The World According to Jennyfur

With the SLCC a mere two weeks away I decided that now would be a good time to indulge in World of Warcraft for the first time. I’ve been on a self-imposed hiatus from Second Life since the beginning of July. I’m lucky if I remember to log in once a week these days. I’ve been suffering from severe SL burn out. My interactions are mostly off-world through instant message, Twitter, Facebook etc. I even have managed to take a break from forums. Tomorrow will be the three week mark since my last post there. I’ve actually been MUCH happier as of late. I haven’t abandoned SL altogether. I just need some time off.

Though this all comes at an odd time with the countdown to the convention ticking away. I can barely muster the remotest bit of enthusiasm for it… well with the exception of the Masquerade Ball because I have an awesomely snarky costume for it. I’m excited to see my friends and hang out with them, but for all intents and purposes I could care less about Second Life right now.

I know some of my SL friends are aware that I am in World of Warcraft now and wondering why I am not on on the same server as they are, but I joined primarily to hang out with some of my local Philly friends. For the time being, I have sought to keep my time there very separate from Second Life. I like the anonymity. I like being a clueless newb. I like the newness of it. Mind you, I’ve never been much of a gamer until now. Although, I did a two-week trial on EVE Online last May. Perhaps, one day I’ll create a character on the SL server, but for now I am enjoying myself on the server that my friends are on.

Before anyone can or should lay claim to being the first, biggest or best in anything especially with regards to Second Life and Virtual Worlds, it would be highly recommended that you do a little bit of research first. I know I am not the first person to bring this up. Every time an instance of such lazy reporting is brought to my attention I can’t help, but shake my head and wonder what people are thinking. If you want to be taken seriously versus making a big splash with an unfounded proclamation of superstar superlatives all you need is a little comparative research.

In a recent article, the Cambridge Evening News proclaims a new fangled first by stating that PA Consulting has had the world’s biggest Second Life conference, with 90 people in attendance. Otherwise the article is fairly minimal and there isn’t much information on their conference. It also does not state whether this was a real world event or an in-world gathering.

In this case, a simple Google search would reveal (among other things) that The Second Life Community Convention began in 2005 with approximately 150 people in attendance at the New York Law School and countless other people attending simultaneously within Second Life. In 2006, 500 people attended the SLCC in San Francisco and the attendance for the upcoming one in August 2007 is expected to reach 1000 participants. If I am not mistaken, the SLCC 2005 may have been one of the first mixed-reality events in Second Life.

Preceeding the inception of the Second Life Community Convention, there were many other virtual worlds and/or virtual reality related events including the Avatars conference series pioneered by Bruce Damer beginning in 1996. More recently there was the Virtual Worlds Conference in NYC and an upcoming one in San Jose. There is also the SLUK meet-up in England. There is an additional Second Life conference happening in Dusseldorf, Germany this September.

As far as Second Life in-world conferences go, in addition to simulcasts of the SLCC and the Virtual Worlds Conference, the SL Educators arranged a Best Practices in Second Life Conference in world that was attending by over a thousand people and Zatzai Asturias has held two Second Conventions in world.

How long did it take me to find those links? Maybe a half an hour. Sure, I knew what I was looking for, but doing a Google search for “Second Life Conferences” drew several pages of results. I know that its not possible to account for all the firsts and the biggests and bests in Second Life. Perhaps there should be a searchable database somewhere of registered firsts in Second Life.

Tony Walsh of Clickable Culture recently wrote on this subject in an article about IWOOT’s proclamation of being the first ever Second Life store where real life products can be purchased with Linden dollars and delivered to your home , which of course was untrue. Tony pointed out that, FlipperPA Peregrine made this possible in 2005 through then SLBoutique website where you could order software and computer parts for Linden dollars. I can personally attest to this since I am married to Flipper. This was covered in the press. Of course, IWOOT and SLBoutique’s offerings and delivery systems are different, but when you claim “first ever” it should really be the first ever. In this particular situation, the issues get resolved in the comments. I don’t think that people claim their superlatives maliciously and most of the time they are just mistakes in judgement or a failure in doing proper research.

The earliest of Second Life residents and Linden Lab employees joined Second Life in late 2002. Second Life has exploded exponentially over the past year or so and the population has grown to 8.5 million from 500,000 since August 2006. It is important for the newcomers to be aware of the fact that some of Second Life’s eldest residents have been here for almost five full years now. I am sure that there are a few firsts left that have yet to be done, but I cannot stress enough the value of research in terms of big picture thinking, growth and sustainability.