[Two Important Updates on 2011 Land Pricing]

OpenSim may meet the needs of many institutions, or some other grid somewhere in the metaverse.  I neither know nor care greatly, personally.

Linden Lab has a perfect right to run their business as they sit fit, even if it seems to make no sense.

The rest of us general users are just simply helplessly watching as some of the best innovators, providers of content, and ... our friends drift off to other grids.  I feel no one is really concerned about what this means for the rest of us who simply value the contribution of educators, non-profit staff and non-profit volunteers in the SL community.  We attend their events, use gadgets they produce and invite them to our stuff too.  We learn and grow and make a difference in the real world through networking with peace groups, social justice groups, environmentalists.  That's all diminishing or ending.

We are the ones who will be left behind in a place that has had a good piece of its heart torn out.  Will it be a place we will want to stay?  I sincerely doubt it, speaking for myself.

[Two Important Updates on 2011 Land Pricing]

If there is a plan that unifies the seemingly opposite actions that SL has been engaged in such as using the arts as a marketing tool while driving away the non-profit orgs that host and support the arts and opening the grid to teens to support the work of educators while driving away educators with price hikes, it would be good for all of us if that unifying business plan were shared.  The alternative is to assume chaos. 

[Two Important Updates on 2011 Land Pricing]

Not just fewer interesting places to explore.  It is perhaps understandable is a largely visual medium like SL that people focus on the visual.  However the glue that makes SL sticky is not builds, it is events, groups, social connections, things to do. Non-profits provide most of the help to newbies and they host most of the conferences, discussions, public affairs panels, that interest core users.  What would "events" look like without non-profits and educators?  Who will teach building classes?  Who will host the freebie walls?  Who will create all the discussion sites and write the articles about SL that attract interested people to SL... the effects are enormous.

[Two Important Updates on 2011 Land Pricing]

I have blogged on this on Music Island if you want to get my full thoughts on the issue and why it is a disasterous policy that affects all residents, not just the non-profit and educational community.  Those of us left behind after a mass exodus of some of the most educated, involved and generous members of our community will find SL a more boring world.  (I am thinking a highway strip of big box stores).  That will only snowball as individuals leave when they find less to interest them.

If you don't have time to read the full blog post (or you are totally with me and don't need to) I have suggested as a starting point we all think about the following actions:

1. Twitter/blog/post everywhere that there will be a vast reduction in interesting content on SL if non-profits and educational institutions leave SL.
   
2. Boycott Marketplace in protest but support your SL businesses inworld.
   
3. Ask people to pledge a discontinuance of Premium Accounts by Dec 31, 2010 if LL does not continue discounts for Education and Non-profits.
   
4. Start Facebook/Linked-In groups to publicize actions.
   
5. Spend spare minutes in SL at welcome centres handing out notecards to newbies telling them how their SL experience will be adversely affected by the reduction in non-profit and educational presence in SL
   
6. On a protest day (TBD) cancel all eductional, non-profit, and affiliated events. Publicize the results in attendance.