The second annual ‘Hippo’ (aka Linden Lab Innovation Awards) are open for nominations. The Linden Lab Innovation Awards are a part of their Open Source - or open source, opinions may differ - project and serve to ‘honor community members who have had the most significant impact on the Second Life open source viewer project over the last year‘. Candidates are contributors who have had the most impact on Second Life open source development in the last 12 months. Got a favorite contributor, documenter, or beneficial influence whose contribution you feel was exemplary between 1 July 2007 and 30 June 2008? Nominate them for an award! More information about how to nominate your favourite contributor over at Massively.

Most famous ‘Hippo’ 2007

Most well known winner last year was Mr. Nicholaz ‘Beresford, who won the title ‘Contributor of the Year 2007′ for his huge amount of great patches - bye, bye memory leeks, or ‘lower memory footprint ‘ as Nicholaz puts it so nicely - which he incorporated in the Nicholaz Viewer. The same Mr. Beresford that almost gave up on supplying us with great ‘asstachment free’ viewers and patching the Linden’s viewer - obviously this (2007) was a different time, a time when everybody thought that contributions would continue to be readily accepted and not largely ignored - does not care much about this year’s Linden Lab Innovation Awards: ‘I’m a pretty ambivalent about this years awards, given that the Nicholaz Edition is now more of an independent viewer and given that I even stopped making submissions. I’m pretty proud of my last one about the Asstachments, which was around January, but the feedback from the Lindens (essentially calling it a cheap band aid) about was less than thrilling. Others which I’m equally proud of, actually the ones which make most of the difference between Linden versions and Nicholaz Editions, have hardly been accepted or I pulled them out after seeing them ignored for months.‘. For those who did not know, btw, there is are a whole lot of ‘alternative’ viewers/clients for Second Life in the running, most - but not all - listed here.

I hope Lindens take better care of this year’s Hippos. Send them iMacs, IM’s and most important of all: listen to them! They were chosen because they have valuable suggestions to make in the first place! ;)

How to nominate a possible Hippo

This is a rather closed ‘poll’, as Lindens don’t announce this call for nominees and votes on the Second Life blog, you need to dig through the wiki until you find a page titled ‘Linden Lab Innovation Awards. Now it’s easy you say? Nope. 1st thing you need to do is login into the Second Life Jira Issue Tracker - and we by now know that 99,19%* of Second Life’s population does not know that JIRA exists, let alone how to use JIRA and then being able to ‘add the person’s Second Life avatar name as a subtask to the appropriate category under MISC’. Not sure if I now how to do that, honestly. :p

All the best of luck to the people that got nominated already - see list below - but maybe we should have some ‘aimed at the broader public’ awards too. Best contribution to virtual fashion? To the art of animating your avatar? Most useful HUD? Best tutorials? Prime interesting news source? Best in picturing the Grid. Top metaverse social peace keeper? Most funny virtual clown? Something to engage all residents, and rewards those that make our Second Lifes more agreeable on a daily basis, not just because of their knowledge of code, but because they have other skills. No? As this is only about people who use ‘Linden Lab shared tools’ kick-ass people like Natalia Zelmanov - contributing hugely in their own way - fall out of the boat.

Anyway, the nominees (so far!) for the Linden Lab Innovation Awards are:

1. Best Documentation (misc-1301) - SignpostMarv Martin, Asuka Neely, Strife Onizuka, Gally Young, Day Oh, Saijanai Kuhn and Catherine Pfeffer
2. Best Project Organizer (misc-1302) - Lex Neva, McCabe Maxsted, Harleen Gretzky and Strife Onizuka
3. Best Contribution (misc-1303) - Mm Alder ,Ellla McMahon, Gellan Glenelg, JB Kraft, tangletwigs fairymeadow, Able Whitman, Seg Baphomet, Marine Kelley, Realxtend development team and Nicholaz Beresford
4. The Jesse Malthus Award for Best Community Influence (misc-1304) - Zha Ewry an Lex Neva
5. Contributor of the Year (misc-1305) - Gigs Taggart, Harleen Gretzky, Alissa Sabre, Carjay McGinnis, Maxwolfe Goodliffe, Fox Diller, Whoops Babii, Michelle2 Zenovka, Marine Kelley and Nicholaz Beresford

As only 8 names out of this list ring a bell to me, I feel ashamed for not spending enough time on JIRA (, but it loads that slow, sir!) although I’m almost always on the RC. To often when something bad happens to me, I just reboot and get one with it, assuming somebody else will report it so they can fix it. But also a bit for our Linden Gods, who should - imho - try harder to explain to people & avatars about JIRA and how to contribute (and maybe see some results of that).

* Vint’s best guess. But really, I won’t be that far off!

Tags: hippos, jira, Linden Lab Innovation Awards, open source

• 'Choosing an avatar name' help at SL Registration
• Fantasy Map for Open Source & Standards
• Help! SL Client Crash when any File Dialogue is opened. (on Vista)