IBM 6 sandbox - a sad farewell.

This pigeon was at Runnymede subway station down the street from me. Kind of unrelated to anything but maybe the pigeon is IBM6 sandbox and the subway car is Second life. Yeah maybe thats the connection. Or maybe the artists are the pigeon and IBM6 was the subway car.. and .. they are off looking for... a .. new..
Or maybe the pigeon is me and... no that doesn't work.

When I joined Second Life on March 25th 2007, I had no real understanding what I was getting into. After about a week of wandering around I accidentally created a box in the back yard of someones private home. I remember the owners being a elderly couple from opposite sides of the world who had "dated" for many years through things like ICQ and other instant messaging platforms. With second life they created a more physical way to share time together. They knew they would never meet in first life but this to them was as close as they would ever get to being together. I remember them quietly watching me build for months on their land occasionally coming down to chat but otherwise just leaving me be. I met other friends of theirs and it became a sort of family for a while. One of the only other family feelings I ever encountered was when I discovered IBM6 sandbox. For months before discovering it, I had been working on typical SL sandboxes where you pretty much had 15 min building time before someone decided to try out a new machine gun on you that they had just bought. This became quite irritating as you can imagine, and eventually I purchased the most expensive fighty thing I could find. Bullets couldn't hit me because I had a shield that stopped them and it quite helpfully informed me of people who tried to orbit, shoot, deform etc my peaceful avatar. I would then unleash unholy vengence on the griefers while chastising them in IM. It was really quite entertaining, however, I still was not getting work done.
I tried out IBM6 one day and stayed there for a year without a single fight. On most days it would not be uncommon to be working beside AM Radio, Spiral Walcher, Tezcatlipoca Bisani, Colin Fizgig, PatriciaAnne Daviau, Jessica Qin and other talents. I was there when Jaymin Carthage built a tree which grew over time before it collapsed. It also unfortunately collapsed much of SL and he was given a bare ass spanking by LL. There would be flying fish who would serenade you with poetry or massive avatars by Madcow Cosmos or Flea Bussy would wander around. It was a hangout for some really great artists. So I was sad to hear that due to restructuring IBM6 was no more. To me it was an iconic sim much like the art bars that were meeting places of great painters. I remember meeting Bettina Tizzy and Tayzia Abbatoir there one day and through them discovering a thriving art world in Second Life. It really was an amazing place.

So while sad, it is not all doom and gloom. IBM have given Tezcatlipoca a handful of Openlife sims and I think three SL ones. Tez has named one IBM Exhibit B and it is the new IBM6. I stopped by today and saw works out by AM Radio, Robin Moore, Mobius Enzo and a suspicious looking rat by Jaymin Carthage. Hopefully it will again become a hub for builders in SL. Below is the SLURL if you happen to be looking for a peaceful place to work.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/IBM%20Exhibit%20B/123/184/23

Oh and should you wish to use scripts there just ask Tez or Patti for a group invite.