FIRST SLDS MEETING NOTES

EIGHTEEN ponies and trainers met at FFF on April 15 2011 to get the Society rolling.  These are transcripts and notes from that meeting.

Zobo Shepherd: Hi y’all and welcome to the first meeting of the Second Life Dressage Society. For those who don’t know me, I’m Zobo Shepherd and I’m a Senior Trainer here at FFF. The reason we’ve all come together here today is because of our love of an art form that may soon wither and die as a form of competition in pony play.
Zobo Shepherd: I’ve been involved in the pony community for about 9 months and there has not been one dressage competition in that time that I can recall. After putting some thought into this problem and asking some questions to some more experienced ponies and trainers, I came to the conclusion that putting a Dressage event together is a huge undertaking.

Zobo Shepherd: Ideally, you need:
1 host
1 scorekeeper
3 judges
I’m sure you can do it with fewer people, but it would help to have a team of at least 5 to properly run the event. That is a lot of people to coordinate and try to get to the same place and time for a two hour event. Also, with events being so few and far between, it is tough to get trained judges as they probably want to enter the event rather than judge it.

Zobo Shepherd: So my idea was to make Dressage competitions more common. Let’s have one once a month instead of once a year. Let’s get a core group together to put these events together. Let’s have a group that TRAINS JUDGES so that there are always plenty in supply and plenty of people willing to do it. Let’s have a group where we can come together and help each other hone our Dressage skills and learn from each other. Let’s bring the beauty and art of Dressage back to the forefront of Second Life Pony Play.

Zobo Shepherd: Thankfully, some of the best trainers and Dressage experts in SL have welcomed this idea, and have offered their time, expertise, and talent to help in this endeavor. I welcome them, and you, to the SL Dressage Society. Our mission is to promote Dressage as an Art and as a form of competition, but we need to have fun doing it too, and I know we will. Thank you and Welcome.

Zobo Shepherd: Hopefully, you have all gotten your welcome packages and have had time to read them over. There are some tags you get when you first join, but there are also tags you have to earn. You may have noticed that it is not easy to earn these tags. We want to ensure the quality of our ponies, teachers, and judges, so the criteria to qualify for these titles are quite stringent. This is all detailed in the notecards in the welcome package, so if you have any questions about how anything works, please ask.

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WALKING BACKWARDS:

Mikky Heron: for MD boots,
Mikky Heron: hit the forward and backward keys at same time, then release the forward key
Zobo Shepherd: ok, i'll have to try that
Gentle Ansar (gentle.jupiter) my Mds go backwardfs
Aprille Dollinger: Interesting