Second Life Day of Remembrance, April 17th, 6 am to 11 pm SLT
Big Easy 

Have you ever lost an in-world friend? As years pass in Second Life, more residents will have the sad experience of logging in to find that someone they know and love in-world has passed away in Real Life.

Resident Katt Kongo recently lost a dear friend, SL resident Ginny Talamasca. In response, Katt conceived of a new community event that would commemorate the life, spirit, and creativity of all the residents who have left us.  April 17, Ginny’s birthday, marks the beginning of the yearly ‘Day of Remembrance’ in Second Life.

The event is organized around the New Orleans tradition of the Jazz Funeral and the Second Line.  Rather than a sad, solemn affair, a New Orleans funeral celebrates life with music and parading. Our parade will depart from historic Jackson Square and crash joyously through the Big Easy region four times–so that Residents in all time zones can participate. 

Participate!
Linden Lab has donated two regions to the effort, but in the best SL tradition, this is a completely Resident-created event. If the Day of Remembrance speaks to you, please join in the effort.  All levels of participation are open!

• Are you a builder or scripter? Volunteer to help script some cool actions in our awesome memorial temple.
• If you are a musician or DJ (especially if you speak Jazziiness) who would like to perform on the main stage, get in touch!

The rest of you mark you calendars for the 17th– come by and join in the “second line” of the parade. Second liners spin parasols, twirl hankies, play various instruments and carry pictures of the dearly departed, all to a Jazzy beat.

For more information, please visit this web page to learn details about volunteer opportunities and the event schedule.

Let’s send our loved ones off in style.

We’re celebrating Valentine’s Day in style and continuing our yearly tradition! Two regions, “Isle of View” and “Hugsville for Teens” (on Teen Second Life) have arisen from the depths of the ocean, decorated in the spirit of LOVE.

We’ve got hugging & kissing booths where you can share your affections with both the Lindens and Resident Volunteers that’ve shown so much L-O-V-E to our community! We’ve also got goodies — including T-shirt and Linden bear collectibles located at the booths.

On Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, 2008…

• Volunteers (over 50 in all!) will be around all-day for Kiss-A-Volunteer!
• Lindens will be on Isle of View from 7-9 AM and 5-7 PM PST.
• And for you Teen Residents, Lindens will be present on Hugsville for Teens from 3-5 PM PST.

Never met a Linden before, or interested in our Volunteer programmes and want to know how you can help make Second Life a better place? Come on over and enjoy the lovin’!

And there’ll be even more love: look out for Cupid Linden, who’ll be flying around and is happy to meet you!

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!!!!

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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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.

Previously announced changes to Help Request have been delayed with the postponement of SL version 1.14.1 (currently on Beta Grid). Planned in conjunction with this release was a move by Liaison Specialist teams into their new roles, including training in the new support systems being implemented as part of the overall improvements being made to Customer Support, elaborated on in Robin’s blog post here. In order to prevent a delay in the release of the new ticketed support system, Liaison Specialists will be moving into their Specialist roles regardless of the new version’s delay.

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…to be processed soon!

Currently we’re looking at a rather large backlog of Volunteer Program Applications. We’ve been going through the process of approving and inviting applicants manually, but we haven’t been gaining much ground. Thankfully, we’ve almost completed tools to help automate the process and as I mentioned, in a previous blog post, we’re bringing in some lovely Liaison Specialists to help us! So if you’ve signed up to be a volunteer you won’t have much longer to wait to find out if you’ve been accepted.

In the process of working on changes to the Volunteer Program, we’ll be disabling the ability to sign up for Help Request. In addition, we will not be inviting Volunteers during the period in which the new Volunteer application processing tool is being enabled and tested. But as mentioned above, when we’re back in action, we’ll be able to get through the existing backlog quickly. Whew! We very much appreciate your patience while we work to help you to help make SL a better place for everyone.