Additional Notes

Tara Yeats came to Second Life in the fall of 2005 through an online message board game called Wild Divine. “I registered for SL only to find I couldn’t run it!” she remembers, “It was another 9 months (love the symbolism!) before I had the upgrades to slogin.” She received an offer she couldn’t refuse on her First Land and ended up purchasing a parcel in Mangyeong next door to the original Chilbo Welcome Center, precursor to the Town Hall and before the Chilbo community was even formed!

In world, Tara has been a builder for the Bodhi Buddhist sim, but lately finds herself drawn into the social and community aspects. “I’m particularly interested in how the metaverse is developing as the next phase of the internet, ” she said. She is just starting to explore machinima making, she has an alt that does live music performances in-world, and she specializes in building streams and rock gardens. Tara also co-hosts a live weekly webcast about Second Life with Chilbo resident Malburns Writer and maintains a SL blog at Tara Incognita.

In real life, Tara lives in rural Washington state, near the Olympic Mountains. Her professional experience includes non-profit communications and web design, and she ran one of the largest religion and spiritualities forums on the internet, in pre-virtual world days. She also grows a mean tomato in her real life garden!

“What I like about Chilbo is the organic-ness of the community,” she explains, “There are interesting challenges for mainland communities that are much more like RL, you’re likely to bump into a much more diverse range of folks as far as interests and RL locations. I really enjoy being part of that mix, and supporting it in whatever small ways occur to me.”