Richard Elen (bet­ter known in Sec­ond Life by his DJ name, “Elrik Mer­lin”, or “Rik” for short) has a tool­box which run­neth over with audio skills, music, broad­cast­ing, and all the impor­tant behind-the-scenes details that go along with those activ­i­ties.  From work­ing as a tour­ing and stu­dio sound engi­neer in the 1970s; through dozens of pro­duc­ing and engi­neer­ing gigs; mag­a­zine edit­ing and mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions; to cur­rent work as a spe­cial­ist trans­fer­ring vin­tage tapes and discs to dig­i­tal for­mat for major pro­duc­tion music libraries, “wealth” does not begin to cov­er the expe­ri­ence he brings to his var­i­ous vir­tu­al world endeavors.

Sec­ond Life res­i­dents may best know him stand­ing beside Saf­fia Wid­der­shins in the award-win­ning web TV show Design­ing Worlds, where for well over a decade he’s been co-host and has worked cru­cial­ly behind the scenes on the tech­ni­cal pro­duc­tion of each episode. Until recent­ly, he played a sim­i­lar role with Gabrielle Riel and the suite of streams for­mer­ly known as Radio Riel, work­ing as part of the team of on-air pre­sen­ters, along­side pro­vid­ing behind-the-scenes tech­ni­cal sup­port. With the found­ing of Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio he steps in front, tak­ing the lead­ing role informed by his decades of pro­fes­sion­al experience.