Back from Florence!

So, you were wondering what had happened to Eschatos? Not paying attention, are we? Eschatos (or at least his typist) has been off in Florence, Italy for the opening of the Rinascimento Viruale exhibit, part of the Festival della Creativita art festival.



Aside from the big news of the launch of the new book AVATRAIT: From Second Life to Florence at the show, we also announced the exciting new Avatrait.com web site. Eschatos is checking out the front page there, but if you click through on the center logo it will take you to the fabulous new "gallery" site where S.L. artists (and art fans) can upload their works, share them, form groups, and even sell their art to the general public. The site's only been "live" less than a week at this point, so there are new features and design elements being added daily, but go have a click and sign up for a free account!



One thing that we'd hoped to have good-to-go by the Florence event was the new Avatrait Island, but that is progressing at a bit more reserved pace than we'd anticipated. However, when Eschatos went over to check that out today, he found that there is at least a pretty snazzy sign waiting for the finished Gallery. When completed, Avatrait Island is going to have a big new gallery, classroom and workshop spaces, offices, a gift shop, event spaces, and a swank European café! Needless to say, you'll hear about it here just as soon as that's ready for visitors.

More later ... ciào!

Here it is!

Frankly, Eschatos is exhausted ... the new book, AVATRAIT: From Second Life^® to Florence is finally available, and he's been beating the Internet with press releases and other propaganda ... all while still trying to get everything together for that trip to Florence!

He still needs to update everything with the new links ... but is relieved that one big thing is crossed off the to-do list!

More later ...

Uhhhh ... wow!

Well, Eschatos had to run over to the Firenze (Florence) sim today to take a look around because he (and his typist) discovered just this morning that we're off to Italy on Sunday!



Simuality's Avatrait division has been invited to participate in the Festival della Creatività next week with some of our artists' creations being featured in the Rinascimento Virtuale show through the end of the year. Track Hax, fearless leader of the Avatrait Gallery (LINK), is going to be giving a presentation, and Eschatos has been tapped to keep everything moving with optimal propaganda goodness!

Another key feature of the event is the "official" launch of AVATRAIT: From Second Life to Florence, a full-color hard-cover book featuring the work of 47 of the Avatrait Gallery artists, that's been mentioned previously in this space. You can check out the Avatrait Book Store (LINK) for previews. We're hoping that we'll have some other exciting Avatrait stuff to premier ... but are still seeing how much can get done before we have to jump on a plane!

More later ...

We're getting press!

Here's Eschatos working late again at his desk ... he's not really feeling as grumpy as he looks, but he's tired and sure seems like he could use some virtual eyedrops! He's actually pretty excited, as the Metaverse Messenger he's reading there has a story about the SL-BaSE conference (LINK) on the front cover of its latest edition!

This was somewhat unexpected, as (aside from these missives) there's been no official promotion of the conference as yet, as there are still bits and pieces of the "registration backbone" of the web site yet to go live ... so he's been holding off on a lot of press releases and stuff waiting to have all that worked out.



Eschatos has been busy setting up in-world resources too ... aside from the Portland Connection sim "info desk" previously noted, there's now the beginnings of an SL-BaSE communications nexus right on Simuality Island (LINK).

All sorts of interesting and exciting stuff is just on the verge of being "announceable", and we should have at least some of it good-to-go by next week, so don't forget to check in!

More later ...

Still waiting ...

Well, Eschatos got some decorating done in the Avatrait Book Store (LINK) over in the Publishing Village on Book Island. Those framed pictures on the back wall are new, and give a low-res preview of all the images that are going to be in the Avatrait: From Second Life to Florence book.



We really had hoped that this would have been available by now ... we were taking pre-orders for it at the SLCC, where the Linden folks suggested that we could get an "official" Foreword for the book ... but they've had the materials for that since 9/10 and we're still waiting for approved copy to come back ... bummer!

Anyway, the big sign in the shop allows folks to still pre-order at this point, which will be shifting around to a link to the order page as soon as we get that last bit of the book. In the meanwhile, though, folks can come by and sort of "flip through it" (albeit without the accompanying text) via the new pics!

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Finally ...

Yes, there is finally some news that can be let out of the bag! Here is Eschatos checking out the "Portland Connection" sim (LINK). Why, you might ask, would Eschatos be checking out that? Is he off sight-seeing around SL again? Well, no, not really ... he's actually working as Portland is the location of the first edition of the new SL-BaSE conference, the "Second Life Business and Social Expo", to be held June 4-7, 2009! This is a 3-part extravaganza, with a 2-day Business conference, a 2-day Social conference, and a concurrent 4-day Expo of products, innovations, and SL services.



As may have been mentioned previously, Simuality is not just a virtual world developer, but an "incubator" for other projects (such as Avatrait and SlippCat). This is our latest, with a new company called Metaverse Conference Management, and its initial product, SL-BaSE!



And, not only did Eschatos check out the environs there, he actually rented some space in their "downtown" area, and set up the beginnings of an info center for SL-BaSE. Feel free to "ooh!" and "aah!" over the spiffy desk he whipped up after having spent way too much time looking around in-world for one to buy ... if Eschatos keeps getting projects like this, they may make a builder of him yet!

In case you were wondering, this is just one of the many "news" items that we've not been able to tell you about before now ... hopefully we'll have others shaking loose over the next several days.

More later ...