THE DOORS ARE OPEN!

After a great opening ceremony, complete with fireworks, flying dragons and river dancing tinies (led by a full-sized Saffia) – SL9B is now OPEN!

There is a lot to see – and do – at SL9B. There are exhibits galore to take-in and live entertainment to enjoy, so much so that packing everything in to the week may seem a little hard. To assist you, here’s my personal whirlwind tours of two sims a day – starting with Nove and Devet.

These two sims are home to the The Community Hub, where you can collect your SL9B HUD and a special gift from Kitty CatS. Flanking this are the Time Capsule area and the main Dream Seeker pavilion.

On Devet – you can find out about giant snail racing, or try your hand at playing a Roncadora harp. Misha Flanagan offers the chance to learn about Children’s Charities of America All Children are Our Future, while Sydney Camille, Oplontis Pavillion and My Creatures of Dream offer examples of the incredible diversity of art in Second Life.

Doctor Who fans in SL and the Commune Utopia present exhibits covering just two extremes of the richly diverse community and culture that exist in Second Life. Here, too, is Fluke shapes and poses, just across the roadway from the Texas State University’s Virtual Field School Project, described as being, “Designed as a cross-disciplined educational environment, filled with tools to allow educators to create an immersive 3-D learning experience for students”. The project is based on three different models of the village of El Cerrito in northern New Mexico, one of which resides in Second Life. It’s a fascinating project and the exhibit is worth a visit to find out more.

Next door to the TSU exhibit sits Rolling’ Rollin’ by sayaca.unplugged and from which you can enjoy panoramic views of the nearby exhibits while climbing to the top, with an exhibit celebrating the SL AIDS quilt alongside of it, bordering the crossing into Nove.

Nove is where the SL9B time capsule will be revealed, in the middle of a water-themed trove of SL memorabilia which includes time capsules from past SLB events, famous SL freebies and a one or two fun items (look for Philip Linden and his amazing swelling / shrinking head…).

In Nove, you can visit the Kama Tea House and you can learn about the fun of speed building – and where in SL you can participate in competitions. SL’s LGBT community invite you to visit their tribute to Fabrice Snook and learn about the community itself. Right across the road from them sits DK T-shirts, with a host of memorabilia produced for the last few SLBs.

Nove also plays host to Dark Eden roleplay (although the entrance faces Neun, so be wary of the region boundary!), with information givers on a range of RP options and careers within their realm. One of my favourite exhibits from SL8B can be found here as well, nestled between Kangaroo Diesel (for which you’ll need full media enabled), and Noke Yuitza’s sculpture. This is Inside Art – an exhibit in which you become a part of the paintings on display.

The Foundry offer you the opportunity to have some fun at their Summer Camp, while just behind this you can participate in a certain famous tea party (no, not the political one – the one involving large hats and a dormouse).

Rounding things off for Nove is a charming little artists corner by Tah Craziboi and a MOAP-enabled exhibit (which I confess to being unable to get going due to lag) by DeeJay Steele.

Tour Pods rove through both Devet and Nove (as they do throughout all of the SL9B sims, and you can pick on up directly outside The Community Hub, or you can hop into any unoccupied one that is passing.

One of the hardest things for people attending an event as big as SL9B is finding out what is going on where and when. Schedules have to be drawn up, spreadsheets made, information sorted and promoted to blog pages –  and that’s even before we get to people finding the information and making use of it.

For SL9B, Crap Mariner has made things a breeze for all, by pulling everything together into a single data table which he has fed into Google Calendar.

The result? A totally spiffy and browsable day-by-day Performance Schedule, which is also being relayed in-world to Codie’s Superboards for the event, which are placed at strategic points around the SL9B regions – and with the organiser’s permission, will be appearing in my (hopefully daily) coverage of the festivities. Here’s what it looks like:

Stage SLurls: Main Stage; Lake Stage; Sunken Stage; Cake Stage; DJ Egypt; Auditorium hub

What’s more, if you click on the Google Calendar icon at the bottom right, you can import the schedule into your own Google Calendar, which allows you to do two things:

• Display all events times in your local times (rather than SLT) if you wish
• Easily search for a specific performer by name

A further advantage to this approach is that changes can be made centrally, and then instantly be seen in-world and on blog pages using the calendar feed.

Thanks, Crap for putting this together and furnishing it to the team and to those of us covering the event!

A further word on lag

In my preview on SL9B, I briefly mentioned the issue of lag; I didn’t go into inordinate amounts of detail, as a preview is hardly the place. Lag can result from many different things and there are many myths that have sprung up around the subject over the years – many of which have resulted in people being quick to point the finger at others when they encounter lag (particularly on heavily used sims). However, the inescapable fact is that the biggest portion of lag resides at the user’s end of things. I had intended to cover the subject in more depth with a focus on SL9B. However, Harper Beresford has done so with a very excellent and worthwhile post on the subject on the SL9B blog – and if you are intending on visiting the regions during the course of this week, I thoroughly recommend you give it a read-through in advance.

We all know the story by now: Linden Lab announce the theme for Second Life’s ninth birthday and at the same time withdraw from participation; given the 11^th hour nature of the announcement, it seemed that even with the potential for celebrations spread across the grid, much of the impetus and feeling of celebration would be lost without some focal-point to the festivities.

Fortunately, some people were unwilling to let matters go so easily. A core group of dedicated individuals stepped into the void left by Linden Lab, and for the last month they’ve been working night and day  to try to ensure that there is a nexus for celebrations of SL’s ninth anniversary and a place for people from across the world to come together to mark the event.

Their determination saw an outpouring of support from across the grid: Dream Seeker Estates donated no fewer than 10 regions to the event, an anonymous donor came forward with an offer of six more, then Fruit Islands and Kitty CatS provided a further 2 sims apiece; Lilith Heart of  Heart Garden Centre fame gave the organisers access to her entire range of trees and flora to help with the landscaping requirements of the regions, and nEoStreams came forward to supply all of the necessary music streams for the event.

And of course, an army of willing volunteers came forward determined to ensure the event is every bit the success people would like to see.

The results of all this are stunning:

• 20 regions of celebratory exhibits, entertainment space, and special areas such as the hub and time capsule display area
• FIVE stages for live entertainment (one more has been added to meet the demand!)
• Some 350 exhibits and stands spanning the breadth and depth of community in Second Life
• For the first time ever at an SLB – underwater exhibits and entertainment stages both over and under water!
• A hub where people can learn about – and visit – other SL9B celebrations taking place across the grid, such as the SL9B Story.

Efforts have been made to minimise the rules and regulations around building, and those that have been set do make sense and – I believe – will help make people’s experience when touring the regions perhaps a little more pleasant.

As someone who has been fortunate enough to be peripherally involved in organising the event from a PR standpoint. During the last couple of weeks I’ve been popping in and out and gathering shots for my Flickr stream (and uploading what I think are perhaps the “better” ones to the official SL9B stream). While wandering, I’ve been fortunate enough to witness the enthusiasm with which people from across Second Life – and around the world – have responded to this, the first Second Life anniversary celebration that is genuinely by the residents, for the residents. I’ve also been privileged to witness the volume of work volunteers have poured into the core SLB in-world groups to communicate with, inform, and help fellow residents be a part of this event and to ensure they are not left without assistance or information.

And now, everything is set. On June 18th at 11:00 SLT, the doors will open and the festivities will begin!

The place to commence your explorations of the regions is The Community Hub. From here you can pick-up your SL9B teleport HUD prior to commencing your explorations – which you can do on foot, by flying or by availing yourself of SLB Pod Tour.

The teleport HUD, created by Bo Tiger (Bourne Denimore) provides direct access to the main exhibitor regions as well as to all of the main entertainment stages, the event auditorium area and back to both The Hub and the pod tour.

Using it is simple enough – WEAR it (default position in top left of your screen, although it obviously works fine at any attach point) and adjust it to best suit your needs (if required). The buttons then work in one of two ways:

• Either it will open the Map in your Viewer, allowing you to see your destination and use the Map’s teleport button to reach it
• Or it will display a dialogue box offering a number of destination points within the named region. Clicking on one of the dialogue buttons will then open the Map, allowing you to teleport.

There are instructions included with the HUD, including a suggestion that in order to ease the collective lag (there is going to be a lot going on collectively across the regions), people only wear the HUD when actually using it, and otherwise remove it when touring regions / exhibits. You can also minimise the HUD by clicking the “***” button – just be aware that if you have manually moved the HUD to another position on your screen, it will default back to the HUD attach point used to initially display it on your screen.

The Pod Tour cars follow a route through the sims that enable you to sit back and enjoy the ride – you can hop on or off any passing pod that is empty, as well as picking one up from the terminus at The Hub. Every effort has been made to get exhibitors to submit information on their builds for inclusion in the pods, which will be relayed to you in chat as you pass the various parcels.

Also at The Hub are details of other SLB events taking place across the grid during the week. To see these, hop on the carousel; as you are carried around, posters of other events will pop-up in front of you – click on the radial black bars under the poster to receive a landmark to the event in question.

Continue reading “SL9B: Let the festivities begin!” →

SL9B is almost upon us! Last minute work is underway to complete builds, prepare the new underwater stage and get things set. At midnight SLT on the 16th June the regions will be closed for access and the technical rehearsals. They’ll reopen on the 17th at the start of the Press Preview day – and then on Monday 18th, from 11:00am SLT, it’s full steam ahead with a week of celebrations!

Courtesy of Moo Money, here’s a machinima taster of things to come:

With all the focus on the central SL9B activities made possible by Dreamseeker Estates, Fruit Islands, KityCatS and our anonymous region donor, attention does tend to get drawn away from other SL9B events that are taking place next week around the grid to mark Second Life’s ninth anniversary.

So I’m rather pleased to have received a poke about the SL9B Story.

Second Life is a powerful medium for storytelling, be it machinima, the spoken word, the written word, acting, or a combination thereof. The SL9B Story calls upon SL writers and storytellers to come together in a collaborative effort and contribute to the Great Big Story Book. The Destination Guide entry for the piece describes it thus:

“Once upon a time…” That’s how all the best stories begin, but what happens next is anybody’s guess — that’s where the Second Life community comes in. To celebrate SL’s 9th birthday, writers and storytellers of every kind are invited to contribute to The SL9B Story. See what other residents have created, then continue the story by writing in the Great Big Story Book, carrying on from where the previous author left off.

The story book itself is located on Penny Lane; it has been created by Serendipity Haven, and sits alongside her in-world gallery. The book uses Media On a Prim (MOAP) to display a related blog, SL9Bhaven. Contributors are invited to add to the story using the comments section of the blog page – which can be opened either in the Viewer’s built-in browser or your web browser, dependent on your preference. Comments will also display both on the blog page and be visible on the book in-world, allowing it to be followed / read from both.

Note that comments are currently closed and will remain so until SL9B kicks-off on the 18th June.

Some submissions have apparently already been made – I assume as a part of testing the site and the book – so it will be interesting to see what appears on the book’s pages once comments are opened, and those which have already been received are displayed.

Given the theme of SL9B is that of community, this is a clever approach to asking the community to work collaboratively together, and I’m looking forward to reading what appears in the book, and of hopefully contributing to it myself. I hope other writers and aspiring writers in SL will take the time to do so as well, and help the story to grow through the week.

Related Links

• SLurl for The Great big Story Book
• SL9Bhaven blog for the story
• SL9B Story Destination Guide entry

The SL9B regions are bustling with builders and exhibits are taking shape. However, there are still a good number of parcels that are still standing empty.

While we appreciate many of you may well be taking our earlier advice, and working on your builds elsewhere and are planning to rez them on your parcel once they’re finished, please remember that time is running out for you to do so.

The SL9B sims will be closing to all access at midnight SLT on Saturday 16th June.

This is to allow time for full technical rehearsals to take place, and final clear-up of the sims can take place ahead of the Press Day opening on the 17th, when the sims will be visited by the SL and RL media.

It’s therefore essential that all builds are in place ahead of this deadline. Please don’t leave everything until the last-minute, just in case some adjustments are required to your build once it is in position; we really don’t want people feeling rushed as closing time approaches!

Also on the subject of builds – don’t forget your land setting information. Getting these right ahead of time will help make your landmarks more attractive and help draw visitors to your exhibit. Our resident spooksperson, the Prim Reaper, is here to provide you with more help on this: