By Gemma Cleanslate
What a marvelous busy weekend I had along with so many others! At 10:00 am Saturday Patch Linden opened the Bellisseria 4th Anniversary celebration with a short to the point speech thanking everyone who has been involved over the preparation and building of the new continent. He said also it was the residents who made it a community. He also promised more big things in the planning and to come. One thing he did mention specifically was Welcome Hubs for new residents of the continent which sounds great. There were 85 residents and visitors at Patch’s speech . Strawberry Linden and Chronos Mole were present also.
Pruudence Anton , who was the main collaborator said, “Thank you today to Patch Linden for opening the celebration and our 3 Amazing DJs, & all our Wonderful Guests!
"Dj Gio, who you can find 2 days a week at Bellis Blues Cafe. - TY!
"DJ Hammie, find her with BEE and at Zoo-Palooza this month. - TY!
"DJ Stephanie, find her at BEE events and Bellis Blues Cafe. - TY!
"Thank you to the Hostesses, Brooke, Vari and Kizzie.
"And a special thank you to Kalia and Riot Hax for their help with this event and build.”
The party went on all day with visitors coming and going.
For those who do not know the whole history of the continent I asked Teresa Firelight who wrote
a marvelous article for The Gazette, Journal of record of the Bellisserian Bureau of Bureaucracy and the Continental Passport Control Board in Second Life® if I could include her article here.
"I caught up with Bellisseria's head builder Abnor Mole, and he had this to say;
'When we started building Bellisseria, we figured it was going to be a few hundred regions and we thought that was HUGE. We wanted to incorporate what we always loved about mainland --its ‘connectedness.’ This is a feeling of continual space that you can't get on just a few regions. It is the perception of community that Second Life started out with, a feeling that many of us remember from so long ago. If fact, that feeling of community is what made us fall in love with this platform in the first place.
People responded to that idea. Four years later it has ballooned to a few THOUSAND regions. When we moles step back and look at what we've built over those years, it gives us a reverent pause. We think, ‘Wow, we started building some homes and some land, and we ended up building a CONTINENT, and it is full of people!’ It cannot not make one smile.
So let me give you a quick history about Bellisseria and how it was built. Bellisseria was born on April 15, 2019 with an initial release of 136 regions. This included two house styles: Traditional and Houseboats. The user community’s response surprised and overwhelmed Linden Lab (LL). Every single house sold out in less than 48 hours. There were many additional requests for homes that LL could not fill because there were no more left. The moles were kept very busy building more homes as soon as possible. On May 15, 2019, LL released another 709 houseboats, which were again snatched up quickly.
By June 24, 2019, Linden Lab was ready to release more Traditional homes, and elected to go with a new strategy. They released one region at a time, rather than all at once. The attempt was to release a new region every day or two, except for obvious gaps on the weekends. The homes remained very popular and tended to “sell out” just about as fast as they were released.
On Sept 17, 2019 the 512 m2 campers were released. Roughly three months later, the Victorians were released (on Dec 16, 2019). Demand still exceeded supply and Linden Lab and the moles kept working hard to make more homes available. They released an additional 2,330 new homes (spanning all 4 house styles) on December 18, 2019.
In short, they released over 10,000 Linden homes in 2019, and there was still demand for more! On April 1, 2020, less than a year after the initial release, Linden Lab made Log Homes available – 4,828 of them. The good news is that by this time, there were usually some Linden Homes available for those who wanted them. They might not be able to get the theme they wanted, but there was usually something available. There would be occasional times where all homes on the Land Page were sold out, but if a person tried back a little later, they could find a Linden Home.
Linden Lab hoped to release the Stilt Homes shortly after that, but the 'uplift' project caused a long delay. This was a project where LL moved their code from their own (somewhat aged) computers to the AWS Cloud. That was a complex project that preempted most others. People kept asking Patch when the Stilts would be available. In response, he ended up Trade Marking the term Soon™
Roughly eight months went by. On December 21, 2020, the Stilts were finally released. The initial release was 3900 Stilt homes, plus another 552 House Boats. There were a few bumps in the road with this release, but were sorted out before year end.
About four months later, the Chalets were released, along with a massive community center – Die Betrunkene Maus – located in Muehlenbach. This happened on March 30, 2021. Four and a half months after that, on August 12, 2021, the Fantasy homes were released. The fantasy regions introduced new technology. They had trees and plants that glowed at night, and the foliage colours changed as the seasons passed. Next came the Newbrooke container homes on March 3, 2022, followed by scenic Sakura (Japanese) homes on May 16, 2022.
In November 2022, they released an update to the Traditional homes and a new Traditional community center on Chippewa Junction. Then in December, 4 new houseboat styles were released.
Of course, Bellisseria is much more than just the houses that people live in. Several community groups sprang up, such as Bellisseria Citizens, Bellisseria Entertainers and Events, etc. These have really fostered community and organised many parties. There have also been volunteer groups who work to create fun activities such as The BBB (Bellisseria Bureau of Bureaucracy) who issue passports, passport stamp machines, licences, etc. Other service groups included the Parade of Homes to showcase nicely-decorated homes owners open to the public, Belli Bin to playfully collect our trash, in-home clubs open to the public such as the Bellis Blues Cafe, etc. And there have been publications to keep people informed of what is going on, such as The Gazette. There are so many others that I did not list who contribute to making Bellisseria a great place to live. It is not just the place; it is the community.
Happy Birthday Bellisseria!”
Many thanks to Teresa for saving me hours of work! I know she put in many to get this all together and The Gazette~
Sunday after I had recovered a bit I spent the morning traveling all over the grid on The Nature Collective hunt which goes on until the end of the month. Many of the members of the Collective had lovely gifts hidden at their nature regions.
If you have an affinty with nature and want to see the lovely builds visit the Nature Collective and get their Hud that will help you visit the sites of all the members. Some are massive some quaint and small by the side of a road. Each has its own charm and they are all well worth visiting. There is also a photo contest involved. Check that out too!
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Erazor/35/89/66After belli party that the Bellihub is open and so is the belli demo homes ... and Abnor Mole did a great job with the tutorials!!!
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/BelliHub/75/186/22
Gemma Cleanslate
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