As with the first speech I attempted to record a machinima, but even though I could hear Philip he only rezzed for me at the last second, when he was saying goodbye. Thanks to Torley we have podcast and a transcript.

Text transcript of Philip’s second speech:
Transcribed by Torley, delightfully polished by Samantha Poindexter (thanks again!).

Yay! I’ve got a dot, I’m very happy. I hope everyone can hear me alright. Well, I guess if you can’t, maybe — ha-ha! — as before, well, we’ll do our best. Somebody can be kind enough to transcript me. Hey, as I said, so welcome to Second Life’s 7th Birthday! If it feels like Groundhog Day and you’re seeing me again, well, you are. We had an emergency and I am filling in for M right now. So I’m “virtual M”. So welcome to the birthday celebrations, I hope the last days have been great for everybody.

I hung out and heard some great — I heard a great DJ in here in the evening, Monday evening, and it was totally inspiring to have the avatar count and everything kind of down to a point where I could sit in the audience at this stage and watch a great performance — I know for me that was really just inspiring to just be able to kinda sit in the crowd and enjoy some live music — it was amazing. It also really inspired me in thinking about how live music as an example, is something that can get better if we refocus our efforts and do the things we’re trying to do right now at the Lab, to just kind of back up and make Second Life just work. Work better for everybody. I think live music is just a super example of that, we’re so close, there’s a a few things that work — I should say there’s many things that work in Second Life, and then there’s a few things that still don’t work quite right. And if you look at something like live music, you can just imagine how if we could just take away a couple of the barriers — for example, broadcasting a stream is pretty difficult with live music, and of course, having a bunch of people — having there be 20 people sitting at your event and [echo begins at this point] have to tell their friends, and try to bring another 50 people into the event is something that today in Second Life, just doesn’t work very well, that max crowd of people that shows up and shuts off the servers. I’m hearing an echo here — who else is hearing that? — it’d be great if somebody turns that [echo stops] off. I’m a pretty good public speaker but it’s very difficult to do with a two-second delay on my own voice.

Hey, so I could tell you I see a nice avatar out there in the audience. Let me take a second and turn my memory back a little bit as I did on Monday. Many of you probably don’t know I actually started the company in 1999, so that means as I said on Monday, that this has been more than 10 years as a project. And for me it was basically my 30s, I’m turning 42 this year so I spent my 30s working on Second Life which is pretty lucky. I mean, I think to have been in that really productive — I guess, as an engineer and as an innovator, your 30s, what a wonderful decade where I was able to put all my creative energy into something as amazing as this and so, thank you to everybody. Thank you to all the Lindens. Look at the world that’s grown up around us in those 10 years. I was saying on Monday that I can’t imagine anything I would change because I wouldn’t want the precious and wonderful things that have happened and that we’ve built here to not have worked out the way they did. In other words, even the tiniest sort of changes that you could imagine in the past might’ve screwed things up and not brought us at least as far as we are today.

So yeah, when I look back on this 10-year project now, I was mentioning my avatar — my avatar was a construction on the afternoon of some day in 2002 when I, we all challenged ourselves. There were about 30 Lindens at the time and we all challenged ourselves to build, like, the coolest avatar. And whoever built the coolest avatar was gonna — we were all gonna buy him dinner. And I knew I was gonna lose, ‘cuz I’m just not much of an artist, and a bunch of the people, a bunch of the engineers, and a bunch of the folks at Second Life were formidable artists so you knew that in their hands, the avatars they were gonna create were gonna be pretty astonishing. So I kinda figured I wasn’t gonna make it but I could at least do something fun and quick and I remember getting a pair of jeans and going into Photoshop — somebody had this pair of jeans that I’m wearing right now, and I went into Photoshop and painted out the crotch of the jeans so they became chaps and, I thought that was a pretty funny idea. That was about the depth of my creative contribution that day, and my avatar did not win. I wasn’t the most popular Linden Lab avatar. I believe, for the sake of history, that was Andrew — or Leviathan Linden at the time as his name was — but yeah, nevertheless, I’ve never taken these jeans off and they’ve become something of an icon for that 3 or 4 minutes that I spent Photoshopping.

So anyways, it’s been a 10-year journey. It’s been an incredible amount of work together. All of us in the world as content creators, as participants, as parts of the community, as consumers of all the magical stuff that’s all around us here — and for the company, as product innovators and operators, designers — we’ve been building this enormous piece of software. I’m not going to do it again but on Monday, I listed off, like, 50 — that is, somebody could probably say here how many it was, maybe it was 42 to the earlier nerd reference there — I listed off a huge number of modular components which are big, freestanding chunks of Second Life that have to be kept working. And it was striking, even when I made the list, how many things there were that have to be kept working for Second Life to stay up and running. And so, that’s a — it’s proof of, or it’s an examination of, why it’s such a challenge to keep this project moving forward.

There are so many parts of Second Life and we as designers of the experience — or of the software at Linden Lab — are so enthusiastic about doing everything at the same time, we just don’t want to let anybody down. There’s literally a million people yelling at us about every different little piece of this system with good reason, and I think the fault that we make sometimes is just an enthusiastic kind of desire because we love the world so much, and we love the community, and we love our participation in it — to do way too much at the same time.

And so, as I said on Monday, we just went through a very difficult process, one we’ve been through only once before in the company’s history, where we laid some people off. We reduced the size of the company by about 30%, that’s about 100 people. That’s a huge change. And it’s a change that you can’t take lightly, you’re saying goodbye to a bunch of your friends that you work with. But looking forward, that change is consistent with — but not sufficient to capture the sorts of things we need to do next. Not only do we need to be smaller and more focused as a company, we have to do a lot less. In other words, we have to do with 2/3rds of the people — we have to do less than 2/3rds of the things we were doing. We are working on too many things at once. And so as we’ve said in the various public discussions about this, we really need to fight and work super-hard to focus on simply enabling the basic experience that we’re all having here today to be better. We want to refocus ourselves on a smaller set of objectives that address exactly the experience that you as Residents are having today and having right here, right now. We can only have so many people listening right now. If there’s too many avatars or too complicated avatars, the framerate slows down to a point where this thing becomes unusable. It’s hard to put your clothes on. It’s hard to walk around when there’s a lot of lag. These are the basic problems that make Second Life difficult to use right now, and probably are the basic reasons that we’re not growing faster.

So stepping back and refocusing our efforts on the basic problems that we’re seeing with Second Life today and the most obvious, immediate things that we can do that are inspiring, that are creative, that move the product forward — that’s what we’re going to try and do. And I talked about this on Monday, I guess I’m just gonna take the time here to say it again now: I also made the statement on Monday that I think of Second Life as being like this amazing city, a very beautiful city, filled with all the wonder that we’re celebrating today. But it’s a city that’s surrounded by a fortress wall and a moat. Hah. It’s very hard to get in there. It takes a tremendous time commitment, an incredibly good friend, a call to action, the desire to have a job — some very strong reason why you would come and jump into this world. And what I think we’ve been doing enthusiastically and out of love but a little bit in the wrong direction over the last couple of years is we’ve been kind of getting ahead of ourselves building bridges and ladders — and rope ladders and scaffoldings — that cross over that fortress wall and get you into the magical city. And we’ve been sort of doing that for little groups of users, whether you’re talking about reaching out to a particular group of international users, or educational users, or enterprise users — we’re sort of trying to build a stairway for each of them to kind of climb over this wall.

When maybe, what we need to do is backup, regroup ourselves as we’re doing right now, and tear down the wall. And fill in the moat. Make these big changes to the fundamental experience that simply makes it easier, simpler, faster, smoother — for everybody. And I think that if there’s a change in strategy that makes sense, it’s that one. To regroup, to simplify, and to focus on the things that affect everybody. I just saw the word “basic accessibility” there in text, I think that’s a great way of capturing it. The basic accessibility of the world simply needs to be fantastic. And we’re not there yet. And it’s a huge mission, it’s okay that we’re not there, I’m absolutely delighted that we have a million or so people in here doing amazing things. We have 450 terabytes of content, we have $700 million a year in US dollars in transactions between people in here. We have livelihoods for several thousand people. One of the things that’s happened in these layoffs is return ourselves to strong profitability. Strong profitability means the world is not at risk. We don’t think it would be responsible for the decision to hire a small group of people at Linden Lab — it wouldn’t be responsible to do that at the risk of the overall economy and the livelihoods of all the people who are having so much success in Second Life. So we respect that, and that’s part of why a tough decision like layoffs is the right one.

So I think that looking forward a bit to the future, I’ve explained there what I think we need to do: regroup, focus on the basics. I think as we’ve had over these last 10 years, judge us by our actions — I said this yesterday — let’s all work together. Let’s make small, measurable steps every day to make Second Life better. Judge us by our actions — and I think this goes for Resident-to-Resident as well as Resident-to-Linden — judge us more by our actions than our words. What matters most is that we continue to make and hopefully accelerate the steady progress that has gotten us to where we are today. This is a big, big project. So let me stop there and, in text, if anyone’s got any quick questions, I can take about 5 more minutes and then, I too have to run.

And thank you, thank you all for being here, and again, I’m sorry for being “virtual M” and boring anyone who was there on Monday as well.

Q&A

[09:32] Jahman Ochs: What will *your* role be, going foreward?

A question there about my role: I’ve always tried to find the best way to be involved with the company in a way that maximizes my strengths. First and foremost, I’m a designer and an innovator. A lot of the little parts of Second Life over the years have been things that I’ve been involved in making. I want to keep doing that — that’s always where my heart has been around — (voice cut out) — practically speaking, I’m on the board of the company. I’m there all the time, I’m there right now. So I’m still very involved, although as has been the case over the last couple of years, not as formally, and not in the same roles.

[09:33] Youri Ashton: Philip: how will you try to tackle the lag problem? Something we all may like to know :-)

To the question about lag — how will you tackle the lag problem? — the team, and it’s a fantastic team in the company now, and a lot of great people here that weren’t here two years ago that I’m really proud to see here, but I’m also a lot less worried about our ability to move Second Life forward. We’ve got a really well-rounded team now that we didn’t have before this, just one of the treasures that we have going forward. So that team right now is hard at work thinking about what needs to change and what we’re going to do differently with a smaller group and a different focus. So to the question of how we fix lag, that’s what they’re thinking about right now, but I don’t want to second-guess them. Lag isn’t a simple problem. Lag is a cluster of 10 or 15 different related areas of impact that slow us down so it’s strange because it’s this single word that has a whole bunch of actually fairly balanced — that is to say, similarly impacting things behind it — so we need to work on all of those, so I don’t want to shortcut an answer like that with, “Hey, we just need to work on avatar rendering” or something like that. It’s actually a much bigger problem, but I respect the team we have to figure out a great plan for it. And look for that from us in the weeks to come.

[09:35] Frolic Mills: Philip, what can you say to the many content creators in SL who do make a living from SL … any words of encouragement about the stability of LL?

So Frolic says, “What about the content creators who make a living? Any words of encouragement about the stability?” Well I think I just said the most important thing, which is: by reducing the size of the company, we return ourselves to strong profitability, meaning that — and that’s the most important thing that can be said about the stability of Second Life, when you get right down to cases. We as a company are running a lot of pieces of this infrastructure, and we gotta keep ourselves going, so being profitable — and we’re incredibly fortunate and successful as a company to be able to do that, we don’t need to borrow money from investors anymore, we are profitable — and that’s a wonderful position to be in, and I think that’s the biggest thing I can say about the stability.

[09:35] labella Farella: Linden curency dropped , will you see it going back up

Regarding the changes in the currency — which is related to stability — the currency price changed a little bit last week. It’s amazing that it is fairly stable again now, though. I think that the monetary policy and the way that money supply is handled in Second Life — although it’s certainly a very new experience — we’ve never had a $700-million economy that existed in a virtual world before. No federal reserve bank has ever had to deal with something like that. (Coughs.) Honestly, I think the way we’ve managed the economy and its stability has been very impressive. Even if you look at the pricing changes that happened last week, they’re very small. I mean, the typical day-to-day fluctuation in pricing is very small, even compared to something like the fluctuation of the dollar against the Euro — which of course in the last year or so has been alarmingly greater than it should be — but even if you go back, Second Life’s currency has always been amazingly stable for foreign exchange. I leave that to the statisticians to drill down on, but it’s obvious just looking at the graphs.

So to the content creators, what I would say is: we are going to keep trying to make the basic system more capable, easier to use, more inviting to people — which means more customers, more capabilities for you — if we can deal with things like lag, that means that your meeting spaces and your stores and your events are going to be able to have more people in them and run more smoothly. And that, coupled with the great work that you’re doing building content, I think, will continue to grow the economy.

I’m going to wrap up at this point. And thank you very much everybody for having me. I hope you all continue to enjoy the birthday celebrations. I know I have. I hear some clapping there, I always love the virtual clapping. It sounds wonderful. (Laughs.) I remember the first time we did that. But yeah, thanks everyone. Let me type that as well. It’s been a pleasure to take a minute and see you all this morning, and I hope to see you soon inworld.

(Resident on voice: Thank you, Philip!)

Take care, everybody.

Philip’s speech was followed by a short Q&A in text chat.

Dousa Dragonash: Is there any truth in the rumour that Second Life is preparing to be bought?

Philip Linden: Dousa…. nope.

Honour McMillan: thank y ou Philip – what is your ongoing involvement?

Philip Linden: Honour…. I am always working closely with Linden, and lately focusing on how I can help with product direction.

Gazanfer Jehangir: people are thinking sl is headed in a direction to end up as a 3d facebook? any enlightenment on this please

Philip Linden: Hmm….. well SL and facebook are very different. But we certainly do need to make it easier as an experience, in manner similar to how easy FB is.

Youri Ashton: Philip: Could you tell us what kind of things you still do with the Lindens, besides your new project

Philip Linden: Youri: I’m active as board member, and am also often at the office.

Zol Link: I am wondering if SL will have any new graphics updates? And will there be a way to reduce lagging and load times during play, I noticed some places lag less and have less Issues then other areas, I would like to see if you could pull off what Eve online and or Entropia Universe has, where over 1k + players could stand in one area with little to no lag

Philip Linden: Zol: The graphics work we’ve been doing lately is state of the art, in terms of shadows and the like. I agree that 1000 people in one area would be incredibly great. what we need is higher frame rate for the complex builds and avatars in SL

Full Transcript:
Transcribed by Torley and polished by Samantha Poindexter

Philip Linden: Okay everyone! I realize not that everyone there can hear me and I’m sorry for that, but I’ve got until 11:30 this morning and then I’ve got a drop-off at summer school to do, so I absolutely have to leave. So I just wanted to get started and again, I’m sure somebody will — maybe if we’re lucky here — will do the favor of recording and translating me. I can’t type as quickly as I can talk, so I’m not going to try to. I’m just gonna speak a little bit here and then let everybody — well, let’s get on with the experience of celebrating Second Life’s 7th Birthday this week!

It’s amazing for me personally looking back. I sat and thought about this 7th year of operation — you know, for me, it is, of course more than 10 years. I started the company in 1999, so in fact I’ve been at this for 10 or 11 years now. In fact for me personally, my 30s were basically spent building an experience — experiencing and growing alongside Second Life. It’s remarkable that entire decade of my life has basically been dedicated to Second Life. This year, I will turn 42. (Laughs.) So it’s an amazing thing looking back and looking at the troubles we’re having even just being here together today. I would say that those 10 years have been incredibly hard. They’ve had incredible moments of frustration. But they’ve also been incredibly rewarding and inspiring and I wouldn’t take back any of it or even do anything differently. And I think that’s something that not a lot of people are lucky enough to say.

You know, you might jump up and say, “Hey Philip, of course there’s so many things you could’ve easily done differently that in these last 10 years that would’ve made things better — or executed better — but you know, changing history has the risk that you might have done something that broke everything in some way, and I wouldn’t toy with that. I think what we’ve achieved here is a magnificent accomplishment together — all of us, the Lindens, the Residents, the Lindens that aren’t with us anymore — we’ve all worked together to build something just incredible. And I wouldn’t even take any chance at anything that might mess it up, it’s unbelievable what we’ve achieved.

I was thinking about this — what to say today and what to talk about — and I had a thought. I wanna try something. I wanna read you guys just a quick list that I made this morning, so bear with me and let me read you a list of stuff here:

Our financial fraud detection systems; the systems we use to transfer assets from the Teen Grid; the central databases; our dark fiber backbone; our asset servers which have about 450 terabytes of data; the 40,000 simulator cores in the system; the group chat system; the LindeX Market placement and fulfillment systems; the physics core; the visual rendering system; the scripting engines; the ability to transfer and move land; the region conductor that manages all the sims coming online; the map servers; the inventory servers; the client UI; the content takedown tools; the monetary policy, processes and systems we use; the customer support tools; the Department of Public Works; our international payment systems; our backup systems; Linden Homes; the Welcome Islands; the Infohubs; the grid monitoring tools; the localization systems; the private regions; our land auction systems; forums; search appliances; the Support Portal; metrics dashboards; our Phoenix, Dallas, and Washington, D.C. data centers; our 3rd-party Viewer directory, open source repositories and programs, and our internal build systems.

(Laughs.)

So I’m just gonna pause there. That is an incomplete list of major components that make up Second Life that I was able to just sit and kind of bring up from memory this morning while I was thinking about us. Now, the reason that I read off a list like that is to kind of — looking back — to sort of beg everyone’s forgiveness and explain that this is an incredibly complicated system. And we have been building all of these different systems, these core components — they’re all part of the Second Life experience, they all hold it up — together. Over all these years, this team of Lindens, and for some of these things, the Residents as well. They’re all important parts of the experience. Probably in the years to come, some of the things I just said will become whole companies in their own right. As Second Life in this experience grows another order of magnitude or two, these things that I just mentioned are probably standalone companies, some of them.

So this is — so Second Life is an incredibly complicated system. We face an enormous set of parallel challenges and I just wanted to take a moment to remind everybody of that. Again, it’s a magnificent accomplishment, but the sheer length of that list is one of the challenges that we, as a company, have faced historically, and we very much face it even moreso today.

You know, overall, I would say that our fault as Lindens has been to be overly enthusiastic. We have tried, as a company — because we’ve been so excited about virtual reality, about we’ve already accomplished together, what we’ve seen everyone do, what we’ve seen you guys do — it’s been so exciting that we have tried to fix it all at once. We’ve tried to make everything better at the same time. I think one of the nicest things about the company is that it’s all done out of enthusiasm, it’s done out of excitement, it’s done out of love for the world. And everything and everyone that’s in it. But I think the challenge we’ve had is that over and over again, we’ve been this small, smallish company trying to work on something that is just unbelievably complicated and figuring out how to restrict and serialize and sequence and prioritize all of these different pieces has been a huge problem and frankly, one that we’ve done our best — we haven’t done as well, I think, as we could — but it is just a huge list.

I wanted to speak for a couple of minutes and touch a little bit — obviously — on the layoffs we just did. We sadly reduced the size of the company by about a third — by about 100 people a week ago, and that’s a big deal and a huge change. But I wanted to say that standing here today in the midst of such a rich world and such continued creative — and for some people, financial — success that’s here makes me realize that, that choice is the right choice and one that though it is hard to make, is definitely correct and obvious. We’re never going to — as a company — risk the world and the businesses and the livelihoods of the thousands of people who make money working here by growing too quickly ahead of profits. By doing the difficult process of restructuring the company and making layoffs, we’ll return ourselves to solid, very solid levels of profitability.

We’re safe, the world is safe. As smart as we may think we are, we are not always going to be able to predict Second Life’s rate of growth and hiring is something that you tend to do something in a linear way, but the growth that company goes through — especially something as amazing and phenomenal as Second Life — tends to be punctuated, that is, you’re gonna have periods. And we’ve been in one of those periods now for the last year or so, where the world grows very little because we’re trying figure out together — you and us — what to do next, how to make it better. The growth, when it comes, is typically non-linear. Growth happens very fast. A company, of course — and we’ve been through these days as well — reels as it tries to provide a solid service offering for everybody as that growth occurs. And then in other times, you know, you have to hire with the anticipation that there are things you can do that are gonna drive growth. And sometimes that doesn’t happen. So I think this combat between linear company growth and sort of non-linear world growth is, again, one of the big problems that we face. And so, to be safe, we have stepped back — reduced the size of the company — and kept everything safe.

Looking ahead as we’ve talked about, what are we gonna do beyond stepping back? I mean, I think a high-level way to describe it is that we may have sort of two-thirds of the people that we did a couple of weeks ago, but we need to actually do less than two-thirds of the things that we were doing. So the process of restructuring and replanning that the teams are engaged in right now is fundamentally to figure out how to do a lot less a lot better. And also to step back for a moment and readdress our efforts — and refocus our efforts — on simply improving the core product experience that we are having right now, together, as Residents — here. We need to focus on the things that matter most to the people who are here, to ourselves as users of this system. We need to make the basic features and capabilities of Second Life work really well. And so, the planning process that we’re going through right now — of retrenching and deciding what’s gonna happen next — is one that fundamentally focuses on that, on improving this core experience for everybody.

I think that Second Life — addressing that sort of core experience problem — I still think of Second Life and the past few years as being something like this: Second Life is this wonderful, beautiful city — once you’re in it and you’re having this amazing immersive experience, you’re just totally blown away by it. But the city itself is surrounded by huge walls and a moat. It’s like a medieval city. To actually get into it you have to invest an enormous amount of time and energy getting across that moat, and over the walls, and into this amazing new world of people inside that are waiting inside. And I think that in our excitement about the success of Second Life — in its amazing initial growth and the amazing things that you guys have done and that we’ve done together — we were getting ahead of ourselves a bit as a company and this is what we really talked about in this restructuring. We were building these sort of rickety — we were in many cases building these bridges and scaffoldings that sought to get different types of people across that moat and over those walls, whether we’re talking about international Residents, or the community welcome areas, or enterprise or education users — we’ve been sort of building these little, thin bridges that try and quickly get everybody kind of over that wall and into Second Life. And of course, you can understand why we’d do that, because it’s just so fantastic an experience once we can get people there.

But I think what we have to do — what I know is the kind of thinking that’s informing our planning process going forward — is ask whether instead we can stop doing those many, many peripheral, highly usage-specific things to get people in here — and instead just take a step back, look at the basic problems that we are all faced by, and by fixing them, fill the moat. Tear down the walls. Stop trying to build over them. We have a product here that can deliver an unbelievable experience to everyone if we simply make the basic pieces of that experience work. Whether we’re talking about how many people can stand together in a meeting like this, or how to put clothes on, or manage your inventory, or build basic objects inworld, or how voice works, how parcel media works, live music — all of these basic features are things that are amazing experiences when you can have them, but they’re not easy enough yet. They’re not — they just in many cases don’t completely work, and we — it’s so easy to get ahead of ourselves as a company and forget that. So going back to those basics and just trying to make this thing work for all of us is what you can expect to see from us next.

I want to stop because I don’t want to run out of time before being able to maybe take a few questions — if the text works. The last thought I had, and it’s kind of a thought that always comes back to me in these times: the reality is, slowly but surely, virtual worlds are working. We are still growing. We have grown slowly and steadily over all these years. We may not have a trillion-dollar economy together, but we have a $700-million-dollar economy that is bigger than a lot of countries, continues to grow, people continue to innovate and build amazing things inside it.

So one thing I would say is: looking back and looking forward, let’s just keep all working together. Let’s keep making this thing easier, more solid, a better experience together. And then, as a final thought, I would say: again, looking back on even the first birthday ceremonies we ever did, that we should all judge ourselves, Residents and Lindens alike, by our actions more than by our words. The actions we’ve all taken together speak loudest and the wonderful things that we have built together — successfully over these years — nothing can take that away from us together. So let’s just keep working together, watch and expect us to keep making the world better for you, and just hang in there and keep going. And I think that every excited statement that I’ve ever made about VR and about Second Life and about what we’re doing together — I believe every one of those — and I think that we may have these funny periods where we have to wait for things to happen. It is all going to happen, and we are going to get everyone in here eventually. So, let me just say again, thank you for all being here, and maybe via text — perhaps we could try via voice — I can take maybe a couple questions before I have to run in about another ten minutes here.

Original audio source (philip-speech-sl7b.mp3)

Hamlet Au/Linden showed up as well, to report on the party for his blog. In style he arrived in just his boxers and a tie. He claimed he forgot to change after a Nude ‘Party’ the day before.

“Hamlet Au: Oh wait, I forgot I was last at that RMB nude party, and forgot to change.  Oh well, boxers work in a pub of drunk people, right? “

“Hamlet Au: Yeah I got my tie on, so I’m still dressed in business casual!“

Looks like the girl on the left from Hamlet got all excited about it.

I took more picture of the party, which you can see in the slideshow. I was running the viewer on low settings and on 800×600, meaning the pictures aren’t nearly as good as they could be. I also added a Slideshow from Ziki Questi, her pictures are somewhat better.

Ziki Questi Pictures:

Links:
Ex-Linden Independence Day Party annoucement
New World Notes post on party
Recap on 30% Lay off at Linden Lab

[19:00] Vanessa
Hamer: Hi Everybody, we’re going to get started now. Please welcome
Linden Research Software Developer Erica Linden to Oxbridge. She may
be using voice, she’ll instruct you accordingly
[19:00] Martini Discovolante: hello Red.
[19:00]
Erica Linden: Hi gang!
[19:00]
Erica Linden: Just waitinf for my
face to rez
[19:00] Frans
Charming: Looking at your title, are you Dutch?
[19:00] Vanessa Hamer: HI Erica!
[19:00]
Red Quixote: ㋡
[19:00] Red Quixote: hello Martini
[19:00]
LillieJay Mills: Hello Erica
[19:01]
Erica Linden: Does one typically
talk in text or voice here?
[19:01] LillieJay Mills: text
[19:01] Jayleden Miles: Text probably would be
better for the hearing impaired that might be among us.
[19:01]
Eila Eiren: Text please
[19:01]
Vanessa Hamer: oh sorry, there’s a
step on the other side, but you can just click the podium
[19:01]
Erica Linden: Sounds good
[19:01]
Red Quixote: Hello Auto
[19:02]
Erica Linden: `oh my what a great
space
[19:02] Erica Linden:
I typically have meetings in someone’s 2005 era office
[19:03]
Erica Linden: So to start, I’ll
introduce myself, I’m Erica Linden and I’m one of two User Experience
leads at Linden Lagb
[19:03] Erica
Linden: new keybord sorry for any typeos
[19:03] Kerhop Seattle: an appropriate typo
[19:03]
LillieJay Mills chuckles at “Lag”b
[19:04]
Anna Darwinian: Hey LillieJay
[19:04]
Erica Linden: wocka wocka
[19:04]
Erica Linden: heh
[19:04] LillieJay Mills: Hi there Anna
[19:04]
Erica Linden: so one of the fun
things about having a Linden last name is that it’s impossible to step
inworld w/out IMs from random strangers asking for advice
[19:04]
Anna Darwinian: Queen Frog?
[19:04]
Pacoima Core: ribbet
[19:04]
Erica Linden: this just happened.
[19:05] Erica Linden:
Some Dutch residents called me that one day, and i was honored
[19:05]
Frans Charming:
[19:05] Erica Linden: we’ve had a variety of Frog
lindens
[19:05] Erica Linden:
I guess we’re sort of affiliated with Furries.
[19:05] Erica Linden: The Slimys perhaps?
[19:06]
Erica Linden: Right! So, I work
primarily on the SL viewer
[19:06] Pacoima Core: it is becoming
[19:06] Kerhop Seattle: (there goes the bears)
[19:06]
Erica Linden: and in the last year
and a half I’ve worked (along with about 20 of my closest friends) on
*dramatic chord* Viewer 2.0
[19:07] Erica Linden: So, all of the things you like in viewer 2
were my idea. And all the things you don’t like were the other guy.
[19:07]
Erica Linden ducks
[19:07]
Tao Mistwalker:
[19:07]
Frans Charming: lol
[19:07]
Kellan McKenna:
[19:07]
76 Rain: lol
[19:07]
Red Quixote: ^^
[19:07] Savannah Blindside:
[19:07]
Anna Darwinian: I wondered about
that
[19:07] Erica Linden:
I have a background in Human compute4r interaction
[19:08] Erica Linden: a masters from the
university of michigan, and a VERY useful undergrad degree in English
an dLinguistics
[19:08] Frans
Charming: haha.
[19:09] Frans
Charming: It helps with the typos?
[19:09] Anna Darwinian: I bet it helps with reading
other people’s typos
[19:09] Erica
Linden: My daily life consists of trying to juggle the needs of
extremely smart and advanced residents, with folks who are new to SL
and have computers made of wood.
[19:09] Erica Linden: All within the constraints of a 6 year old
codebase
[19:09] Kerhop Seattle:
Abacus?
[19:10] ABBI
Hunniton: ha
[19:10] Roberto Viking: maybe there should simply be two viewers
[19:10]
Roberto Viking: a
technical one and a simple one
[19:10] Savannah Blindside passes Miss Linden some of
the good chocolate and a bottle of asprin
[19:10] Erica Linden: to display content that I
can barely begin to imagine
[19:10] Erica Linden: the wonderful thing about SL is that it is
entirely user generated
[19:11] Erica
Linden: but as a designer that means i have no idea how long the
names of things will be, how many million items folks will have in their
inventory, what level of complexity an object will have, etc
[19:12]
Erica Linden: so it’s sometimes a
challenge to get it right the first time
[19:12] Erica Linden: we’re about to release our
early 2.1 beta version
[19:12] LillieJay
Mills cheers
[19:12] Quinn
Skyther: I guess ‘checkspell’ is too cutting edge to make its way
into a legacy viewer
[19:12] Kerhop
Seattle: thank heaven for decimal versions
[19:13] Frans Charming: Great!
[19:13] Kellan McKenna: yay
[19:13]
Erica Linden: which will address a
bunch of the things folks have been totally annoyed by
[19:13]
Erica Linden: believe it or not, we
live and die by the popular pjira issues
[19:13] Vanessa Hamer: that’s SO refreshing to
hear
[19:14] Erica Linden:
even though it is absolutely TERRIFIYING to go in there and comment.
[19:14]
Kerhop Seattle: do they affect your
performance reviews?
[19:14] Erica
Linden: and unfortunatly, many of the things folks want are pretty
darn difficult to wrangle
[19:14] Erica
Linden: our performance reviews are quarterly and are affected by a
bunch of things including the quality of work we have produced and the
reviews of our coworkers
[19:15] Anna
Darwinian: Hovertext penetrating opaque walls is difficult to
wrangle?
[19:15] Erica Linden:
the jira’s we’ve worked on are a big part of it, yes
[19:15]
Erica Linden: heh
[19:15] Erica Linden: maybe a bit
[19:15]
Kerhop Seattle: ok
[19:15]
Be Ewing: Erica — it
seems to me that we live and experience daily … why are your reviews
only quarterly?
[19:16] Erica
Linden: and there’s lots of fun stuff that’s just getting quietly
worked on in the background that we can’t announce because it takes
like a full quarter to qa some of it (cough cough mesh)
[19:16]
Frans Charming smiles
[19:16]
Anna Darwinian:
[19:16]
Be Ewing: Erica – but
that’s just it
[19:16] Erica
Linden: i’m hoping these small things that you mention Victorian
will be given more attention in the coming months
[19:16] Be Ewing: we experience 2nd
Life without time dimensions
[19:17] Antique School Desks: Unable to find specified agent to
request permissions.
[19:17] Be Ewing: and expect things to be delivered
instantaneously
[19:17] Asimov
Starsmith: hehe
[19:17] Erica
Linden: I’m very proud of our viewer team for doing two things in
this latest build – 1) focusing on the top pjira and bugs from the
betatesters (stuff like the sidetray covering the world vs moving it
over)
[19:18] Frans Charming
nods
[19:19] Erica Linden:
and 2) changing our scope quickly based on data and going from some
feature-add stuff to focusing entirely and obsessively on CRASHES AND
FRAMERATE
[19:19] Erica Linden:
It has been really cool to watch.
[19:19] Erica Linden: and by focus, i mean
Everybody.
[19:19] meghan
Flinders: do you have residents test this before release………as
things like not being able to see chat easily and screen being covered
would be picked up much quicker by …..us
[19:19] Erica Linden: meghen – indeed we do
[19:19]
meghan Flinders: and
they didnt notice?
[19:20] Erica
Linden: there were 500 NDA’d testers on viewer 2
[19:20]
Erica Linden: several of which
worked in our internal jira and filed bugs
[19:20] Kerhop Seattle: Speaking of framerates, any
chance we could get an updated version of
http://s3.amazonaws.com/secondlifegrid.net/frameratesbygpu.png ?
[19:21]
Erica Linden: and yep, they
noticed. and we thought “ah, it’ll be ok” and “not really a big deal”
and other such inaccuate things. And got swept up in the 45,000 other
things that needed fixing.
[19:21] Erica
Linden: so, yeah. my bad, and it’s now an option in preferences.
it’s really a personal preference, and i’m glad we let folks choose
now.
[19:22] Frans Charming:
Thank you for admitting that.
[19:22] Erica Linden: Frans – I wish I made great decisions all
of the time.
[19:22] Erica
Linden: sigh.
[19:23] Erica
Linden: but so, it’s pretty easy to get thinking the
DIFFICULTproblems are the ones to focus on
[19:23] Frans Charming: That’s ok. It is refreshing
to hear someone say they made a mistake sometimes.
[19:23]
Erica Linden: and ignore the tiny
easy to change things
[19:24] Trance Mistwallow: erica. do you think in future that
SL resources will be more evenly distributed between new AND old
residents. i.e. When you are a new account crossing sim borders and
teleports etc are instantaneous whereas once your inventory hits about
10,000 and u wear a few attachments these things take much much longer,
not to mention the tp probs, it seems to me that although front end
customer service and experiance is prioritised that i am always hearing
from older residents that the second life experiance suffers greatly
the more you accumulate over time, will this always be a problem with
SL do you think? or will perhaps a new system be developed maybe a
multiple-object-thread loading system for people with larger inventories
but who are not unfairly overusing sim resources?…
[19:24]
Erica Linden: it’s kind of silly
how many giant mountains we’ve been climbing to clean up stuff in the
background (I personally touched and cleaned up every single panel and
floater in the viewer to make sure there was consistancy and clean
layout) and just kind of write off little things
[19:25] Erica Linden: hmm Trance – that’s several
questions – let me try and pull it apart
[19:25] Erica Linden: so first, yes resources
should be pretty evenly distributed
[19:26] Trance Mistwallow: ok
[19:27]
Erica Linden: and believe it or
not, they were with viewer 2, but the line “new users” kept getting
used as a substitute for “lord there’s no way we have time to do that
too” and considering the desparate need to clean up 1.23 in the
background /code level, it ended up being more of a cleanup than a ZOMG
new features build.
[19:27] Trance Mistwallow: i guess all i am trying to ask in a
nutshell is that will similar resources be expended in keeping the SL
experiance a fluid one with older residents as well as the newcomers?
[19:27]
Trance Mistwallow:
][_ (( )) ][_
[19:27] Trance
Mistwallow: i see
[19:28] Erica
Linden: happily, because of the 2.0 cleanup work (killing embedded
text strings, widgetizing ui stuff, etc etc) it’s way faster now to
iterate UI and fix stuff
[19:28] Trance Mistwallow: 2.0 plus is faster.
[19:29]
Be Ewing: Erica — I do
have one question here
[19:29] Erica
Linden: so – re: lots of inventory = lag i’m not the best person
to address that, but i do know that there are some things that are
purely related to the speed and power of yr graphics card (another thing
that varies person to person)
[19:29] Be Ewing: I come to 2nd Life just to enjoy
the experience and meet/learn from others
[19:29] Vanessa Hamer: Be? Please let Erica get to
Victorian’s Q first, so she’s not overwhelmed
[19:30] Be Ewing: I still have older
viewer …. but newer one too
[19:30] Trance Mistwallow: sure i understand that, i
am merely reffering to the universal problems that all residents have
over a cetain age, but i can save these questions for another
occasion…
[19:30] Trance
Mistwallow: also 10,000 is actually a small amount of inventory for
someone a year or 2 old, mines is 30,000
[19:30] Be Ewing: Don’t you think it
would be good to switch back to older policy where at a certain point
everyone switches to same viewer though others exist elsewhere?
[19:31]
Erica Linden: Re: Disneyland ™ -
I think our old new user experience was really good for folks who like
to figure it out themselves, explore, and twiddle various controls.
However, there’s also a bunch of folks who are potentially awesome
residents and creators who jsut hit our new user experience and
EXPLODE.
[19:32] Trance
Mistwallow: ][_ (( )) ][_
[19:32] Erica Linden: one of the things i did early in my time
at linden is run a ton of inperson user observations
[19:32] Erica Linden: we brought in random folks
from different demographics who had never used secondlife and
essentially watched them fail
[19:32] Patti Larimore: Are new residents going to
be asked to fill out questionaire..on their interests..and then be
placed in gateways to accomadate…do you know? Or are they already
[19:33]
Erica Linden: and as someone who’s
job it is to make things easier, it was really hard to watch
[19:33]
Trance Mistwallow: i
hear in the future there may be a questionare at account creation so
when they are lopgged on for first time they are placed in best location
for their interests and with relevent info, as everyone has slightly
diff resons to be here, is this true?
[19:33] meghan Flinders:
tbh…….almost everyone starts as free account and to not be able to
ask support questionsfor problems is a turnoff….
[19:33] Erica Linden: so, as in education,
different people learn in different ways
[19:34] Erica Linden: and it’s important to
provide different avenues
[19:34] Quinn Skyther: Optimizing for shopping KA/KT makes SL
look like a bloated 3D Google appliance
[19:34] Erica Linden: many people I watched
learned by communicating with others – asking questions and pestering
folks. Many others read every word in front of them and loved
notecards and tutorials
[19:35] Erica
Linden: and others would rather eat glass than take a tutorial.
[19:35]
Trance Mistwallow: so
true erica
[19:35] Erica Linden:
and our job really, is to provide access to information that is
palatable to all these learning types
[19:35] Erica Linden: and really try to
communicate WHY SL is so compelling.
[19:36] Erica Linden: and honestly (for me) that
was hard to do in 1.23
[19:36] Tao Mistwalker: Oddly, I never had to take a class on the
old viewer, tho. I feel completely lost in the new one.
[19:36]
Erica Linden: because before we
could even get to the “zomg look castles!” part of SL, folks were
bailing because they couldnt figure out how to walk
[19:37] Erica Linden: and um we looked like
shareware
[19:37] Trance
Mistwallow: thats because u are so used to the old viewer, even
though i find it hard too, fact is 2.0 plus IS more consistent with
other web software
[19:37] Frans
Charming: Tao, I have given RL classes with the 1.23 viewer.
People are generaly lost quickly.
[19:37] Erica Linden: so the good news is SL tests way better
with new users under viewer 2
[19:37] Antique School Desks: Unable to find specified agent to
request permissions.
[19:37] Erica
Linden: since it’s more consistant, and there are a few more
familiar UI metaphors
[19:38] Erica
Linden: but that in no way solves the problem
[19:38] Trance Mistwallow:
understandable
[19:38] Patti
Larimore: Perhaps…but 1/2 this room is using 3rd party viewer,
one that seems more user friendly.
[19:38] Erica Linden: and the next step is to
figure out how to hook people up quickly with stuff that is intersting
to them
[19:38] Erica Linden:
patti – re; 3rd party viewers – well i certainly hope folks are using
the viewer that works best for them!
[19:39] Erica Linden: that’s why we are open
source
[19:39] Ni
Rumble: And has jiggly boob physics! :p
[19:39] Kellan McKenna giggles
[19:39]
Erica Linden: also important!
[19:39]
Frans Charming: stand still Erica,
else Ni gets distracted.
[19:39] Patti Larimore: lol
[19:39] Trance Mistwallow: ][_ (( ))
][_
[19:39] Kerhop Seattle:
Has LL collected any gpu statistics for viewer 2 in order to update
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Typical_Frame_Rate_Performance_by_Graphics_Card/GPU
[19:39]
Erica Linden: The great thing about
being a frog is you don’t ever have to worry about your hair or makeup
[19:39]
Marion Questi: Good to
hear the 2.0 tests well with new users. Is it helping with retetion and
Premium conversion?
[19:39] Erica
Linden: Kerhop – oh heck yes
[19:40] Vanessa Hamer: Great gown though!
[19:40] Savannah Blindside: I was
about to say; a very well dressed frog!
[19:40] Erica Linden: as a matter of fact, since
we’ve upgraded some our stat collection software, we’ve gotten a much
better idea of the type of processing power new users have
[19:41]
Erica Linden: and literally,
priorities changed overnight
[19:41] Trance Mistwallow: ][_ (( )) ][_
[19:41]
Trance Mistwallow: i
can only speak for myself vis a vis emerald vs 2.0plus, emerald has
comprehensive radar, useful for quickly spotting new residents who might
be a little lost, and of course theres phantom lock, would be lost
without that
[19:41] Kerhop
Seattle: I’ll be shopping for a new gpu later this year and it’d be
nice to know which ones perform better similar to the chart on that
web page
[19:41] Patti
Larimore: How does the stat collection software
work?…surveys…? or
[19:41] Erica
Linden: sadly, most people coming into welcome island are using
balsa wood and chewing gum computers
[19:41] Be Ewing: All — I definitely am
in the minority … but don’t you think most people just want to sign
on and communicate and use 2nd Life and be transparent to all of these
developer questions?
[19:42] Erica
Linden: patti – again i’m a bit vague on the statistics but it’s
something serverside that figures out aggrigate % of different graphics
cards and ram
[19:42] clank
trader shouts: Ouch!!
[19:42] Erica Linden: as a result our QA folks started collecting
really old computers
[19:42] Erica
Linden: we shipped a bunch to offices all over the country
[19:42]
Erica Linden: and everything is
getting retested for average framerate
[19:42] Kerhop Seattle: no netbooks or iPhones?
[19:43]
Erica Linden: Kerhop – I wish
[19:43]
Kerhop Seattle:
[19:43] Frans Charming: That is good to hear.
[19:43]
Kerhop Seattle: cool
[19:43]
Erica Linden: right – so where was
I?
[19:43] Erica Linden: I
know i missed some questions
[19:43] Erica Linden: !!
[19:43] Erica Linden: heh
[19:44] Patti Larimore: Was curious about the entry
survey…..
[19:44] Erica
Linden: I don’t think that is a problem
[19:44] Erica Linden: oh the viewer 2 survey?
[19:44]
Trance Mistwallow: yes
[19:44]
Patti Larimore: if
there was going to be one. I am education manager for GOHA and ….was
told
[19:44] Patti
Larimore: new residents would be filling out survey
[19:44]
Erica Linden: i wasn’t involved in
making that but it was intended as a way to get info from people in a
friendlier way that pjira
[19:44] Patti Larimore: if they are interested in winter
sports for ex. they go to that gateway
[19:45] Quinn Skyther: Survey’s don’t work
well when users don’t know what they don’t know
[19:45] Erica Linden: a couple of the release
managers and qa have been squishing the feedback into actionable jira
for us
[19:45] Erica Linden:
(actionable and drama-free)
[19:45] Erica Linden: Quinn – SO true
[19:45] Patti Larimore: Excellent
point Quinn..so the gateway will be manned
[19:45] Patti Larimore: volunteers
[19:45]
Patti Larimore:
hopefull:))
[19:46] Erica
Linden: imho, the best way to tell how someone works with software
is to observe them using it
[19:46] Erica Linden: and the best way to get folks to cool
content is to provide a bunch of browsable options
[19:47] Patti Larimore: lol
[19:47]
Be Ewing: so net net
bottomline … I am a straight user … giving you most direct feedback
… and you seem to be totally oblivious to the value of this feedback
interactively given
[19:47] Quinn Skyther: I was surprised to see a lack of 3GL-like
look and feel skins
[19:47] Ni Rumble: Touching on Trance’s question concerning
massive inventory accumulation…will SL ever allow the back up of
inventory to hard drive? Or would that just make it too easy for people
to pirate content?
[19:47] Be Ewing: wouldn’t best way to get feedback to have 2nd life
interactive sessions here rather than pjira/jira etc?
[19:48]
Erica Linden: I rather hate those
websites, like my insurance company, that ask you “are you a customer
or an employee” and you don’t know which to pick because you are an
employee SOMEWHERE and your COMPANY is a customer and you don’t want to
miss any good options so you end up picking both.
[19:48] Erica Linden: or university sites tend to
do this
[19:48] Erica Linden:
Students | Faculty | Researchers
[19:48] Erica Linden: people are often all three!
[19:48]
Erica Linden: it’s pretty difficult
to define yourself in that way
[19:49] Erica Linden: Ni – lord i have no idea
[19:49]
Be Ewing: Erica — I will
try one mor time
[19:49] Kerhop
Seattle: even “male or female?” is tough for some people
[19:49]
Be Ewing: I am an
individual user of your product
[19:49] Erica Linden: pirating is definitely something we all
want to prevent
[19:49] Be
Ewing: I am not affiliated with any organization
[19:50] Jayleden Miles: Be please be patient and
let Erica have a chance at answering everyones questions and concerns.
[19:50]
Vanessa Hamer: ty Professor Miles
[19:50]
Erica Linden: Be – i’m try9ing to
read scrollback – your question is pretty spread out
[19:50] Kellan McKenna nods
[19:51]
Erica Linden: are you asking if i
think there should be One Viewer to Rule them All?
[19:51] Tao Mistwalker: lol
[19:51]
Erica Linden: or are you suggesting
inworld sessions such as this for gathering feedback?
[19:52]
Savannah Blindside: I
think there was also a suggestion about an alternative to jira – more
live help
[19:52] Vanessa Hamer:
Miss Erica, it appears Be has left
[19:52] Erica Linden: ah ok
[19:52] LillieJay Mills thinks Be meant the latter
but doesn’t see her anymore
[19:52] Erica Linden: oh
[19:52] Kerhop Seattle votes for the latter
[19:52] Erica Linden: well i will try to answer
anyway
[19:52] Trance
Mistwallow: i think most ppl who use 3rd party viewers would say
there are prob one or 2 features that are the reason they use that
viewer, is good to havethe choice i think
[19:53] Erica Linden: re: jira vs live help – live
help is pretty hard to scale over 10,000 users a day or whatever the
numbers are lately
[19:53] Erica
Linden: it is very costly
[19:53] Erica Linden: and we are a free service for the majority
of residents
[19:53] Marion
Questi: Have you been able to measure the impact of V2 on new user
retention and Premium account conversions?
[19:54] Erica Linden: jira serves a different
purpose – it’s a way to catch the comments and patches from open source
contributors and residents patient and passionate enough to deal with
jira
[19:54] Professor
Viper: you had a lot of volunteer help, the Mentors, and you shut
them down
[19:55] Patti
Larimore: Erica..Trance and I …and maybe others in the room..are
members or sl Mentoring programs…part of RHN…..does LL have any
way..or any reason to keep track of how many residents provide
assistance to new residents
[19:55] Trance Mistwallow: the new RHN system sems
to be working better than the old one group system
[19:55] Patti Larimore: LL supports
RHN and many Lindens are members I understand
[19:55] Trance Mistwallow: i have seen
a great surge in enthusiams on the front line at welcome areas since
its introduction
[19:55] Erica
Linden: Professor Viper and Patti – I’m not very up to date on the
Mentor vs RHN issues unfortunately
[19:56] Trance Mistwallow: ][_ (( ))
][_
[19:56] Trance
Mistwallow: … maybe we’re going off topic
[19:56] Kerhop Seattle: hmm, it seems if
mentors/rhn volunteers are hanging out at welcome areas to new
residents of V2 that they should be involved with V2 stuff. given a
heads up, common questions about V2,e tc….
[19:57] Patti Larimore:
Kerhop..true..most are
[19:57] Trance Mistwallow: yes i agree to an extent
[19:57]
Patti Larimore: I use
both viewers….
[19:57] Trance Mistwallow: i am hoping we can repeat this meeting
with the RHN groups at next convenience
[19:57] Erica Linden: Kerhop – that’s why we try so
hard to announce and release beta versions (which often are buggy!)
despite their not-readyness
[19:57] Patti Larimore: But LL has done an excellent
job of providing tutorials in help areas
[19:58] Kerhop Seattle: ’tis true
[19:58] Erica Linden: it’s a way to get feedback,
iterate, and most of all give folks a headsup on what is coming
[19:58]
Trance Mistwallow:
there are too few of these sessions
[19:58] Erica Linden: similarly, the tech blogs
have been really active in posting mockups, proposed features, etc
[19:58]
Vanessa Hamer: Hey guys, one more
question, I don’t want to keep Erica too long.
[19:58] Professor Viper: I would use V2
more often, but every time I switch, eiter way, it resets all of my
preferences
[19:59] Patti
Larimore: Would be excellent if Lindens could on occasion ..meet
with mentor groups ….
[19:59] Patti Larimore: At least heads of groups
[19:59]
meghan Flinders:
Erica..what are the changes we will see with viewer 2.1
[19:59]
Savannah Blindside:
I’ve had that happend and I *hadn’t* switched viewers
[19:59] Kerhop Seattle: I like PViper’s question
[19:59]
Erica Linden: it’s the fist time
i’ve worked like that and I really like it. I was converted. it was
pretty scary at first to post my proposed design document to the blog –
flaming is pretty depressing, but Nyx and I got amazing feedback and I
think we made better decisions because of it
[19:59] Erica Linden: reading up…
[20:00]
meghan Flinders: there
are many mentor groups..possbbly leave meetings open to all
[20:00]
Trance Mistwallow: i
have asked erica in IM if she is willing to repeat this meeting, i have
offered to gather all RHN groups at one venue so all who want can be
there
[20:00] Patti
Larimore: Any connection..information sharing…I agree
[20:01]
Erica Linden: ah – preferences
resetting – yeah. switching back and forth has it’s charms.
[20:01]
Erica Linden: personally, I save a
copy of my settings file and replace it when i upgrade (if i’m not
testing new user experience)
[20:01] Quinn Skyther: Hard to focus features of on a
“generic experience” engine. What is the LL prototypical user
experience reference? Gamer? Shopper? Business Collaborator?
[20:01]
Professor Viper: how do
you do that
[20:02] Professor
Viper: file name?
[20:02] Erica
Linden: it depends partly on whether the version you are going to
has teh same app name – so if you install a new version of SL Beta 2.1
over an old version Zap go your settings
[20:02] Trance Mistwallow: i would
say, chat room user, networking etc
[20:02] Pacoima Core: I have a simple question?
[20:02]
Erica Linden: Viper – in mac they
are in library > aplication settings > sl
[20:02] Vanessa Hamer: That’ll be it after
Pacoima’s, OK?
[20:03] Professor
Viper: how about PC
[20:03] Trance Mistwallow: before you log off erica could
you quickly respond to the IM i sent? and.. thanks so much for your
patience
[20:03] Pacoima Core:
is it worth my $10 /month to use tech support?
[20:03] Erica Linden: Trance – i’d be happy to –
re: viewer 2.1 features – there is going to be a blog post really soon
and i don’t wanna steal their thunder
[20:03] Trance Mistwallow: perhaps
after the blog release?
[20:03] Pacoima
Core: in lieu of attending clases in worlk?
[20:03] meghan Flinders: where will
that be?
[20:04] Vanessa Hamer:
I think Pacoima’s “Premium Membership” question is a great one to
close on.
[20:04] Erica Linden:
Pacoima – I’m not sure I can answer that – are you asking about the
value propasition?
[20:04] Erica
Linden: ah
[20:04] Erica
Linden: ok
[20:04] Pacoima
Core: i guess so
[20:05] Erica
Linden: again, that’s a personal decision. our support folks have
gotten great reviews, and Linden homes is pretty cool.
[20:05]
Patti Larimore: Thank
you very Much Erica..for this. Interesting.
[20:05] Erica Linden: Yo I just make software
though.
[20:05] Erica Linden:

[20:05] Erica Linden:
You do what you’ve gotta do.
[20:05] Vanessa Hamer: Erica, thanks SO much!
[20:05] Tao Mistwalker: Yes, thank you
for your time, Erica…
[20:05] Frans
Charming: Thank you Erica.
[20:05] Kellan McKenna: Thank you Erica!
[20:06]
Erica Linden: Thank you – I’m really
glad to hear your questions.
[20:06] Trance Mistwallow: thankyou so much
[20:06]
Pacoima Core: ♫♪♪♫ APPLAUSE!!!
♫♪♪♫
[20:06] Savannah
Blindside applaudes
[20:06] Q-Translator
v0.21 – English: Too many HTTP requests too fast.
[20:06]
Frans Charming applauds
[20:06]
Erica Linden: Dinner awaits!
[20:06]
Ariell Enoch: thank
you
[20:06] Erica Linden:
[20:06] Jilich Lavendel: great
presentation
[20:06] Carl
Metropolitan: Thank you for coming.
[20:06] Vanessa Hamer: Thanks to all who attended
as well
[20:06] Quinn
Skyther: Thanks for the information.
[20:06] Pacoima Core: for she’s a jolly good
fella…..
[20:06] Erica Linden:
hee
[20:06] Erica Linden:
ribbit

Rob
had been the Open Source ‘busybody‘
for about three years at LL before moving on. He has was greatly
appreciated and during his absence it became clear that a dedicated open
source person was being missed. It took some time for LL to find the
right person to fill his shoes.

For the last ~7 years Scott has
been been leading the Open Source sipXecs SIP
PBX project. His new role at the Lab will be as he puts it: “to
expand and improve the open source viewer program”.

Besides being
the Director of Open Development, he will also be heading up the
Applied Engineering team with the “mission of making our sustaining
activities for the viewer even more responsive to the needs of our
Residents”.

Hopefully Oz Linden will be able to fill the Lab and
the open source community with renewed energy to work on great new
features and improvements in collaboration with each other.

If
you have a facebook account you can see him here scooting around on his motorized
skateboard!

You can read his introduction
email here.

Hat tip to Opensource
Obscure.

This does not mean it is perfect, but it brings us right to the edge of what works well in doing SL machinima. Make sure to watch it in full screen.

The singing by the avatar is done well, I don’t think the lipsync tech in SL is good enough yet to do this properly. But this is a great effort with a great result.

Two of the scenes that I found particularly interesting, was the camera scene in the white room and the man that drowned the old school newbie. At least that is what I imagine he did, maybe it is a metaphor to getting rid of our inner noob.

It took much longer then any of us expect. On February 13th 2009 we where given the word by Soft Linden that the hippo would return in the next viewer after 1.23, but non of us had realized that the next viewer would take such a long time to come.

Why Hippos? The hippopotamus has long been a kind of unofficial mascot of Second Life. Learn more about it on the wiki. Hippos!

I entered with a goofy shark attack picture and so far am placed second.

Click on the picture to go to the facebook page for it and click ‘like’ to help me win.

Update: And the contest is closed, I finished second place.