Global Kids hosts "Youth Forum about TG Merger"

Thanks to Blaze Borgin for sharing this news on his blog.

A number of TSL Approved Adults, hosted a youth forum meeting at Global Kids island on the Teen Grid on Wednesday, 29th December, 2010. This youth forum allowed Teens to come and share their thoughts, concerns, ideas, and hopes for the future of Second Life. Rik GKid,  Rhiannon Ferlinghetti and Frans Marseille hosted the discussion with 20-30 teens for about one hour. The shut down of TSL is sheduled for the first week of January 2011.

Here’s the summary according to Blaze:

Some 20-30 teens participated (It was very short notice) and all shared their opinions. Here are the topics that were discussed.

• Why teens oppose the merge
• Why teens are for the merge
• Treatment of teens by adults and vice-versa
• Teen content creation
• The loss of our “close community feel”
• Ways of maintaining our “close community feel”
• How residents under 16 feel about the merge
• Alternatives to Second Life for those who are left out (Different open grids)

Overall, teens who are transferring seem to be excited about the merge, though they worry about how they amy be accepted into the adult community. Content creators see it as a positive change to be able to provide their products to more potential customers while others are excited about the new regions to explore.

Both teen age groups are not too happy about how well Linden Labs handled the younger group. Most feel that being enclosed in one region for 1-3 years or even cut off entirely before transferring is not a good decision.

Overall, the meeting proved to give quite a bit of insight on the feelings of those involved. It is clear that this move will not be easy, but like all other hard times, it seems we should make the best of it.

Apparently there will be a full transcript of the meeting on Global Kids website and on Betterverse website very soon. I will publish more info when I hear about it here on my blog.