The Breaking of the Fellowship

SLCC 2009 has started off on troubled waters. SLUniverse seems to be the centre of the universe for this conference, which I find odd. Not that I have anything against SLUniverse, it just scares the living daylights out of me at times, but it's not as if thousands of different people have spoken. However the debate has taken centre stage at SLUniverse as exemplified by this thread.

The disagreements on the decisions made by the organisers have already led to one group forming their own get together in Vegas, now the educators have spoken, over at SLUniverse where WainBrave Bernal has announced that SLED, a very influential group of educators, will be holding their own conference away from SLCC.

TFU (The Future United), the organisers of SLCC 2009 must be rather frustrated at the splinters that have appeared, one group organising a get together because they feel they're no longer welcome and that the conference isn't aimed at them, and then another group, the kind of people whom the first group felt the conference was aimed at coming to the same conclusion as the first group but from a different angle. They seem to feel that the conference isn't serious enough and is more of a social gathering.

First of all there was the wave of disappointment that the conference won't be held in Vegas, this was a major disappointment.

The disappointment wasn't just over the conference not being held in Vegas, it was about a perceived lack of consultation with the community, after all Vegas was the popular choice and was then dismissed by the organisers because it didn't meet the criteria, a criteria which wasn't actually explained, is it any wonder people were a bit miffed?

Then came the Proposition 8 links to Bill Marriott being a reason not to hold the conference at a Marriott. Now here, I lost some sympathy with the organisers because instead of looking into the issue and presenting the side of the story from Marriott Hotels (not Bill Marriott) perspective, they started talking of holding the conference in a different hotel.

Marriott Hotels score highly on their equality and diversity with the human rights campaign, HRC are not just gay friendly, they actively campaign for equality based on sexual choice. This should have been mentioned, but alas it was a missed opportuinity.

Now we have SLED, who cite the comments in the same SLU thread as being one of the reasons for their decision to host their own conference instead of being part of SLCC 2009. I disagree with their reasoning.

First of all SLED are part of the community, the disparate parts make up the whole in Second Life, by distancing themselves from the community as a whole SLED are perpetuating the myth that Second Life is full of deviants.

However, when some of the comments have been anti education they probably feel that they may not be welcome. This really isn't a good excuse and educators above all, should be working towards intergration and equality. Diversity is a part of life and educators should recognise this.

This is a worrying development because it suggests there are fractures in how Second Life will develop, do the educators want a grid of their own?

The pain of the educators can be seen in quotes like this:

"We don't want to spoil SLCC! We don't want to be the reason that the others can't have fun. We also did NOT weigh in and say that Las Vegas was a bad idea!"

However the more cynical amongst us will also note this comment:

"We've decided to move ahead with planning for SLEDcc at another location at a time most appropriate to educators. "

Hmm yes quite, it is taking place in the middle of the school holidays!

However the bottom line is that SLED should have a presence at SLCC, even if they want to go ahead with their own conference, a scaled down presence would be fine but they shouldn't be parting the ways, this doesn't help anyone.

The educators should be there, education plays a massive part in Second Life, from your simple maths solutions to working out how far apart to place prims to inworld classes bringing a new dimension to distance learning. SLED should think again about their plan to separate.