Review of July

Review of July

Now the next month is over and it's time to look back. Actually July in SecondLife is a very quiet month. Many of the residents are on vacation or just spending more time with real life activities. So the activities in SecondLife inevitably go back and also we counted on the fact that this month will turn out a little worse. However, we have not given up on the inevitable, but have decided to react with a wider range of offers and new event formats. We also organised two special theme weeks. As in the previous months, we can say in July that we can look back on a successful month.  And in many aspects it was the most successful month in 2019.

Ok, we look back together at the events of last month.

We also opened July with a special week. Since this week was the most important national holiday of the USA, we celebrated our American week. What kind of events could you offer in such a week? We started with a Country Night at the Trails End Music Hall Club. Like every Tuesday DJ Yezika entertained us and we had a lot of fun. So we started successfully into July. 

We had no events on July 4th, but we used the time to decorate the alcoves on the street in front of Sunshiner's Pub and celebrated our "Happy 4th of July" party with one day delay on 5th of July. Everyone came with patriotic clothes and it was a very nice street party. DJ Valantine had picked out suitable music and we took over their stream for a wonderful party. And of course a big fireworks display was not missing at the end. And through donations we could increase the jackpot to 2,000 L$. So it was a wonderful party for everyone.

How can you close an American week? What would be a typical American event? And what would be special? We thought long and hard about it and then had the decisive idea. That's why we organized a "Rockin' Roller Derby" Party. Now we didn't have room for it, so we temporarily built a new platform below the Temple Mount and built a new venue with the Sunshine Roller Rink. Also this was really good, DJ Yuimetal was simply wonderful and many visitors came. With that we successfully finished our American week and July started well. 

There was no time to clean up after this week either. It was not far to the French national holiday. But before that we celebrated another event at Sunshiner's Pub. After the successful time travel with the 80's party and 70's party in June we decided for a lot of glitter this time. We celebrated our "Glitter Night" in the Sunshiner's Pub with all our glittering decorations. It's always amazing that we can do so many different events here. Of course we all had a lot of fun finding bright shining and glittering outfits. The sunshine girls and visitors complete a venue and make the event successful at the end.

Also the next event was something new. We've been thinking for a year about how we could use the meadow between the Trails End Music Hall Club and the Sunshine Garden for an event. And especially the platform with the garden and the barn is very beautiful and has its own atmosphere which invites you to relax and unwind. First the border between the two originally separated Sims prevented this, later we had the Winterland. Since in many countries children go to summer camps to spend time in nature and to learn a lot of useful things, we also wanted our summer camp. And we also quickly had a name, Camp Sunshine. With this "Summer Camp" event we went to the meadow.

And then it happened. We celebrated the French national holiday together with our friends from France. Since we closed again on July 14th, we used the time difference and celebrated it on July 13th in SecondLife. But it was already the morning of the 14th July in France. Wit our event "Honor France" we used again the alcove with the big stage and the street in front of the Sunshiner's Pub and decorated it accordingly colorful. Also on this day there was a big fireworks display and we had a lot of fun together. 

Of course everything was decorated in the colours of the tricolour and also our clothes were French or had the colours. It was really nice to see so many of our friends and guests.

Then it happened. We had our second special week in July and this time we followed the moon mission of Apollo 11, which was launched 50 years earlier. For this we placed a moon over the Trails End Music Hall Club with Bic's help. It was hollow inside and housed our Space Station, where we celebrated the events this week. Already the preparation was a lot of fun, and we changed the decorations several times during the week. 

On 16 July 1969, the Apollo 11 Mission to the Moon was launched. And 50 years later, our mission started on July 16. So our first event was "Launch to the moon" and we all had a lot of fun. And besides space travelers we could see androids, aliens and space troopers of the future. It was really an impressive crowd that came together. Our Events of the special week to celebrate the successful fly to the moon and the first landing of humans at the moon were planned before and independent of the SecondLife Challenge (#Apollo50th, #Apollo50, #Apollo11, #SecondLifeChallenge). But many new guests came and some used our Sim and events to make really fantastic pictures and took part with this at the Challenge. And everyone can share the pictures which made in our sim in our Flickr Group too.

On July 19, 1969, the Apollo 11 reached moon orbit and swung in. With that the first stage was finished and the preparations for the landing with the special module "Eagle" could begin. Reason enough to have an event for this at the 19th of July. Our Moon Week arrived the orbit too, and we celebrated the "In the Moon's Orbit" event. Like the Launch event came many guests, a lot new members in the group joined us.

Our special week for the 50th anniversary of the moon landing achieved its climax. The Apollo 11 mission reached its destination 50 years ago on 20th of July. The lunar landing module "Eagle" successfully landed at 20:17 UTC in the Mare Tranquillitatis on the lunar surface and Armstong's words went around the world "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed". This is 1:17pm here in our common virtual world. As we started our party at 4pm, and we looked back at the mission 50 years ago, "Eagle" was already standing on the lunar surface. We had added a small lunar landing place with the model of the lunar Apollo 11 Eagle lander placed to our set. And the Apollo 11 Service Module with the Command Module flew about the walkways. Our event "The Arrival on the Moon" was a success and more as 70 guests celebrated this anniversary with us. This was our event in July with most visitors. 

The lunar week was a huge success and we had more than 200 visitors at these three events. After landing on the moon we cleaned up and the space station left the Sunshine Realm again. We will certainly use it again in the future.

After we were for a week in our space station with the wonderful events, we wanted to go once again to the Sunshine Caribbean Beach again. Because it is summer in the northern hemisphere and the first warm days are behind us. A beach is a perfect place to relax. Dreadlocks and colorful clothes, happy people who smoking joints and dancing to the Reggae music. Many will remember Bob Marley now, the king of Reggae. The word reggae actually means "loose women". And there were be some sexy half-naked or lightly dressed women today again. We celebrated with our friends and guests a "Reggae Night" party on the beach.

Even though this was not a public event at the Sunshine Realm, I would like to include it in the summary. It's my diary, and it's about the Sunshine family. July is also Odette's birthday and she is one of us. And of course we didn't want to miss the opportunity to congratulate her and surprise her with a party. Since she wouldn't log in on July 24th, we used the time difference again. After our Reggae Night at the Caribbean Beach we changed to our private sim, where we prepared everything for a surprise party. We had invited Joaquin Gustav, he was already waiting for us to have an after-party for Odette. And when it was 8pm in SecondLife, Joaquin sang "Happy Birthday" and we started a big fireworks display.

Didn't I say, surprise party? Well, we already had the birthday party for Odette on Tuesday. And we really hoped we were able to surprise her. And we were all together the first this year to wish her a happy birthday. But we wanted to come up with something special and really surprise her. She is one of us. So what can you do to organize a very special celebration for her?  We remembered that Odette loves the burlesque theme like no other of us. And that Phil wasn't able to join us for this event in May. And we have still the Burlesque Palace in the Sunshine Realm. And so we asked one of the best singer in Secondlife Sultry Sonata Masterson if she wanted to sing for us. And she immediately agreed and we quickly agreed. We prepared our "Odette's Birthday Burlesque Party - She is one of us!" Party and it was an amazing night.

As we arrived the last week everyone od us knew that this month was special. But we didn't stop and organized events. In this week we wanted reuse places and party ideas. At first we remembered the "Mystical Creature" Events last year and returned to the Sunshine Garden. This was the first event in the Garden last year. We repeated this now as "Mystical Creature" Night and many friends and guests followed us with breath-taken costumes. It was a wonderful night together with friends. And if the events last year were very special, we overbid it is this year.

When we plan events it is often a mixture of new and proven formats. It would be almost impossible to prepare three completely new events every week. We also have to choose an outfit, and then there's the cost of a new location. That's why we're looking for new events that we can hold at existing venues and mix existing ones. Also at the following event we went back to the past and fallen back on proven methods. We built the Caribbean beach for our first Surf's up! Event. And we made our Swimming Lessons Event here. We mixed both to our new Surfing Lessons event.

The last event in July was the "Butterflies Watching" event. After our Summer Camp we were looking for a new idea to host another event on the big meadow in front of the Trails End Music Hall Club. We had some good ideas and laughed as we spoke about them. But I always had the image of a naturalist running after butterflies with a small net in his hand. And I told Misty about this. Misty laughed as I tried to explain it for her. My English is limited and I missed a few words. But that's how this event was born. And it was an amazing and succesful event. We finished the July on Sunshine Realm with this.

The month in numbers

I said it to the begin of this blog. The July was in a lot aspects the most successful month here at the Sunshine Realm. With a mix of events, some proven formats and some new, we could work against the common situation in SecondLife at each summer. We could win new group members, and the Sunshine Cove Rocker Group reached with 927 members. We continued the successful development of last months. We celebated 13 events like in the months before. And we could increase the count of visitors again. We had 717 visitors at our events in July. This are 57 more as in June and the highest value in 2019. This make an average of more as 55 vistors at each event.

Thus make the Sunshine Realm to a successful place. And we could see, that more guests followed the themes with amazing outfits. So can we inspire a lot people and helped to make Secondlife more colorful. We use our contests to say thank. We shared 19,500 L$ with the guests and this is an increasement too. Only in January was the Jackpot higher as in July. And compared to the June we put 1,250 L$ more in the contestboard. 

Now we look back at the whole year so far its behind us. We had more as 4,250 visitors and the summery of all jackpots in 2019 so far is 129,750 L$ in 90 events. 

Thank you all for helping us and making the Sunshine Realm to such an colored an amazing place,