Official Matters About Primtings

Dear Primtings Patrons,

We’re so close to making tier, and yet so far away… And now the short yet long email — if your heart stops in the middle of reading this, please skip the middle and scroll to read the part in the end.

We are now past due for our tier payment, so I do not know how long Primtings will stay up. We’ve raised over L$300,000 in less than 3 weeks, with all donations tracked on pCampaign @ http://campaign.Primtings.com … We can try raising the remaining L$180,000 in whatever remaining time that we have left before Linden Lab deactivates Primtings.

I have sent the letter below to Linden Lab, in hopes that they can give us a week or two buffer time. They never respond to anything I send (not even support tickets – concierge calls are always deferred to support ticket, nowadays), so I have no idea what’s going to happen:

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Dear Linden Lab Billing,

We are in the process of raising funds to support the sim tier fees. For the upcoming payment of US$1770, Primtings has raised over L$318,277 from over 700 donations by nearly 500 unique avatars. Primtings is a nonprofit arts and education sim based entirely in SL, and 500 significant donating supporters is a major metric.

Our main source of funding has always been from microdonations from our community in SL.

Please give us two more weeks to try raising tier. We would be able to pro-rate to pay the time difference, if we are unsuccessful. 

Thank you,
Ina Centaur, on behalf of the Primtings Community

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In the event that we are unable to raise tier by the time Primtings is deactivated… Well, I’m not a fan of destruction unto deadend, so, I will outline a contingency process that balances:

1a) Primtings Mobile: I’ve created a mobile 3d mesh creation app called ClayAR. It basically lets you model any 3d mesh in an intuitive way using your fingers by manipulating a virtual “clay ball” on your touchscreen. Even though that app is still in alpha/private beta, that’s about 3423581234935 times harder than making an app that lets you create stuff via prims like SL. So, we’re going to have a mobile Primtings where anyone can create prim’d paintings using prims on their mobile device (or on the web).

1b) Out of SL/Skipping OpenSim??? Why mobile? Well, unlike SL’s limited ecosystem, mobile has a much larger (and proven) paying population. Primtings would be able to make enough to be able to pay tier — at least — or more. Yes, the plan is also to route funds from Primtings Mobile to fund that ginormous lump. Linden Lab will make its loads of petty profit from poor Primtings, anyway.

2) Support for the Mobile Future: We’d need some amount of serverside support for Primtings Mobile. But, the costs for a decent Intel Xeon quadcore server with 3TB bandwidth in RL is less than $100/month — it’s even less, since I own a rack of them in RL. For those who wish to support Primtings Mobile, you will receive an option to have your existing donations routed to Primtings Mobile.

3) Maintaining Responsibility in Transparency: One week after Primtings’ deactivation, I’ll send everyone who has donated a link to have their donations transferred to Primtings Mobile or returned. Within 3 weeks from that, if you don’t respond to the link, your donation will be returned automatically.

I think 1) might have gotten some of you just a tad bit too excited. (I know – it would be *so cool* if we could all go maker on our mobile devices!) Just to be clear, 1) is something I’d work on both ways. If Primtings can make tier, that’s even better. (I’ll foot the RL server bill myself.) If not, then at least, Primtings will exist elsewhere, though in a different form… and likely with very different exhibits. It’s not possible technically or legally to directly port these exhibits, so what you see in Primtings Museum really is an ephemeral art form — take one last look at it, please!

In summary, Primtings will be around in some form, albeit reduced, no matter what. Your donations will be returned or transferred, per your choice, if we do not make it.

Also – we are not yet over yet! – Please continue painting prims or donating in Second Life.

Thank you for the past, and let’s look forward to the future,
Ina Centaur

Dear Primtings Patron,

It’s been two weeks since the launch of our first pCampaign in 2011, under LL’s new sim tier pricing. We now have less than 10 days to raise the remaining L$350,000 needed to keep the Primtings sim going for 6 more months. The cynics among you would think this a futile task. Maybe it it is, but maybe it’s not — I want to side with those on the side of hope — those who still believe.

We’ve had over 2500 unique visitors to Primtings Museum in the past few years, and if each of you donate L$150 — a fraction of a dollar — we’d have enough to be able to make this goal. The problem, then, is how do I unite all of you on this cause to save this virtual museum? We hold common ground — we all love the spirit of Primtings Museum. I’m going to try pulling something out of the same essence of creative wonder that launched Primtings Museum and its legacy.

I am inviting all of you to participate in the creation of our newest prim’d painting — a massively collaborative primting called “Paint by Prims”.

It’s inspired by the “Paint by Pixels” live crowdsourced artpiece launched by iam8bit at GDC last week. Each attendee of GDC was given a colored square, and each attendee chose where to put that colored square on a wall-sized paint-by-color grid.

We’re taking this to SL by converting these paper pixels to prims, and letting anyone anywhere in the world join in. Instead of giving each participant a random color, the difference is that we’re applying a “real world” cost of paint colors to prims — those who donate more, will get more colors to choose from. This gives true creative freedom to the participants — this is a blank canvas, where you can color each prim anything you want, per your donation level. Supply and Demand: These pixel prims are available on a first-come-first-serve basis.

Upon completion of this piece — when all 2,000 prims have been painted — we should have more than enough to meet our fundraising goal to keep Primtings Museum alive for six more months. We would also have given birth to a new primting — made possible by you.

Continuing the pCampaign’s tradition of open transparency, each donation will be instantly recorded to http://campaign.Primtings.com — moreover, anyone on the Internet can view the status of this Paint by Prims project @ http://paintbyprims.Primtings.com

Please help me make this miracle of creation happen. Become a Paint by Prims artist. Come paint prims with me! Visit Primtings Corridor annex (along North Entrance).

Ina Centaur
Founder, Curator and Director,
Primtings Museum