Compassionate Redheads Win 2009 Spirit of Relay Award

On August 1st, it was announced that the Relay For Life team Compassionate Redheads had won the 2009 Spirit of Relay Award. Daaneth Kivioq passed the word to the team, saying they had drawn attention, “for their dedication to the fight, and their willingness to pitch in and help other teams.”

Other teammates expressed pride, “Out of a thousand teams, we came out on top!”

The award itself is on display at the dance floor of Hope Gardens in the Southern Colorado sim at (162, 33, 26). There was also a copy on display at the Cutlass club. On August 15th from 5 to 9 PM SL time, also at Southern Colorado, the Redheads plan for a big party to celebrate their win and efforts in Relay for Life to raise money in SL for cancer research.

The night before the award was announced, at 11 PM on July 31st, there was one last party in the Relay for Life track, a “Blingtard and Destructomania” party. At the Babbage Team’s Mars exhibit, Redheads and possibly people from other teams either dropped or wore objects that filled the air with particles, notably a red rose that filled the air with little hearts. Some then announced it was this moment they were finally taking down their exhibits by “blowing them up.” Others were a little reluctant to take them down, preferring that they stay up in the remaining time the track is up. Lomgren for one left his "Really Wild West" standing, so other Redheads simply blew up items of their own at his exhibit while the place itself remained intact. There were also fireworks going off on places around the track.

Taking one more walk around the place with a friend, this reporter found much empty space where there was once exhibits, but many were still standing. The fireworks were still launching in the air in a couple areas. Word has it they will remain until Monday, a week after the lease had ran out.

Bixyl Shuftan

NEW BUSINESS HORIZONS WINS GOLD FROM SECOND LIFE CREATOR LINDEN LABS

Second Life business park and conferences developer, New Business Horizons (http://www.nbhorizons.com ), is today being awarded the prestigious accolade of Gold Solution Provider by Second Life creator Linden Labs. After a rigorous vetting programme, NBH joins just 30 other businesses worldwide in receiving the new award, launched today by Linden Labs.

New Business Horizons (NBH) runs the Blue Horizon business park in the online virtual world of Second Life, where it provides managed offices, conference facilities and other business centre services for a wide variety of clients including Universal Music Group (UMG), the Institute of Travel & Meetings (ITM) and Macmillan Cancer Support. Its work for UMG, whose artists include Amy Winehouse, Elton John, Gwen Stefani and U2, includes the building of a bespoke business complex and conference centre straddling four Second Life islands.

NBH and its 30 peers were selected as Gold Solution Providers from a pool of more than 250, in a scheme which recognises them as "particularly well qualified" in providing virtual world services for enterprises and educational institutions.

"Innovative enterprises, military organizations, government agencies and educational institutions are actively using virtual worlds for distance learning, training and simulation," says Tom Hale, Chief Product Officer at Linden Lab. "The Gold Solution Provider Program makes it easy to find experienced partners that can deliver high-quality experiences for a wide range of Second Life projects."

NBH founder and chief executive Alan Haymes comments: "Our aim has always been to make Second Life as accessible and successful as possible for our clients, whether they're smaller businesses seeking serviced offices or global enterprises requiring major developments. Becoming a Gold Solution Provider is a powerful recognition - by the owner of Second Life itself - of our work's quality. It tells enterprises and institutions that we have the official thumbs up."

The award comes just a few months after NBH scooped the prestigious 'Best Use of Technology' award from the Docklands Business Club and the East London Chamber of Commerce.

How do you spell incompetence?

Wanting to reward the open source programmers who worked on the open source client for Second Life, Linden Lab has launched a nomination process for The Jesse Malthus Award for Best Community Influence nominees - 2008 Hippo Awards for Open Source.

Incredibly, it seems that our dear SL creators can't handle an award right. They opened the process, took nominations and closed everything. All was well, wasn't it? That was until they decided to add names after closing nominations.

Without surprise, some questions were asked about the fairness of such a work method. "So nominations are 'OPEN' again or only allowed to 'add' people after it is closed if you are a Linden? I now consider this award rigged and Linden Lab's credibility on this issue compromised", responded Renee Faulds on the award nomination page at JIRA.

Linden Lab had a strange explanation to give to the community.

"One thing we looked at was the fact that the descriptions for many nominees did not match the category, as if the person nominating maybe made a mistake in filing", said Rob Linden, who describes himself as Open Source Busybody at Linden Lab.

"So, we had two choices, adds Rob Linden. We could have slavishly adhered to the exact nomination process, and said tough, wait until next year. Or, we could have done what we're doing, which was to make sure that we considered the existing nominees for the categories they are most suited for. We all felt like it was more important that we get the end result right than it was to rely exclusively on an imperfect process."

There are two problems with this. The first is that they did not manage an awards nomination process right, admitting it was imperfect. The second one is that they changed their minds about their own rules yet again.

When you think of it, there is a continuity in this. Linden Lab has often said it did not want to police SL but it reversed its decisions on plenty of matters such as banking and gambling. It seems to be a work method to do policy shifts, leaving people wondering how decisions are made.

How do you spell incompetence?