SL11B Is Coming!

SL11B

Soon Second Life™ will be turning 11 years old, and of course that means a huge party!

The event will be held from Sunday June 22nd – Sunday June 29th, 2014. There will be 11 sims worth of amazing exhibits, music, conversation, debate, firework displays, games, puzzles, sports and much, much more!!

Actually, even that won’t be the end of it, as the sims will be open for a further seven days for everyone to explore.

The theme this year takes inspiration from a quote by the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill:

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

When Winston Churchill said this in 1943, he could not have imagined a virtual world like Second Life, but now, more than seventy years later, his words have come true in this new world that we have created.

Last year’s birthday celebration was an important milestone — 10 years. And, appropriately, Linden Lab’s theme was reflective of the past 10 years and a review of how far SL has come. This year is a good time to examine where we are going — what does the future hold for SL and it’s many residents? Where are we headed?

As stated on the SL Community Celebration website: “If there’s one thing that makes SL unique, it’s our community of users. Users from all corners of the globe come together under a single umbrella to build a community that comes from our minds and our imaginations. Everything we see, touch and use in Second Life is a product of our imaginations, our minds, and our community.

Want to get involved?

Applications are now open for Performers, Volunteers and speakers and performers  in the Auditorium. Lots of volunteers are needed to make this a success, so please consider whether you can give some time to helping out.  It should be a lot of fun!

Applications for Exhibitors (i.e. people who want a plot to build on) opened April 27th. The closing date for Exhibitor, Performer and Auditorium applications is May 20th, so don’t hesitate too long!

Need more information?

You can find out more on their website, and by following them on Facebook and Twitter.

There is also a Flickr page where you can paste your own images when the sims open.  In the meantime, keep an eye on the Flickr feed, because the team will be posting some sneak peek pics!

Main site: http://slcommunitycelebration.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SLBCommunity
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SLBCommunityCelebration
Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/groups/slcommunitycelebration/pool/

They have also posted these promotional videos, which are kind of corny but feel free to watch:

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers, ZI Social Media Manager

 

Wedding Expo May 1st thru May 24th!

ZI Expo Welcome Area_001Did you know that ZoHa Islands has a business district? Did you know that they hold themed business expos regularly throughout the year? Coming up in May is the 2014 Wedding Expo!

ZoHa Islands Business District Office holds themed expos every month and the space is FREE! This will be open to ALL creators, you do not have to have land with us. ZoHa business owners get benefits like free advertising on our ad boards and our website along with free business consults from the business district manager Deelish Wishbringer. ZoHa’s Business Districts are the best place to be for your business! So if this will be your first visit we encourage you to take a look around, you might find your perfect business space!

Each creator will be given a space to highlight their product or service (per approval). If you have large items you can display a mini version of your item with a sign that says “not actual size” or something to that effect.
You will be expected to be there as much as possible to talk to potential customers. This is not an open invitation to spam people, greeting them and asking if they’d like to know more about your product/s is the better way to go. This is a great opportunity to get your items seen as this will be heavily advertised!

Here are the Expos we’ll be offering, any are subject to cancellation due to lack of interest:

♥ Wedding Expo – May 1st to May 24th

♥ Home & Garden Expo – June 1st to June 28th

♥ Vehicle Expo – July 6th to July 20th

♥ Game/RP Expo- Aug 14th to Aug 31st

We are open to suggestions, please IM Deelish Wishbringer if you have any good ones!

We will be supplying an easel for you to put a sign with your logo on no scripts in this please (if your display items are scripted in a way that makes them work or do something that is okay). You may include in your sign an info card and a landmark to your place of business or a link to your Market Place listings on a notecard. Set the sign to sell items contents for $0L so that when you are not able to physically be there people have the option to grab your info. (you may want to add text to your logo that says “right click/buy for 0L for info or something to that effect).

There will be 15 to 20 spaces per event. Time allotments may vary per space depending on interest., meaning the more interest the less time allotment per space to allow everyone interested to get a chance to exhibit. Once set up you will be informed on how much time you will have in your space, once you are informed of your time allotment it will not change. You will have 90 prims for your set up.

Please fill out the application by copying and pasting it, putting it on a nc and sending it to Deelish Wishbringer in Second Life.
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1) Your SL name:

2) Your business name:

3) Your product/s name/s:

Products need to be seen in person to be pre-approved please include a landmark to the product. If you do not have one, please say so, and Deelish Wishbringer will IM you to set up an appointment with you to arrange an in-world view of the items you wish to display.

4) Your LM (if you don’t have an in-world shop please IM Deelish Wishbringer):

5) Your commitment to showing your items for the time allotment given and being there as much as possible to talk about your product, give out info etc.

6) which expo are you interested in?
Answer here:

[ ] Wedding Expo – May 1st to May 24th
[ ] Home & Garden Expo – June 1st to June 28th
[ ] Vehicle Expo – July 6th to July 20th
[ ] Game/RP Expo- Aug 14th to Aug 31st

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We are open to suggestions, please IM Deelish Wishbringer if you have any good ones!

Once your application is in and you have been pre-approved, you will then be added to the expo group so that we can contact you easier and you can rez your items at the expo when the time comes.

The expos will be held here: ZoHa Islands Exposition Area

Here are some pics of our current vendors that are signed up and ready for the upcoming Wedding Expo:

Vendor: Smooth Designs
ZI Wedding Expo smooth designs_001

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vendor: Red Rose Jewelry
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Vendor: A Ceremony To Remember
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Vendor: Lovers Village
ZI Wedding Expo Lovers Village_001

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vendor: Beloved Jewelry
ZI Wedding Expo Beloved Jewelry_001

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hurry! Space is limited, and spots are filling up quickly! This is a GREAT opportunity for any business! Don’t pass it up!

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers
ZI Social Media Manager

Ebbe Altberg: For the People

“We’re here, we’re willing to listen. We’re willing to engage in dialog and have conversations about what is the future and how do we get there. And that the doors are open now, again, and we want to talk to you, we want to understand you, we want to understand how to make you successful, whichever way you feel is required to make that happen. So that’s it. I’m here, I’m happy to talk to all of you, I’m gonna learn and listen and most of all, I want to make you successful, because that’s how we all can become successful.” ~ Ebbe Altberg, April 9. 2014

At a recent in-world conference for VWBPE (Virtual World Best Practices in Education), one of the keynote speakers was Linden Lab’s new CEO, Ebbe Altberg. This was a wonderful opportunity to really get to hear from Ebbe since he was installed as CEO of Linden Labs in February of 2014. You can see the video of Ebbe’s entire address here.

During his 84 minute keynote address, Ebbe touched on his thoughts for the future, gave updates, and answered questions from the audience. He addressed not only issues within the educational community, but also in SL and virtual worlds as a whole.

First of all, Ebbe feels that education is a very important partner with Second Life. He has already reinstated better pricing for educational organizations and nonprofits. He wants to reconnect with the education community and feels it is an important part of the virtual world experience. He is looking forward to education being an important part of SL from this point forward.

Another priority is working with the legal department regarding revamping the TOS (Terms Of Service) regarding content creation in order to mitigate the rumors that Linden Labs is into stealing the rights to user created content and selling it to benefit themselves. They are working to change the wording to reassure creators so they will feel confident that Linden Labs won’t steal their unique user created content, and wants to make it very clear that content creators are owners of their own creations. He is very interested in ensuring that creators can get their content both in and out of SL. Linden Labs is not trying to lock them in to SL only and wants to ensure people can export their items to the metaverse and open sim. Ebbe wants to see users getting the most out of SL.

Ebbe spoke about LL’s position regarding the metaverse and open sim. He feels that he’s glad that others, such as Philip Rosedale’s High Fidelity, are exploring this area, and that it is important for growth going forward. However, Ebbe feels that we need to get SL right first, and that we still have a long way to go. He feels that SL is too difficult for most people, and the learning curve is really steep. Ebbie states that he wants to make SL more user friendly and easier for people to use who are new to virtual worlds. Second Life needs to be easier to use and that we need to make improvements to the user experience. Linden Labs is working on this and they have developed some short-term goals, but most changes are long-term and will take time to develop.

A great deal of progress has been made over the last two years and most of these changes have been behind the scenes, such as a huge improvement to avatars and the ability to have lots of avatars on a sim without crashing. Change comes to SL like a slow drip — they’re constantly improving in small increments.

Future Technology
Ebbie touched on the fact that Linden Labs is actively in development on new technologies — specifically Occulus (a beta viewer has already been released, and an update is coming soon). One of the issues being worked on is how to interact in world without a keyboard and mouse.

Service
Ebbe has received many inquiries about whether or not the in-world Community Liaison between Linden Labs (LL) and SL users will be reintroduced, and the answer is “not at this time.” However, a very big priority of Ebbe’s is to reopen the dialogue between educators and Linden Labs, and to make sure that talk turns into action. Linden Labs wants to develop priorities and work on them to make progres towards those goals.

He is also encouraging employees of LL to go in-world as Lindens. He has lifted the rule against LL employees going in-world as Lindens, and wants to encourage them to get out there and interact with end users and really see what is going on in SL.

There is a perception that SL is nothing but a venue for gratuitous sex. Ebbe feels that there is a need to try and market SL better, so that we can improve the reputation and help people understand the breadth and depth of all that SL has to offer. The good and wonderful things in SL aren’t being seen outside the walls of SL, and that needs to change.

Strategy Going Forward
Some of the things that are in Ebbe’s top priorities in the immediate future include:

• Taking Linden dollars as a currency outside of SL. This is a massive undertaking, and getting RL bankers and so forth to go along with it is huge. They have to ensure transactions are safe and there is controls in place to avoid fraud and money laundering. It needs to be safe, legal and compliant. Ebbe compared this project to Bit Coin.

• Make SL and the viewer more intuitive and easier to use: There was an attempt by LL to simplify the viewer, and it didn’t work. Ebbe says that he is looking into why this didn’t work, because once again, SL’s learning curve is so steep it often chases off potential new residents before they can even get started.

• HiFi in SL: Linden Labs is working on making a richer avatar experience by bringing emotions to avatars. They’re in the early stages of development, but they want to make it so you can interact with avatars and be able to see their emotions, as well as hearing it in voices or emoting it in type. He wants to move avatars to beyond just being “dolls” and actually being able to see expressions of surprise, anger, happiness and have that transmitted visually.

Audience Questions:

• Will LL be working on the ability to export content out of SL?
Currently, Linden Labs isn’t actively preventing this from happening. Perhaps what is happening is that the way to export isn’t simple enough, or isn’t being communicated, but people currently do export content. Perhaps they are using a work-around, but LL isn’t actively preventing this. Which brings up another problem, where creators need to be the original creator of every single piece of the item in order to export it, and so if you’ve added a script or other component created by someone else, then you cannot export the item. And the reasons for this are simple: We need to make sure people can’t pirate your work by exporting it out of SL and into other platforms, but clearly LL needs to work out how to allow creators to export items with other user-created content and still make it so that your content cannot be pirated.

• There is a problem with schools and other groups in Japan, Australia and New Zealand having issues connecting to SL. Will it be possible for people in New Zealand to be able to connect to SL servers using their high speed network? And what can they do to expedite communications with SL more effectively?

Linden Labs is attempting to partner with companies in Asia to help understand what their issues are and how to fix this problem. How do we distribute hardware globally, and there will always be some users who are going to be far away from hardware and thus unable to connect to SL without some latency. The long-term goal is to invest in more hardware and distribute it globally as much as is feasible.

• How is Linden Labs addressing some concerns that educators have with allowing K-12 children onto the grid and still ensure their security and safety?

Linden Labs is attempting to make the main grid better, safer, and cleaner without restricting what adults can do, and then expand it to include children. LL is not currently planning on resurrecting the teen grid because it’s not worth it and it’s not a priority and it takes up too many resources for limited content. Right now, LL’s priorities are solving the problem of ease of use, solving quality issues, making technology more flexible. Then, down the road, we can offer more dedicated special interest audiences like that in a safe manner. But it’s not currently a top priority.

• Community Development — We want to see LL office hours in world back and more visible Lindens in-world.

Once again, the restrictions against allowing staff to go in-world as Lindens has been lifted. Staff need to interact with users, and find out what their issues are. LL would like to have meetings but there needs to be ground rules, such as keeping it calm, make sure actionable items come out of the meetings, and that they are not simply gripe sessions. Perhaps a good way to connect with special interest groups, such as E-sports, the bar association, music groups, machinima groups, etc. would be to create an area where these groups can post the dates and times of their meetings and informational get-togethers. Then LL staff can go there, find something they’d like to attend, and then be able to go there. Ebbe stated that he would like to be involved in that, too. Linden Labs is working towards more transparency, and they want to repair that communication. Special interest groups are welcomed and encouraged to invite LL staff to participate in their events and meetings.

In conclusion, Ebbe stated that he is excited to be here and being part of the cutting edge of this type of technology. The possibilities are endless. Advances need to continue to happen, and LL should be at the forefront of these advancements.

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers
ZoHa Islands Social Media Manager

4th Annual Autism Awareness ~ Lighting the Way 2014

I visited the Autism Awareness sims and took some photos. Please take the time to visit these connecting sims and donate to a very worthy cause. ZoHa Islands is a major sponsor of this event, as they have donated the two sims for their use. They are Marbella Bay and Margarita Bay. There is a clickable slurl here.

Here are some pics. Their website is here. Check the schedule of events, or wander the vendors at the sim and help support Autism Awareness in the month of April!

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I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers
ZI Social Media Manager

MadPea’s Lost Mine Hunt ~ Part 3

After collecting all the crystals, I returned to the mine entrance, and as I clicked on it, it swung open, inviting me inside. I thought to myself, “Ahh this must be the end. Now I’ll be collecting my goodies!” Alas, once again I was very pleasantly surprised!

Here’s what the mine entrance looked like as the crystals activated it:
Mine entrance with crystals cropped

As I strode forward, it automatically TP’d me to deep inside the mine, and it was breathtakingly beautiful. The crystals glowed blue, and I gazed around in awe.

Lost Mine Crystals cropped

My HUD had changed once again, I smiled gleefully to myself, realizing that I was not yet done with this hunt, and it had just gotten interesting! My little pink helper had gone silent, so I knew that this third part I was on my own. I rubbed my hands gleefully and proceeded forward. Looking at my HUD, I knew I was going to have to collect seven gems, without my helper, and a rabbit’s warren of tunnels to explore. This was going to be challenging and fun! I was not disappointed.

I had to wander the tunnels, to find seven of these signs, which upon clicking would collect a gem, and when my collection was complete, I would be able to find the treasure.
Inside mine collection point cropped

When I was finished, my HUD looked like this:
Final look of hud cropped

Meanwhile, I had to hunt for and collect all seven gems. This third part of the Lost Mine Hunt is truly one of MadPea’s very best yet! It is a masterpiece of illusion, games, and puzzles. The textures were amazing, and the ambiance was haunting, as the mine whistled with eerie wind. You would occasionally hear the flap of some creature’s wings (bats, perhaps??) and the dripping of water echoing. That, combined with the half darkness of the tunnels made you feel like you were truly inside a cave.

inside mine more tunnels_001

As you wandered the tunnels, there were roadblocks in the form of puzzles. One was a door, and I had to rotate the pieces of the puzzle until they aligned, and the door opened into this, where I had to search for one of the gem signs:
Winter Wonderland in Mine cropped

At another point, I fell through the floor and landed in this cave, where I had to solve this laser puzzle, so the laser went through the mirror and opened the door. Don’t worry this isn’t a spoiler; this is definitely not the solution! You have to turn the pieces so the laser pierces the mirror.
inside mine laser maze cropped

At one point, I had to hop onto floating rocks as I searched for the gems. Several times, I got turned around, and ended up clicking on the map, which teleported me back to the mine entrance, and I began from the beginning, until I finally found that final elusive gem. For me, the hardest one to find was the silver gem.

Once my gem collection was complete, I headed for the final destination, which was blocked until I solved a water puzzle, where two tanks of water could be filled and emptied until you were able to get the right balance. The gate opened, and I ended up in this room, where I grabbed a mine car, and it rode me through the mine until it dumped me out in the treasure room, where I collected all 21 of my prizes.

Mine cart ride to the treasure cropped

I won’t show you the treasure room; you’re going to have to see it for yourself! 🙂 The prizes were wonderful and so much fun to go home and unpack.

This was my favorite MadPea hunt ever! I loved it, especially the end. Don’t miss this one; you will be disappointed if you do! I’m already looking forward to the next one! Great job, MadPea! Thanks for making our SL so much fun!

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers
ZI Social Media Manager

Heartbleed SSL Vulernability and SL

Please read this important post by Linden Labs about the Heartbleed vulnerability and Second Life:

by Community Manager Linden Lab on ‎04-10-2014 02:45 PM

“Many of you may have read about the Heartbleed SSL vulnerability that is still affecting many Internet sites.

You do not need to take extra action to secure your Second Life password if you have not used the same password on other websites. Your Second Life password was not visible via Heartbleed server memory exposure. No secondlife.com site that accepts passwords had the vulnerable SSL heartbeat feature enabled.

If you used the same password for Second Life that you used on a third-party site, and if that third-party site may have been affected by the vulnerability, you should change your password.

Supporting sites such as Second Life profiles are hosted on cloud hosting services. Some of these sites were previously vulnerable to Heartbleed, which may have exposed one of these servers’ certificates. As an extra precaution, we are in the process of replacing our SSL certificates across the board. This change will be fully automatic in standard web browsers.

Thank you for your interest in keeping Second Life safe!”

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers,
ZI Social Media Manager