.   Happy macroing!