OPEN FORUM: THE YEAR THAT WAS

What were the milestones of your Second Life in 2006-- as a Resident, as a community member, as a creator, or as someone in the metaverse?  Post and discuss here, and after the New Year, I'll highlight the best Comments in an update.

Comments

[Daisy Beauchamp]

In general, finding SL, and meeting some incredible people.

Finding my place, what I need to be doing, what I want to be doing in SL. I'm a RL photographer, and have just brought this into SL.

Next week I'll be opening db studios, which is a 2 story gallery/studio for portraits and product photography.

I'm excited to have found a way to use my RL skills in SL, and already, it's really opened my mind to what I can do IRL as well.

[rikomatic]

For me a milestone was when my girlfriend suggested that we create our holiday card in Second Life and film a machinima video to accompany it. It was much more work than I thought it was going to be, from creating avatars that looked somewhat like us to purchasing our wardrobe to shooting our avatars in various locales.

But sending it out to friends and family really helped connect my virtual life with my real world life. I'm unlikely to win any machinima awards, but the thanks and appreciation we've received from the card and video are their own reward. Even my dad gets Second Life now.

[Laetizia Coronet]

Second Life has opened whole new areas of creative thinking in my mind. How would I build a house? What would my own island sim look like? I have started to design clothing in SL now and I notice a marked change in how I perceive RL, how I appreciate fashion and art and architecture in RL, because I can grasp a bit more about the creative processes involved.
SL is not really 'second' life but rather an enrichment of 'first' life.

[T_S_Kimball]

In my case, its applying my knowledge of SL's strengths and weaknesses, its good and bad ideas, toward the goal of what I term 'Uru Content Creation' - Using the content creation concepts learned in SL to allow careful (but diverse) content expansion within the new Uru Live.

It may not become any form of true 'competitor,' but learning from SL's mistakes should go a long way in keeping its own retention figures high.

--TSK