SL6B is a celebration of community – it’s created and managed by the residents themselves for other residents to enjoy. I spent hundreds of hours working on my builds for the event for the community to enjoy, and did so at my own expense – it’s voluntary, and hence a freebie. That’s right – Prad Prathivi gave the grid a huge frickin freebie.

Why so? Because I love the collaborative ethos behind a community event like SL6B. It’s about people from all around the globe who share in common this virtual world, and they come together to create something which isn’t for financial gains, but to simply show “This is what Second Life is to me”. In a virtual world that has more than its fair share of sex and commercialism, it’s nice to be able to explore a place where products are constantly being pushed into your face. It’s nice to see the diversity and learn about what other people use SL for, and seeing the grid from another perspective.

Hamlet Au decides to base his “SL6B=Fail” article on statistics that only a minor proportion of residents went to see the sims. Which may well be true, but it’s 17,000+ people who participated in a resident-run grid event. If a resident doesn’t want to attend, then bully for them. I don’t care why someone does or doesn’t go to the events – it’s not about how many people are drawn to it. SL6B’s success was never to pack every sim with as many people as it could manage. It was to create an event which had a strong theme and to bring in a diverse range of exhibitors to showcase their talents and demonstrate what the future of virtual worlds meant to them.

Sure, in events like these, there’s always going to be a couple who will miss the point. But on the whole, I was very impressed with many of the exhibitors I saw across the party sims.

I loved the comments about the theme making the sims “too dark”. Excuse the sarcasm there, please. But really – in a virtual world which is full of sims of tropical islands and sunshine-inducing builds, I think something more dank and darker was refreshing. Whenever I do a sim build for a client, very rarely do they ask for a sim which is of a darker persuasion.

And admittedly, many of the builders/exhibitors involved in the event don’t come from a science fiction background – but you know what? Who said the future of virtual worlds was going to be decided by anybody other than the designers and content creators of the virtual worlds? As designers, it will be us who influence the direction which the metaverse will take, and what sort of content is being made in the future.

Some final notes about the stage. I received many compliments of the stage builds, and I personally thank everyone who took the time to be so kind. It did take a lot of work to produce them, and in particular the SL6B Mainstage. But once again, the fact it was built over the border of 4 sims proved to be a big issue – trying to build over the edge of four sims in the first place is a difficult task in itself. Trying to border-proof it is just as difficult, and the efforts of myself and Linden Lab didn’t seem to resolve this, in the end.

It’s my second event where I’ve built the SL Birthday mainstage, and I daresay it’s time for somebody else to show me how it’s done. Because my God, I’ve found sim crossings a huge pain the backside!

So that pretty much sums it all up. If you weren’t happy with SL6B, here’s a thought – why don’t you participate in SL7B and show us how it should be done, instead of slagging off at all the people who so generously put in their own time into the event?

I’m really not going to hold my breath that any of these nay-sayers would bother though.