Second Life, Linden Lab & OpenSim News
Special Blog Post: Here is a look back at my favourite historical snapshots of previous VWBPE conferences held in Second Life. This year marks VWBPE tenth anniversary in Second Life so now it’s time to go back down memory lane…
Wow, so much has changed over the years since I first started going to VWBPE conferences. I still can’t believe this is the 10th year of the annual conference. Here’s to the next 10 years! 🙂
On Wednesday 29th March 2017 Ebbe Altberg (Ebbe Linden) CEO of Linden Lab had a hour long conversation with Kevin Feenan at the 10th annual VWBPE conference about education in Second Life and the education possibilities that could happen in Sansar.
It was a really interesting conversation between Ebbe and Kevin. There wasn’t any major announcements made during the interview. However it was more general this year with a variety of talking subjects.
Ebbe did stay after the conversation to answer questions from the audience. The audience for this special event was very limited this year with some empty seats. Most were watching from other places around the VWBPE regions / the Second Life grid and via online streams.
Here are the highlights that interested me most from Ebbe Linden conversation
New Second Life Features
Lower Land Prices
It’s worth watching the full video of the conversation to hear more from Ebbe. It was good to hear the latest updates on Second Life, Sansar and education in general this year.
The 10th annual VWBPE conference officially opens today from 11am SLT/PDT in Second Life through until 1st April 2017. There will be educational presentations, demonstrations, workshops, social events and much more happening every day.
The tenth anniversary of VWBPE is going to be awesome from start to end. The VWBPE regions this year have been completely been revamped and look amazing.
VWBPE 2017 SLURLS
VWBPE 2017 Regions Map
Important Links
Here are my first preview snapshots of VWBPE 2017 regions
For more info visit vwbpe.org
The VWBPE 2017 conference officially opens next week on Wednesday 29th March through until Saturday 1st April 2017 in Second Life. The theme for this year is Legacy and it’s worth mentioning this will be the 10th anniversary of the annual conference.
VWBPE 2017 is a free to attend event and here are some of the exciting speeches ahead.
Please Note!
These sessions will be in a private region. To get your invitation to attend you need to submit a question for our guests. Start thinking about what to ask! Questions must be submitted no later than Sunday March 26 at 11:59pm PST (extended from original March 20th deadline).
Want to bring a friend? Starting March 21st, the Rockcliffe Registration Portal will be open for people to register new avatars and find out more about the VWBPE conference in-world. Invite your friends to go to https://urockcliffe.com/reg/second-life/ and follow the easy instructions to get started. We suggest that they come a day or two early to get oriented, so they don’t miss any part of the conference.
Volunteers Needed
There are many interesting places (worlds) to visit in Kitely, see here.
Latest News
Useful Links
On Tuesday 14th March Linden Lab officially launched the all new Second Life community platform to the world. At first glance the new community platform looks really nice with a whole new page layout with the main pages along the top. It’s now easier to view the forums, knowledge base, blogs, answers and to keep track of all activity.
Here is what the new Second Life community platform looks like now. Take a look today and spread the word. 🙂
Forums
Blogs
Knowledge Base
Answers
All Activity
Revamped Profile Section
The profile section in the top right has been revamped with a whole new drop down layout where you can find profile settings, manage followed content, account settings, ignored users and sign out
.
Create Topics in the Forums
There is now a new +Create option to add new topics in the Second Life forums in a matter of seconds. Notifications and Inbox icons have been added to the top right to keep track of the latest activities.
New Search Box
There is now a new search box (with advanced search) where you can find out everything within the Second Life community platform. You can either search all the content, blog entries, knowledge base articles or by members.
Advanced search
You can search by the content type, date created, last updated and much more here.
These are still early days for the new launched Second Life community platform and work is still in progress to make it even better in the weeks ahead. So far I like the new updated version of the community platform and I believe in time this will will improve the Second Life experience for everyone.
Do you like the new Second Life community platform or do you prefer the old version layouts instead ?
According to Hypergrid Business latest blog post Avination Grid has officially shut down on OpenSim which is very sad news to hear about. Apparently the grid and company behind it has officially shut down after a series of financial problems in recent years.
Melanie Thielker who the owner of Avination Grid has confirmed the following:
I first joined Avination on 17th January 2012 and since then I’ve blogged about the Avination grid from community events, big news stories, grid improvements and much more. Back then there were 592 regions, 43, 787 registered users with 3, 226 unique logins (past 30 days). The Avination viewer was 54.9MB in size back then running version 1.5.8.
On the Avination login screen updated recently in 2017 there are 81, 424 registered users, 492 regions with 399 unique logins (past 30 days). These screenshots are from my first day when I arrived at the welcome area of Avination.
It’s a real shame this is the end of Avination now and this is a huge loss for the OpenSim community moving forward I think.
Late last month Linden Lab announced the start of revamp of the Second Life community pages including the forums, blogs, answers, knowledge base etc. On Friday 10th March the lab made a small announcement saying “Currently, we have turned on the Knowledge Base. Blogs and Forums will come soon – but for now those areas are still under construction. We will update as those become available“.
URL > https://community.secondlife.com/knowledgebase/english/
It’s good to see the Knowledge Base is back up and running again because it’s been offline since late last month. I would imagine next week the lab will switch on the blogs and forums etc hopefully.
The home page of the Second Life community platform now looks like this as of Sunday 12th March 2017.
Stay tuned for further updates soon.
On 7th March Linden Lab released a brand new video of Sansar showing what can be done in the new world. The video includes some amazing visuals. rendered movements and a brief look at the user interface. The video runs for 1 minute and 56 seconds. The video has already been viewed more than 10, 000 times on YouTube since yesterday.
There is a glimpse of places to explore, the Sansar store (marketplace), the realistic avatars you can use and the tools available to create personal experiences. The graphics look really nice and I think it’s going to impress people who are used to Second Life graphics.
The narrator says that Sansar is revolutionary and it’s unlike anything the world has ever seen before. Sansar will take VR to the next level and Sansar will have live events, entertainment, education uses and much more.
Currently Sansar is in an invite-only creator preview phrase and its planned to go into the Open Beta phrase in Spring 2017.
The new revamped Second Life community platform was due to go live last week but due to the large complexity of the Community migration it’s taking longer to complete apparently. For days the blog, forums, KB, Answers etc have been offline. The wait is almost over I think!
The lab have been keeping everyone updated regularly on the Community migration on the Second Life Status page under the Community Platform Maintenance section.
Today the lab are still continuing with the community migration. Hopefully the new community platform might go live possibly this week or next week. We will have to wait and see.
Daniel Voyager 