As part of the busiest week of events in Extropia's history, we're holding a special Sophrosyne's Salon at 10 am SLT Thursday morning, in the Central Nexus in Extropia Core.

Our Salon Spotlight Guest will be Tom Bukowski (Tom Boellstorff).  Tom is the author of the newly-released book, Coming of Age in Second Life.

Tom is Associate Professor of Anthropology at University of California, Irvine and Editor in Chief of American Anthropologist. He hosted the recent atomic-world conference "Cultures of Virtual Worlds," and has been an embedded anthropologist in Second Life since 2004.  His new book is an anthropological study of Second Life's cultures and subcultures. It's challenging, provocative, engaging, and offers much to everyone, casual reader, SL Resident and social scientist alike.

Tom is a delightful, engaging, insightful speaker, and we're delighted to welcome him to Extropia!





Our regular Saturday Salon will feature another very special guest, Universa Vanalten (Erika Vick) of NASA Headquarters. Universa is the coordinator of NASA's extensive activities in Second Life, and will be discussing the space agency's use of virtual technologies for outreach, education, research and exploration. 

Fresh from the coming NASA Future Forum this week in Extropia and other SL venues, Universa will set out the future of NASA's virtuality efforts, and share some exciting movies and slides of present and future space endeavors!

Saturday, May 17, 1-2:30 pm, Central Nexus at Extropia Core.



Meanwhile, last week's Salon has been described by many as the best yet - which is saying a lot!  Ben Duranske, of the virtual worlds legal blog Virtually Blind and author of the new book Virtual Law, joined us for a terrific discussion of legal issues facing residents and merchants in virtual worlds.

Ben has a rare gift for explaining complex matters in an engaging, entertaining and enlightening way, and we were all (33 peak concurrency) treated to a marvelous discussion!

Thanks, Ben, and we hope to have you back in Extropia again!

Hamlet Au, New World Notes blogger, former Linden and author of the outstanding new book The Making of Second Life (seriously - it's maybe the very best book on synthetic worlds out there - it's smart, gripping, sensitive and insightful - go buy a copy!), was our Salon Spotlight Guest today.

We had a terrific crowd - a peak concurrency of 42 - but the Salon room looked strangely empty after seeing 84 people in there last week!

Hamlet dealt well with the outspoken Salon crowd, told some great stories, shared his insights on the Lindens, the state of the industry and the future of synthetic worlds, and stayed into overtime to chat with all of us. 

The transcript is available here.

No Salon next week!  I'll be gone all week.  Back in two with a second try for JoJa Dhara on Virtual Holland, which we had to cancel a few weeks back due to logins being shut off...

David Brin's appearance as Salon Spotlight Guest was the centerpiece of Yuri's Night celebrations in Extropia. Dr. Brin packed them in: we had a peak concurrency of 84, and stayed right around 80 for most of his two-hour appearance.  Thankfully, sim stability was excellent, considering the circumstances.

It was certainly an unusual event!  We got off to a ragged start, with many of the audience trying to talk at once - which works fine for backchat at events like Metanomics, where the speaker is in the Voice channel, but which completely overwhelmed our guest, who was in text chat,  struggling with the interface and the speed of threaded conversations.

After our shakedown, Dr. Brin got into the spirit of the thing in fine form, challenging us to look critically at internet-based communications tools, including those we were using, and led us in a rough-and-tumble exchange that left us all thinking, and hungry for more.

Many thanks to Dr. Brin for his time and engagement with us, and our thanks to Zeroe Auer, who created Dr. Brin's photorealistic skin, and Zada Zenovka, who built his shape.  He was looking fine!

Next week: Hamlet Au (Wagner James Au), founder of the influential blog "New World Notes," and author of the terrific new book, The Making of Second Life.


Photos by Boc Cryotank (Stephen Euin Cobb)

Special thanks to Boc Cryotank (Stephen Euin Cobb) for the photos-  Boc's got an eye for the ladies, doesn't he?  :D

We cancelled the regular Saturday Salon due to SL's long downtime: logins started working right at 1, when the Salon was scheduled to start, and a lot of people hadn't gotten the word.  Plus, our Spotlight Guest, JoJa Dhara, had been sick anyway - we decided to let her rest, and to sav her visit for a time when she's healthy and we can get a full crowd. 

The afternoon turned into an impromptu party, as a good dozen people showed up anyway, and kibitzed while Vidal expanded the seating in the Salon room, in preparation for SF Writer (Robert J. Sawyer)'s visit on Sunday:




And, photos of the Salon itself the following day:

We celebrated galatea_gynoid 's first rezday today!  My dear love and true friend, Extropia's visionary and driving force, my inspiration and delight, has been in the world a year, and it's my great honor to have spent much of it with her.  Here's to many, many more!

Enormous thanks to Reactor Radio's DJ Nicki Petrichor for the best day of music ever!  Nicki played an *unbelievable* set of the best electronica from around the world, and her 4-hour set was still going strong when I left after 5 hours!  Nicki, you're the greatest, and we love you!

Thanks to everyone who turned out on one of SL's uglier days of late.  It was really good to spend the day with you, dear friends and new friends.

I'm sorry I didn't get more photos, especially of everyone who was at the party's first few hours: it took me a while to settle down, relax and take snapshots. So, Grace McDunnough, Noelani Lightfoot (who took my stunning new profile photo - check it out inworld!), Meissa Thorne - my apologies, and I'll catch you double at the next party!

This past Saturday, our Spotlight Guests were Hiro Pendragon and Lordfly Digeridoo, for an intense and spirited discussion of Julian Dibbell's article for Wired, "Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses," Hiro's commentary on the article, and on best practices for handling griefers.

We had a lot of first-time attendees, and things got raucous, but we settled into a worthwhile and civil discussion, with sides that agreed to disagree on the seriousness of griefing. 

I'm indebted to Boc Cryotank (Stephen Euin Cobb) for the photos: with the intensity of the discussion, I didn't have the chance to take pictures, or even get a headcount.


Next week, please join guest host Argent Bury for a discussion with Dalien Talbot on OpenSim and its significance for Second Life.  Saturday, February 16, 1-3pm SLT at The Nexus in Extropia Core.

We had another amazingly fun afternoon at the South Park Beach Party in Extropia Core yesterday!  Six hours, three DJs, $2000L in swimsuit prizes, trivia contests and more!

Lots of new friends - thanks to everyone who brought people, and everyone who dropped in to rock out with us!

Special thanks to DJs Seven Shikami, Nicki Petrichor and Vannesh Cannoli - three fantastic sets, and a lot of very happy dancers!

Arisia Vita and Tara Yates were our swimsuit contest winners - thanks for the eye candy you two, and everyone!

I'll remember this as the week I had very little time, and spent most of it in a foul mood.

Still, it was full of great stuff - a tour of the Vulcano community, and a lot of very enthusiastic new friends, the premiere of Dizzy Banjo's Parsec, and a wonderful fun time at the Extropia picnic, much of it sitting with Argent, watching our daughter dance like a wild thing and make friends.

	Vulcano Thanks to so many of the citizens of Vulcano for showing me a good time!
	Club Pyramid A brilliantly creative design - I can't wait to party there!
	Nothing But The Blues Me and Ev0l Twin Ali at Vanni's party
	Parsec Thanks to Dizzy for the opportunity to see this amazing work of art!
	Parsec About to begin -

Salon Spotlight Guest Corro Moseley, CEO of Daden Limited, brought us a different kind of Salon yesterday.  We had a peak concurrency of 34, with lots of new faces, for Corro's show and tell of terrific tech, including the Nabatzag bunny, which provides information on avatars visiting an SL location to an equivalent bunny in FL - essentially, an FL doorbell for SL. Kiki the Parrot demonstrated networked chatbot technology, but the hit of the day was Halo, the walking, talking chatbot avatar!

Unfortunately, we had our first eviction for public rudeness. I've been running a weekly event for eight months in SL, and have had to eject four people: one for nudity with a one-Linden woodie when we were at a PG facility that explicitly prohibited nudity, one for commercial audio chat spam, one for a replicating-script griefing attack, and only one, yesterday, for verbal obnoxiousness continued after a polite IM warning. One person who can't behave in 32 weeks of events with an average attendance of over 30 is extraordinarily good odds.

The Salons are a verbal free-for-all that are unlike other prominent discussion events in SL. I refuse to moderate audience questions and encourage backchat and side conversations: that's what's made the Salons such a success, and enabled them to serve as a nexus of professional relationships and friendships that have spread across venues and even platforms: the Salon crowd is well-represented every day in Twitter chat!

Aside from trusting the audience to be smart and interesting, one other factor contributes to the Salons' success: the rule Namav Abramovic articulated so succinctly as, "Don't be a dick." That only one person has clearly violated that rule in 32 weeks is a testament both to the good sense of Salon attendees, and how high the bar for unacceptably obnoxious behavior really is - *ordinarily* obnoxious behavior is more than welcome!

I hope we'll have at least another 32-week run before our next incident.

They should all be like last week!  I really got the balance right - a lot of work, a lot of fun, a lot of love. 

Gods, I adore my family and friends - thank you all for one of the best weeks ever! 

	Metanomics at Malburns' Metanomics overflow with IYan, iAlja and Grace
	Interviewed at SL'ang Life Island a great turnout from the Extropians!
	A real date! Argent and I go skating at Vanni's party - our first real date!
	Scheming With Grace We didn't have the threesome with John, but I did get Grace all to myself! :P
	A Night With Vids Love and companionship through a dark night
	Gala's Hawt!
	Name That Celebrity! At least I didn't go with the Oompa Loompa pic, but I've got it, don't you worry! ;)
	Avs & Outfits Our favorite pastime, back again!
	'Dorable! *such* squee over those cute ears!
	Moping at dande's dande's place *was* the best spot in Extropia for brooding - gods know what it looks like *this* week, though!
	Core Mission After the Salon, another great set from Nicki!
	Serenity Or, actually the Muir - a much nicer ship, and an even hotter captain!
	Caledon Argent and I begin our explorations - and end up up to our necks in a freezing river!
	Warming up Snuggled back at home -