OpenSim: A little story of a closed-user micro grid
It has been a while since I have been in my little own closed grid, which I run for some of my oldest SL friends. In the last months of 2007 we did your first steps. And now we can feel a little bit comfortable in our exile. We got the basic things we need, and the content does look very nice. If you run a micro grid, things develop very very slow. From time to time you get a new curious visitor, mostly a friend of a friend. They drop in, are enthusiastic, see the work that has to be done and leave. Just 1% of the visitors stay and try to contribute whatever they are able to give. I did spend ~ 3000 EUR over the time for the server infrastructure and do spend a lot of time to keep things running. Technically and as contact person for the needs of the grid users. In the early days of our micro grid we decided to keep it as closed usergroup grid and not to connect trough hypergrid. In first it was the fear of content theft about their stuff that they did create in our grid. After a while we saw that it is good to have a kind of “INVITE ONLY” grid. So we could control who we let in. We did not want any weirdos, or lets say no users that are much more weirdo than us 
. Another slowing down decision has been, not to have an inworld currency, most of us left SL because of the bad economy or the wrong decisions of Linden Lab, which is in the conclusion pretty the same 
. If you got no currency you will not attract professional content creators. Soon we did realize that and did no longer cry about that. We where facing copyright discussions and solved them and decided that the respect of the copyright is a very high good. Even if we are closed. In doubt, we delete “shady” content. Better safe than sorry. Even in our micro grid we had some bad blood due to strong personality by what we lost some valuable users which are hard to replace. In a micro community every head is a mastermind and more than important. And for me it had been hard to take care of all the problems you are facing if you run a grid. I soon decided not to go to deep into human relationship issues. I just always tried to keep it on a moderate level between the fronts. And where are we now?
We were facing times of silence, where nothing seem to happen, where no one logs in for a week. And we have high weeks where for some reason many people are online and creating content. Mainly people are online while the grid founders are online too. I guess people really need a permanent contact person and a kind of guide. It is nice to work on things and no one is distracting you. But it can be very lonesome…much much to lonesome there. If no one is there to “show and tell” why build? Is the question I ask myself the most and I guess others are asking the same question in other grids too. That’s our story so far. I truly hope that the end of the summertime will get people back to fun-work in our little paradise-like-utopia-exile. I promise to blog a little bit more about our opensim-grid activity in future. If that is stuff that matters…in anyway.
Personal: Dear Philip Linden/Rosedale,
Dear Philip,
after reading your blog post, I did take a rest and sit down to think over what you were writing. The most important thing you did say for me “… I’d like to thank the SL community, and in particular those people who sent me the many heart-warming email messages of support that I’ve received since returning.”
You may ask, why is this so important? Because it is odd to hear a CEO of a commercial driven product to talk about “a warm heart”. And I don’t talk about the CEO of warming blanket factory . May this be true? Is this CEO having a heart? And does he mind to keep it warm by the community and not by a “hot balance sheet”?
It is true that you need money to keep your business running, the pay the wages, to pay your bills. But I guess you never had this primary in mind when you started your Second life product. If I am wrong with my guess, I only can say “you had bad luck” . You did create a product with a high emotional and strong social binding of your too often underestimated costumers.
Dear, Phil’, what do you feel, if you look to a screenshot like the one above? Do you see a costumer willing to spend some money? Or do you see a person with a warm heart, sitting at a place which a another warm hearted person did build? Do you see cost of ownership or do you see a beautiful place in a world which had already lost so many heart warming places like this forever. To keep you heart warm for a very long time never stop to listen to your community which is is left after Linden Lab did squish out some hearts due to greed and a CEO which heart had been cold as ice. We put our hearts into your hands, what will you do? Squish or keep em warm?
Philip, if you ever may have the smallest doubt, here is the landmark to the place shown in the picture above, sit down, look around, make a deep thought, maybe you will get a warm heart after a while again.
Sincerely yours, Infinite.
Shopping:Bunny’d
The temperature outside is up to 38°C, and inside at 28 °C. It seems that my brain is operating in a not known mode and so I do things I usually do not. Like walking around in boxers or buying virtual pets…
WTF? Pets? Yes! Yesterday my nerdish, geeky, all worlds best female friend, came up with a SL landmark I should be dying to see. So far to the background story. We teleported to a virtual tamagotchi-thingy like selling point. At first I was going..”yes..cute..ah again..a virtual pet” . But after taking a look at the idea behind the virtual pet, made me smile. Because virtual worlds need more creative content like this.
We decided to take a look at the animal creators sim too…
The team of ozimals.com did create a virtual bunny micro cosmos. Their SIM looks like a little girls dream and you may start to barf about the cuteness, but far apart from that. They created an entertaining product line. You can buy a bunny nest and some basic food and water. You can choose your bunny out of many different races and properties. We did not find bunny nests at their SIM, just starter packs, so the landmark above may be a good starting point to get a bunny with the properties you like. If you want a special race.
Once your bunny is born you will have to deliver some food etc. . It does not take to much attention and the costs for the food are moderate if you…well ..if you not to decide to breed. Yes, you did read right. And this is where the fun starts. You can bring together a pair of bunny and if you treat them right you soon will have some baby bunny. You may end up like Cpt. Kirk and his tribbles. The impressing thing about that bunny funny product is. They did build in some genetic rules. So your baby bunny will have some characteristics from his parents. In the worst case you will have a mutant bunny. As natural born shopping addicted we did buy a bunny each and set it up. My little one is called “bun bun”, named after the a toy bunny meekakitty did create as give-away some weeks ago.
Behind the fun, there is a high level of creativity. One of those user driven business, people, costumers like. I urge the content creators in SL to create more such great stuff. And I urge Linden Lab to take care of them and not to scare them off Second Life by chaotic Linden Lab business behaviour.
Well yes, I am going mad, yes it is too hot today. But hey, at last I take my time every day in life to play. When did you play the last time in your life? So get your bunny NOW and enjoy life! I am out now, at the coast, fishing virtual. But that is another insane story….
Bun Bun's first hops
Your Infinite Sunset.
