The Chilbo Road Press

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.