Say What?

For those of you who haven't yet read about SL, it is a virtual world. It's not a game--there is no objective or goal, although there are certainly games you can play in Second Life. It's an online world where you create a persona, or avatar, and go about doing what you might do in your regular life, except in cooler clothes and with a bunch of other people who are as strange as you are to be doing such a thing.

Anyway, in my new job as Executive Director of the Massachusetts Bible Society, I'm supposed to help raise awareness about us and also to further the goal of biblical literacy for more folks in a way that doesn't insist on a literalist and fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. So, I thought it would be cool for MBS to have a virtual presence in Second Life as well as our physical presence in the very obvious first life.

But, I had never even visited Second Life before and had no clue how to proceed. Even though I'm a gamer, I have never even been part of an MMORPG for fear that I would become addicted, the dog would hate me, and I would lose even my first life! They don't call it EverCrack for nothing.

Second Life, however, counts as work (I have the coolest job in the world), and I thought it would be fun to blog about how someone new to the whole thing (a newbie or noob) fares as I try to not only get a character up and running but buy property and accomplish the MBS goals.

Which brings me to yesterday, when the adventure began.