The Chilbo Road Press

In Attendance: Kristine Kristan, McDaniel Sixpence, Gem Blue, Rachel Corleone, Alleara Snoodle, Corcosman Voom, Zedd Zeplin, Chibi Lexenstar, Polenth Yue, Maddog Easterling, Tara Yeats, Rubaiyat Shatner, Malburns Writer, Josain Zsun

First Time Attendees (please friend!): McDaniel Sixpence, Rubaiyat Shatner

Chilbo Annex Placement & Content Finalized – Sim Liaisons Needed!

Based on previous discussions, Kristine Kristan and Chibi Lexenstar developed a model Chilbo Annex building that will serve as outreach posts in the sims of Greater Chilbo.   The first Chilbo Community Annex location was placed in the Mindulle sim located at:  http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Mindulle/116/64/118

The first model Chilbo Community Annex in the Mindulle sim.

Inside the Annex, we’ve placed content suggested by the community, including the Community Directories, freebies, texture packs, the Chilbo Resident Welcome Kit, calendars, posters, and more.  Visit the Annex to pick up a copy of any goodies you might have missed!  The space also features comfortable seating for a chat, and shelving to hold sim servers and other functional objects that can be housed in the Annex facilities.

Fleep Tuque and Memorial Dae discuss the meaning of Chilbo
in the Mindulle Annex.

Barring any last minute changes to the structure or the content, the rest of the Chilbo Annex locations will be placed in host sims around Greater Chilbo over the coming weeks (see the map upstairs in the Chilbo Town Hall for other proposed locations).  Gem Blue, Zedd Zeplin, and Chibi Lexenstar are going to work on locating a reasonable spot for an Annex in the Soyeonpyeongdo sim, and we decided to keep the historical structure in Madhupak, with some minor changes to the doors to make the space more friendly and welcoming.

Maddog Easterling has volunteered to serve as the steward for the Kuwol Annex – but more volunteers are needed!  If you’d be willing to help keep the Chilbo Annex in your sim up-to-date and be an ambassador to folks in the local neighborhood, please sign up on the volunteer form!  It’s a great way to support the Chilbo Community and meet more folks in the area.

Incorporating Feedback from the Annual Land & Resident Census

A current proposal would limit the use of the subsidized newbie starter homes to
one calendar year to encourage more investment in the community.

Based on the data and comments from the Annual Land & Resident Census, we discussed several potential changes to more closely reflect the goals and needs of the community.  Some of the proposed changes include:

• To limit the use of the starter home/offices subsidized by the Chilbo Community to one calendar year. This would encourage folks who decide Chilbo is a good fit to invest in the community by buying land nearby or renting from other community members, while freeing up the newbie starter homes for new members.   In order for this to work, though, we need to provide an effective and easy way for people to transition from the starter homes to .. tier donors?  land owners?  rentals from other members?  This isn’t yet clear.  Thoughts about good ways to communicate this information or facilitate transitions?

• To encourage greater use of the Chilbo group chat feature. The majority of respondents to the Census indicated that they knew some Chilbo members, but not many or not well.  We want to encourage greater “network effects” among community members, and utilizing the group chat is a free and easy way to talk more amongst ourselves.  For those who find the group chat distracting, closing the group IM tab/window will eliminate the chat, and it can be re-opened at any time during the login session to get back into the discussion.

• To reduce group notices and consolidate “event announcements” to a weekly summary. Some felt that group notices were coming too frequently, so we’re trying to find the right balance between keeping folks informed about what’s going on and not spamming everyone with unnecessary reminders.   Though this in some way conflicts with other feedback from the Census that people want more reminders.    We’ll keep trying different combinations until we strike just the right amount!

• To encourage more discussion events, art events, commercial activity, and non-profit organizations in the community. Feedback from the Census indicated that people would like to see more of these types of events and spaces, so Committee Chairs and Members should perhaps focus on ways we might increase this kind of content.  We have many great spaces in the community for holding events, let’s use them!

Have thoughts or input about these proposed changes?  We’ll discuss next steps at the May 15th Town Hall, be sure to attend!

Linden Lab’s New Mainland and Machinima/Snapshots Policies

As part of the new Terms of Service (which everyone should read!), Linden Lab also announced new policies covering the Mainland, and governing the creation of Machinima/Snapshots on the grid.  We didn’t find anything particularly controversial about the Mainland policies, but discussed how the Chilbo Community should handle permissions about making machinima or taking pictures on community land.   The proposal:

• Chilbo Community land should have a blanket “Machinima/Snapshots allowed” policy. Private landowners can set their own preferences in land description, but we encourage openness where possible.

Everyone thought this was an agreeable approach, but we wanted to give those who couldn’t attend the meeting an opportunity to weigh in.  Unless objections are voiced at the next Town Hall meeting, we’ll probably begin updating the descriptions in the “About Land” settings for community property giving blanket permission to film and take snapshots on public lands owned by the CCBP group, and leave it up to private landowners how they want to handle things on their own property.

Chilbo Summer Fair 2010

Chilbo Summer Fair Grounds in 2008

The Chilbo Summer Fair is intended to be a celebration not just of the Chilbo Community, but also other communities in Second Life.  Previous iterations of the fair included workshops, panel discussions, events, fair rides, and lots more.  It’s basically a community-wide celebration of our residents, our projects, and all the things we love about Second Life!

With the European MetaMeets conference taking place in May, and the Second Life Community Convention taking place in August, we decided that July would be a good month to hold the Fair.    Exact dates and duration (do we do it over a weekend?  Run it for a whole week like last time) are still up in the air, and we decided it would be best to hold a separate planning meeting for those who are interested in participating.  Ideally, everyone in the community would contribute at least one event, build, or activity, and we’d like to invite our friends, neighbors, and groups from across the grid to participate too!

Save the Date!
Chilbo Summer Fair 2010
Planning Meeting
Saturday, April 24, 2010
@ 11AM SLT
Chilbo Town Hall

Please join us next Saturday to plan a terrific celebration of Chilbo!

Second Life Community Convention 2010 – Boston, in August!

Fleep Tuque announced that she has accepted a position on the Board of Directors of the organization that runs the Second Life Community Convention, a real life meet-up of Second Life residents.   Though we’re still negotiating details regarding venue and dates, the SLCC this year will definitely take place in Boston, and probably the weekend of August 6th – 8th.  More details coming soon, and Fleep invited any Chilbo residents who want to help with SLCC either in Boston or the in-world conference to let her know as soon as possible.  More info to come soon!

Community Partnership Updates

In keeping with this year’s theme of “Building Community Partnerships”, we have a number of partnership initiatives getting off the ground with other groups on the grid.  Updates on our current partnership projects include:

New Citizens Incorporated (NCI)

NCI InfoHub under construction on Route 10 in Chilbo sim.

Chilbo resident Tomkin Euler was unable to attend the Town Hall on Saturday, but he sent an update regarding the InfoHubs being installed on Route 10 in Chilbo, and Route 9 in Madhupak sims.  Much progress has been made on the Madhupak InfoNode, and construction has begun in Chilbo as well.  He’s working with Winry Carver and Jason Arun at NCI for the construction, and asks folks to please stop by and have a look.   Be sure to send any questions, comments, or feedback to Tomkin!

Metanomics

The Chilbo Community is now listed as an official Event Partner at the
Metanomics Event Partner landing hub.

Things seem to be going well with the weekly Metanomics broadcast from the Malburns MetaHub in Chilbo (SL) and on Reaction Grid, though we’ve had some technical difficulties on the Chilbo sim in Reaction Grid.  Malburns Writer reported that things have been a little unstable over there, but the broadcast from Reaction Grid went much more smoothly this week.  Tara Yeats is going to follow up with the Metanomics team to see about getting the Chilbo logo included on their website and at the main Metanomics landing spot.  Thanks Mal and Tara!  [Update:  It took Fleep so long to write this post that the Metanomics Event Partner hub has already been updated with a LM to Chilbo!]

East River Community

Overhead view of the East River Community on the Mainland.
Inset:  ERC Community Manager Jilly Kikuchiyo and Fleep Tuque discussing partnerships.

We’ve had some previous discussions with Indigo Mertel of the East River Community, which is also located on the Mainland, but have not yet established if a partnership of some sort would be beneficial to our communities or what form it might take.   Fleep Tuque has been a bit overwhelmed lately and asked if any volunteers might be willing to take up the conversation and see where it leads.  If interested, please let Fleep know!

Confederation of Democratic Simulators (CDS)

The City of Neufreistadt, a member of the Confederation of Democratic Simulators.

Fleep Tuque had an interesting conversation with Claude Desmoulins of the Confederation of Democratic Simulators regarding community governance models in the wake of the Governance in Virtual Worlds conference.  They tossed about the idea of hosting some kind of discussion or forum about self-governance, or perhaps a workshop about community building.  Rubaiyat Shatner mentioned that he has been a member of CDS for years and said he might be able to help facilitate the conversation, though he’s pretty busy too.  You can visit the town of Neufreistadt or visit the CDS website to learn more.  We’ll follow up with Claude and see where the conversation takes us.

Edloe

Fleep Tuque visiting the lush and lovely lands of Edloe.

Kristine Kristan volunteered to strike up a conversation with Crap Mariner about ways that our two communities might partner to host events or otherwise provide connections or benefits to our respective memberships.  Edloe is not on the Mainland, but it’s part of a creative and active community archipelago.  Kristine will report back and let us know how the conversation goes.

Relay for Life

Chilbo residents Alleara Snoodle and Kristine Kristan have placed
kiosks for RFL Team Passionate Redheads around the Chilbo Community.

Chilbo residents Alleara Snoodle and Kristine Kristan are both members of the Passionate Redheads team, and they are working on plans to host a benefit for Relay for Life in Chilbo.  The event is likely to be a concert of some sort, but they’re working out if it might be possible to host the charity event in conjunction with the Chilbo Summer Fair, if the timing works out.  More to come when we figure out the dates for the Fair.

Junky & Abandoned Parcels in Madhupak Sim

Creative camouflaging of a junked up, abandoned parcel in Madhupak sim.

Kristine Kristan raised the issue of several junky and abandoned plots on Madhupak.   There are several plots that are clearly abandoned First Land spaces, though some of them are not fully surrounded by Chilbo Community land, so we can petition to have them cleaned up but then they go to auction.  We decided to look at the top 2 or 3 really egregious parcels and figure out what approach would be best for getting them cleaned up.  Another issue is that the community group is currently maxed out at tier, so we’d either need to sell some outlying land or get more tier donors to cover any additional land acquisitions.  Fleep Tuque said that there are several chunks of land in surrounding sims that are currently owned by the CCBP group that could definitely go to interested community members, so if anyone is looking to move out of a starter home, please see Fleep – we have lots of options!

New “Real Estate” Listing in the Chilbo Road Press

Many Chilbo residents offer properties for rent or sale to fellow Chilbo members,
like this cute cottage rental in the Mangyeong sim from Tara Yeats.

Speaking of land, Zedd Zeplin and others suggested that it would be good to have a way to communicate with each other about land for sale or rent to or by other Chilbo Community members.  Many folks in the community have landholdings they’d be willing to sell to community members, or are starting new rental areas to help provide more options for folks who want more space/prims than the Chilbo Community starter homes provide, but there aren’t currently good mechanisms to communicate what’s for sale or available for rent.  Our current methods are kind of a hodge podge of word-of-mouth and a few kiosks in the Town Hall.

Fleep Tuque suggested that we might repurpose or add a page to the Chilbo Wiki to serve this function, but not sure that’s the best route since it would require folks to do a little work to format the entries in a visually appealing way.  We’re playing around with ideas, but if anyone has suggestions, please speak up!

Other & Announcements

The Kyonu sim south of Soyeonpyeongdo is marred by campers, abandoned
First Land plots, and large prim screens (that aren’t even phantom!)..

Zedd Zeplin and Maggie Larimore are expanding their land clean-up efforts into the Kyonu sim.   Kyonu is just south of Soyeonpyeongdo sim, and it will be a challenging case, with lots of abandoned First Land, camper spots, and huge prim screens.  Everyone wishes them lots of luck. 

Valentino’s Cards, Gifts, & Flowers shop to have a new entrance built in Madhupak sim,

Valentino Tendaze will be creating a new entrance to his Valentino’s Cards, Gifts, & Flowers shop in Madhupak, on the parcel of land that Josain Zsun picked up for the community some time ago.

Meeting was adjourned.  Next Chilbo Town Hall meeting is scheduled for May 8, 2010 @ 11 AM SLT.  Transcripts available in the Town Hall.

In Attendance: Alleara Snoodle, Fleep Tuque, Maggie Larimore, Kristine Kristan, Tomkin Euler, Maddog Easterling, Gem Blue, Rachel Corleone, Corcosman Voom, SunHi Mistwalker, Zedd Zeplin, Chibi Lexenstar, Malburns Writer,  SkyeRanger Pinion

First Time Attendees (please friend!): Jonn Luik, Dali Waverider

Tickets to Linden Lab on Chilbo’s Behalf & Chilbo Name in Groups

We recently had some issues with Linden Lab being confused about who is petitioning them for abandoned land on behalf of the Chilbo Community Building Project group, and mixing up the CCBP with other groups in the area that have similar names like the Greater Chilbo Landholding Group.  Linden Lab asked us to have one person file support tickets on behalf of the group for land issues, and due to the confusion about groups, we discussed how to handle groups that want to show they are connected to Chilbo without getting them confused with the official Chilbo Community Building Project group that holds community lands.

We have a page on the wiki for posting about tickets to LL that might impact other Chilbo members, and folks are encouraged to use it so we know what’s being submitted to the Lab and can avoid confusion and mix-ups.  Everyone has the right to file support tickets and negotiate with LL, and should!, but we determined that tickets filed on behalf of the CCBP group, and especially about abandoned  land/ad farm issues, should be filed by a group owner to reduce potential mixups.   A draft policy regarding this change is available for comment.  Regarding the group names, it was suggested that ties to Chilbo could be indicated in the Group Charter area of the group info.  Zedd Zeplin offered to change the name of his landholding/rentals group to minimize the confusion.   Thanks Zedd!

Chilbo Road Press Seeks Writers

Editor-in-Chief Chibi Lexenstar is seeking more writers for the Chilbo Road Press!  Some mentioned that they don’t know how to blog, but might be interested in writing stories.  Chibi and Fleep Tuque offered to help folks new to blogging learn how to do it and we encourage members of the community to give it a try.  It’s not that hard and it’s great to share our experiences and thoughts with the broader Second Life community as well as with each other.  If the technology of blogging is putting you off, Chibi can also submit posts from notecards to the blog, just send her a notecard with full permissions images!

Viewer 2.0 – General Discusson & How Does it Affect Chilbo Community Content?

We had a lengthy discussion about the new beta viewer, discussing pros and cons.  Builders were especially concerned that the new viewer seems difficult to use, though other features were seen as a big plus, including the TP history, browser like bar, and clothing options.  And of course Shared Media!  Fleep Tuque offered to schedule a “Tips & Tricks” session for the community to help folks adjust.  We also discussed which content in the Town Hall and elsewhere in the community might need to be updated to take advantage of the new Shared Media capabilities (html-on-a-prim), and decided that it should save us a load of prims to remove some of the prim-heavy RSS feed readers we’re currently using.

Fleep suggests that people don’t just complain about the bugs and changes they don’t like in the beta viewer, be sure to actively document your concerns and bugs on the JIRA so we’re sure Linden Lab is getting good feedback from the experts – us!  Click to see what’s already been filed as suggestions and bugs for the Viewer 2.0 beta on the JIRA – and vote for the ones you agree with or experience!

[Update:  On March 23rd, Fleep gave a presentation to ISTE members about Viewer 2.0, sharing the slides here since they seem relevant - though these were not shown at the Town Hall!]

Changes to Chilbo Based on the 2009 Resident & Land Census

People either haven’t had a chance to look at the data or haven’t had enough time to grok all the implications, so we decided to put off serious discussion about that topic till the next Town Hall.  For reference, reposting the results:

We’ve already made some immediate changes to how we communicate certain things to reflect the needs of the community, such as fewer group notices. Which brought up another topic..

Using the Chilbo Group Chat

Resident Gem Blue mentioned that she’s a member of other groups in Second Life that seem to use group chat more extensively for.. well, chatting.  Some members expressed concern that group chat was spammy, though others pointed out that you can easily close the tab (v1) or session (v2) if the chat is bothering you.   Several said they wished the group chat were more active, so we decided to give that a try and reassess how we feel about it if folks are finding it disruptive.  In the mean time, feel free to start a conversation or share something with the group and let’s see where it takes us!

Updates on Community Partnerships Initiative

Resident Tomkin Euler is spearheading our efforts to partner with New Citizens Incorporated (NCI) by providing InfoHub space on land parcels off of both Route 10 in the Chilbo sim and Route 9 in the Madhupak sims.  Tonmkin reported that he’s in touch with folks at NCI and they were working out designs, texture choices, and that sort of thing.  Corcosman Voom began some initial conversations with NCI and helped scout out the potential locations, so as soon as the designs are formalized the partnership should be a go.   Thanks Tomkin and Corcosman!

Tomkin Euler and Fleep Tuque discuss the NCI InfoNode on Route 1o in Chilbo.

Fleep Tuque reported on the partnership with Metanomics.  Malburns Writer and Tara Yeats have been hosting live streams of the show for quite some time, making us a sort of “unofficial” event partner for the show, but in the interest of showing our support for other communities and projects that we feel benefit the grid, decided to make it official if they were willing.  Fleep spoke with Jeanette Forager and it looks like it’s a go!  Fleep will work with Jeanette to get the textures they need and other things to make the official event partnership a reality.    Thanks to Malburns and Tara for helping move this along!

On the Linden Lab Community Partnership proposals, we wrote a response to Blondin Linden and he came through for us dealing with some abandoned land and getting Route 9 paved (thanks Blondin!!!).   No other response to our letter, it looks like Chilbo wasn’t quite what they were looking for for the program, but we’re glad we went through the process all the same.  In the course of the discussion, we decided we probably didn’t need to put bridges back in over Route 9, but would construct paths and connections to sidewalks leading down to the road.

Griefing Incident in Greater Chilbo

Kristine Kristan briefly reported on a major griefing attack on Greater Chilbo that lasted for over two hours.  Kristine deputized Chibi Lexenstar to assist, and then Michael Linden answered the call for help and eventually all was put back in order.   Many thanks to Kristine, Chibi, and Michael for dealing with this disruptive attack!  (And to Michael for helping!)

New Sidewalk Texture

New sidewalk texture on the left, old texture on the right…

Kristine Kristan put a motion out to update the texture of the official Chilbo sidewalks.  She took the existing texture and, well, texturized it to give it a more realistic look and feel, and baked in the color so we no longer have to do the additional step of coloring the prims.  Awesome Kristine!  Everyone loved the new texture and Kristine, Chibi, and others volunteered to help update existing sidewalks.   The new texture was distributed through group notices and will also be added to the Chilbo Community Welcome Kit for landowners and available in the Chilbo Town Hall.  Private landowners are encouraged to update their sidewalks too, but if you want help, give Kristine a ping.

Announcements?   Other?

Fleep Tuque mentioned the EVOKE project as something that may interest folks in the community.  Funded by the World Bank, the EVOKE game is a web based game about saving the world – the REAL world! She encouraged folks to check it out.  Some may remember a previous game in this vein, the Superstruct game, that led to the birth of the Chilbo Community Garden in the nature preserve (currently being replanted in a new location TBA).   Last year Fleep and Rachel Corleone made a video for the game filmed in Chilbo!

Alleara Snoodle announced that the American Cancer Society would be holding Relay for Life in Second Life again and asked how Chilbo would contribute this year.  Several people are already committed to be on teams, so we decided that Alleara should put a kiosk for her team in the Chilbo Town Hall Plaza for those wishing to donate, and Chilbo would potentially organize an event to support the cause.

Gem Blue mentioned that she has land in the Soyeonpyeongdo sim that she would like to sell to community members.  If you’re looking to upgrade or expand to new land, please ping Gem!

Myakka City is run by Jonn Luik in the Sunwi Do sim.

Jonn Luik invited members of the community to check out Myakka City.   He recently moved into the neighborhood and bought nearly the entire sim of Sunwi Do.   Congrats Jonn and welcome to the neighborhood!

Meeting was adjourned.  Next meeting to be held on April 10th @ 11AM SLT.

In Attendance: Fleep Tuque, Kristine Kristan, Corcosman Voom, Untolerable Bohemian, Lizzette Zenovka, Zedd Zeplin, Kelp Parkin, Chibi Lexenstar, Malburns Writer, Tara Yeats, MS Hawker, Maggie Larimore, Dno Vale, toster Oh, Polenth Yue, Gann McGann, Tomkin Euler, Rachel Corleone  (Gem Blue and Emru Rau stopped by the decorating party afterwards..) 

First-time Attendees (please friend!): Chibi Lexenstar, Untolerable Bohemian, Polenth Yue.  Kelp Parkin and toster Oh are relatively new, too, so be sure to add them if you haven’t already..

Committee Chairs:  Current Term Ending, Next Term January-June 20

Directors & Committee Chairs are listed at the bottom
of the Online Status Boards in the Chilbo Town Hall

The current term from June to December 2009 is about to end and we discussed Committee Chairs for the upcoming term.  Current Chairs are:

Residential: Kristine Kristan
Commercial: Kristine Kristan (interim)
Arts & Entertainment: Corcosman Voom
Non-Profits: Lizzette Zenovka
Education: Josain Zsun
Activities & Events: MS Hawker & Eliza Quinzet (co-chairs)

In addition, the current Directors have also agreed to continue in their capacity of assisting with the overall administration of the Chilbo Community:

Director of Public Safety & Prim Management: Rachel Corleone
Director of Communication: Malburns Writer
Director of Technology: Tara Yeats

For the next term, Zedd Zeplin volunteered to serve as the Commercial Chair (thanks Zedd!) and all current Chairs present agreed to serve another term.  If any of the absent Chairs wishes to step down, please let Fleep Tuque know, otherwise we’re assuming you want to stay on board for another go round!

Members of the community who wish to serve on a committee can complete the Chilbo Community Administration – Volunteer Sign-Up sheet.  Generally, Chairs for future terms are nominated from folks on the existing committees, so if you have an interest in taking on a Chairperson role, join that committee to get more involved!

Thanks to all who volunteered at the meeting, and to our Chairs for doing a fabulous job!

Linden Lab Community Partnership Program – VOTE NOW!

Board in the Chilbo Town Hall links to
discussions about the Linden Lab Community Partnership Program

After several meetings and discussions, lots of brainstorming and ideas, and many, many edits and revisions, the final version of the Chilbo Community’s Proposal to Join the Linden Lab Community Partnership Program is finally completed!   Many thanks to all of our residents who contributed ideas and feedback, and special thanks to Corcosman Voom and Kristine Kristan who worked extensively on the edits and revisions!

We now must decide with a final up or down vote whether or not to submit the proposal, with a majority vote determining the outcome.

Be sure to read the complete Proposal to Join the Linden Lab Community Partnership Program before casting your vote!

VOTE FOR OR AGAINST SUBMITTING THE PROPOSAL

CLICK HERE

Voting will end at 11:59PM SLT on December 31, 2009.  A majority vote will determine whether or not we submit the proposal, with the results to be announced at the January Town Hall Meeting.

Community Liaisons & Outreach Stations for NIC Sims (Not-In-Chilbo)

Chilbo Department of Public Works – Mindulle Station

As the community and the areas loosely called “Greater Chilbo” have grown, so have the opportunities to meet new neighbors and friends – but community leaders sometimes get a bit “stretched thin” trying to do outreach in new sims, and folks in outlying areas may have heard of the Chilbo Community, but might not know why they’d want to join our group.

To address these issues, we discussed appointing a single person per sim to serve as the Community Liaison for that region, as well as constructing an outreach station in each sim that would be something of a “satellite” Town Hall – a kiosk or other structure would provide info about our goals and purpose, with a teleport to the Chilbo Town Hall, and contact information for the Community Liaison for that sim.

We brainstormed several ideas and decided to use the Sandbox in Madupak as a place to try out different kiosk/building designs, with a more full discussion on the topic to be held at the January Town Hall.

A Cautionary Note About the Growth of CCBP Group Owned Land

Greater Chilbo Community Map 2009
Shows both privately owned (green) and group owned (blue) land.

Following the completion of the 2009 Annual Land Census for the Chilbo Community Building Project group owned land (results will be forthcoming once we’ve had a chance to crunch the numbers), Fleep Tuque discussed the rapid and explosive growth of CCBP group owned land over the last year, and expressed a note of caution as we move forward in 2010.

First, we want to make sure that we’re fully utilizing the group owned land we already hold before acquiring new land purchases.  Land with no one to care for it, build on it, or make it interesting isn’t much use to anyone, and we don’t want to waste the land/prims we already have available to us.

In addition, the explosive growth rate in 2009 crossed something of a “cost threshold” in terms of our total tier responsibilities to Linden Lab each month.  While the financial backing for group owned land is in good shape right now, it’s worth noting that we don’t want to become “too big to fail” -ahem- and to be prudent about our land purchasing decisions.  None of us has endlessly deep pockets, after all. 

Though the point of the discussion was NOT to ask for tier or $L donations, the conversation veered in that track for a while, and several people had questions about how tier works, how to donate, etc.  If you still have questions about this, feel free to contact Fleep, and of course donations of tier or $L for group owned land is always greatly appreciated.  But the intent behind the agenda item was mostly to caution folks to not get too overzealous in buying land (especially new users!  this is a common newbie thing and we’ve seen many folks get in over their head!), and to understand that while donations of land to the CCBP group is very very generous, it also carries a monthly fee (tier) and we may not always be able to take on new donations/land.

So, not sure that all came across as intended, but hopefully this helps clarify things a bit!

New Pages Added to Wiki:  “Resource List” & “Tickets to LL”

To better facilitate communication within the group, we’ve added two new pages to the Chilbo Community Wiki.

The Resources List page is now available for members of the community to offer general skills, talents, abilities, or other resources that might come in handy.  For example, Chibi Lexenstar has volunteered her graphic design skills, and Rodolfo Mirabella is able to translate from Spanish to English or vice versa.  Have a special skill or talent you’d like to offer?  List it on the Resources List page!

The second new page is the Tickets to LL page, which stands for Tickets to Linden Lab.  From time to time, members of the community need to submit tickets to Linden Lab for dealing with a variety of issues, from petitioning for abandoned land parcels to reporting griefers or abuse.  If you’ve submitted a ticket to Linden Lab about something that affects the Chilbo Community, please post your tickets on this page so others know when issues have already been reported.  It would also be helpful to update your post if/when the issue is addressed or resolved by the Lab.  Hopefully this addition to the wiki will help the left hand know what the right hand is doing – and ensure that we don’t unintentionally petition the Lab for the same issue multiple times.

Don’t have an account to edit the wiki? It’s pretty simple, just create an account at http://wikispaces.com and then navigate to the Chilbo Community Wiki at http://chilbo.wikispaces.com – then click the “Join” button in the upper right corner to request access.   As soon as an administrator approves your request, you will be able to contribute to the wiki!

Announcements & Other

• Malburns Writer started a Chilbo Community thread using Google Wave.  If you already have a wave account, let Malburns know and he can invite you to the thread.  If you don’t have a Wave account and want one, let Malburns or Tara Yeats know and they’ll get you an invite!
• Kristine Kristan mentioned that we have new chairs in the Town Hall donated by Yasuki Beck of ++LP2 Furniture.   Thanks to Kristine and Yasuki!
• The Chilbo sim on Reaction Grid is taking shape!  Malburns Writer will post instructions here soon for how to log on to the Reaction Grid and how to find the Chilbo sim when you get there.  Feel free to pick a spot and start building, it’s a big giant sandbox for us all to play with!
• Untolerable Bohemian has a group and a Sub-o-Matic for notices about his music shows, please send him an IM to join so you know when his shows are!
• Writers for the Chilbo Road Press wanted!  Have article ideas?  Want to learn how to blog?  Contact Fleep Tuque to get an account or Tara Yeats for help with how to blog.  Your article goes here!

The Town Hall meeting was adjourned.  Please send corrections to Fleep Tuque, full transcript available in the Chilbo Town Hall.  Next meeting TBD!

Decorate the Town Hall Plaza,  Put an Ornament on the Tree, Give a Gift!

The Chilbo Town Hall Plaza decorated for the holidays!
Add an ornament and a gift under the tree!

Following the Town Hall meeting, we went out to the Town Hall Plaza and decorated for the holidays!

A mennorah rests on the Town Hall Podium, with daily candle lightings (thanks to Crap Mariner for the mennorah, and Emru Rau for taking care of the candle lighting), and a beautiful Christmas tree and other holiday decorations are out on the plaza.  Check out all the fun holiday activities like ice skating, snow angels, mistletoe for kissing, and more!

Traditionally, members of the community make an ornament (copyable!) for the Christmas tree and place a gift under the tree.  If you place an ornament or gift, be sure to check the permissions to ensure folks can get your gift and take a copy of your ornament!

~ Happy Holidays to all and cheers to a bright New Year in Chilbo! ~

Chilbo residents at the Hanja Welcome Area

On October 24th, Chilbo residents met to discuss the Linden Lab Community Partnership and our intention to submit a proposal. Fleep presented a first draft document that incorporated nearly all of the initial suggestions and brainstorm results from the previous meetings. It should be noted that this document was merely a first draft and that it did not/does not reflect the views or consensus of the Chilbo Community.  Indeed, there were  strenuous objections to some sections of the document.   Nevertheless, in an effort to be transparent about our process, we post the original unedited first draft for archival purposes.

Current Status: Based on our discussion at the meeting on the 24th, a second draft version of the document is in the process of being created.  The second draft is available for revision, commenting, and editing by members of the Chilbo Community.  Members of the public and other Second Life residents are also invited to watch our progress there and submit comments or feedback as a reply to this post.

Fleep intends to set up a special kiosk in the Chilbo Town Hall with transcripts of our previous meetings and the relevant web links later today, and will send out a group notice in world when it’s set up and ready.  (Apologies for the delay, I’m in the process of helping my mom move today!)

On Saturday, October 17, 2009, we held a special Chilbo Town Hall meeting to discuss whether or not the Chilbo Community should submit a proposal to participate in Linden Lab’s new Community Partnership program.  [A full transcript is available in world at the Town Hall.]

The idea was discussed briefly at the October 10th Chilbo Town Hall meeting, and at that time we decided to table the discussion until the following week when we’d all had time to read the program guidelines and the comments and guidance provided by Blondin Linden on the official blog post about this topic.

It is Fleep’s sense that the general feeling in the community is a mixture of confusion, concern, and scepticism, but a general willingness to give it a try if we think it might benefit the community.  During our discussions about the program, various concerns surfaced:

- How would the program benefit Chilbo?   What would we have to do in return for participating?

- There seems to be some backlash about this program, would participating damage Chilbo’s reputation as an independent, free thinking, and open community?

- Linden Lab is somewhat notorious for starting new programs and initiatives that fizzle out, is it worth jumping through a bunch of hoops if this program continues in that vein?

- Would we lose any rights by participating?

Others expresed the sentiment “Nothing ventured, nothing gained” and the consensus seemed to be to move forward with as much openness and transparency as possible with the intention to submit a proposal IF we have broad community consensus to do so and IF we can craft a proposal that clearly benefits our community.

Why would Chilbo want to participate in the first place?  Fleep tried to summarize by saying, “Chilbo is a well established community, we’re good community citizens, we want to participate in helping new AND existing residents become more connected and we’re willing to teach and share in exchange for some official recognition of what we do.”  How best to formalize such an arrangement with Linden Lab is the question, and as always, the devil would be in the details.

During the discussion, we talked about structuring a potential proposal around two questions:  What do we want from Linden Lab? and What are we offering in return?

In the “What do we want from Linden Lab?” category, many ideas were floated, including:

- A new “Communities” listing in the Showcase page, official recognition of Chilbo in the list

- Better reclamation process for the abandoned parcels and ad farm squares, and better management of the Governor Linden owned roadways that intersect our community.

- We have established community standards, but no way to enforce them if someone breaks their agreement with us (no covenant or reclamation process if we “sell” community land).

- We spend a lot on tier for infrastructure, sidewalks, bridges, green spaces – the very things that help make the “community cohesion” we have visible, perhaps Linden Lab could help with that.

- We are experiencing a ton of lag in some sims, any way for Linden Lab to help us pinpoint problem scripts and troubleshoot the lag problem?

- The Hanja Welcome Area is just a few sims north east of Greater Chilbo, and it seems pretty darned underutilized with just a handful of the typical Linden Lab signage, but nothing that helps visitors to the Welcome Area connect to any of the sims or communities nearby.  Perhaps Chilbo could volunteer to build/manage/staff the Welcome Area to help visitors move beyond a cursory visit and connect with the communities around it?

In the “What are we offering in return?” category:

- We offer a well established, long term model community, one that has arisen organically in the mainland, and seems to work well for our members.  We can teach others how to start their own communities based on the Chilbo model.

- We are an example of a community _without_ a roleplaying or other distinctive theme – more akin to an actual community from real life, with residents having many different interests.  We believe this diversity strengthens our community and makes us both more viable and perhaps more representative of a broader cross section of Second Life residents than some communities.

- We provide free or extremely cheap land, housing, and project space to Second Life residents who want to explore projects that benefit the public good.  We have an excellent track record of privately funding education, the arts, public health, and other projects of this nature that contribute to civic life on the Mainland.  As participants in the program, we would continue to focus on this “public and community service” model in all of our endeavors related with the Community Partnership program.

- Our residents have expertise in Second Life – everything from event planning to scripting to building to avatar creation and machinima, we offer our expertise in exchange for participation.

- Our community is large enough and diverse enough to staff events and manage projects with a high level of quality and professionalism.

So, that’s where we are in the discussion at this point.  What are YOUR thoughts?  Which ideas do you like best?  Do you have other suggestions?  Something you think we should NOT do?  Other concerns?

We invite feedback especially from Chilbo residents, but readers of the Chilbo Road Press are also invited to participate.  Is your community thinking of participating in this program?  What would be your concerns with the ideas we’ve proposed so far?

We will reconvene in the Chilbo Town Hall next Saturday,  October 24, 2009 at 11AM SLT to discuss feedback received on the blog and to determine whether or not to move ahead with submitting a proposal.

Thanks for your feedback on this issue!

In Attendance: Fleep Tuque, Kristine Kristan, Josain Zsun, Lila Roecastle, Corcosman Voom, MS Hawker, Lizzette Zenovka, Alleara Snoodle, Tomkin Euler, Salty Saenz, Maggie Larimore, Gem Blue, MS Hawker, Rodolfo Mirabella

New Committee Chairs Nominated & Needed

We have a number of folks who volunteered to chair some important community functions, but  through one thing or another they have less time to spend on Chilbo projects.  Particularly the Activities & Events, Commercial, and Education chairs are open.  Kristine Kristan nominated MS Hawker and Eliza Quintet to serve  on the Activities & Events committee, to wide agreement.  Congratulations to MS and Eliza!

Kristine will temporarily take over the duties of Commercial chair for now, but we’d like to find someone to fill this spot since Kristine already has quite a lot on her plate with the Residential chair responsibilities.  Duties of the Commercial chair include:

• Serve as a liaison between Chilbo and the broader commercial sector in Second Life
• Promote and encourage new business development in Chilbo
• Assist new entrepreneurs with setting up a business in Second Life
• Recruit new shopkeepers for the commercial properties in Second Life

Gann McGann has served as Education chair for quite some time and has done a terrific job, but we’re looking for someone to fill this spot.  Duties of the Education chair include:

• Serve as a liaison between Chilbo and the broader educational community in Second Life
• Keeping up with the SLED mailing list to keep aprised of new educational opportunities
• Helping educators find suitable property and move into Chilbo
• Coordinating classes held in Chilbo
• Contributing to the education resources in the community, including the Chilbo Public Library and the repository of tools for teachers

Interested in serving as the Commercial or Education chair of Chilbo?  Send Fleep Tuque a note!

Land Updates

Community member Wainbrave Bernal has a number of exciting projects going on with his work and unfortunately has less time to spend on Chilbo projects.  He’s reduced his tier and the Salamander HQ and Grill will be closing, though Wainbrave’s heart will always be in Chilbo.

Likewise, Sine Rennehan’s Nature Preserve area in the Mujigae sim has mostly fallen into disuse and will be sold to reduce her tier.  The Nature Preserve is a large, beautiful area and can be parceled according to our needs.  Our first preference is to sell to someone in the community, so if you are interested, please contact Fleep Tuque.

Finally, Cosimo Urbanowicz has picked up a huge parcel in Kuwol and is looking for projects and tier contributions to support the new addition to Chilbo.  Stop by the new property and have a look, and if you know someone looking for land or project space, contact Cosimo to get more information.

Linden Lab’s Community Partnership Program

We had a discussion about the Community Partnership program that Linden Lab announced on their blog recently.  Many were unclear about what the purpose of the program is, how it would work, how it would benefit Chilbo, or even if we would qualify for the program since we own land in 6 sims but don’t own ANY full sim outright.

We decided to table this discussion until everyone has had a chance to read Linden Lab’s guidelines, and a follow up meeting to discuss is scheduled for next Saturday, October 17th at 11AM SLT in the Town Hall.  Please join us if you’d like to participate in this discussion.

Mad Wax Records & Musician Mentoring Program

Kristine Kristan reports that Mad Wax Records is now listed on Indiespectrum.com as a supporter of live music in Second Life.  She will be working on a machinima piece with Alleara Snoodle and others, and hopes Mad Wax can be a destination resource for musicians in Second Life.  They’re just in the planning stages for the video and she’ll need some extras and actors, so if you’d like to be included, let her know.

MS Hawker also has been discussing with Cosimo about instituting a Musician Mentorship program to pair novice performers with more experienced performers to help new musicians on the live music scene in SL.  As most of you know, MS’ Germelhausen coffeeshop and bakery (affectionately known as The Haus)  is one of the hottest social spots in Chilbo, with live performances nearly every day.  If anyone would like to assist with developing the Musician Mentorship program, please let MS know.

Deeding Objects to Group

Cosimo Urbanowicz sent around a notecard suggesting that we deed community objects to the Chilbo group and asked for feedback.  Fleep Tuque advises that if this is to be done, it must be done very carefully since the permissions system in Second Life can get extremely complicated.  Objects should only be deeded to the group if a) you are willing to give up being the owner of the object, once it is deeded you can’t take it back b) EVERY prim, EVERY script, EVERY SINGLE COMPONENT of the object is full permissions – if even one script or one component is NOT full permissions, then that object essentially cannot be modified, transfered, or copied, depending on the settings, which may mean it becomes an “orphan” object that no one can really use.  Fleep agrees there are some use cases where group deeding may be appropriate, such as for sidewalks or other community infrastructure objects that can be replaced if needed, but advises extreme caution for objects that are unique, purchased, or where there are no back up copies.

Following the Town Hall, we took field trips to the Nature Preserve in Mujigae and visited Cosimo’s new land acquisition in Kuwol.

A full chat transcript of the meeting is available in the Chilbo Town Hall.   Next Town Hall meeting is scheduled for November 15, 2009 at 11AM SLT.