Burning Life 2009 retrospective

November 3, 3:42 PMSecond Life ExaminerApollo Manga

Previous Next

Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Second Life Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Burning Life 2009 is over. Most of the builds are gone, but the Playa is still there and many builds do remain, though they could vanish at any moment. Many Second Life participants in Burning Life - artists, creators, performers, volunteers, rangers, and Linden Lab employees - including this writer, a Burning Life 2009 ranger, are already feeling a sense of loss after weeks of preparation and nine days of intense celebration.

If you weren't able to attend Burning Life 2009, you still can see some of the builds there, at least as of this writing. Some have been symbolically burnt, like Tijn Erde's build in Burning Life-Granite shown in this picture, but many are intact and just waiting to be enjoyed. As of today, Second Life members can visit the Playa by opening the Second Life Map and entering "Burning Life" into the search box.

Linden Lab today released some interesting statistics about Burning Life 2009:

• There were 28,564 unique visitors (i.e. people, like this writer, who have multiple avatars were counted only once).
• Over 1,300 Second Life residents were involved in preparing and opening the event.
• Residents spent 54,972 hours in it.
• Participants came from an astounding 170 countries! This is a huge increase over the 50 countries represented in Burning Life 2008. The top five countries in 2009 were in descending order the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, and Japan.

Burning Life 2009 was both a creative and a social event that's left many participants feeling a sense of loss now that it's mostly vanished into the playa dust. There's talk now of special projects where people will be able to visit some of the more memorable builds, of continuing classes, and of social get togethers for drummers, rangers, lamplighters and other Burning Life volunteers.

Above all, however, participants will be counting the days until Burning Life 2010 sprouts from the playa. If you missed it this year, try to visit the Burning Life 2009 playa while some builds remain there and next year, make plans to attend. Better yet, make plans to volunteer. There's a wide range of volunteer activities for nearly every taste, including lamplighters, rangers, DJs, performers of all sorts, portapotti artists, and many others.

You can learn more about Burning Life 2009 in the fourteen articles that appeared in this space:

• The Man burns one last time
• The Temple burns
• Lamplighters' final fiery dance
• Lamplighters' fiery dance
• Rangers on the playa
• The roof is gone
• Burning Life 2009 is open
• preview 1
• preview 2
• preview 3
• preview 4
• preview 5
• preview 6
• preview 7

 Burning Life is inspired by Nevada's Burning Man and closely adheres to its Ten Principles, particularly the principles of Radical Inclusion, Radical Self Reliance, and Gifting/Decommodification.

Now you can follow Apollo on Facebook!

All photographs in this report are by Erik Gordon Bainbridge.