The House in SL

The new Safari house in SL will be holding the first in a series of events on March 25, at 12.00 SLT
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Sistiana/106/81/25


Back in September 2014, The Safari was lucky enough to be given some space on sim Sisitiana, in SL.

The 2014 Safari Embassy on Sistiana

 The beautiful sim is the home of John 'Pathfinder' Lester.

Safarina Wizard Gynoid immediately took in hand the space and put up a building, very much like an ancient church in the gothic style.

We held a party there in October 2014, with a crowd of bi-virtuals, or should that be multi-virtuals. It was a way to remind all of the symbiotic relationship between SL and the opensim worlds.

Inside there were some posters and information about opensim, including a link at the now famous video that shows the hypergrid jump by some of the Linden team to an IBM owned region in opensim... this video

Time went by, Wizard became busy with other projects and relinquished the land to me, and last November, I began rebuilding and rethinking the space.

As you can see, the classic look of the region has not changed, but the style of the new building is rather different. it's divided into 3 floors. The ground floor is all about general information on how to find people in opensim, how to get help, and some tips and tricks - from things like 'What is an .oar' to 'How come people friend me so fast in opensim'.

The middle floor is dedicated to specific information about grids. Click on the posters and get a notecard that tells you something about the size, location, prices, and ideology of each one. The central display gives you an idea of how the grids are distributed around the world, and shows - just for illustrative purposes - the names of about 200 grids that are hg friendly. Wow - 200, that's a lot!

A separate space called the 'school room'  will house some information about educational builds - everything from university grids to privately run sims with a didactic twist, like Graham Mill's Micrographia.

The top floor is for social events. While it's not my intention to have a lot of events in SL, it's nice to think we have a place where experienced opensimmers can share their experiences with people a bit shy about taking the plunge. And dance a bit too. The events here will not be SL-bashing, but will hopefully dispel some of the myths and misinformation out there.

This build has a strong not-for-profit bias. It celebrates the generosity of opensim, not the people trying to make a fast buck out of it. The idea that we can all give something back to the opensim community is paramount - because those are the kind of people I hope will join us.  Finding your way around opensim can be a huge challenge to new people. I say this - if someone showed you kindness in opensim, then please, pay it forward by helping someone new.  And if you're not fond of newbies, just consider this, if you help them, it is also a way you can help put the rip-off merchants out of business.

It makes no absurdly self-aggrandizing claim to being the official home of Opensim in SL - nobody can speak for the massive variety of worlds, with all their fiercely individual ideas and aims. However, I'm proud to say that people from some 50 different grids have contributed to the build.
Many have provided posters and notecards, advice, moral and practical support, and some have given a few Lindens to help with the upload costs. Thank you all!