Reserve your space now for the second annual Second Life Community Convention. Join us at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, California, from August 18th-20th. At the event, you will hear how different Residents are pushing the boundaries of Second Life. Be sure to catch Philip and Cory Linden hash out plans for the future and take the opportunity to hang out in San Francisco with all of your Second Life friends. Register today. We hope to see you there!

Making Learning Fun and Profitable!

Educators have been using the Main Grid for some time now to test their ideas and conduct research. Now the Teen Grid is beginning to generate interest with schools and non-profits as an invaluable resource for learning and advocacy. Global Kids is one example. Read more

Helping Residents Find Their Niche

The founder of the Academy of Second Learning (ASL), Selaras Partridge is dedicated to real life education in Second Life. The organization was created to help Residents find their own creative niche. She also volunteers as an Instructor and Live Helper and in her "spare time" she is also an in-world artist who creates imaginative buildings and clothing.

Ginny Gremlin is a Second Life Mentor and Live Helper who is involved with several Resident-run learning organizations. She has a reputation for being extremely helpful especially with new Residents.

Know someone worth mentioning? Tell us!

American Apparel Breaks New Ground

What makes the opening of the in-world American Apparel so special is that in just a few months, they will have an exclusive offer only for Second Life Residents. When you make a purchase in the in-world American Apparel store, you'll get a notecard in your inventory with a promotional code offering a real life discount at their online store. Find out more.

Dealing with Assault in Second Life

Assault is the number one type of abuse reported in-world. The majority of all permanent bans are enacted against Residents for attacks of various kinds. These include personal attacks against individuals, as well as grid-wide and global attacks. If this has happened to you, there are actions you can take. Read more.

Ten Tips on Creating Machinima in Second Life

You can use Second Life as your own virtual back lot, soundstage, choreography studio, costume and prop repository, and special effects house. Eric Linden, Linden Lab's machinima expert extraordinaire, gives ten tips for creating machinima in Second Life. Find out how.

How Much Growth is Enough?

For the past several months the population of Second Life has been growing steadily, with new accounts added in the hundreds daily. A couple of weeks ago, however, the rate of new account creation was given a huge boost with the elimination of the credit card requirement. We think that in the long term this change will be to the benefit of the Second Life community as a whole despite concerns about increases in griefing and minors on the main grid.

Early feedback suggests that the average rate at which people are filing abuse reports has increased from 1.2% to 1.65%, a real increase. But as Daniel Linden mentioned in his blog (Abuse Levees Holding), its not the dramatic jump that many people feared. It would appear that although many more people are coming into Second Life, for the most part they are interested in what the world has to offer. They are also getting involved in the economy of Second Life and contributing to the recent stabilization of the LindeX value.

Most important though is this growth is vital to maintaining a rich and interesting environment. With expanded growth comes diversity and the corresponding potential for innovation. A world that stagnates is, as Raph Koster points out, a world that is not developing toward the common good. Our challenge is to work together to define the common good, to retain the cultural mores that have brought us this far, and to evolve our community standards to embrace our increasingly large and diverse population.

Agree? Disagree? Let us know - send us your Letter to the Editor - with your Second Life username - and we will publish a representative set in the next edition of The Second Opinion.

We received many responses to our opinion piece: Open Channels. A representative sample of the letters start here but you'll need to click through to read the whole text and we encourage you to do just that. Thank you for your responses.

Keep in Mind this is a Global Community
I think it would be a cool idea to have people come to you for face-to-face meetings. The only thing I would remind you is that not all Second Lifers are American or based in the Americas. Having been on the tail end on Sony Online Entertainments pathetic excuse for customer service. Its way too easy for online game companies to forget that places exist outside of the states :) I'm not accusing you guys of that by the way just trying to ask you not to fall into that trap. And yes I'm biased I live in the UK! From Sean Szymborska

Let Us Know What Happens
I just wanted to say how much I am in support of the Second Life Views program that you've cooked up. I think it will be an excellent opportunity to interact with your user base, in a setting that just isn't possible in Second Life itself (yet!). One question I had is will an overview of what was talked about be made public later? I'd be fascinated to know what's being discussed! From Travis Callisto

[Editor's note: we do plan to publish information after the events. Watch this publication for more!]

This is Good, Listening to the Community
The Second Life Views program is a very welcome addition to the multiple lines of communication that Linden Lab offers to the community. There is no other online world, game, or company I know of that listens to their customers so often and offers so many channels of communication (keep reading)
from FlipperPA Peregrine

[Editor's note: the following responses were originally posted on the Be the Change Blog]

The Plan Plays "Favorites"
This really seems like the resmod [Resident Moderator] program makes an in-world invasion. I don't understand the Linden Lab penchant for selecting a group of "friends" on which to confer special prestige or benefits. SL may be a platform for member business and content created by members, however, what makes one member more entitled to special prestige or say in an advisory capacity. Each time LL makes a move to confer a special contract, benefit, authority to a "friend" it causes hard feelings. It's divisive. If Linden Lab wants feedback then invite all members to comment via the forums. If Linden Lab wants to a small group of members to provide advice then why not let the membership elect spokespersons. I really think this plan, like the resmod plan, is a bad one. (keep reading)
From Katykiwi Moonflower

The Real World Provides an Additional Opportunity
This is a bold and visionary step for Linden Labs. It will be a difficult--and frustrating at times--process to effectively host and manage. However, it is an important step toward proactively communicating with your clients and should lead to some significant insights and strategic initiatives (keep reading)
from Bloop Cork

Last month we reported that Arito Cotton was the owner of Taco. Shortly after the newsletter was published, Broken Prototype became the proud new owner of the cartoon island.