A number of readers have sent me this Linden Lab announcement, which seems to suggest that the company will not host a site celebrating Second Life's upcoming 9th anniversary, but instead, only promote SLer-hosted events around that celebration. I just checked with Linden spokesman Peter Gray, and he confirmed that:

"That's correct - we currently don't plan to host SL9B events this year," Peter e-mailed me, "and instead will be focused on promoting events put on by the community." He added Linden's community team should be posting more about this on the official forums soon.

So there it is. To be honest, I think this state of things is just as well: