Linden Lab Launch The “What Second Life Means to Me” Video Share Project

Linden Lab have launched an interesting project : The “What Second Life Means to Me” Video Share Project. The blog post announcing the project states :

We’ve been having a lot of fun with no end in sight to the good times – but you can’t turn 12 without a little pride and reflection. Second Life has been going strong for a dozen wonderful years and there’s a ton of things happening to celebrate. You’ll see more to come here in the Featured News Blog – but we wanted to stop and ask – “What is the meaning of Second Life?” To you – that is! This question may sound daunting – but the truth is, tapping into what makes “SL” so special to us as individuals and communities is a really amazing exercise in retrospection and self-discovery. This is your world – so what does it mean to you?

Whether you just got started, have been onboard for the full dozen years, or fall somewhere in between – we’d love to see a glimpse of your story in the “What Second Life Means to Me” video project. You don’t have to be a master of machinima to participate.

Linden Lab have a couple of suggestions as to what sort of software can be used for the project :

You can use something like Camtasia or Fraps to make some great stuff relatively quickly, and both have free or trial versions. Or, you can film yourself talking directly to your web or digital camera and telling your story. This doesn’t have to be a strictly inworld project – because we understand that Second Life impacts our offline lives as well.

I’ll add to that list and suggest people might want to give Open Broadcaster Software a whirl, which is free and open source. I’ve used this software myself for trying the art of recording virtual world videos.

As for how to share your videos, that’s explained in the blog post :

From a few seconds to a few minutes – just kick it off with this – “In Second Life, my name is …” and share your story from there! Once you have something set – share it! Upload it to YouTube and embed it on this forum thread. Together, we’ll watch the thread for new stories over the coming weeks – it should be awesome. If you prefer to express yourself in writing – share what Second Life means to you with a reply to the thread.

Now to give you a flavour of what you may want to submit, the blog post includes six videos, however they are all short, at around 90 seconds each, but they do manage to pack quite a punch.

Xiola Linden is first up, explaining how she came to Second Life from a popular journalling site. I used to blog on a popular journalling site in the early 2000’s, indeed I still have an account or two on one.

 

Then we get to Torley. This is quite a personal video, explaining where Torley was with his first life and includes a big shout out to Watermelons!

Next up we have Strawberry Singh, whom is a very mischievous young lady and leads people astray. Always have your wits about you if you’re in the presence of Strawberry Singh. In this video Strawberry talks of her love of photos.

Draxtor Despres, who knows a thing or two about making videos of people in Second Life, talks about making videos in Second Life.

Kaya Angel of the absolutely stunning Angel Manor Estate talks of his love of architecture. I was torn on whether to include Kaya’s video in this blog post as it’s unlisted on YouTube. However I decided on balance that it should be included, especially as it’s included in the official blog post. I hope that’s ok.

Then we hear from Gentle Heron, who talks about Virtual Ability and how being an avatar means people can engage in activities that would not be so easy to participate in outside the virtual world.

These videos say a lot, which is impressive considering how short they are. Hopefully other people will happily participate so we can see more reasons regarding What Second Life Means To You.

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