The Last Ditch

The Second Life of Blogpower

During the run-up to the Blogpower Awards ceremony last year, many of our bloggers visited Second Life, the virtual world where the ceremony was held.

A couple of the visitors from that time are still regulars. However only Bag of Bag's Rants (a fellow-traveller, rather than a Blogpower member) has anything like the enthusiasm for SL that I have.

Of the others involved in the awards, Ruthie is still an occasional visitor, as is Ian Grey (aka Delicolor).

At that time, I began a tradition of naming my various SL vessels after the female members of Blogpower. So we have a "steampunk" airship called the SS Ruthie (see picture of my avatar at the helm), a Zeppelin called The Lady Ellee and - stateliest of all - a 120 metre long airship liner called the AL Limoncello, after Welshcakes of that ilk. Currently in refit, the Limoncello houses my art gallery in Second Life and her large ballroom was the venue for our party after the 2007 awards ceremony.

All vessels are usually female as any fool knows, but there is also a spacecraft named for Blogpower's well-loved founder, now sadly no longer a member. Here is the USS Higham in all its glory.

The new Blogpower Common Room (BCR) is on one deck of a new spacecraft, until now un-named. Bearing the above in mind, I have decided to name her in honour of enthusiastic Blogpowerer JMB of Nobody Important. As she is from Vancouver, I have named the craft the USS Vancouver, and the nameplate fixed high on the stern (click picture to enlarge) proudly declares that she has "JMB/Blogpower Hyperdrive." I have two more vessels to name. Both are spaceships.

I am open to suggestions as to female Blogpower members to be honoured (in the comments please).  Suggested designs for the nameplates (emailed as jpeg files to the email address in the sidebar) would also be welcome.

Blogpower Common Room

Link: Blogpower: Blogpower Common Room.

I have made available a meeting place in Second Life for members of Blogpower. Just click this link to be taken to a page which will (if you are a "resident" of Second Life) open your software and take you straight to the room. It's on one deck of a spaceship above my land. Please feel free to visit at any time and arrange to meet other members there. I look forward to seeing you.

Blogpower: Best Posts of 2007 by Blogpower Members - Self Chosen

Link: Blogpower: Best Posts of 2007 by Blogpower Members - Self Chosen.

JMB has done a sterling job collating the best posts by Blogpower members in 2007; or at least those their authors believed to be their best. Do please head over to Defending the Blog and check out a wide variety of interesting posts, plus one by yours truly.

Best Blogpower Blog Post of 2007

Link: Blogpower: Call for Nominations for Best Blog Post of 2007 by BP members.

JMB over at Nobody Important is organising a round up of the best Blogpower posts of 2007. If you are a Blogpower member, head over to the linked post to get the details. I have spent a little time this morning running through my posts last year to see if I have one I can modestly submit. So far, these are the candidates (in no particular order):

Questions of conscience (why forcing religious adoption agencies to cater to gays is wrong)

Social Justice -v- Justice (why it is wrong to apply social criteria to educational selection)

How English am I? (a reflection on Matt Sinclair's thoughtful criticisms of one of my posts)

What can we hope to achieve? (the concluding part of a three-part post entitled "What is the point of blogging?")

Show of Hands at the Royal Albert Hall (a controversial review of a folk concert's audience)

Edukashun, Edookayshen, Education (a comment on the grammar school controversy)

Ban Koran like Mein Kampf, says Dutch MP (a piece about freedom of speech)

We pay to have an underclass (comments from life on the effects of "social policy")

"Fear of prejudice" let gay carers abuse boys (the new British aristocrats of Labour's client groups)

The Jean Charles memorial blog round up (the Menezes story, as seen by other bloggers)

Any views?

Blogpower Round-up No 4 - Advent Edition

Link: Nobody Important: Blogpower Round-up No 4 --- Advent Edition.

Don't miss the Advent Edition of the Blogpower Round-up over at "Nobody Important." It's a sterling piece of work by JMB, showcasing the best and the brightest of Blogpower.

Blogpower Roundup - Nominations please.

The second edition of the Blogpower roundup is in the works over at Imagined Community. I can only echo our founding father's appeal to submit your nominations to: -

blogpowerroundup AT googlemail DOT com

Blogpower Round-up #1

Link: An Insomniac: Blogpower Round-up #1.

A new dimension to the Blogpower experience? Thanks to Matt M., for a job well done. Follow the link and check it out.

The Party's over...

Despite all my protestations to the contrary, it seems I was nervous about yesterday's awards ceremony. When the Second Life server crashed at precisely the time we were due to start, my heart sank. Within minutes, however, the server was back up. My “land” was accessible again and the guests began to return. There may well have been attendees who had not registered with Blogpower in advance. If, so I was not able to teleport them back. If anyone missed the event because of the crash, I can only apologise. You would have been very welcome.

After the initial scare, things went smoothly, thanks to a lot of real life goodwill in our virtual room. Our founder James Higham struggled with his welcome speech via a dial-up connection (“what is dial-up?”, heckled someone) but in the end he made his points.

I galloped through the formal part as rapidly as cut and paste would allow. SL “chat” lingers on screen for only 15 seconds, so I had to paste in a paragraph at a time. We had twenty awards to announce and ten recipients on hand to receive their virtual trophies.

In about 30 minutes we were done and ready to adjourn to the bar. When the last part of my speech was cut and pasted onscreen, I confess I experienced a sense of relief. I had a lot of late nights preparing for this event. Time differences meant that bloggers experimenting with SL showed up at odd hours looking for guidance. I left none of them - knowingly - unsupported.

Exhausted, I left my own party to make something to eat, planning to return. In fact, I fell asleep and didn’t wake until this morning! I hear the party went on for several hours. Several who couldn’t make the awards showed up for the celebrations, notably DK of Devil’s Kitchen. 

At times in the past weeks, I found myself sharing the views of the cynics. The project sometimes seemed downright stupid. At other times,however, it was great to “chat” with bloggers whose writing I respect. Since they live as far apart as Minnesota, Kazan and Adelaide, how else was that going to happen? It was also amusing to find that many of our most serious bloggers have a suprising sense of fun!

In the end, stupid or not, it worked. I am grateful to everyone who took part - many of whose “avatars” can be seen dancing in the attached - deliciously silly - movie.

With apologies to others equally deserving, let me mention a few names in particular. My thanks firstly to Ruthie. She couldn’t be there on the day but she played a great part in the preparations, single-handedly charming many into familiarising themselves with the quirks of Second Life. Thanks also to Welshcakes and James. Second Life is demanding software and they struggled with the limitations of their equipment. Lesser mortals would have given up, but they were determined to play their parts. I salute them.

From outside Blogpower, Bag of Bag’s Rants deserves special credit for enlivening the proceedings throughout. Bag and Blogpower’s own Ian Grey were quick to discover gimmicks, gestures and unsavoury animations to keep us all laughing at the same time as selflessly helping out the “newbies” they had so recently been themselves. Thanks guys.

A file listing the Second Life names of everyone who attended the event, the after-party or both is also attached for the benefit of the curious. But now, the last of the cartoony pictures uploaded, it’s back to serious blogging for me.  Anyone want to buy some virtual land?

Download guest_list.pdf

The Blogpower Awards - today at 1400 London Time

Well, the day has arrived. And I think we are all ready. In a short time, and despite using a dial-up connection, James Higham has become quite at home in Second Life. The Blogpower community in SL has helped him through a rapid apprenticeship and yesterday we were finally able to rehearse.

Also yesterday, my SL neighbour Zhu and I took Welshcakes shopping. She is now glamorously attired, shod and bejewelled for her big day. Like James, she is accessing SL with a less-than-powerful computer and a poor connection, so it's a struggle. But, deo volenti, she will be there - as will at least one of her regular readers who came along yesterday to check out the venue.

If you have your account set up, don't start your Second Life software yet. If you have started it, quit. Instead, Just click this link or the similar links at other Blogpower blogs. It will launch the software and insert the correct address (see screenshot above) so that when you click "connect" to enter Second Life you will arrive at the right place.

Step forward to avoid the next arrival landing on your head and find yourself a place to stand. If you are in the running for an award, please stand near the front, where I can reach you to give you your trophy. All winners with Second Life avatars to receive them will be presented with one of the glittering (and expensive) trophies shown here. Alas they can only be displayed in Second Life itself.

I am happy to rent you a beautiful virtual apartment where you can display yours, or to provide a trophy cabinet on my airship - free of charge - where you can keep it. My security robots will be given your name so you can visit unmolested whenever you want. Your equally-prestigious winners blog badges will be your equivalent in Real Life.

I will open the ceremony at 1400 London time (0900 New York time) by introducing James, the founder of the feast. Within the hour, we will be done with the formalities and ready to adjourn to the bar and dance floor on the airship "Limoncello", some 200 metres above. The metal disk (pictured) on the grassy terrace outside the venue is a teleporter. Click on it, and it will take you to the bar.

At that point, you might also want to click on the "music" button at the bottom of your SL screen (see screenshot)  . One of our guests this week spent an hour or so dancing away in silence, because he did not notice that button!

Apart from the lovely Welshcakes, we hope to see other Blogpower members and readers from the fairer sex, as well as some of the other beautiful women of Second Life who have promised to join the party. My neighour, Zhu, who has helped enormously in the preparations, as well as donating the tuxedos to be worn by the male guests, has promised to get up at 0600 her time to be there. We also hope to see the lovely Anais (pictured below in full bling) for whom James seems, from his blog reports, to have fallen very hard.

Our only regrets at this stage are that neither the doyenne of Blogpower, Ellee Seymour nor the lovely Ruthie Zaftig (pictured modelling a new dress yesterday, and who has given superb support and encouragement during the run-up to the awards) will be able to attend.

In the end, it's all just fun, but it has been a wonderful experience to "meet" and chat to so many of you as we prepared for this event. It has certainly brought the Blogpower bloggers together and we look forward, wherever in the world you are, to "meeting" you too.We can be recognised by the "blogger" titles hovering over our heads. Feel free to introduce yourselves.

For those of you who can't make it, SL has excellent facilities for video-recording and photography, so expect some serious red carpet reportage on the various Blogpower blogs tomorrow. For those of you who can make it, please do. We look forward to seeing you there!

The USS Higham, and the man himself

It's the final day of preparations. Tomorrow at 1400 London Time, the Blogpower Awards will be presented in Second Life. Yesterday, the founder and guiding spirit of Blogpower, James Higham, finally made his SL debut. After a tetchy start beset with difficulties, but with the guidance of a number of Blogpower SL veterans, I think it's fair to say our boy is ready for the big match.

Here, courtesy of Free Jersey Blog, is the photographic evidence (click to enlarge).

Today also saw the launch of the latest craft in Second Life to be named after a Blogpower blogger. Here is a photograph of my new space craft, the USS Higham.

Congratulations, James, and here's hoping that it all goes well at the awards.