Press Release: Grand Opening of the Ancient Byzantine City of Antiochia This Sunday

We are very happy to invite you to the opening festivities of the Antiochia sim – home of the Antiochia Community of Citizens (or, in its Greek form, "Agora Polis Antiochia").

Antiochia is the virtual platform for a number of organizations and individuals whose main aim is to extend the boundaries of information, communication, and education across both virtual and real words. It aims to become a Knowledge Community spanning Real and SecondLife, by focusing on the key values of Education, Citizenship, Creativity, and Diversity.

Antiochia’s main sponsor is the Antiochia Scholarships Trust, a Canadian non-profit organization helping students from the Greater Middle East to realize their dream of pursuing their university studies in Canada. For more information on AST, please visit its website at: http://home.antiochiatrust.org .  Antiochia’s Chief Architect is SecondLife’s Alexia Carnell, owner of the Time Machine Design Studio and Store and its Landscaper is SL’s Butterfli Summers. The Terraforming and some of the buildings were done by Bagheera Kristan.

The sim itself is creatively modeled after the ancient city of Antiochia on the Orontes (today in Southern Turkey), a multicultural, tolerant and creative city with Phoenician roots, Greek origins, then Roman and Byzantine high points. We have tried to reflect this cultural diversity in our buildings, attractions, and the 44 Information Points you will find throughout the sim. A good starting point is Antiochia’s Info Center, located in the Nymphaeum Plaza, with the following slurl:

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/ANTIOCHIA/138/247/31

The Opening Festivities will last the entire day of Sunday, January 11, 2015, from 10 am slt to 10 pm slt, so people from all time zones can attend one or more events at times convenient for them. You will find a detailed list of all events and their venues' Landmarks below.

We have planned for you a variety of informative, educational, and entertaining events. One of AST’s Middle East students will briefly talk about his dream of studying in Canada; a European expert in leading-edge network science will give the Inaugural AST Lecture; and we will have a panel discussion with questions and answers from the public on Ten Years of Virtual Governance in SecondLife.

The musical events will cover everything from rock, pop, folk, blues, and country to Spanish guitar and even a much-anticipated classical piano concert that will open our entire day, at 10 am SL time.

Please feel free to visit the sim and to join our group, Agora Polis Antiochia, so as to stay informed of our future activities and events. You can contact Antiochia’s Project Manager, Alex Olteanu, either in-world by IM-ing his avatar, AlexOlteanu Unplugged, or by e-mail, at alex@antiochiatrust.org; or the Project Administrator, by IM-ing his SL avatar, Bromo Ivory.

We hope that you are just as excited as we are by the events we have planned for you and that you will be able to attend with your friends sometime during this day.

We look forward to seeing you and your friends on Sunday, January 11, 2015, for Antiochia's Opening Festivities.

The Antiochia Team