Tag: SLB Archives (2012-)

The SL16B celebratory regions have opened their doors to mark the 16th anniversary of the public launch of Second Life. As with previous years, the event includes music, entertainment, talks, presentations, performances and the opportunity to explore themed builds and exhibitions by participating members of the Second Life community.

This year marks something of a departure from recent SLB events, in that for the first time since SL9B, these celebrations have been under the direct management of the Lab and the Linden Department of Public Works (LPDW), rather than being community-led. The most notable aspects of this change are that this year, the celebration doesn’t feature things like the familiar 4-region Birthday Cake stage – in fact there are only two official stages: the Main Stage and the DJ Stage.

The second notable aspect is that the exhibitor spaces are considerably fewer this year than in previous years, and these are located in the five regions on the west side of the SL16B estate, being: SL16B Astonish, SL16B Captivate, SL16B Enchant, SL16B Incredible, and SL16B Sparkle. Each of these is marked by a large central exhibitor display with a landing point associated with it, with smaller parcels laid out around it in a grid pattern of roads (traversed by the familiar pod tours) and footpaths.

The rest of the celebratory regions are given over to public spaces, the stages, the auditorium, a large central lake and beach, and a couple of Linden Homes preview regions, of which more anon.

The theme for this year’s celebrations is “Sweet Sixteen”, with a focus on a 1950’s, the start of the “youth revolution” and a general period of social change in America that continued through the 1960s.   Given this, there are the inevitable core elements of diners, drive-in movie theatres, bright colours, vinyl and 50s B-movies and typically 50’s views of “the future” that involve rocket ships and the like to be found throughout the exhibitor displays, but there are also those that put the 50s into context as informative pieces, and those that cast their net a little wider.

In this latter regard, I admit to particular liking the International Space Museum / National Space Society’s central display that celebrates our once and future presence on the Moon. Yes, we didn’t reach the Moon’s surface until 1969, but NASA was a child of the 1950s (officially formed in 1958), and July 2019 does mark the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s historic landing.

The community spaces offer attractions of their own: the lake and beach noted above, meandering parks, and spaces that can help take the load when dealing with large numbers of avatars bunching together in the core events areas. And here I might sound a little critical, but having become used to fantastical builds for the various stages and event centres over the last seven years in particular, the core builds – stages and auditorium – for Sl16B come across as – well – a touch bland.

Yes, I can understand the reasoning; some of the more fantastic builds seen in the past were doubtless resource heavy for both servers (with a scripting load) and – more particularly – viewers (lots of mesh and textures, for example, clogging up local computer resources). The builds here are a lot more economical in these respect; but while they do reflect the teens / 50s theme, they do seem to lack the attractive lustre and thrill of previous community designs.

Events and Activities

But in terms of major events, what does SL16B hold? Well, the best way the stay abreast of all that’s going on is via the official calendar of events, which I’ve embedded below.

However, there are a couple of significant events taking place which you might want easier reminding about – the weekday Meet the Lindens sessions, and the SL16B Music Fest, so I’m including a few notes on them here.

Meet the Lindens

Now a staple of SLB activities, Meet the Lindens features the opportunity to listen to and ask questions of, employees of Linden Lab at 14:00 SLT, Monday 24th June through Friday, 28th June at the SL16B Auditorium.

You can find out more about who is taking part this year in my blog post, SL16B: Meet the Lindens – when and who, however, the schedule for the sessions is given below for ease of reference.

Day (14:00 – 15:00 SLT)	Lindens
Monday 24th June	Patch Linden, Senior Director, Product Operations
Tuesday 25th June	Oz Linden, Senior Director, Second Life Engineering and April Linden, Systems Engineering Manager, Operations
Wednesday 26th, June	Ebbe Linden (Altberg), Linden Lab CEO
Thursday 27th June	Xiola Linden, Lead Community Manager, and Strawberry Linden, Marketing Specialist
Friday 28th June	Meet the Moles – the Linden Department of Public Works

 

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SL16B Music Fest

The SL16B Music Fest will take place on Friday 20th and Saturday 21st June, at the Main Stage at SL16B. Again, for ease of reference, the line-up of live performers is given below.

Time	Friday, June 21st	Saturday, June 22nd
10:00	Parker Static	Dreama Summerwind
11:00	R4 Anne (oXoRyanneoXo)	Mimi Carpenter
12:00 noon	Tempio Breil	Grif Bamaisin
13:00	Gabriel da Silva	Donn DeVore
14:00	Alazarin Mobius	Skye Galaxy
15:00	Evely Lane	Effinjay
16:00	Zak Claxton	Quartz

Other Points of Interest

The Welcome Area

The best place to start your visit, the Welcome Area features:

• A click-to-teleport map of the celebration regions that will deliver you to a destination (or the closest landing point to it).
• Free gifts and free 1950s-style avatars to help you fit the mood of the celebrations (and potentially reduce your rendering impact on others visiting the regions, should you choose to use them).
• The Swaginator HUD for the SL16B gift hunt.

The Tapestry of Time

An anniversary celebration is something the evokes memories and gives us cause to look back, and SL16B is no exception. Building on an event from 2018, this year’s celebrations include an expanded Tapestry of Time, a full region devoted to providing in words and video, the chance to look through SL’s long history from 2003 through to the present day. True, not everything has been recorded, but there’s enough within the region for the historically minded to find of interest.

Linden Homes Preview Regions

There are two Linden Homes preview regions.

• The first  – SL16B Stunning – presents the current crop of Traditional land-based homes, and the existing Houseboat type of home that can been found on Bellisseria, the Linden Homes continent.
• The second – SL16B Spellbound – presents the upcoming trailer-style homes that will form (a part of?) an upcoming new Linden Homes release.

The Linden Trailer Homes are liable to be gaining a lot of preview coverage, and they are certainly an interesting idea. However, the preview comes with an important note from the Lab:

Please keep in mind this region is just a PEEK at content that is still in progress. The final live regions will be somewhat different and will have some variety built into them just like the previous themes do, but this gives a taste of what is coming.

Patch Linden will have more to say on these units during his Meet the Linden presentation on Monday, June 24th. Following his session, I’ll have a more in-depth look at these new trailer homes including comments from Patch.

SL16B Shopping Event

While not a part of the SL16B regions per se, don’t forget that running from June 20th through until July 8th, 2019 is the SL16B Shopping & Gift Event. This can be found in the familiar Second Life shopping event mall, covering 15 regions (five for shopping) and decorated in the SL16B colours. See SLurls and Links below for the region SLurls

SLurls and Links

SLurls

Core SLurls	Exhibitor SLurls	Shopping Surls
SL16B Welcome Area	SL16B Astonish	Aurelian
Tapestry of Time	SL16B Captivate	Gilded
SL16B Auditorium	SL16B Enchant	Golden
SL16B Main Stage	SL16B Incredible	Halcyon
SL16B DJ Stage	SL16B Sparkle	Tinseled
Linden Homes Preview 1
Linden Homes Preview 2

General Links

• SL16B landing page and information
• SL16B event calendar
• SL16B Destination Guide Category
• SL16B Community Experiences
• SL16B Shopping and Gift Event page

On Monday, June 17th, 2019, Linden Lab announced the line-up of performers and the schedule for the SL16B music festival.

The Music Fest has been a part of the Second Life Birthday celebrations since SL12B in 2015. This year, the event will take place over the two days of Friday, June 21st and Saturday, June 22nd, on the performance stage in the SL16B region.

The event schedule is as follows:

Time	Friday, June 21st	Saturday, June 22nd
10:00	Parker Static	Dreama Summerwind
11:00	R4 Anne (oXoRyanneoXo)	Mimi Carpenter
12:00 noon	Tempio Breil	Grif Bamaisin
13:00	Gabriel da Silva	Donn DeVore
14:00	Alazarin Mobius	Skye Galaxy
15:00	Evely Lane	Effinjay
16:00	Zak Claxton	Quartz

Note the SLurl given in this piece will not be available for general use until SL16B opens.

The 16th anniversary of Second Life’s opening to the public at large – SL16B – is just around the corner (starting June 20th). And, as has been the case with SLB events over the last few years, the celebration will feature a series of Meet the Lindens sessions featuring members of the various teams within the Lab who work on Second Life.

The sessions will run daily through the week of the SL16B celebrations, and will be hosted at the SL16B Auditorium. They offer an opportunity to hear from – and likely ask questions of – Linden Lab staff who work on the platform.

All of the sessions will take place between 14:00 and 15:00 SLT, Monday, June 24th and Thursday, June 27th, with the schedule lining up as follows.

Day (14:00 – 15:00 SLT)	Lindens
Monday 24th June	Patch Linden, Senior Manager, Product Operations
Tuesday 25th June	Oz Linden, Technical Director for Second Life and April Linden, Second Life Operations Manager
Wednesday 26th, June	Ebbe Linden (Altberg), Linden Lab CEO
Thursday 27th June	Xiola Linden, Lead Community Manager, and Strawberry Linden

Friday, June 28th will see a (currently unadvertised, as awaiting names) session with some of the Moles.

For those who may be unfamiliar with some of the above names and their areas of expertise:

• Patch Linden oversees the content development teams, the Mainland Land Team, and the Linden Department of Public Works – LDPW, aka The Moles. As such, he oversees things like the development of the new Linden Homes continent, the Lab’s games and experiences such as Linden Realms and Horizons, and so on. He is also responsible for managing the individual Second Life and Sansar support teams, and the account support team.
• Oz Linden oversees the engineering side of Second Life – this encompasses viewer development, simulator development and a lot of the back-end services required by SL (e.g. the asset service, the appearance and baking services, etc.). This includes managing the development and implementation of SL projects and features such Bento, Animesh, the Environmental Enhancement Project, Bakes on Mesh, etc. On the simulator side of things, His team works closely with the Operations team.
• April Linden manages the team responsible for keeping all aspects of Second Life’s infrastructure – servers, network, etc., running. This involves more than just the simulator servers, encompassing as it does core systems such as the log-in services, and the back-end services as well.  This is the time that is directly engaged in handling service outages, protecting SL from things like DDoS attacks. When things do go sideways, April also takes responsibility for informing Second Life users on what happened and why (and LL’s efforts to avoid any future repeat) through her excellent post-mortem blog posts (like this one) which are recommended reading for anyone interested in understanding the complexities of Second Life.
• Ebbe Linden, as the Lab’s CEO since 2014, really needs no introduction. Open and honest, he has always endeavoured to keep SL residents appraised of business at the Lab  – including Sansar – and on the manage perspective on Second Life. Should anyone want a potted biography on him however, I offer the one I pieced together when he officially joined Linden Lab.
• Xiola Linden oversees the Second Life community team, which includes Strawberry Linden. Like many at the Lab, both Xiola and Strawberry are “former” residents of Second Life (quotes used as both remain active in-world on their personal accounts outside of their official capacity as Lindens).  Part of the Marketing Team, the community team is responsible for community relations, running the Second Life social media accounts, working on marketing projects, etc.

As with previous years, I will hopefully be recording each of the sessions, and will be producing a series of audio reports for each. These will comprise bullet-point summaries of the topics covered (I regret to say that producing full written transcripts of every session is too time-intensive for me to commit to), with accompanying audio, as well as links to the official video of each session.

Again, all these sessions will take place at the SL16B Auditorium – but please note that this SLurl will not work until SL16B officially opens.

Catch the SL16B page in the Destination Guide for more information on events and activities during the celebrations.

June 2019 marks the 16th anniversary of Second Life fully opening its doors to the public (and, as I’ve previously mentioned, Linden Lab’s own 20th anniversary as a company). As is the tradition, the anniversary will be marked by the Second Life Birthday event, marked by exhibitions, music, entertainment and more taking place across the SLB regions.

On Monday, April 1st, 2019 Linden Lab opened the doors to applications from exhibitors, performers, presenters and volunteers, with the blog post reading in part:

SL16B is coming this summer … This year, we are excited to return to being more involved in the organisation of all the events. In addition to the official Music Fests, costume parties,  and Shopping events, of the last few years, we’re also returning to our roots and participating more in the development and planning of the main SLB celebration.

Those wishing to apply to be involved in SL16B as exhibitors, performers or volunteers should follow the links below.

• Exhibitors should then read the Exhibitor Policies and complete the Exhibitor Application form
• Performers and Presenters should then read the Performance Policies and complete the Performance Application form.
  • Note that in difference to recent celebration applications, this form covers DJs, live musicians, performance arts, and those wishing to present a lecture or presentation – there is no separate presenters application this year.
• Volunteers (greeters, etc.), should complete the Volunteer Application form.

Notes for the above applications:

• When entering times in any of the above forms, please ensure you used Second Life Time (SLT).
• The closing date for all of the above applications is Wednesday, May 15th, 2019.

In addition, on March 14th, 2019, Linden Lab announced the SL16B Shopping Event (read here for more). Those wishing to apply to be a part of this event as a merchant should complete the Merchant Application form, no later than Saturday, June 1st, 2019.

The SL16B Shopping Event: scheduled to run throughout the shopping period, this multi-region shopping event is now accepting applications from merchants. Those wishing to participate should ensure they have applied by June 1st, 2019.

We’re all familiar with the Second Life Birthday (or more correctly, anniversary, given Second Life is technically older than the celebrated date), marking the month and date on which the platform opened its doors to the public – June 23rd, 2003.

In 2018, we celebrated the platform’s 15th anniversary – a remarkable milestone given the speed at which software and hardware and platforms themselves can rise to prominence before fading away, replaced by the Next Big Thing.

However, as Linden Lab noted in a March 14th blog post, this year’s anniversary marks another special year:

Sixteen years ago, on June 23rd, 2003, Second Life launched to the public. Though it feels like just yesterday and a lifetime ago at the same time, this year we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go retro and embrace the “Sweet Sixteen” theme for our big party. Sock hops, bowling alleys, and late nights at the diner were a quintessential part of many teenagers lives back in the 1950s, but the 1950s were also a time of political and social change. The world was shocked by the iconic ‘Elvis pelvis,’ and poodle and pencil skirts changed the fashion world forever. Rebellion became the titillating pastime among all that soda shoppe sweetness. It was an era that – like Second Life – rocked and rolled! So, this summer we’re throwing a 1950s themed SL16B with a TON of fun events and happenings. Here is a brief run-down of just a few.

– Linden Lab official blog post

This year the official celebration period will run from Thursday, June 20th, 2019 through to Tuesday, July 8th, 2019, and to mark it the Lab is promising an array of activities, including:

• The SL16B Shopping Event: scheduled to run throughout the celebration period, this multi-region shopping event is now accepting applications from merchants. Those wishing to participate should ensure they have applied by June 1st, 2019.
• The SL16B Music Fest:  popular during recent SLB events, the Music Fest will be returning for 2019, and details on how performers can apply will be forthcoming soon.

There will also be the grand community celebration, plus from the Lab the return of the Swaginator and gifts and parties.

Linden Lab Also Turns Twenty

2019 also marks anther significant anniversary, one that is also worth noting and I would hope (assuming plans aren’t already in-hand) it will also form a part of the SL16B celebrations: the 20th anniversary of the founding of Linden Lab itself.

Linden Research – to give the company its formal name, although it does business under the name of Linden Lab – was founded in 1999 by Philip Rosedale, the company’s first CEO and former Chief Technology Officer of  Real Networks. The company’s original focus was on the development of a immersive virtual reality system comprising both hardware and software known as “The Rig” (which, rumour would have it, still lies in boxes at the Lab’s head offices in San Francisco.

However, unable to develop a commercially viable version of The Rig, Linden Lab turned to software application, producing LindenWorld, the precursor of Second Life.

Initially developed by Andrew Linden, one of the first employees at the Lab (and who would remain with the company until opting to re-join Philip Rosedale and work on the fledgling High Fidelity). LindenWorld wasn’t open to the public, and was more a game than social environment, with a focus on guns and the avatars were made out of prims and carried the name (appropriately enough, of Primitars.

Then in 2001, during a meeting with investors, that Rosedale and his team noticed those at the meeting were particularly responsive to the collaborative, creative potential of the nascent Second Life.

Thus, the objective, game-like focus of the platform’s development shifted towards a more community-drive, social environment, focused on user-created content, and thus Second Life as we  know it today was “born”. On March 13th, 2002, Steller Sunshine became the first public resident of Second Life, and the platform’s public beta commenced in October of that year. Then in June 2003, Linden Lab released Second Life to the world at large.

The first Second Life trailer

So … here’s an early “happy Birthday” to Linden Lab itself. While we may not always agree with the company or its decisions, the fact remains that without the Lab, many of us might never have entered user-collaborative, immersive social digital environments. So I hope that SL16B will mark the company’s birthday as much as it marks SL’s anniversary.