Second Life’s birthday is the 13th of March each year (as opposed to its anniversary, which is the 23rd of June). That was on Sunday.

There’s a story as to why there’s confusion about the whole anniversary/birthday thing, and it’s actually my own fault.

Back when, when I organised the third anniversary celebration for Second Life, I made the error then. I somehow got it into my head that it was Second Life’s birthday, rather than its anniversary, and I organised a lot of the signage and promotion that way. How I got that all mixed up, I have no idea.

Anyway, Linden Lab was very cross with me about my making that mistake, I gathered.

Several Lab staff grabbed me by the collar and informed me at astonishingly great and verbose lengths, how much of a ghastly and intolerable error that I’d actually committed in my accidental conflation of the two dates. Having received my spanking, it was then expected that I make my best effort to fix the problem. A whole bunch of emergency adjustments happened over the following 24 hours or so before the week-long event kicked off, as textures, text, notecards, calendars and all sorts of things got hasty name-changes and rebranding.

I think I was awake for 21 or 22 hours of that effort, dashing hither and yon, and making edits and having meetings. All in all, organising that week of celebrations and events took me about 700 or so hours, altogether – and then, only, because I delegated everything I could get away with.

As it happens, my mistake got passed on to the organisers of the anniversary next year, who also referred to it as the birthday, and so on. It’s one of those unstoppable gaffes, it seems.

But enough of the boring guff about the anniversary, and more about that notable day in March itself.

Nevertheless, the 13th of March is the day that Second Life’s first actual (non-Linden) user signed up and signed in, gracing the grid with her presence and her first creations. Her name was Steller Sunshine. Back then, Second Life was called Linden World (the name-change to Second Life came later, and most of the Lab staff thought the new name was as lame as many of us still do).

While in the throes of organising the third anniversary of Second Life, I got the chance to meet Steller briefly, and she gave me a copy of one of Second Life’s earliest vehicles – a sort of flying … carpet thing; one of the surviving items from the original Linden World database.

Like the first astronaut, Steller was the first of us to take a step, or rez a prim, or just plain have a go in Linden World/Second Life. Millions of people followed, but Steller was the first, and it was a historic day for Second Life, and for Linden Lab.

Lalo Telling has more of Steller’s adventures, along with some images.

Remember Steller. The first of us.

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Tags: Linden Lab / Linden Research Inc, Linden World, Second Life, Steller Sunshine