You
have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never
repay you.
John
Bunyan
Having just had my look
back on 2013 in Second Life (SL) I now want to look ahead into 2014 and…
I have a
request of my readers. (Ah hah! I’ll bet you thought that you could just
cruise along while I did all the heavy lifting, huh?)
As many of
you know by now, I travel across the Grid inworld a lot and don’t stay very
long in one place. Being a transient I
don’t stay connected very well with many of my friends and the people I meet
along the way. I oftentimes don’t return
to sims I’ve blogged about and remember fondly.
(I don’t get thrown out of everyplace.)
Recently,
as I’ve been working on the story plan for this year (Yes, believe it or not,
there is some method to this madness.)
I’ve found once again that sims have gone away and friends are no longer
around. (We won’t go into Significant
Other’s assertion that this may have something to do with my writing.)
In my
recent story about social
media inworld I blogged about the use of these tools to extend the boundaries
of SL out into the Metaverse and Real Life (RL).
Here’s my
request:
Let’s use social media to extend our
conversation beyond the confines of SL in order to have a more robust community
and build stronger ties.
Why should
we do this?
First, as
I wander about inworld I meet many people.
I find it difficult to stay in touch if I’m not inworld. My meanderings are all over so I’m not always
plugged into what’s happening in SL.
Then, not everyone is inworld all the time. (Nor, am I suggesting that they
should be. Significant Other is worried
about this last one. A lot!)
Next, what
happens if SL goes away? Linden Lab has made no commitment of
indefinite support that I’m aware of and seem to be engaged in a maintenance only
model. I ask my famous question, when
was the last time anyone met a Linden inworld?
Finally,
I’m curious to see if this can be done.
Is SL a technological and social dead end? (I, for one, am tired of RL friends who say
SL is for those with No Life in Real Life (RL).) How committed are all of us to this wonderful
thing we call Second Life?
Sims are
closing. The number of residents who are
online has been static if not slowly declining for years. Books used to be written about SL. If you haven’t already, go and read Wagner James Au’s great book, The
Making of Second Life. It talks
of that time before the Golden Age. I’d
like to see him or someone else write the next book about SL and I don’t want
it to be its obituary either.
How do we
do this?
We take
advantage of social media tools like Twitter, Facebook (FB) (avatars and SL
businesses can have FB pages), and Goodreads
(used effectively by Zoe
Foodiboo with the 1920’s Berlin Book Club).
These
tools will permit us to organize around or to take advantage of new or existing
inworld groups for either book or film discussions, technology (mesh is a great
topic these days), or for social functions.
The message can be gotten out to a larger audience.
Now,
here’s the catch. This won’t happen if
we just sign up and wait for something to happen. We have to listen, engage, and
contribute. Many of us are already doing
this all in different ways. Frau Jo Yardley builds Weimar
Berlin. Perryn
Peterson scours the world looking for festivals while consolidating SL
businesses needing homes. Wagner Au
blogs. Tera Trenchcoat, my
Research Assistant, helps me with the drudge research behind my stories. (If any of my stories are drudge it’s my
fault.) There are many others who each
in his or her own way contribute to the experience that is SL. Even the avi who just sits in a bar somewhere
on the Grid and asks someone how things are going helps. Can all of us together take SL to the next
level?
My ask gets specific at this point.
How many of you in the week will set up a Twitter account
in the next week, send a tweet, and follow others and me? Then begin to engage in the conversation?
How many of you will set up a Facebook page for either
yourself or your business or group? Or,
like other people’s pages?
How many of you will join groups inworld and ask how you
can contribute?
Anyone who needs help with any of this, please reach out to
me. I’m even willing to do training
classes inworld for small groups.
Some of you may be asking a good question right about
now. “OK, we got it. We do this.
What do we expect to get out of this?”
It’s a fair question.
Here’s my reply:
We revive our community as existing residents become more
active because they can interact more effectively and easily. We break the tether to the PC. We may begin to attract back those who left
out of boredom. The old criticism, still
valid in my opinion, of SL was, alright I’m in with a lot of effort what do I
do next? We may begin to attract new
residents.
Further, the community can show Linden Lab that SL
is viable, sustainable, and worth further investment.
Most importantly, our community begins to exist beyond SL’s
servers. Like the RL astronomers always
tell us, once we break away from Earth and move out among the stars, mankind
will live forever and be dependent on a small speck of dust somewhere in the
Milky Way galaxy.
Likewise, while SL may last a long time, once the
dependency on it is removed, the Community will live forever.
Who’s with me?
As always, I’m grateful to
all inworld for their kindness and time in stopping to talk with a stranger who
was passing through their lives.
I welcome feedback from
readers, please either comment on my blog or
e-mail me at webspelunker@gmail.com
.
If you would like to read about my other adventures in Second Life please click here.
If you would like to read about my other adventures in Second Life please click here.
