Sometimes It's Just that kinda' Morning =^..^=

There's not a lot to whine about so far this morning...{Ah, but the day's just begun}... and while I've looked the days blogs...listened to Phillip Rosedales beach interview on Dusan Writers blog {linked here * http://dusanwriter.com/?p=758 *}...I've not logged in-world yet. So I may not know that the Benares server has gone up in smoke...there's zero back up, concierge phone service is down, the island was under furry attack with self replicating prims, our SLurl was confused with Help Island Public2... so when the server is replaced we will have 89 nooblets being booted into every tree and pond on the island,.............OH I'm sorry..that was last weeks *stuff* ROFL.

In a more mentally stable note.... Last evenings foray into the land where they're all 30 minutes old was wonderful. In a couple of sessions that totalled maybe 3 hours, I got the chance to do that which is another passion for me...I ended up dressing up 11 new people and answering questions for a lot more.

There have been numbers published by a couple of the Lindens, Alexa recently, that indicate retention of new accounts at around 10% of the total. A couple years ago approximately 15% never left Orientation Island. I will always believe that personal one on one contact would dramatically improve those numbers. I don't necessarily mean that Linden Lab should provide a one on one mentoring system...While that's a fantastic scenario...it just won't scale. What I think would work though, is a system of volunteers to provide face to face answers to the questions we all had when new. Maybe they wouldn't do the kind of personal attention I try to provide...but give new accounts **some one** to talk to. Back this volunteer group with official Secondlife Mentors or some kind of *watchful eye*. And that *watchful Eye* needs to be there 24/7. Secondlife is worldwide...only about 40% of Secondlife is from the USA...perhaps 50% or so from the Western Hemisphere...this is doable.

As the system currently stands...rarely is there any supervision at the Help Islands...what we have now is that usually there are 100 new residents on the most commonly used HIs at any one time...in the 3 hours I was out there I saw one Mentor on one island. That mentor wasn't there for 3 hours either. If anyone would like to check these numbers?...IM me, I will send you a HUD that will allow you to see the population on all the Welcome areas, all the Help Islands, and how many Mentors are on those sims.

The most common question I get other than, "What do I do next", is, "How do I go somewhere else"... {In case you've forgotten...there are prominent signs...There's a giant green beacon visible from everywhere on the island}...As new people we seem to have tunnel vision... We want to have someone say "Here, click this". Todays system is the blind leading the blind...

Having watched most of you that do me the honor of looking at this blog...I see people that would be happy to help any one that asked them. I believe that all of the people in our community are those who do take the time to answer a new persons questions.

For me, I haven't forgotten how it felt to, *not know*. To know that others seemed to have a better stand, or nicer hair, or somewhere to go or be. It was like high school all over again...and I was ashamed to ask.

If I can...I want to help as many as I can to know that the Secondlife Dream is alive for many of us. That's my passion here...the reason I've helped well over a thousand new people to maybe feel that someone cared about *them*. If any of this turns into something that speaks to you...come talk to me.

And so it goes

Love and care, brinda

Namaste