Three years of HGSafari

          Sunshine Szavanna, Whirli Placebo, and Joao Frazao, with some help from the magical special effects of Cherry Manga, and in all about 60 friends and fellow conspirators, all came together to celebrate three years of crazy crashing, awesome art, intrepid investigating, and excessive exploring around the metaverse.

          Sunshine shared with us some fabulous World music, from Africa and Asia, on the theme of travel and family, both central to the hypergrid experience. 

           Our favorite guitar man Whirli played some original numbers, couple of covers, which were moving in every sense of the word. If you don't know his music, go and check out his Youtube Channel by clicking here (don't forget to subscribe!).   
           Whirli is an old hand at opensim life, but, his FrancoGrid avie was new.... he picked out, from the weird and wonderful starter avies, this Little Prince look, which when you think of the book, is really appropriate. 
          I can imagine Whirli and Saint-Exupery sitting down and philosophizing over a few drinks, can't you?

        Joao Frazao  brought us some great Ukulele music, we were proud to have him with us debuting his new CD, called Portal, which is on his website... I was afraid to open a browser then and there, because we were a little bit crashy by the third hour, and the floor had gone kind of soft, people falling through it down 100m to the sea below... Joao ended up singing under the platform, which was not a problem.... another proof that virtual is better than real sometimes!        

          In these days of division, tribalism, intolerance, and general selfishness, the friendship and shared creativity of humanity, experienced through virtual worlds, is especially important. As Pathfinder has said in the past, opensim has a sort of frontier spirit, we are all in this together, and the instinct to help and support each other is our greatest resource. So thanks to all those who have hosted Safari events, and to those who have attended.

          In 3 years, we have seen an explosion in hypergrid travel, and that's a good thing. And our Safari tours are only a very tiny part of all the HG tourism that's going on. Long may it last! Sites like http://opensimworld.com and http://soloton.selfhost.eu/ make it easier to find places to visit.        

          While most people are in opensim to build their own worlds, and that's necessarily time consuming and requires an introversion and focus on your own home grid, don't underestimate the importance of reaching out to others. Appreciation is a two way street. If you don't bother going to see other people's builds, you cannot really expect them to be interested in yours. Travelling to other grids is a way to protect yourself from getting exploited, a way to test your resolve, a way to make new friends and get a better measure of your own talent by looking at what others have done.
            If you tend to be a stay-at-home, you are missing a lot. 

         People said a lot of nice things to me at the event, but what happens on our Safari tours is really really a group effort. The ones behind the scenes are often unsung heroes. Take for example the event last night - Nino Whitman, who set up the region for our party, and Ssm Binder, the grid admin who came inworld to check all was going well, and Archael Magic, who represented the grid and supported the preparation of the event with kindness and good humor... for every Safari event, there are many people who reach out and make things happen and it's all too easy not to notice or remember them. Hug a dev today!

            HG Safari is not the only way to explore the hypergrid,  some would say it's the 'worst' way - opensim is not really built for mass teleports from all over the hyperverse, and we have crashed our share of sims and whole grids.  By pushing the technology, by holding each other's hands as we explore, the group brings installations to life in ways that the solitary sojourner can not even imagine; and we seek to bring recognition to the modest, yet wildly talented, creators who have made their homes out here on the edge.

           The event inspired a number of cinematographers, and here's the first of a series of machinima about our fun, this one by Susannah Avonside

        Thank you all for making it such a fun event yesterday, and may we all meet again next week as the adventure continues!