A lot of controversies have surrounded SL’s birthday party SL5B. Now, some of the party’s directors, including SignpostMarv Martin, head of both SL4B and SL5B until he resigned, have announced they will arrange an alternative festival next year: The Resident Birthday Bash.

”I like to see things done right, and this one was royally f**ked up,” Shoshana Epsilon said. She worked as an art director for SL5B. This is how she described the troubles that have led her and the others to estabilish a new festival.

”SignpostMarv Martin was the chair until Dusty Linden showed up about six weeks ago. Dusty was supposed to be our liaison, no interference, that sort of thing. Then she started throwing her weight around. The committee had been working for nine months at that point. We’d chosen to do ’cultures’ in SL, and Marv, being Marv, wanted the dirty ones as well as the clean ones, that is BDSM, Gor, et cetera,” she said.

”We’d published this back in September, and no one said anything. Then Dusty steps in and says the whole place has to be PG. Wait, we said, it wasn’t PG last year. Yes, she said, and we got five complaints on that. But, we said, the sims were labelled clearly. LL didn’t respond to that.”

The committee then asked what they were going to do with the Gor and BDSM stuff. ”They gotta go, said LL. And the kids – they have to go too. No kids and adults in the same pictures.”

SignpostMarv Martin resigned from his job. His successor, Trinity Coulter, former SL5B organizer, was ejected from the group by Dusty Linden.

Epsilon kept her job, but protested by displaying pictures of RL families. ”They are as non-sexual as you can imagine. My guess was LL would pull the pictures or ban me, but they haven’t. For whatever reason,” she said.

Epsilon, Marvin, Pryii Akula, and Will Webb are the chief organizers for the new festival which will be called the Resident Birthday Bash. Epsilon describes it like this on her blog:

”Although our goal for 2009 is to create our own event to celebrate Second Life's birthday, we want this to become a cross-metaverse event, as well. Furthermore, if we have the resources, we would like to make this a venue to run Resident events throughout the year. With that in mind, we have created a parent organization: Virtual Resident Events.”

”I have nearly 200 people who have signed up for the new group,” Epsilon said. She asks people to look for kiosks to join the Resident Birthday Bash group. It’s not an SL group, so it won’t take an additional slot. The kiosks will allow you to get information, offer to volunteer, or to donate.

”This first event is going to take a lot of work – we have a lot of infrastructure to put together, but our goal for the venue is to associate it with every major LL-sponsored event,” Epsilon said, pointing on her blog to how the Edinbugh Fringe Festival always works as an alternative to the Edinburgh International Arts Festival.