Yeah, i was part of Burn2 this year again! Had a tiny space with an installation as you can see in the image above. The name was “Jewel”, the crystals in the ground were sending the “earth powers” to a big diamond hanging in the neck of a huge mannequin. In the installation it was possible to sit on the diamond and be the jewel of the necklace. It was nothing too big, but it was fun to build and set. I would like to thank Menno Ophelia for his help in this installation with the crystals! He is a sweetie!

I had a lot of fun in Burn2 this year. Although it was smaller than ever (only 4 sims) it was nicely organized and had really good art installations and events. Thanks from here to all the Burn2 team, specially the Rangers! Maybe i missed some really cool stages like the ones a couple of years ago, but they were cool too. The important is the “burners” (as they call the participants and the visitors) were in the mood to have a cool event, so we had it.

As you know Burn2, as Second Life edition of Burning Man festival is not Linden Lab supported anymore. That means the organization have to pay for the sims as any other event. That means also that the event has to get money to pay those sim rentals so donations are important. I’m not sure if this new relationship with Linden Lab is better or worse for the event, but i think this situation gives some more freedom to the organization regarding the contents, and that’s good.

Remember you can visit the Burn2 web page for more information about this year’s event or for a donation.

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Burn2 is here again. It is one of my favorite events inside Second Life for many reasons, one, is an art show where anybody can participate, amateurs and professionals, second, is all about freedom, creativity and sharing and third, there is an amazing crown of people in there!

I took some pictures you can see in the slideshow above or in a set in Flickr. The Burn2 team recorded this video so you can have an idea of what’s going on in there:

They define Burn2 this way:

BURN2 is an extension of the Burning Man festival and community into the world of Second Life. It is an officially sanctioned Burning Man regional event, and the only virtual world event out of more than 100 real world Regional groups, and the only Regional to burn the Man!

The BURN2 organization spreads Burning Culture and the Burning Man Ten Principles (http://burn2.org/ten-principles) year round in Second Life, culminating in an annual festival of community, art and fire in the fall – a virtual echo of Burning Man itself…so BURN2.

The thing to do is go and explore, enjoy and connect. You can find information in the Burn2 website like timeline, the events, shows…etc.

Also in Soup Radio we recorded a show during the Press day of Burn2 that has a lot of references and places you might enjoy visiting. Find more information in the Soup Radio blogpost or listen the show in stream or download it as an iTunes podcast.

I have a tiny build in Burn2, but will write another post about it.

QR code by Harter Fall

I’m part of the team of Regular Guests & Contributors of Soup Radio, a 24/7 online radio station dedicated to the arts, with a particular focus on Second Life.

Our new schedule started on Saturday, July 2nd 2011 (12pm PDT, 3pm EDT, 8pm BST).

About the topics for this month let me paste the Show Notes for this month:

This month our usual shows are replaced by a special extended edition dedicated to SL8B (Second Life 8th Birthday). The regular crew is joined by Dekka Raymaker andKhamudy Mannonen, and together they explore the event and visit a number of locations, including work by Sanura Sakai & Andel Rhiadra, windyy Lane, Caro Fayray, Eupalinos Ujagin & Simotron Aquila, Madpea Productions, LEA, Shellina Winkler, Claudia222 Jewell, Harter Fall & Elliena Bulmer, and Ub Yifu. During the tour they discuss the history of the event, how the builds relate to this year’s theme ‘The Magic of SL‘, the ratio of creative versus commercial ventures, and many other topics.

Arahan also reveals details about the upcoming ArthOle performance at Odyssey. (Duration 147 mins)

References:
Kawaii
Miso Susanowa logo dispute
Ansel Adams
Blender
Maya
3D Max
I Can Has Cheezburger?
Cat Organ
Monty Python mouse organ sketch
Numbakulla: The Pot Healer Adventure
Steam
REC
Halo
Ke$ha – Blow
Pirats Art Network
Tom Otterness
Hudson River School
Baron Grayson
Matthew Barney
Bridget Riley
Robert Irwin
Holbein – The Ambassadors

Playlist:
Magnetic Fields – Doll’s Tea Party
Oberhofer - o0o0o0ooo
Patrick Wolf – The Stars
Devo – Social Fools
Spider and the Flies – Jungle Planet
The Teenagers – End of the Line

Thanks for listening!

Hope you really enjoy this month shows, you can listen Soup Radio in two ways:

• In an Audio Stream
• In iTunes as a Podcast

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• Soup Radio will be in SL8B (raulcrimson.com)

The Second Life birthday is back, as every year around June 23rd! This time is SL8B. the 8th birthday. As i wrote in a post some days ago the team of Soup Radio were working on a space in there. It was great to work on it and filmed the short movie above. Hope you can visit it! Here is the SLurl.

Finally Linden Lab published the official announcement in the Linden Blogs a couple of days ago. Check it and the official SL8B blog for calendars of events and much more updated information. Only remember today, June 20th at 10AM SLT the 21 sims will be opened to the public!

Chantal Harvey, renowned machinima artist and SL8B volunteer, made this video to show us about more about SL8B:

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Soup Radio at SL8B

Next June 20th it will start the SL8B (Second Life 8th Birthday) event. As every year we have the big party to celebrate how old is our world, and also as every year a group of residents will build amazing installations and will perform as DJs, musicians, comedians…

Soup Radio at SL8B by Arahan

20 regions of art, experiences, music, community, fun and experiences! SL8B will be up from June 20th to June 26th, at least the activities. The buildings will be opened to visit until July 2nd. Anyway, the most important day is 23rd, the BIRTHDAY itself with a lot of ceremonies and events.

And… as the title of the post indicates and as you can see in the image in the top and here at left we, the team of Soup Radio, are working on our space for SL8B.

As you can imagine right now we can only show some images of details of what we are working on exactly, but you will see more in the event or in the pictures and videos we will publish after the opening.

We are REALLY excited about it and we are having fun building our space, we are almost done! Arahan blogged in the Soup Radio blog this:

The Second Life 8th Birthday (SL8B) takes place from June 20-26th 2011, and Soup Radio is taking part in the celebrations.

We’re using it as an opportunity to introduce the station to new listeners and explain what we’re all about, and with that in mind we’re working on creating a space where visitors can relax, listen to the current schedule, and browse information. We’re located in the Spellbound sim, do drop in if you’re in the area. Teleport here.

Also, our July schedule is going to be a SL8B special, we’ll be touring the sims, talking about our discoveries, including the good, the bad, the ugly, and our conclusions on the event. If you have a plot there do send us a landmark and we’ll definitely check it out for possible inclusion.

Separate from Soup Radio I’m DJing at the official stage on Thursday June 23rd from 10-11am SLT/PDT (6-7pm BST), would be great to see you there if you can make it.Teleport here.

With thanks to Raul Crimson, Penumbra Carter, Dekka Raymaker and Nebulosus Severine for their contributions and help with the build.

-Arahan-

So if you go to SL8B, please, visit our space in there. I think you will enjoy it. I will blog more about SL8B and also we will speak a lot about SL8B this month in Soup Radio.

See you in the Birthday!

I’m part of the team of Regular Guests & Contributors of Soup Radio, a non-profit online radio station dedicated to the arts, with a particular focus on the virtual world Second Life.

Our new schedule began yesterday, Saturday, June 4th 2011 (12pm PDT, 3pm EDT, 8pm BST).

Hope you really enjoy this month shows, you can listen Soup Radio in two ways:

• In an Audio Stream
• In iTunes as a Podcast

Special thanks to Honour McMillan for his time and his interesting conversation… and because she is just great!

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• Soup Radio… i’m part of the show! (raulcrimson.com)
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I’m part of the team of Regular Guests & Contributors of Soup Radio, a 24/7 online radio station dedicated to the arts, with a particular focus on Second Life.

Hope you really enjoy this month shows, you can listen Soup Radio in two ways:

• In an Audio Stream
• In iTunes as a Podcast

Special thanks to Treat Kanto for his time and his interesting conversation… and of course his charming personality.

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• Soup Radio… i’m part of the show! (raulcrimson.com)

From this month of April i’m part of the team of Regular Guests & Contributors of Soup Radio, a 24/7 online radio station dedicated to the arts, with a particular focus on Second Life.

About my topic for this month let me paste an extract of the Show Notes for this month:

Raul Crimson interviews artist Elros Tuominen about what Second Life means to him personally and as a creator. Part of the interview, conducted in Spanish, is related to how language in SL can be a barrier, but also an effective way to learn and practice different languages. Elros also comments on how much avatars represent the person behind the keyboard, and at the same time can evolve into independent personalities causing a loss of identity.

Hope you really enjoy this month shows, you can listen Soup Radio in two ways:

• In an Audio Stream
• In iTunes as a Podcast

I would like to thanks specially Arahan Claveau for his suggestions and technical help with the show and to Elros Tuominen for the interesting conversation.

I was checking Twitter lately and saw some people is speaking again about that “dilemma”… Should Linden Lab have only one viewer for Second Life, or to improve the usability is better to have two?

I think it was Anthony Hocken who restarted the topic, anyway this have been a topic long time discussed by a lot of people in a lot of places. Some people wonders (and for some comments by Rodvik Linden in Twitter that may be the way Linden Lab decides to go) if it would be better to have two kind of viewers instead of only one, one for basic users with a simple and improved UI and one for advanced users with all the options we have and maybe some more.

Even this may seem a good idea some people thinks that would keep the new users away from content creation since they would be used to a simple UI and may be scared to use an advanced one. One thing Rodvik Linden mentioned was the possibility of having only one viewer, but with a “switch” to change between both options.

Personally i think the two viewers option is not a bad idea. One of the big problems of Second Life is how hard the UI and the learning curve has been always keeping potential users away and making a lot of people create an account only to try it and never come back. Having a simplified viewer, or a web-based one, would be interesting to permit new users have a basic approach to Second Life and even to have access for SL from iPads, mobile phones or netbooks. This kind of viewer would permit also that integration as Facebook game some think is a good idea. I think having SL and Facebook together is not actually needed or even a good idea, but this is material for another blogpost.

Then, after this web-based viewer Linden Lab would have a really improved SL viewer (maybe 3.0?) with that “switch” Rodvik mentions. As now we have some menus as optional (Advanced and Develop for standard users) we would have a really improved and simple UI and at the same time the possibility to change to a more complex one but really powerful. And speaking about all this… please, Lindens… can you improve the building tool? Thanks!

I don’t think that last option would keep new users away of content creation, i know people who were SLusers for the last 4 years and never created a simple plywood cube even they had the ability to do it in the viewer. The ones who would be interested in content creation would click the “switch” for sure and will experiment. At least is what i think… and you? *points at the comment section below*

We all know Linden Lab uses to manage their Public Relations in… let’s say interesting ways. One of those “interesting ways” is a group called Second Life Press Corps. For those who don’t know it, is a group managed by Pete Linden to connect with SL bloggers, informers, writers, TV-machinima creators, etc… Some like a press club. The group is not “Open” but theoretically everybody would join following the instructions included in the group chart:

This group will be used by Linden Lab’s PR team to share announcements, invitations to inworld press events, etc.
To request an invitation, please email pete@lindenlab.com with the following information:

• Your Second Life name
• The outlet (blog, magazine, TV show, etc.) that you work for – please provide the name, URL, and a brief description

Note: To be admitted to the group, the outlet you work for must be in compliance with our trademark guidelines: http://secondlife.com/corporate/brand/

So if you want to join, you know what to do. I’ve been member of this group for a year or so, and it was pretty silent until a month ago or so, i presume that’s related with the changes in the PR team of Linden Lab, well, in the full Lab. Sincerely, never thought to blog about it, because of this silent, but after reading this interesting blogpost by Chestnut Rau possibly it was the time.

I’m not an expert in PR, but i understand the Lab wants to control who has access to some information, or at least who has it first. Let’s see an example, today there was a Meet and Greet event with Rodvik Linden (Rod Humble), new CEO of Linden Lab. The PR team of Linden Lab sent a notice in the Second Life Press Corps group, and i think only inside this group, asking the members to send a request by email to be in that meeting. Initially i was supposed to be out today and i didn’t send the email (Chestnut Rau was in the Meet and published a transcription *good work*).

I’m trying to be neutral and just to tell the facts, but is hard not to express an opinion about that matter. I presume Linden Lab wanted to introduce the new CEO to the “inworld press”, and that’s nice… i also presume they wanted to do it in a “safe environment”, out of greefers, excessive lag… maybe excessive criticism too? It’s nice the CEO connects with the residents, is even important since those residents are also customers, but i wonder if that could be done in a different way not so… FIC, not so “VIP club”. Maybe is just i’m missing the times when we had those Town Hall meetings with the Lindens to talk about things…

Anyway… what do you think?