Part of our support structure here at Linden Lab is a dedicated customer team called I-World. This team answers support tickets and live chats from residents who are experiencing some difficulties or looking for guidance with in-world issues. Some of you may be aware of us from your contact via the Support page but most of you will probably never have heard about us.

We help to ensure that your in-world experience goes as smoothly as possible by providing answers where we can and getting our technical colleagues to perform their magic where we can’t. We know there are things that sometimes don’t work so well in SL…things that get you down. We’re sorry that they happen, they get us down too and we want to get them resolved as quickly as you do.

So, we’ve been thinking about what more our team can do and part of our efforts is to establish I-World Island, a place where we will try to offer additional signposting and guidance for some of the in-world issues that occur.

The island will have a number of areas that you are most welcome to visit and perhaps find some additional information that you weren’t aware of before. One particular section of this island will be driven by you, our fantastic residents whose creativity and support for Second Life make it the exciting place it is today. We are setting aside an area for an I-World Expo, allowing YOU to submit items to pass on free to other residents that you feel make a positive impact to the in-world resident experience. This item might be a skin, an interesting piece of furniture, a guide to locations in-world or even a tutorial pack that you have put together that can help a resident learn something new about Second Life. Anything that is PG-rated.

In return, we will offer you a small shop area to place information about your in-world business or activities and a landmark for residents to follow. These spaces will be offered on a rotating, short-term basis so that residents coming back to the island can see a variety of content.

Hopefully you are getting a sense of what we are trying to do here; find a small way of focusing residents on some of the positive and exciting things that make SL a good place to visit and remain

All you need to do is to log in to the Support Portal and submit a ticket to us, using the “Special Questions - Basic Account or Guest Login” ticket type then choose the category “Submissions for I-World Expo“. Leave as much detail as you can of the item you want to highlight to other residents.

Once this ticket has been reviewed someone will get back in touch with you about placing this on our island. Please note that this might take some time depending on the level of submissions received. We really look forward to hearing about the fantastic ideas you come up with.

In addition to the I-World Expo we will have a number of other areas for you to visit but we want to keep them under wraps and not spoil all of the surprises!

To officially unveil the island, on Saturday 5th April, we are hosting the I-World Music Festival and want to offer you the opportunity to tune in to our broadcast (stream details to follow) or to drop in on us at I-World Island and enjoy some live music over the course of 24 hours from Midnight PST until Midnight PST Sunday 6th April. We’ll follow up with some more details later in the week but you can be assured there are some fantastic live musicians gearing up to perform for you on the day!

Naturally we won’t be able to host everyone on one island but don’t forget you can tune in and hopefully be able to pop in for a wee while at another time during the day.

Thanks for everything you do to make Second Life a great experience for each other and, indeed, for us who work here. We hope that we can give you a wee bit more back via I-World Island.

Best Wishes

If your plans permit, please consider spending time with musician Astrin Few this evening as we bid adieu to the 2007 Winter Festival.

Astrin will be appearing at the four corners WinterFest dance hall 7 - 9 p.m. Pacific. You can enter from Voss, Wengen, Moritz or Zermatt.

Thanks for making wintertime in world so lovely and lively this holiday season, and may 2008 bring only the best to you and yours. See you at WinterFest ‘08!

Last month, I blogged about this year’s Burning Life festivities. Today, Burning Life celebrates the launch of its fifth year gracing the Second Life community. Below, you’ll find important details on how you can enjoy this year’s celebration of art, music, and culture. And don’t forget to peek at the Burning Life flickr stream and pick up the complete Burning Life Camp Guide in the Burning Life (Rocco) welcome area.

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At SLCC this year we offered to setup a music development mailing list to facilitate discussion around a very large topic - music in Second Life! Resident musicians, venue owners, buillders, scripters, audiences, and promoters are all invited to participate. Linden Lab recognizes all the innovative work that has been going on in the music community and we want to do all that we can to help it thrive and continue to grow. Our goal in this is to work in concert with you to make Second Life a viable platform for music promotion, performance, and distribution. (more…)

Have you got the downtime blues? View the latest installment of Second Opinion, the Second Life newsletter, on our website and coming soon, grab a newly updated copy from one of our in-world locations. (Don’t forget to sign up for automatic in-world delivery of upcoming issues!) This month in Second Opinion, find out what Sabin Linden says about Het-Grid, get information on SLCC, learn about AjaxLife in our interview with Katharine Berry, read up on Stephany Linden’s voice tips and tricks, check out our view on the new features vs. bug fixes debate … and more!

Also, as a reminder, we are no longer emailing the newsletter, but will instead continue to improve the online and in-world versions for everyone to enjoy. For example, you can now get the RSS feed directly delivered to your RSS reader du jour. Have any suggestions on how to make the newsletter better? Email them to the editor.

[UPDATE] Thank you for your comments. We greatly appreciate your continued patience during downtime. Please note that in the near future, and thanks to Het-Grid, downtime will occur less frequently. Don’t know about Het-Grid? Check out Breaking News in this month’s newsletter.

For the last four years, the Burning Life festival has helped Second Life Residents recognize the true creative potential of our ever-changing and ever-growing world. This year, Second Life’s annual homage to Burning Man is back, bigger and more imaginative than ever!

The Burning Life grounds will appear in the shape of an 18-estate island. The specially created location echoes the spirit of Burning Man’s Black Rock Desert without the blood-boiling Nevada heat and the bitterly cold nights. Burning Life will begin on September 24^th this year in order to provide real life Burning Man attendees with the opportunity to participate. Monday, October 1^st after the Temple burn, will mark the disappearance of Burning Life once again. Objects and land ownership will be wiped, leaving participants and visitors with a lingering suspicion that it was all just a wonderful dream.

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In May, we blogged about Second Life’s upcoming birthday. June 23, 2007, that’s this Saturday, will mark the fourth anniversary of Second Life’s launch. Volunteers have been hard at work planning and building for the event, which will be held in the SL4B sim and surrounding sims and will continue until June 30, 2007. Due to the increasing number of new Residents, volunteers decided to plan this year’s birthday event around Second Life’s history.

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Last Thursday, we announced that we would host a Second Life Speech Gestures Contest in conjunction with the Voice Stress Test Extravaganza. We have since decided to postpone the Voice Stress Test Extravaganza, previously planned for this Wednesday, May 9. Fear not – the Stress Test will return, watch this blog for more information!

As such, we have extended the deadline for the Second Life Speech Gestures Contest entries until May 14 at 3pm PDT, providing Residents with an additional week to create and submit speech gestures. Please see last weeks blog post for submission guidelines and more information about the Second Life Speech Gestures Contest.

As many of you may know, June 23, 2007 will mark the fourth anniversary of Second Life’s launch. In the past, Resident and Linden events have been held to celebrate the community, and this year we’re pleased to announce that the Second Life Fourth Birthday (SL4B) will be an event to remember.

The SL Birthday Volunteers group is already hard at work and has chosen a theme. Likewise, the SL4B Ad Contest is under way! Want to help plan the party? An open meeting will be held at the Pooley Stage to discuss SL4B on Monday, May 7 at 11 am and 7 pm (PDT). Send an IM to SignpostMarv Martin for more information or check out the SL4B wiki to get involved.

We had many great submissions to participate in the Third Annual Second Life Winter Festival (read the initial announcement). We’ve chosen the participants for the event and created a set of Tour HUDS with the locations/events inside. Visit Chalet Linden in Wengen to pick up both Winter Festival Tour HUDs and your free official Second Life Winter Festival 2006 T-shirt!

There are two different HUDS, one for the first half of the event and one for the second. (Big thanks to Forseti Svarog for volunteering to set up the HUD system.) The folder also includes a copy of the HUD kiosk in case you want to place one on your own land. When you click the kiosk, a folder named  “Winter Festival 2006 HUD & Tshirt” will appear in your Inventory. Right click on either of the HUDs and it will appear in the top right of your screen. Then click on any of the pictures to read more. Once you find what you want to visit, click the right hand button for the landmark.

Remember: The Winter Festival begins today - Friday, December 15 - and runs until December 22!

Keep reading for the full schedule of events…

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