Here is the event information:

Being a musician in the modern era has offered a huge wealth of tools
and opportunities, however, this can also be overwhelming. The same
thing can be said for the modern media business: how do you promote
yourselves in a vast sea of competition? Which tools are effective?
How do you separate your work from the pack? What artists and
businesses have been successful?

And, of course, the most important question: how can I get people to
listen to music, while still having an opportunity to make a living,
and maintaining the quality of my work?

We will be addressing these questions – and many more, hopefully
brought by you. Our panelists include:

John Allers: program director Radio 104.5 WRFF-FM – or better known to
us, the best local supporter of local artists, Clear Channel
Jennifer Vatza: local band manager; new media promoter, Web 2.0
socializer; virtual worlds expert
Darren Morze: local musician (Manic Mirrors) and studio engineer (Plan
B Studios) in both analog and digital
Ben Morgan: Music Director, Millcreek Tavern; Founder, Musictech
mailing list; Past associate of The Future of Music Coalition, Elektra
Records, CDnow

As usual, we will be having a fairly open discussion with the
panelists, not a lecture. We hope to see you Thursday, March 6th,
at our meeting location:

1835 Market Street
14th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19103

To attend, simply drop an email to Frank Taney, our kind sponsor from
Buchanan Ingersoll, & Rooney – francis(d0t)taney(at)bipc(dot)com – if you don’t
have time to register, feel free to show up, but you may have to wait
a few minutes while the front desk contacts us.

We always gather between 5:30pm and 6:00pm EST, and start at about
6:15pm. We’ll have the discussion until about 8pm, and people who want
to join us for a cocktail afterwards at Elephant & Castle at 18th and
Market are welcome.

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.