Glastonbury is second best to Secondfest

Sick of hearing about Glastonbury and all that mud? Tired of hearing people complain about wet they were, despite the fact they saw all those amazing bands? You could tell them to put a welly in it (instead of a sock, it’s more fitting) or you could check out Secondfest.

I first heard about Secondfest through my friend Ruth’s band Mama Shamone. We had originally interviewed Mama Shamone for our journalism magazine project Six Degrees and they are now playing at the virtual festival.

According to it’s MySpace Secondfest describes itself as:

‘A virtual three-day music festival inside Second Life realised by The Guardian and Intel, featuring live music from offline and online performers, theatre, ballet, cinema, animation and general chaos. It kicks off Friday 29 June at 6pm GMT (10am SLT) and rocks and rolls until midnight (GMT) Sunday night.’

The lineup includes:

The Pet Shops Boys

New Young Pony Club

Hot Chip

Simian Mobile Disco

Mama Shamone

It’s sponsored by the Guardian and Intel, which have collaborated to show each other in a technologically favoured light. I am going to be there for the three days of the festival, because I smell one hell of a story for my magazine. The best thing is, I don’t need a tent, wellies or a guitar. Sounds like my kind of festival.

They came in their virtual droves

For the magazine I am creating, I have decided to write a confessional article on people who have either been ‘cheated on’ or vice versa on Second Life. Of course, this was never going to be easy. How can people cheat on their real life partners with someone in SL, if we are all but pixels in SL?

Anyway, back to the story. I posted a question on the forum at http://www.secondlife.com to see if anybody would like to be interviewed.

The response was INCREDIBLE; I was so pleased, something like 1500 or more views and 75 replies. My momentary pleasure however was soon abated. Why you ask? (I am giving you no choice in the asking by the way.) Because these people wanted to discuss amongst themselves the very nature of my question, not to volunteer for interviewing.

Here are a few of the more interesting responses:

Apple Pinkney

'Is there anything wrong with telling you this is none of your business? You sound like one of the way too many reporters who can't think of anything original to write so you come up with another way to slam the Internet'.

Well I suppose that’s all fair I suppose, but slamming the internet? Sounds like you wanted to slam someone else Apple.

Conifer Dada

'I'm a bit of a flirt sometimes and am not averse to wearing my birthday suit from time to time in public but I'm just having fun and being a bit of a tease I'm not looking for any close relationships in SL just friends and fame!!!!!'

It’s nice that people volunteer this information.

Conan Godwin

'Bumping pixels isn't sex, and I feel sorry for anyone with such an unsatisfactory real life sexlife that they would equate the two together. So the answer is no, no one has ever cheated on their real life partner in SL because that is physically impossible.Cyber "sex"( for want of a better word) is more like co-authoring a porno script together than actually having sex as such.'

That’s that then Conan, clearly the discussion is over.

All in all, I had a lot of brilliant feedback, and some people have offered to talk to me regarding the issue. I think I am going to interview quite a few people to get a few different perspectives. I do think am gonna use this forum from now on to get people for interviewing. It’s much handier than walking around for hours in SL, that’s for sure, my virtual legs were beginning to hurt.

Third Life

It has come to that part of the journalism course, where you have to decide whether you’re going to get a job, or take on the immense final project. A few people I know have decided to get jobs, or jobs seemed to have found them unexpectedly. I am quite jealous in some ways, as it means you’re actually getting paid for what you’re doing, and that really does make all the difference after a year’s intensive course, and many unpaid placements for some.

Despite my mild green eyed monster (I would say the shade of green is similar to a pastille shade), I have the advantage of a summer I guess. Yes of course, there is work to be done, (as if my conscious would let me forget that!) but that’s interspersed with sunny mornings lying in the grass and my own deadlines.

The project that I have taken on consists of 12,000 words in the form of articles and a 3000 word critical assessment of said project. I have decided to do my project on the infamous Second Life, only it took me about 2 and half weeks to narrow my ideas down for it. I was originally going to do three 4000 word articles, on various aspects of SL, such as:

1) Journalism-with Sky News and Reuters moving into SL, is this the future of Journalism?
2) Children and SL- How beneficial or harmful to children is SL?
3) How SL has changed the lives of people in real life, for better or worse.

Strangely, this all changed when I met a woman in my virtual meanderings , who I began chatting with randomly. This woman, in the shape of a child avatar (your character on SL) started to tell me all about her real life and how awful it is. This then went onto how SL has helped to distract her from a lot of pain, and is helping her to build social connections. It all reminded me of a confessional interview, and then PING, the idea of doing my own magazine came to me.

Narrowing my ideas down more and more, my magazine is going to be a cross between Glamour and Timeout, and it’s going to be all about SL for the people in SL. It’s going to be in a PDF format, and so people within SL will be able to read it straight from their virtual world.

Of course, the hard bit I think is going to be the design. Oh and the fact that it is going to have to be many smaller articles, instead of 3 big ones. The next step is to start attending more events on SL, and interviewing more people. Finding the right person can take several days in itself, so I am going to start advertising on the SL community boards.

That’s it for now; there will be more updates as my magazine progresses!