Was I worried the iVillage tour last night wouldn’t be well received? Well you always wonder when you throw an event in SL if people will show up…but man, I had no idea that they would show up in the numbers they did last night. A LOT of tour attendees arrived for the kickoff tour, and while I’m so thankful for that (thank you all for coming!), it brought up the other side of the coin - what do you do when you’re overloaded with guests?

In real life, people end up wandering out to the porch or the patio, going on a Denny’s run, or the cops show up because your neighbors complained. Physical space tends to balance itself out. In SL, however, there’s a few little factors called lag and sim limits - two invisible presences that will shut down your event for you, which you have little to no control over, and can quickly complicate an otherwise groovy time. In RL, people make their own choice on when to leave a crowded party - “C’mon guys, we’re packed like sardines in here, let’s go”. You make a choice based on your physical comfort level. In SL, your physical comfort is a non-factor - you’re at home in your computer chair with your fuzzy slippers on. The reasons you can’t get into a sim or your computer slows to a crawl are outside influences dictating to you what will happen, not vice versa. They’re also technical reasons as opposed to physical sensations - its hard to be told by your computer what will and won’t fly, its not so hard to obey what your body tells you is your personal limit.

Having got that mental noodle out of the way, I did learn a lot from last night’s iVillage tour. A lot of those lessons I want to help incorporate into the next tour, coming in the new year. Some are organizational, some are instructive, some are suggestions I’ll make for the residents that pick up the tour torch after my stint is over. (Such as, if you’re going to the mainland for a tour, try to put your meeting on a sim border, or barring that, organize two tour groups to attend in waves.) But the biggest thing I learned again was that the generosity and patience of SL residents is undeniable. Someone had a question, people jump in to help. The people we approached to speak at the tour, Steller Sunshine and Neph Protagonist, were incredibly gracious and generous, willing to improvise, and went above and beyond the call of duty. Celebrity Trollop was fantastic spearheading goodie bags from wonderful designers, and the designers themselves were so giving in their selections, picking wonderful items from their inventory that made the gifts extra special.

You can analyze and pontificate on the software that runs SL, the concepts of the metaverse and virtual reality, but its always going to be about the people that make SL such a wonderful place. Its the first, last, and only reason SL exists, and really the only one that matters. For your perusal, I give you the lone picture I managed to save last night - the talented Cylindrian Rutabaga performing live at the loft, accompanied by a random guest dressed as a cockroach on keyboards. The mystery guest sat in for a song or two, then wandered off to explore the rest of the sims, giving us a truly surreal and (for my money) amazing moment that can only happen in Second Life.