Alta’s Pocket Guide to SL21B

On By altathiemenIn Second Life, SL Events
A wide view of part of a huge futuristic circular room. Cyan bands around the ceiling and floor illuminate the massive space. Toward the right, part of a large circular hole in the floor can be seen through which various shaped and sized vertical elements protrude. From the left and back toward the right, groupings of cylindrical pedestals can be seen with widely varying packages sitting on top of them. In the foreground, with just her head and shoulders visible, a woman with glossy white hair tied into ponytails looks toward the right across the room.

Here’s my completely unofficial pocket/quick-start guide to this year’s SLB. For all the details, you should start browsing through the Featured News blog on the Second Life site.

A bird's eye view of the SL21B welcome area. A nighttime view of a broad plaza. A large mosaic spelling out SL21B occupies the middle of the plaza. Standing rectangular panels form a crescent around the far side of the mosaic. A lattice work pyramid surmounts the whole plaza.

If you’re arriving from a link on the community blogs or the Destination Guide, then you’re most likely going to begin at the Welcome Area shown above. Some things to take care of before you zoom off to the event spaces or exhibit areas:

Hunt HUDs

Pick up your hunt HUDs from the givers right at the Welcome Area plaza. There are two hunts this year. There’s this year’s edition of the Swaginator hunt which works much as it has for the past few years. There’s also The Elements Hunt, which has its own HUD.

For those new to the Swaginator hunt, just wear the HUD and follow the clues. You’ll know when you’ve found the prize stations. Touch them (in order!) to get your prize and the next clue. Tips: Don’t over think the clues and focus on the big public areas and event spaces. Swaginator prize givers have not, yet, been seen in the exhibitor areas.

The Elements Hunt is new. This hunt does encompass the exhibition regions. So, there’s a nice big scope for your searches. The HUD comes with a note card explaining how it all works. The important bits are:

  • Wear your SL21B – Elements Collection Hunt HUD.
  • Collect elements across the exhibitor regions.
  • When you find one, walk over it or walk within 5 meters of it and touch it.
  • The Elements Collection Hunt HUD will now increase by a point.
  • Find another element and repeat!

The prize is a decorative/huggable/animesh Cobalt Boopie. Once you’ve completed the hunt, return to the welcome area to receive the prize from the giver.

In another change, sadly, they are not giving away an EV this year.

Getting Around

Two panels stand before a low concrete wall. Blue flowers are growing/spilling from a planter behind the wall and can be seen between the two panels. In the distance, fountains can be seen against a night sky. The left hand panel is titled 'Adult Teleporter' and has four buttons labeled 'Firestone Keep', 'Exhibitors', 'Shop & Hop', and 'POD Terminal'. The right hand panel is titled 'Teleporter' and nine buttons labeled 'Welcome Area', 'Stonehold', 'The Nimbus', 'Aquatorium', 'Exhibitors', 'Shop & Hop', 'Tapestry of Time', 'Gift Area', and 'POD Terminal'.

SLB is big. To find where you need to go, the Destination Guide’s SL21B category provides a great list of locations.

If you want to get a quick(ish) overview of the whole SL21B space, there are once again Yava Pod tours running. There are POD terminals for both the main and adult regions.

Climb into a pod, and take some notes, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what’s where as you start your serious explorations.

Finally, there are the teleporters. Somewhere in each region, usually near the center of exhibit spaces or the entrances to event venues, will be two panels (see above) with teleport locations for main and adult SLB regions. Just touch the label and go.

And if all that isn’t enough, there are usually volunteer greeters around the welcome area who can hand you a notecard of links to interesting locations.

Events

The Opening Ceremony…

…has come and gone. However, Vic Mornington live streamed the session on YouTube and has posted the video here. Note that the video starts well before Patch’s speech and includes lots of camming around the attendees and presenters. If you want to skip to the opening ceremony itself start about 23 minutes in. Vic also recorded the fireworks show after the welcome speech.

Town Halls and Community Roundtables

A series of four town halls and the second community roundtable will be held over the course of the next week. All of these events will be at the Aquatorium Water Stage.

  • Tuesday, June 25th at 1:30pm SLT – Town Hall with the Product and Engineering teams
  • Wednesday, June 26th at 1:30pm SLT – Town Hall with the Product Operations
  • Thursday, June 27th at 1:30pm SLT – Town Hall Brett Linden interviews the Founder of Second Life Philip Linden
  • Friday, June 28th at 1:30pm SLT – Town Hall with the Moles!
  • Monday, July 1st at 11:30am SLT – Second Community Roundtable with Oberwolf Linden and Patch Linden

In my experience, some of these sessions can be very popular. It wouldn’t hurt to plan on showing up at least half an hour early.

Live Music and DJs

As is traditional with SLB, live music and DJs will be playing at all the stages pretty much solidly through the first ten days of SL21B. Big thanks to all the volunteers that make this happen as well as the musicians and DJs.

For the schedule of who’s playing what where, see the Google calendar here.

There are again four main events stages where all this music will be happening.

The Gift Area

A huge futuristic circular room. Cyan bands around the ceiling and floor illuminate the massive space. A large circular hole in the floor can be seen through which various shaped and sized vertical elements protrude. All along the floor that surrounds the hole, groupings of cylindrical pedestals can be seen with widely varying packages sitting on top of them. Several people can be seen looking over the items on the pedestals.

The gift area is on a sort of mezzanine level at The Tapestry of Time. The gift area needs no explanation. Just head on in and start clicking. (Oh your poor inventory!)

The Exhibit Areas

There are sixteen main and four adult exhibit regions hosting some 310 exhibits! A full list of exhibitors can be found here in the community blogs. The full list of exhibitor regions, with SLURLs, is below.

Main Exhibit Regions

Adult Exhibit Regions

Shop & Hop

Past a planter filled with green foliage and flowers is a wide, high roofed enclosed mall. A tall column fronted with purple crystals rises to support the mostly transparent roof in the middle distance. A half a dozen store fronts can be seen along the back and right walls. Above the stores the high wall is decorated with a multicolour mural with something like an ocean wave theme. The rest of the wall is composed of heavy X shaped supports. A few tiny shoppers can just be made out in the distance.

Shopping? Of course there’s shopping. There is the traditional SLB Shop & Hop as well as a half a dozen regions of adult themed Shop & Hop. See the full vendor list here.

  • Shop & Hop (well, it’s just one region, but it’s a place to start.)
  • Adult Shop & Hop can be reached by walking or flying from the Firestone Keep stage. The adult shopping regions are directly attached to the east end of the adult exhibit/stage regions.

Did I leave out a fave part of SL21B? Let me know what I missed!

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