And we're done..

The anniversary finished this last minute. The site is still there, so go see it while it lasts, and enjoy!

Five weeks and 700 hours of my time went into it. This coming week is going to seem pretty quiet by comparison.

Thank you, Second Lifers.

One thing I've learned

Organising the SL anniversary has taught me a lot of things. I'll likely talk about a bunch of them in time, but here's one.

SL communities (at the present time), form around seed people. If there aren't any pre-existing ones, or they becomes absent for a long period, the community self-selects them.Usually it's one or two. Rarely as many as four. SL communities organise themselves around who they see as the key person or people.

One of the downsides of this is the tendency for a community to suffer from organisational paralysis if the person or persons are absent, unavailable or just too busy. We encountered a lot of that with the community groups for the anniversary, many of who were just not able to get anything together in the temporary absence or preoccupation of their chosen folks.

In the end, nine out of ten of the communities who we were in touch with never got it together. Many more never contacted us at all. Certainly a lot of groups thought "Who? Us? Why would people be interested in us?". We missed you folks. Please - whoever is organising next year - contact them. SL is full of diverse communities and viewpoints. It's worth showing what you're all about, and any celebration of SL is diminished by your absence.

We got some of you, at least. I wish we could have gotten more. SL doesn't seem to lend itself to very well to non-hierarchical autocratic communities (there are some wonderful exceptions, of course), but the constraint of having a first life, makes it easier for people to pick someone to follow, and just follow along. When the majority do that, it makes things harder, both from the point of view of the leader(s) and the remainder who have other ideas.

I'm sure that will change over time - while SL has the tools to let you run a business that makes or loses real money, it's support for communication and collaboration is much more limited, and that puts very high prices in time and effort on better organisational models. Those prices are higher than most people with first-lives can afford. Perhaps by the next anniversary things will be very different on that front.

So..

• What do communities need to organise themselves in better and more effective ways?
• What tools do we - as residents - need to communicate and collaborate more effectively?
• Remember to put yourselves forward next year, darnit! So many communities got missed that should have been showcased.

In the kitchen

A lot of you are wondering, and asking why you're not seeing me at the anniversary celebration, except for the briefest errands.

Well, I've used way too much bandwidth on the planning and organisation. I've got to conserve, otherwise I won't make it until the end of the month. No, there's no way for me to get more.

So I'll be stuck away from people and places mostly for much of the next week. Besides, I'm stuck in IMs mostly on background organisation, keeping things working.

So, for now, I'm working in the kitchen until the party is done and cleaned up.

Get out there and enjoy it. You are the ones who will ultimately make it worthwhile or a waste.

Success?

Well, it's near the end of the first day, and overall things are looking quite successful. The DJ's and musicians are getting a lot of exposure in the Celebration Dome, which has been busy since it opened right after the grid update completed.

I'm not sure quite how you gauge the success of these things, exactly, but it's all looking fairly smooth and busy at this time.

I think we've got virtually 24 hour DJ and Live Music coverage until late sunday. Check it out.

Countdown...

With only a few days to go before SL's third anniversary celebration is due to open, the builds are being finalised. Now, of course, it's all coming out of the woodwork at the last minute. Community showcases, speeches, music - half of it's still not locked down. Waiting on you, folks. Help us out. Time is short.

In the meantime, here's Torley and I being menaced by a giant bear. Yes, that's a giant version of one of my signature bears, brought to rampaging life by Shawk Pertwee.

Community Showcase contacts

If you want to be a part of SL's third birthday celebration by showcasing your community, now is the time to get things moving. There's not a lot of time left.

Contact Gonta Maltz or Spiderkitten Mirabeau who I've got working on liaising with the community showcases.

If you're a DJ or live musician and want to strut your (PG) stuff at the party dome, contact Spiderkitten Mirabeau.

Birthday parties

I'm not actually doing all this celebration planning and organisation single-handedly. I've put together a team of people.

• Torley Linden I've got running hither and yon for me, doing all the lindeny things that I need done.
• Mera Pixel is the site boss. Organising the main SL-ebration site, and the builders and scripters who will be working on it is her task.
• Mimi Thereian is handling parade organisation.
• Gonta Maltz and SpiderKitten Mirabeau are handling liaison work with the community showcases, and some marketing and PR. SpiderKitten is also trying to organise DJ's and live music for the big dome.
  
• Amalthea Blanc is handling the resident art/sculpture display which will occupy approximately a third of the SL-ebration site.
• Kai Sachertorte is trying to line up our historical talks.
• Tao Takashi is minding the calendar, and the video showcase.
  

Me? I'm taking care of organisation, direction, vision, signage, meetings, clarification, information, ridiculous dictatorial pronouncements and the development of duodenal ulcers.

Like a startup company, we're all sort of mucking in wherever there seems to be a need.

Later there will be many more people to thank.

Plywood - Sign of the times

Well, the first lot of signage is set out, thanks to the rude enslavement of my evil twin, Torley.

Nathan Walton and Monica Young of Plywood, the webcomic consented to do some extra graphics for the signs. In fact, I got six! The signs change on a regular schedule.

Speaking of schedules, there aren't any yet, but there will be. As we get closer to the celebration period, the events schedule will firm up some, and the signs will start giving out useful event schedules.

You can also track the celebration calendar by iCal, an XML feed, or pop open Google Calendar and search for Second Life Third Birthday.

Birthday plans

Expect to see some signs soon.




Want to be involved? Contact me and I'll make sure you talk to the right person.

Looking for communities who want to showcase where they've come from, where they're going and what they have to offer. Want to do a day or a half day (or several of them) of displays, events and Q&A's in your community to show what you've got?

IM me in-world, or email me. You've got about 3 weeks to get your community together.

Want to put something on but have nowhere to do it? Let's talk.

Design, plan, measure

Hard at work on site design.

There's no stopping Mera. She's like a machine.


Totally.

A simple task

My task appears on the surface to be a simple one:
Plan and organise a birthday party for a quarter of a million people, furries, robots, tinies, goreans, role-players, and alternative communities. In three weeks.

What can possibly go wrong?

Okay. Yul Brynner in chaps, maybe. But aside from that, I mean...