Growing Shrooms

Hello reader! Apologies for my distinct lack of updates on the Second Life front of late - truth be told, it's simply because of my complete lack of activity in-world. My time spent in SL has greatly diminished of late, not through a lack of interest, but simply because RL demands it.

That being said, someone reminded me a couple of weeks ago that it was SLxB time again and inquired as to whether the Shire would be having a presence there again. Seeing that the theme of this year's SL9B event is 'community', I felt it was imperative that we would; after all, it has been said a number of times in the past that the Shire community is one of the strongest and largest on the Grid.

So I'm here at Jamboree, slowly putting the plot build together with the help of my trusted friends Etheria Parrott and Panacea Pangaea, who between them could build, texture and code almost anything. The above picture is just a teaser of what our plot consist of, but I think it fits perfectly with the natural feel of our home sims and offers a good general picture of what our community has to offer all year round. It's an incredibly difficult thing to bottle, as by its very nature 'community' is only really defined by the people who take part in the events, but I'm trying to involve as many tinies as I can by asking for snapshots of tiny life. We'll have a method of hearing poems written by Copper Mistral's Poetry Slam group too.

And as an amazing unplanned bonus, our plot neighbours the plot for in-world percussion group DRUM!

SL9B opens to the general populace on June 18th. More information can be found on the official blog.

Kickin' It

A few weeks ago, Zayn Till (he of the ownership of the Shires) and Wynx Whiplash (she of the creator of the tiny avatars) launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund their efforts to try and transpose the characters of Second Life into a first-world Raglan Shire project, and with a week to go, not only have supporters helped them reach their target amount of $8,500, they've taken it past $10,000!

This is a great result for the Jazz Paws team, and I truly hope their efforts pay off, as their vision far exceeds the desire to see these characters in a media away from a digital one. I hope they both utilise the talents of Shire residents at some point too! The community didn't get to where it was simply of the position of prims, but the people behind the avatars!

Goodbye Tiggs!

Tiggs Linden by Marianne McCann

Some slightly sad news to report: Tiggs Linden, one of the very few (if not only) full-time tiny Lindens is to leave Linden Lab on March 9th.

Tiggs has been working out of the Boston office of the Lab for a number of years but has decided that now is the time to move on to pastures new. "This was my choice. I still believe in Second Life and I think it is a viable, healthy place to be," Tiggs told the Friends of Raglan Shire group. He's off to work for Turbine, developers of some other popular MMO games including Lord Of The Rings Online.

Tiggs will undoubtedly be sorely missed by many around the Grid, but by none more so than those in the Friends of Raglan Shire group. As part of that group, Tiggs would often allow residents to throw questions his way about how things worked (or didn't) or why things happened (or didn't) and would very happily and succinctly answer and offer explanations. It was great to see a Linden interacting first-hand with residents, many of whom had probably never heard from a Linden before, let alone have seen or stood alongside one of them at the many Raglan events that Tiggs would come alone to see.

Tiggs has promised to stay in Second Life though - "I'm just leaving the Lab, not Second Life" - and stay as a tiny too. He also suggested (tongue-in-cheek) that he may teach a class or two at Raglan U, the Shire's in-world learning facility. From FoRS group chat:

[12:51] Toady Nakamura: and imagine the scripting classes you could teach at Raglan U
[12:51] Tiggs Linden: i do know a tad about scripting
[12:51] Morton Wheels: cool :-)
[12:51] mouseplay Resident: loll scripting classses?
[12:51] Toady Nakamura: I knows
[12:51] One Rhiadra: ooo scriptings
[12:52] Morganne Darkstone: oooo...wuld love t'learn lots about scripting...
[12:52] Tiggs Linden: "how to bring a region down"

Thanks for being such a wonderful source of help and support, Tiggs and we all wish you well in Middle-Earth!

Happy New Year!

Hello dear reader, hope you had a good Christmas holiday period and fabulous New Year break. As soon as I do something noteworthy in Second Life, I'll be sure to tell you about it! The cold chill of RL keeps my brain's creativity levels somewhere in line with the mercury in the thermometer. I'll do something soon, I'm sure.

For now, stay safe, stay warm, stay awesome.

Iron Waffle at 'Theatre De La Talent' 2011

Raglan talent show, originally uploaded by Q aka dymoon (Qyhat Harbor).

Iron Waffle was a rock cover band featuring Zayn Till, Wynx Whiplash, Teal Freenote, Krull Quar and Etheria Parrott and was the last act billed on the night's Raglan Talent Show.

Podium Soapbox

Tonight was Raglan Shire's fifth annual Talent Show as part of the Showvember month of activity. It was great fun, as usual, with about a dozen performers from the Shire groups performing various acts including singing, acrobatics, sketches, magic shows, etc. Once again - for the fifth year in succession - I was asked to MC the show; my talent clearly for being able to talk incessantly when required. It's a task that is both easy and difficult at the same time: if you've prepared a script, it's easy enough to just copy-and-paste your text; it's when there are gaps to be filled, to keep the show going that it can get tricky. Still, it seems I have a penchant to be able to say something when needed (whether it's the right or wrong thing). As I told one performer, I'm only the glue to join the acts together; if I fall together, I let them down more than anything.

But I did take the opportunity this year to read off a piece of text that I'd written earlier in the year; bizarrely, it was part of an obituary that I'd written about the number of real life losses that have affected the Shire groups over the past two years - the deaths of Stillpink Sandgrain, Daisyblue Hefferman, Har Dyrssen and Nitzrokk Saru, as well as the alleged loss of Jammers Inaka* - and the impact that they've had on those they were around online.

Here's my oratory from tonight.

Second Life isn’t just a game - it’s an advanced, real-time social networking experience. It allows us to immediately connect with people from all over the globe to share a vast range of interests. 

We can converse with each other as easily and as efficiently - most of the time at least - as we can with someone in the same room. From these connections, communities grow. The Shires themselves have expanded over the past four years from up to 100 members of the Friends of Raglan Shire group within its first 6 months to well over a thousand fellows now.

And it continues to grow; our creativity, technical knowledge, warmth, and general friendliness have made the Shires a wholly enjoyable place to explore and reside in and the community - as a sum of all of our contributions, no matter how small you may feel you have contributed - has been the main reason for that. For me especially, and I hope for you too, it reminds us that we shouldn’t ever take the connections we make with one another for granted. 

No-one person is better than the next; we’re all different and we all contribute in different ways. Whatever difference of opinion you may have with someone else, always be gracious, be helpful and kind and enjoy your time amongst your friends, neighbours and tiny acquaintances. 

That’s always been the Raglan way and it’s made the community one of the strongest, most caring and warm-hearted in all of Second Life.

Then I introduced a group of basement kitties performing covers of Monkees songs whilst a hamster rode on a barrel around them. Never a dull day in the Shires!

*I haven't addressed the Jammers situation, and I don't know if I will here. I deleted my original blog post about her supposed death earlier in the year, not out of disrespect but that it had no relevance anymore when she turned up again. It's a contentious situation, and I appreciate others views surrounding it; all I'll say is that I find it astonishing that those who would say "if only I had one more day with this person to tell them..." can so easily turn that person away when they do return.

Scaling Back

Adelebsen Isle by MarillaAnne

Despite not being especially prolific in terms of building over the past year (due primarily to the distraction of a RL house move), I've been able to rack up a fair amount of sales over the past few months - but never really more than enough to cover my rents. I've paid out for a shop space on Heron Shire (my main store), one on Raglan Shire, a houseboat on Heron Shire for (my wife) Kitti Dumpling, a home plot on Raglan Commons (despite still having my Linden home), a shop on Extrovirtual and a shop on Adelebsen Isle.

I've earned a bit in Second Life over the past five years, but never the kind of amounts that would pay for anything substantial in RL - I did cash out some L$ last year though to buy this for our wedding - and as exciting as that would be, I can't imagine it happening now. Sales in-world, especially for a niche market like tinydom, have slowly ground to a crawl over the past couple of years. There are good days and good weeks and the Tiny Swagtastic $50L Weekend offer has proved to be a great success; but the profits never seem to outweigh the costs and the majority of my sales actually come from the Marketplace - another example that goes some way to proving this point about the closing of ElvenMyst to be true.

So it was with a heavy heart that I decided I'd need to start scaling back on my costs, losing a couple of the Shire properties in favour of refocusing on the others. But another decision has sadly been made for me this week with the news that MarillaAnne Slade and Michmeister Slade can no longer afford to keep Adelebsen Isle running. I really liked what they'd done at Adelebsen Isle, and loved to explore around and see the blend of goods from both tiny merchants and more regular sized folk too; they were able to attract a good number of creators who I'd never encountered before, which is always refreshing. I just hope that both Marilla and Mitch find the energy and enthusiasm to stay around in SL for a while longer; it's one thing to lose a good sim, but quite another to lose good sim managers and creators.

I'm not giving up all in-world presence - far from it, I think there's still a great deal to be gained from having an in-world shop and I love kitting them out! - but I'm downsizing. I'm not alone in doing this; several others have had to adopt a similar approach recently, but I hope that the spaces I free up will be quickly snapped up by someone wanting to call the Shire home or make use of a shop space at the heart of one of the most endearing communities on the Grid.


UPDATE (11/11/11): Well, it seems Adelebsen has had a stay! MarillaAnne has announced that she has found a sponsor to keep the Isle alive for at least another three months!