Scenes From Team Firestorm's Fifth Anniversary Party

On Thursday September 3, Team Firestorm, the makers of the popular Firestorm viewer, celebrated their fifth anniversary. It was a fun-filled event with music, visual performances, gifts for those stopping by, and lots of fun.

Read more in Events.

Party Time at Qwark and Gemma's

On June 21 at Noon SL time, Gemma Cleanslate and Qwark Allen threw a beach party at their house. They called it the last of the SL Newser celebration parties, though as it took place a week later, to me it was more like a "between the birthdays" bash, with the SL11B just a couple days later.

Those dropping by included Any1 Gynoid, the former CNN iReporter, and Chakat Northspring of Team Firestorm. The latter brought out her pet firekitty on her back after seeing Qwark's playing in the sand.

Besides dancing, one could pick up a drink at the bar, or a snack.

Grease Coakes shows off a colorful "pawsome" animation.

One last look at the hosts of the party.

By Bixyl Shuftan

Team Firestorm's Jessica Lyon Interviewed at SL11B

(Click here if the video fails to load)

On Thursday June 26, the head of Team Firestorm, Jessica Lyon gave a talk at the SL11B Auditorium about the concerns about the new Grid being developed by Linden Lab. Chakat Northspring recorded the discussion, "A talk at SL11B: The obvious fears and uncertainties currently circulating in SL as well as speculations 'for fun' on the new platform, its potential to succeed/fail and what we might expect. What is in store for us? What should we as residents do, think, how should we react to all this news?"

At first she wasn't sure whatEbbe meant, then he realised "a whole new platform," ... "This was a pretty big bomb to drop on everybody."

She felt Linden Lab "wants to make a whole new platform ... make you want to go to it."

Jessica compared the to a history program in which people remembered only one scene, where a witch was made to drown, "there ought to be a study" on why people seem so fixated on their view of one single event in a description.

Shefelt the panic could backfire by getting the lab to clam up again, saying this was "the first time since Philip we've had a CEO who's so open. One of the first things he did was to reverse the decision to keep Lindens from socializing ... I applaud him for being open."

While she hopes the Lab makes something so good it'll attract everyone from Second Life, she doubts they will.

Jessica stated she would be "Shocked" if they didn't at least allow Linden dollars to transfer over. She expected better tools for creating there, and guessed the new grid would most likely meshed based. So forget bringing prims over, even her signature ears and tail.

Did note Ebbe didn't say for sure there would be no content transfers ever, possibly some protocol for a content transfer system as time goes on.

Jessica saw SL being shutdown only of the new grid is so hugely popular, very, very, few residents are left, "As long as Second Life is popular, it makes no sense for them to shut it down."

One of her first questions to Ebbe was where was he putting his resources? The New Grid or SL. His answer was both.

Firestorm will continue to be developed, "As long as Second Life continues we're good."

Jessica noted "Second Life didn't start out as open source." It was a few years before it was. She guessed the Lab would be sure of the new grid before making it open source.

She had one suggestion to Ebbe - why was Firestorm so popular? The viewer was a byproduct of open community developlent, "we involve the community, we invite them to meetings" ask them for ideas, "it creates for the user a sense of ownership" "happy, proud, of the viewer ... created pride and a following." She felt the New Grid would not truly succeed, at least at first, because it was developed in private without any feedback from the public.

"I have very little worry about Second Life going anywhere. ... do what you always do, Second Life will be going for years to come."

Firestorm Team Member Chakat Northspring Discusses Ebbe Linden Mentioning Development of New Virtual World

(Click here if the video fails to load)

Chakat Northspring (Panterapolnocy Resident) provided this recording of this meeting on Friday June 20 between Ebbe Linden and a few others from Linden Lab, and a number of Third Party Viewer team developers. Just after minute 58 begins, a conversation starts that leads to Ebbe Linden saying that Linden Lab has been working on a next generation virtual world. Word quickly spread in and out of Second Life, including the Second Life Universe forums.

I talked to Northspring a few hours later. She told me the "meeting was planned as usual, Noon-1 pm. Ebbe started to talk shortly before end, after dropping in late, and meeting ended at 2 pm. So, yes, Second Life next gen. And he didn't even announce it. He discussed it - as well as few other topics, like communication with TPV, users of SL, marketing etc."

I asked her if most of the Lab's development was aimed at this new Grid. She answered, "Some devs are allocated there, yes, but that team here is still leaded by Oz, and improvements for SL are on the way as well." Northspring added, "This SL 2.0 won't be even publicily available for some long time. Ebbe just gave insight on plans and things in progress. After all, Lab is a company, (a) business. Oz said, that as long as SL will be profitable ... they'll be developing it. So it's not like shutting down SL and forcing people to SL2."

"Sorry for my grammar," she commented, "I'm trying to wrap my head around this misinformation nonsense on blogs, reading all rumor posts."

I asked if this new Grid would be closed to content from Second Life, that content creators would be unable to upload it. Northspring answered, "Yes, Ebbe said that, actually. But as I've said, not in the content of announcement, rather loose thought. They want to make that "new grid" better, not flooded with old assets from 2007... but Ebbe actually said something about import/export. I can't recall now what exactly, probably that it's not too possible, but he's aware of the problem, that starting from scratch would be hard." She brought up Ebbe Linden's Twitter, "His answer actually answers your question better. They generally want new, good content - not old asset system. But they're thinking. That's how I understood it. 'Will we be able to upload any of our SL stuff? Maybe just mesh or nothing at all?' - 'Too early to tell. All I've said is that we don't want the next gen to be constrained to be less than what it should be.' Key is 'too early to tell.' He just shared an insight, and now SL is flamed up with drama."

Northspring went on, "And it's actually a good thing, that he shared it. Linden Lab was never so open for long time, and we can look in the future with them. Well... they've made Patterns. No one in SL died because of that. " She mentioned the blogs that were spreading rumors and panic, and rolled her eyes, "SLU and several blogs already, one hour after meeting finish."

Northspring went on, " About being profitable - Oz said, in content of  'how long (the) original SL would go.' that as long as it'll be profitable - 'months, years, forever - I don't know.' the word 'forever' suggests for me, that SL original and planned 2.0 can coesist, if they'll be both profitable."

"The fun part is, that this project was in development for 2 years and now people wake up, when Ebbe is starting to say about pre-alpha testing. And he just shared this info with us." Northspring then espressed worry, "I'm actually pretty afraid, that Ebbe will now stop to share any information with community because of this one reaction. After all, there goes his weekend. I hope they won't do it."

Northspring would later start a post on the Secondlife.pl forum, which you can find (here). "I admire (honesty)," she stated there, "Linden Lab's probably never been so open with respect to the members enough to communicate transparently with projects of this type and to respond to the unofficial forum (skipping that desire wystopowania panic). It is very good that Ebbe became the 'head' Linden Lab - and that is so honest, although its PR department is not necessarily (sharing) the same opinion."

"draw your own conclusions by the brain, rather than succumb to the general panic and rumors."

More on Ebbe's announcement can be found at:

http://nwn.blogs.com/
http://modemworld.wordpress.com
http://monaeberhardt.wordpress.com
http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/
http://journeymetaverse.wordpress.com/
http://grid-press.com/
http://joyardley.wordpress.com


Bixyl Shuftan

Team Firestorm's Chakat Northspring at the SL Sci-Fi Con

A couple weekends ago, the Second Life Science-Fiction convention was taking place. I took a peek over there, and ran into one of Team Firestorm: Chakat Northspring (Panterapolnocy Resident).

Chakat told me Firestorm isn't likely to have a major update anytime soon, "We need to merge in Project-interesting first. And polish everything again, as after every merge ... which includes beta testing etc. A lot of conflicts in flies. Huge merge. ... It's not me, who is doing that luckily, but developers responsible for that have hard time. ... Linden Lab code changed in many places/files, where we did our modifications. It'll take some time." She thought it would take two to three months, but it could be longer, "There is a reason why Jessica is not giving any solid dates usually on anything, only flexible amount of time."

"I take it the complaints about Phoenix have died down?" I asked her, referring to some whom were happy with Team Firestorm's old Phoenix viewer being retired and no longer updated. Chakat answered, "Mmm... well, there still are people on Phoenix, but small numbers. Hardcore users, who it seems are fine without seeing avatars at all, and using (the) viewer for chatting, lecture listening or other inworld activities. But (the) majority of users spread between other viewers, Firestorm in majority."

After a short chat, which included a little about her taking part in a Star Trek roleplay, and watching a few brawlers duke it out at the "Mighty 'Morphing Power Rangers" exhibit, we went our seperate ways.

Bixyl Shuftan