Last Sunday January 10th RMB City celebrated its 1st Anniversary.

Here’s what Erica Dubach said in her first official speech as mayor of our community:

Congratulations to the team for the incredible island, the incredible experience and congratulations for reaching the 1st Anniversary, half time of the whole project. I have an incredible admiration for the work that Cao Fei and all of you have done here: you’re really working at the frontier of digital Art and this is why I’m so excited to be mayor, because I think that what you’re doing is absolutely groundbreaking. You are exploring a new technology that deserves a lot of credit and you’re doing it with unbelievable creativity and energy and you have my admiration. The reason I accepted the request to be mayor is because I believe that this technology has a great future I think Second Life and what you’re doing here is the way that people will interact in the future on the Internet and I would like to take a moment to explain what I mean and put in context what I think your work means.
I think that SL is the best example of a virtual world and its potential, there are many of them out there, about 150 to 200 different virtual worlds but SL allows an explosion of creativity that has not been seen in other worlds in the same way so what this means is that SL is very large and very active. For example, if you measure the transactions SL is the 175th largest city in the world, the largest country in the world and every single day ¼ of a million objects are Beijing produced by the residents such as you, so this means also for anybody visiting it that they have just this incredible richness of an experience. This island here and what you’ve done here is one of the best examples of this. What’s happening in the Internet in parallel, not just in SL but if you’re looking at Google Maps or Google Earth, for example, is that there is more and more emphasis on 3 dimensional work, recreating buildings and having people walk through this buildings. There’re also more and more opportunities for people to interact with each other on social networks, like Facebook, and people are having more and more interconnecting levels with different avatars and personalities; you can shop today for clothing on line and you have an avatar. I firmly believe that these two trends are going to convert and what you’re doing today in SL is learning about what digital Art means in an art form that will only expand in the future. So these two technologies are really coming together in a way that is important. This is why I think what you’re doing needs to have as much visibility as possible. I think what I’d like to do as a mayor is to connect these two trends , as a mayor I would love to have this city to be visited by as many as possible. So instead of building something else in addition onto this island, I would love to have people go through this space, RMB City, and really see it for what it is. So… as mayor, I would like to announce that we would like to combine the two worlds of the SL and the people outside by inviting people onto the RMB City Code, which is a treasure hunt through the city, there will be codes throughout the city, there’s a story and ancient mystery to be unfolded and in the end the person who can unlock the code will receive a special mysterious object and will be able to understand the city better. I’m looking forward tremendously to working with you for this next three months. Thank you

Following Erica’s exciting speech RMB City announced the upcoming ‘RMB City Code’ game:

RMB City staff and the new mayor E3A Digital are glad to disclose a new enthralling and arcane project: RMB City Code, the new intriguing ‘SL decoding game’ in RMB City and the first project of our mayor’s agenda
An inedited ancient story is to be revealed next February in RMB City. A mystery has to be unfolded, a puzzle to be solved, the quest is hard and the price unexpected. You will get to discover the city in order to disentangle the riddle, you will touch the dirt and the opulence of RMB City…
Open up your eyes and come to explore the island as you’ve never done before! As mechanized robots numbed by daily routines and everyday gestures, we pass by places and towns without grasping the small hidden details and uncommon treasures anymore. This is a game for those who want to start ‘seeing’ with new eyes, for newbies and old acquaintances who want to (re)discover the ‘legend’ of RMB City. Look for signs and get immersed into an ancient tale of Chinese mystery, the best explorer will be awarded with an unexpected precious prize…
Dear avatars, you will find yourself immersed in a complicated secret that will keep you involved until its final solution, you won’t be able to avoid it, the city and the mystery won’t let you go until the very end…
The end is just the beginning of another journey…we’ll all wait for you to discover the mystery of this code and experience RMB City with us

After the official announcements and the presentation of the the new marketplace we all broke out into dance with our most affectionate friends, a gorgeous China Tracy in her specal Viktor & Rolf dress and baby China Sun.

RMB City invites you to a special gathering on January 10th, 2010, at 12 am SL time, 4 pm Beijing time. The location? The brand new People’s Marketplace (RMB City 1 205, 53, 66 (Mature)). The occasion? RMB City’s first birthday, and the inauguration of its fourth mayor, Erica Dubach, aka E3a Digital. A special announcement about an exciting new mission, the RMB City Code, also awaits.

Come and join China Tracy and the newborn China Sun in the stalls of our new bazaar. Buy a new costume for your avatar. Watch the dancers of RMB City Opera perform their revolutionary choreography. Last but not least, come to hail E3a, our new captain in chief, as she speaks to us about the increasing relevance of our virtual world.

Erica Dubach E3A Digital, Fourth Mayor of RMB City:
Born in 1969 in Switzerland, Erica Dubach travels the digital world in search of the new and interesting, both professionally and personally. As E3a Digital in Second Life, she has connected the virtual world to the real world using RFID technology. RMB City is destined to achieve the same leap in the context of art. As Erica in Real Life, she is a PhD candidate at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH Zürich) since February 2007, and a senior researcher in the Auto-ID Lab University of St. Gallen / ETH Zürich since February 2009.

RMB City Code, a SL decoding game, Coming Feb 2010

Announcing Mayor E3A Digital’s first project, RMB City code.
A series of codes have been planted in RMB City, where the mystery of an ancient story is waiting to be discovered. You may embark upon different experiences to try to crack them. The moment you unfurl the web, you will revel in an unexpected surprise…….