Moving from Second Life to OpenSim
If you follow the ramblings of Ener hax on the iliveisl blog, you’ll know that we have pulled out of Second Life. Ener did a wonderrful job in single handedly running as many as 19 sims with 101 tenants. That is a huge task and one the Ener did very well. Usually when an estate closes, there are a lot of bad feelings, but not in Ener’s case.
An outpouring of love, support, even financial donations, show the true richness of Second Life. Community is what it is all about. Linden Lab is simply a provider of a an open source virtual world. The iliveisl community that Ener fostered is truly a community and many of the sims were purchased by its residents, are staying together, and are even keeping their original names! That speaks volumes to the efforts of Ener and to the wonderful residents that call ilivesil home for play and in-world business.
My role has always been in the background of iliveisl with Ener Hax being the spokesperson and manager. As part of my role, I developed the social network accounts and tied them together to allow for Ener’s efforts to reach outward. The iliveisl blog steadily receives 1000 hits a day, the Twitter account has over 10,000 followers, and the iliveisl Flickr just broke 7000 images.
The social presence of iliveisl is important, not as a marketing tool, but as a way to share the joy, creativity, and possibilities of virtual worlds. For my interests, I like what can be done by using virtual worlds as an elearning animation tool and as a space visualization and meeting tool.
In looking at Linden Lab as a virtual world provider, filtering out all the hype it received three years ago, it is an easy decision to try OpenSim as an alternative. There is even a wonderful, low tech installer that you can try out for installing OpenSim on your own box.
However, the ability to share what we make with others also guided what choices were suitable. Reaction Grid as an OpenSim host was the clear choice. It is home to many prominent educators, such as Jokay, whom I admire greatly. It is also home to Boston College, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Intel, and many others.
The Reaction Grid team is wonderful to work with. While poor Ener tried to get M Linden to just tweet out a simple hello (seems reasonable? especially with a $3K a month customer and why would you be on Twitter if you were not going to part of the conversation?), Kyle, CEO of Reaction Grid and very much its front man, is able to spend hours a month Skyping with me! One could argue that Reaction Grid is smaller and it is, but it also does not have 300 employees working for it!
Great cost, passionate team, and a fantastic community make Reaction Grid the right choice for our endeavors.
More to come as “Enclave Harbor” builds its way to life. This time Ener Hax (hmm, same initials as Enclave Harbor) gets to strictly focus on building, remains the outward facing spokesperson, and retools iliveisl to be the “i live in sim lands” team behind the workings of Enclave Harbor. That team includes two of the best Second Life scripters and a successful clothing maker (pays for her two sims from her in-world work).
We look forward to you coming into Reaction Grid, using our free sandboxes, and snagging the free resources we are making. See you in-world or at a conference!
More on the photography of Therese here
Our Second Life estate closes
Ener Hax had quite the weekend with the very hard decision to shutter the iliveisl Second Life estate (end of a Second Life chapter). The resulting outpouring of love and support was amazing. The residents banded together and have scheduled to buy 90% of the sims as individuals but keep the spirit of the community going.
While no comment was made by Linden Lab, it was interesting that support came from the estate’s residents, residents from other estates, facebook friends, and even the co-founder of OpenSim! It looks as though there have been over 200 tweets of support and blog traffic tripled. Ener is very good about communicating openly and honestly and at building true community spirit. The use of the iliveisl blog and twitter helped calm fears and set direction for those affected.
Most private estates simply vanish in the night with no warning or consideration of their residents. That type of behavior could be discouraged by Linden Lab (perhaps a refundable sim deposit based on sim activity?). Ener is keeping the estate going a full month after the announcement with a soft transfer date of February 16th and this is clear with a formal blog announcement and the distribution of notecards in-world, both easy to monitor and verify. There are other ways this could be done as well.
For those not using virtual worlds as an income tool, shop owners and content creators spend much time developing traffic to their shops and the associated landmarks. Once a sim is gone, that landmark no longer works.
Of course, I am biased but so very glad that Ener will be our chief builder for the Reaction Grid endeavor we are launching. Ener will no longer need to worry about the financial side of being a virtual world estate manager (19 sims at the peak of our 25 month effort – all of which was 100% run by Ener) and can concentrate on just building – a true passion.
Why did we leave Second Life?
Costs and politics.
I could list my issues and Ener could too, but from a training and eLearning perspective OpenSim is superior. Scripts run faster, higher frame rates coupled with higher anti-aliasing make for better video, and about 10% the expense.
I’ll be talking at the end of May in Chicago about eLearning and the use of virtual worlds, namely hosted solutions like Reaction Grid, and more details are coming soon.
Also, the launch of a rich free resource (Enclave Harbor) for educators and businesses thinking of looking into virtual worlds will be unveiled soon.
A note to Ener: great job with this hard choice and it is clear that you are very much loved and that your work in Second Life was enjoyed by many. I’ll miss the Eville Atomic Lounge but I see that you started on one in Reaction Grid today as a way to unwind (you should try a martini to unwind!).
