AlisonJamesArt
Explorer of physical and virtual environments, an adventurer of the mind and a creator of fantastical things
A Whirlwind of Crazy Busy-ness
This is a bit of a short worded blog post because I have included a video to explain what has been happening in my life at the moment. In short, my life has been a whirlwind of crazy busy-ness. I seem to have difficulty finding balance and time to just stop and meander. Some days, I feel like I am running just to catch up to my own life and in the process, I am missing the moments and the people.
There have been a lot of changes in both my first life and my second life. It was all necessary and a productive way to spend my time in between semesters at university. Soon I will be back for my 2nd year of postgraduate studies and I am very much looking forward to the structure and routine.
Anyway…this is the vlog of my days between Christmas and now…I hope you enjoy it!
Credits:
Body: Maitreya Lara
Head: Akeruka Lulu
Hair: -FABIA- Mesh Hair Unnatural
Eyes: Atelier Pepe – Dreamy Eyes – 05
Dress: fame femme: Milana Dress – Maitreya – Brown
Necklace: =Zenith= magic stone necklace
Leggings: ::C’est la vie !:: Emmi Tights (#1)
Shoes: {sallie} Velvet Slouch Boots – black
Pose: seiCheez::Apple Strudel-HappyStand Pose 3
House: (Milk Motion) rainy forest full pack; Plants: [DDD] Zen Bamboo – Square ; Lamps: 22769 – Geometric Floor Lamp – COMMON ; Couch: [ keke ] refurbished sofa – wood 2.0 ; Coffee Table: [DDD] Reclaimed Coffee Table ; Rug: Sway’s [Vondra] Rug with fringes . woven
References:
Hello Avatar
Sometimes our Sanctuaries become Our Battlefields
QCA Perceptions of Reality Exhibit 2018
Cajsa Choices: MangroveJane, RL Artist Whose SL Art Is Featured In A Real Life Gallery
Live Presentation #30 – Non Traditional Blogging with Groves and Crap Mariner (and Alicia)
Map of Prince Edward Island
Sometimes Our Sanctuaries Become Our Battlefields
This photo was actually a reshoot of one I had done earlier in the year. I had to reshoot it, not only because I had learned a bit more about in world photography and how to make the plants not look so pixellated, but because to print it out for exhibition I needed a MUCH higher resolution that what I was originally saving at.
[WARNING: TECHO spiel incoming. Feel free to look away while I get this out…]
For those of your wondering, to print for exhibition at the size I wanted (I printed in A2 or roughly 33.cm x 59.4cm), my photos needed to be at least 120ppi which using the inworld photography tools translates as a minimum of 5028 x 1024. This seemed to be the magic size for me. Any higher, and my firestorm viewer simply crashed out. Any lower, and I couldn’t seem to get the resolution I needed.
Something else I learned doing this, was that if I wanted to save my photos to archive them, I needed to save a copy as a tiff file to avoid degradation when constantly opening and working with them. The file formats I was working with, png and jpeg, were not going to hold up over the long term. For a start, jpeg compresses a file when you save it, which is great when you want small file sizes, not so great when you need to keep all the detail in the photo you are using. PNG is a web friendly format, is easier to post online and doesn’t compress the photo but it can’t contain layers only a flat image. It saves as smaller file sizes than tiff, but larger than jpegs. Tiff has more metadata and doesn’t corrupt as easily and therefore is better for archiving. Tiff can save layers you are working with and is a lossless way of saving your work. So if you are opening, working on and saving your photos, it keeps the quality clean, however you pay for this with larger file sizes. That at least is my understanding on these file types. Feel free to comment below if you know differently!
[OK… Techo spiel over! You can look back now!!]
So, the idea for this photo actually came from a quote by Strawberry Singh in an article (1) I read where she was talking about the Avatars against Trump (2) movement. It made me start thinking of the idea of our sanctuaries and what they are. A sanctuary is a place of refuge. It brings up images of comfort and peace given amongst chaos and battle. I considered places I consider sanctuary in my everyday life…my home, national parks, a deep bath filled with bubbles. But none of these things really felt like they conveyed that conflict
For me, my mind is both my sanctuary and my battlefield. I think it is the same for a lot of people. It is the place I retreat to when the world is a bit much and I need to escape from people for a little while. It is the place where I can dream and build realities and sit in peace for a little while. But it is also, at times, traitorous and torturous. At times like this, it becomes my battlefield, the place where I need to fight my hardest in order to find my footing and stability. And that is the symbolic representation of what I am portraying with this photo in particular. I wanted to portray that idea of that sanctuary being a battlefield, but also the strength and persistence and courage it takes to keep fighting.
I chose such an urban background that looks like it is war torn. The urban setting is quite familiar, but when shown in this post apocalyptic way, makes you feel a little uncomfortable and unsettled. Clothing is ripped and torn and the body is dirty as if the battle is not new. Indeed, this is not a new battle for me. I can’t remember what windlight this was exactly. I will have to write that down next time so I can reference that for future photos too.
This photo was also to be the start of the Super Hero/Super Villain series that was beginning to form in my mind. So on the one hand, it had this grounding in the idea of sanctuaries and battlefields on a conceptual sense…and on the other hand it became the start of a longer narrative about this character that keeps coming up in my art over the years, “She”. More of her story will be revealed in blog posts to come…
So… yeah… WOW it can be hard to actually talk about what these photos are actually about sometimes…I didn’t expect it to be when I first started because I am usually quite loquacious about everything else, but now I find myself doing it, I find myself struggling out of my comfort zone where I would just silently put it all up and let people think what they may. And that makes me ramble just like this so now I am going to end this post here and finish up with the credits!
Credits:
Location: Wastelands
Head: [GA.EG] Barbara
Hair: [DUE] Crystal
Eyes: Izzie’s Winter Eyes (brown)
Body: Maitreya Lara
Body Applier: Izzie’s Face & Body Dirt
Pose: ::Poseidon:: Paladin 2
Shield: [The Forge] Havok Shield, Brown from The Junkers Arsenal gacha
Gun: ::Poseidon:: P-226FR Twin Pistols F3
Top: DRD -Wasteland Torn Tank Red
Pants: DRD -Wasteland Torn Leggings Red
Shoes: Flite – Phyrric Boots – Eggplant
References:
(1) Cajsa Lilliehook, 2017, ‘Nevertheless…’, Eclipse Magazine, February 12, 2017, https://issuu.com/eclipsemagazinesl/docs/eclipse_magazine_february_2017
(2) Avatars Against Trump https://www.flickr.com/groups/avatarsagainsttrump/
Exhibitionist!
Yesterday was the first day of a group exhibit I am in at the Project Gallery at Queensland College of Art(1) in Southbank. It has been a hectic week, but these past couple of days saw me tired and frustrated and exuberant and then back to frustrated and proud and joyful…is there a word for feeling the whole gamut of emotions all at once? If so, I have certainly been THAT word. I have missed exhibiting more than I thought I would. I miss the bump ins and the drop offs, I miss going to the shows and the opening nights. I miss talking to other artists about their art and what brought them to exhibit and what their art means to them.
I have only done student exhibits this past year while I tried to find my footing with the new direction my art has taken and to wrap my head around what I am ACTUALLY trying to do with my art. It has been an incredible year. I have grown so much as an artist. I have had to learn no less than 14 programs from the basic viewers of the online world I now produce my work in to programs like Maya for 3D modelling and mesh work to programs for video editing…soooo many video editing programs…but that is a whole other story… I had never considered digital art or video installation as a medium that I would take up until…I actually took it up and ran with that. I really needed this past year to step back and explore and I am really glad I did. But this year…oh my…this year I want to exhibit and exhibit some more.
So this exhibit that started today is called, “Perceptions of Reality”, and it is a group exhibit that I submitted with my peers to be shown in one of the three art galleries on campus. The basic idea of the exhibit was based around this:
“The realities we have are diverse. Defining and describing it will depend on who you talk to at any given time. This group of postgraduate adventurers are delving deep into themselves to bring you visions of realities that are as distinctive and individual as a fingerprint. We want our visitors to leave questioning their own perception, engage in dialogue about multiplicity of perspectives and challenge themselves to reflect upon their own individual perceptions and experiences as frames of reference that filter their unique view of reality.”
My own part in the exhibit is based around my experiences with the online world of Second Life (2) where I have been researching online realities, experimenting with various ways to express classical philosophies of reality as related to online worlds, absorbing the different culture of art within online worlds and learning what exactly it takes to make art in an online world and how this differs from art in the physical world.
At first, our exhibition proposal was rejected. And THAT moment felt pretty crappy. But a week or two later, in the ANOTHER moment, it appeared someone had dropped out or something didn’t work out…or whatever…we didn’t question it, we were just thrilled and excited when we got the email that said that we had a place.
Which leads us to THESE moments…the moment where I was frustrated and swearing because I couldn’t get the technology to work and it was making me feel stupid. The moment where I got to see my prints go up on the wall and be shown to the public for the very first time. The moment where I was so damn grateful for the lovely tech people in AV Dispatch who did everything they could to help me and get my video up and running on a continuous loop as it was supposed to be. ALL the moments I walked into Liveimage (3) to get my photos printed and each time it was AWESOME and I had amazing conversations with people and laughed and was overjoyed to see each of my prints turn out MORE beautiful in a real life printout than they had been on the computer screen.
And soon it will be the NEXT moment, where on Thursday, I sit in a gallery all day and then nervously attend the open night where people will want to ASK me about my art. The moment where I let someone else sit at my computer in the gallery and transport them into the world of Second Life. The moment when I will get to hear what people see when they look at my pieces and what it makes them think.
The moment when I will get to stand with my peers and say, “We did this and everything we did to get here…to this moment..was worth it.”
Refs:
(1) QCA Galleries https://www2.griffith.edu.au/arts-education-law/queensland-college-art/qca-galleries
(2) Second Life http://www.secondlife.com
(3) LiveImage https://www.griffith.edu.au/visual-creative-arts/queensland-college-art/qca-live/liveimage
Exhibit Refs: (these will be updated as I upload the blog posts with didactic for each one)
All the exhibit photos can be found together in this Flickr Album: https://flic.kr/s/aHskv6P6su
or individually at the links below:
(1) Exhibit Photo 1: Self Portrait
Flickr Ref: https://flic.kr/p/23GiDWQ
(2) Exhibit Photo 2: Well Helloo 2018! How YOU doin’?
Flickr Ref: https://flic.kr/p/23sWeW5
(3) Exhibit Photo 3: It Takes Patience to Be a Tree
Flickr Ref: https://flic.kr/p/ZsBzh3
(4) Exhibit Photo 4: Sweet Dreams Are Made of These
Flickr Ref: https://flic.kr/p/DSxmsH
(5) Exhibit Photo 5: You Be Thelma, I’ll Be Louise
Flickr Ref: https://flic.kr/p/YT6gWb
(6) Exhibit Photo 6: Furious Angels Will Bring You Back To Me
Flickr Ref: https://flic.kr/p/X3MbV8
(7) Exhibit Photo 7: All I wanted Was a Cup of Coffee
Flickr Ref: https://flic.kr/p/Z8h4vj
(8) Exhibit Photo 8: Sometimes Our Sanctuaries Will Also Be Our Battlefields
Flickr Ref: https://flic.kr/p/FBebbS
(9) Exhibit Photo 9: Burn
Flickr Ref: https://flic.kr/p/ZqZFWy
(10) Video: Hello Avatar https://youtu.be/gBbAo-8314M
One Billion Rising in Second Life 2018 – call for volunteers
I remember attending this event last year and fully plan on doing so again this year! If you can help in any way as a volunteer, blogger or sponsor please check out the links in Inara’s article!
One Billion Rising in Second Life will once again be taking place in Second Life on Wednesday, February 14th, 2018.
When launched on Valentine’s Day 2012, One Billion Rising (OBR) was the biggest mass action in human history; a call to action based on the staggering statistic that 1 in 3 women on the planet will be beaten or raped during her lifetime. With the world population at 7 billion, this adds up to more than one billion women and girls who are at risk. OBR aims to bring people together, raise greater awareness of the plight of those at risk the world over, and bring about a fundamental change in how vulnerable and defenceless women and girls are treated.
Since its inception, One Billion Rising has grown and the local campaigns deepened, it has also brought in economic violence and the violence of poverty, racial violence, gender violence, violence…
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You Got This
Eleven Days ago I started a 100 day challenge. Now this challenge actually started with my real life daughter who is learning violin when her lovely teacher challenged her to do 100 days straight of practice. If she missed a day she had to go right back to the beginning. I should point out that the actual amount of time does not matter. It’s the reinforcement of a daily routine that matters. Now this is great, but on its own was not going to motivate my daughter…what she needed was an incentive to keep going and a punishment if she did not.
So, to sweeten the deal a little, we decided to compete, because my family is actually ridiculously stubborn and competitive against one another. For the most part, we are actually quite sweet but if you get us in a game of monopoly for instance, it is the dirtiest, most underhanded rip your throat out game, you will ever dread to encounter. We made a rule that if someone missed a day, they had to put $10 into a tin and at the end of the challenge, the person who reached Day 100 first, would win all the money in the tin.
Sounds easy right? 100 days…that’s only a third of a year. NO PROBLEMS. WRONG! I decided that I would make my challenge 100 days of exercising at the gym. I hurt all over and have battled the worst case of “Don’t wanna’s” EVERY DAY. I really hadn’t thought this through quite clearly enough because seriously…I feel like I am doing extreme 100 day boot camp. And I REFUSE TO GIVE UP BECAUSE I WANT TO WIN DAMMIT. On the upside, I am starting to run faster and for longer. I have added some extra weight and reps onto my strength routines and it is starting to feel GOOD to get up and move everyday.
So, that is where today’s photo and blog post has come from. It’s a little bit of my real life leaking into my Second Life. And believe it or not, after spending an hour doing this photo, I actually felt really motivated to go to the gym and get my exercise on!
I TOTALLY GOT THIS!
Credits:
Location: Alpha Gym
Body: Maitreya Lara
Head: Akeruka Lulu
Hair: no.match_ ~ NO_LIE ~ UNICORN !
Eyes:[Buzz] Gleam Eyes – Chocolate
Outfit:[VALE KOER] 1 URBAN FITNESS CLOTHES M RARE
Shoes: Eliavah ~ Althea’s Kicks [FATPACK]
Tattoos:.Identity. Body Shop – Rise Strong; .Identity. Body Shop – Pure Heart
Sweet Dreams Are Made of These
I am TERRIBLE at doing these posts. It’s not that I don’t want to talk about my art and why I am doing what I do, it’s just that sometimes it really hard to find the words to do so. Recently, it came to my attention that I have to start to write about it because I will be expected to write about it a whole lot more. So this is where things sort of became a bit serious. I had a small panic attack, breathed in and out into a paper bag, and then I made the decision to just write the blog post that accompanies the pictures I do.
So firstly, I love books. I love studying and I love my bed. It’s that sort of escapism where you can shut the rest of the world out and enter another. Or you can learn something you never thought possible. Or you can be prompted to think about unexpected things. There are always books everywhere in any house I have, bot most especially in the bedroom. The bedroom is such a personal space. It is always one of the first spaces I decorate when I put down my new house. I throw my books out and a few of my favourite knick knacks and I choose a bed that allows me to climb under the covers at the end of my night.
So even though the rest of my house is a big old mess. I am still moving things in and trying to fit furniture into spaces and landscape a forest, this is one place in amongst the chaos where I can dream and think and feel calm and at peace, because here, I am at home.
Another reason why I am terrible at this is simply because I am just not used to it. When you paint a still life or a portrait, you don’t write a list of credits for everything that is in the painting. When you do an installation you don’t write, “CREDIT: Fruit bowl from Target, Bed sheets by Kmart”, anywhere on it. However, in Second Life it is very much of the culture and expected that when you do a picture, you will credit the creators. It is an interesting way of driving the economic engine of the world, of giving a shoutout to some incredibly talented people and also letting other people know where they can also get the same stuff. I have been very slack at doing this, which has given me terrible guilt gut for a long time. Unfortunately there is no antacid for guilt gut, there is only facing it head on and doing what you know is right to do.
So to all the talented creators who made the things that went into the making of this scene and also my actual bedroom, I salute you!
Credits:
Body: Maitreya Lara
Head: Akeruka Lulu
Hair: +elua+ Filia Ombre
Outfit: Paper Arrow Co. Onesie gacha Ink
Pose: Made by me with Anypose
House: Scarlet Creative Mistletoe Lodge; Bed: Bazar Traveller’s Bed; Pillows: Zen Creations Totally Sleepless Pillow Set; 8f8 – Storyteller’s Burrow – Book Bank Full; Sidetables: Bazar Traveller Night Stand; Lamps: 22769 ~ [bauwerk] Leafes Lamp Gold; Curtains: Soy. Vintage lace curtain; Vine Lights: +Half-Deer+ Firefly Vine – Frost; Doll: Garbaggio//Archibald Gachum; Tea Cups:[Merak] – Jewelry Cups; Alarm Clock: – The Pitchman – Vintage Clock Red; Fish Bowl: +Half-Deer+ Baby Kraken – Black Cherry; Teddy Bear: <:*BoOgErS*:> Grin Bear; Rugs: Mori. spiral rug . free spirit; Charging Station: Chi(T) Cluttered Charging Station; Book Stacks and Clutter: Sway’s [Ten] Stack of Books, SAYO – Stationed in Soho Gacha – Open Books, Floorplan. Notebook clutter, FloorPlan. Book Clutter, [ zerkalo ] Huge pile of books RARE, +Half-Deer+ Book Clutter – Stack – Dark, Fancy Decor: Magazine Stack, -RC-Cluster New You Self Help Books – Stack for Table.
Being Inspired.
Just recently, I had asked my family not to buy me a thing for my birthday, but rather that they all pitch in and send me to Canberra to go see the Hyper Real exhibit that was showing in the Australian National Gallery. And that is exactly what they did. Flights were booked. A hotel room reserved and before I knew it, I was on my way. It was important for me to do this on a number of levels.
Firstly, one of my biggest influences, AES+F were a part of the exhibit. They weren’t coming to Brisbane anytime soon and I wanted to see what they did in their installations for myself. I have such admiration for their narratives and allegories. Their productions are intense and epic and I wanted to be there to analyse and immerse myself in the experience.
Secondly, I wanted to see the rest of the exhibit. Reality, hyper reality, simulation and simulacrum is what I have been researching and producing art work on. I build in the online world of Second Life in order to draw parallels between our online realities and our physical realities. To have a whole exhibition curated around these very things was just too good an opportunity to miss.
Thirdly, I wanted to get out and be INSPIRED. A lot of what I do can be really isolating. My work is done on a computer or in libraries. These are pretty silent places for the most part and I have a tendency to become singularly focussed (read: obsessed) with the things I am researching. So it really helps sometimes to leave my temperature controlled environment and online world and SEE what other people are doing and how they are doing it and broaden my artistic vision a little.
All these things happened and more. I can’t even really express what a magnificent experience this was. To have two whole days to myself to spend in the National Gallery, soaking up the atmosphere and immersing myself into the Hyper Real exhibit. I spent as much time as I could in the Hyper Real exhibit itself, taking extensive notes and photos so I could write it all up when I got back. I had specific questions to answer, having discussed this with my supervisor prior to leaving, but when I got there I found I had so many MORE questions…so 10+ pages of scrawled notes later…I think I may have enough to start writing.
I spend so much time in QAGOMA that it is easy to forget that other galleries do things differently. NGA is so very large. It is separated from the Portrait Gallery by the high court of Australia. It has a beautiful and inspiring sculpture garden that looks out upon Lake Burley Griffin. I was incredibly lucky that the weekend I was down there, they were running a free public program called, “Sketchy Sunday” which was very busy. A number of artists and designers were available to chat with or ask advice. It is a wonderful idea and one that would be great to see happen here in Brisbane.
The gallery itself has an extensive collection of classic and contemporary art works. I was delighted to discover a video exhibit of Angelica Mesiti including one of my favourites, “Citizen’s Band” which is a collection of four short films showcasing four people playing music that is culturally significant in surprising places. The narrative is layered with meaning and astoundingly, beautifully poignant. Like all video installations, this one is best experienced with the full four channel immersive experience. It gives you a very different emotional connection to be surrounded by the story and to watch it move from screen to screen.
Being so immersed in the experience for a full weekend, was truly inspiring and memorable. I absolutely plan on doing this again. I found what I was looking for and then a whole lot more. I talked to people about the artworks and I listened in on conversations people were having about the works before them. I really LOOKED at the pieces and armed with questions and my notebook, feel like I SAW and EXPERIENCED them with a depth I simply did not have a year ago. It can be easy to dismiss going to the Art Gallery as an indulgent experience, but if you are studying or working in the art field, I feel like it is a necessity. This is the sort of thing that is your inservice or work training. I certainly gained a richer understanding and a broader perspective by doing this and it will help me to look at what I do in a new way.
The Hyper Real Exhibit is being shown at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra from the 20th October 2017 – 18th February 2018
Refs:
Hyper Real Exhibit Website
https://nga.gov.au/hyperreal/
AES+F
http://aesf.art/
AES+F Inverso Mundus Information
http://aesf.art/projects/inverso_mundus/
National Gallery of Australia Website
https://nga.gov.au/
Angelica Mesiti
http://www.angelicamesiti.com/
Trademark Complaint Received from Linden Lab — StrawberrySingh.com
Hello everyone, I decided to write this blog post for a couple of reasons: To explain why I am removing one of my most popular tutorials on my YouTube channel. To warn any other Second Life bloggers or vloggers so they do not experience the same thing that I’m going through right now. Last year…
via Trademark Complaint Received from Linden Lab — StrawberrySingh.com
show 162: war of the social worlds
An excellent show by Drax, Jo Yardley and the panel today on both the recent Atlantic Article and social worlds
show #162
we debate – with a illustrious panel – the state of affairs in regards to social vr supremacy. enjoy:
a quick note on the worlds that were not represented like vr chat [which i like a lot actually!] = we put the word out to folks to join us but no real response in time so we shall continue the subject as we move forward!
meantime our guests on the panel in the order they were introduced on the show:
- adam frisby, ceo sinewave entertainment, maker of sincespace [happy birthday folks = on year out in public and doing splendid!]
- jeremy owen turner, performance artist, composer, teaches cognitive science at simon fraser university
jeremy in vrchat
- menithal, previously matti deigan in second life. engineer, mercenary in high fidelity for 2 years & savior of drax in many situations in hifi…
- xaos princess, munich based…
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Entitlement and Gratitude
Ok…so I am going to have a bit of a rant here today. If you don’t want to hear it, perhaps you should just look away for a few minutes while I get this out of my system because I have been seething over it all day and it’s time to stop laying it all on the people I love and just get it out there so I can let it go and move on to being positive again.
/rant on
So there is some talk going around about the new BVNUniversity which quite frankly, I am SUPER excited for. I have looked over the courses and plan on taking a few, time permitting. My lovely friend, Alicia is doing one on January 6th at 8am SLT. I will not miss it for anything and you should all book yourselves into that one ASAP because she is not only AMAZING at what she does as a blogger and vlogger, but also she is one the best, nicest and most patient teachers I know. Now this brings me to that fact that these courses have a Linden dollar value attached to them, which I have heard people grumbling about. Let me try to make my position on this somewhat clear…
- I believe the BVN courses are more than fair and wholly affordable for what you are getting. Let’s break this down a little. BVN are asking $L1500 per course or $L10,000 for the whole suite of 12 courses. $L1500 is equivalent to a whopping (sarcasm implied) $USD6 at the current exchange rate. That is less that what you would pay for a book and THIS is interactive! Don’t try to give me the whole, “Oh but that’s real life and this is only Second Life…” excuse. The CONTENT is real. You wouldn’t think less of the content if it was delivered online anywhere else. So why here and now? You can ask whatever you want in a smaller group setting. You can take notes and meet some of your favourite bloggers and vloggers. People blow 1500L on stuff everyday that they use once or twice and then it ends up sitting in their inventory. At the end of the course, you will have LEARNED something and you will be better at what you do because of it. Which will in turn lead to a better quality of content for us all to enjoy.
- I also believe that it is important that these jobs remain paid because there needs to be work inworld to drive the economy that is not just stripping, dj’ing, being a product creator or a land baron (yes…I know that is oversimplifying…but really, when a noobie asks the question how can they make money inworld, those are always the answers that follow.) It allows bloggers and vloggers to share their knowledge in a way they might really enjoy, to continue to see the sharing of their skills as something that might have value and in this way, encourage them to stay in world and keep being AMAZING. Having a variety of occupations in world will help to make a healthy economy for EVERYONE. It keeps people interested in being in the world. And in turn, having those people interested in the world, being paid for what they love to do will keep THEM paying into the economy OF the world.
- There are a few people paying a lot of money to keep this going for many people. People love it when someone else pays and they don’t have to worry about contributing anything. And it’s all good up until the point where you mention that its starting to wear you down a bit and ask someone to throw a little money in the kitty. Now I am not saying here that people in the world aren’t generous, because as we have just seen with the For Max event, people ARE generous when it comes to charities. Businesses however, well…that just brings ALL the entitlement divas out in full force. BVN have been doing this free of charge for a while now. They pay for the land the free meetings are on. No-one has made ANY money off any of this up until this point, but they sure have PAID a lot of money into it. Everyone has volunteered. And that is great…BUT…you can only volunteer so long. Sooner or later, you will need something to keep you going and to keep the sim running and to ensure that you get and maintain a certain standard and quality over the long term. Land fees, recording fees, website fees, advertising, gifts, prizes…who do you think pays for all of that? Don’t you think we ALL should pay if that if we use the service? Don’t you think it is WORTH $USD6 to keep going?
- You are not ENTITLED to FREE anything. If it is free, it is a gift. You don’t HAVE to sign on to a class, or support the BVN and their work if it is not your thing. They are not forcing you to attend the classes to stay in the group and they are not saying they will stop the free services either.
- If you have questions or concerns, why don’t you reach out and ASK the founders yourself, or show up to one of their events. They had a question and answer session recently. Did you go? If not…why not? Don’t just spread rumours and misinformation. BE informed so you can in turn inform others.
So maybe instead of feeling righteously entitled to something you are not actually entitled to and outraged that someone offered you a quality assured service, you could find a little GRATITUDE for the work and money that has gone in so far. You could be thankful for the vision that has led us to this point where we CAN enjoy and participate in this service. And perhaps, you could be PROUD of the people who are asked to teach and those who have taken the risk and put this out there and created a new job stream for your second life.
/rant off
Refs:
Thank you to Delicate Flower who answered all my questions thoroughly and eloquently.
Bloggers and Vloggers Network website
http://www.bvnsl.com/
BVN University Page:
http://www.bvnsl.com/bvuniversity/
Bloggers and Vloggers Network Headquarters SLurl
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Inspired%20Dreams/223/81/3003
AlisonJamesArt 