Coming from Australia and working for Linden Lab in our San Francisco office, I am always keeping an eye out for the activities that are happening in my home country. My focus at Linden Lab is in the enterprise space, so I generally see the great work that has come out of several Australian corporations. This week, however, my attention has been focused on the amazing Second Life community that has rallied in support of the devastating bush fires that have hit Australia.
As many of you are aware, these fires are one of the worst natural disasters to hit Australia in over 100 years. In response, Residents have created several inworld campaigns to raise funds to donate to relief efforts, from donation boxes to concerts to vendors selling clothing to support the cause. There’s already been some great coverage of these efforts from outlets including Massively, the MetaverseJournal, and New World Notes.
Seeing Residents come together like this is another powerful reminder of the breadth and strength of our global community and another great example of how Second Life is being used in ways that can really make a difference in the real world.
I’d like to thank those who have initiated fundraising efforts or given their support to this cause. Please describe/link to your inworld relief efforts in the forums.
Ok, I admit it. When I first joined Linden Lab to head up Enterprise Marketing three months ago, I wasn’t 100% convinced that working in virtual worlds really works. I mean, intellectually, immersive environments make perfect sense. We’ve all heard the key messages and I’ve been hard at work writing them. Meeting in Second Life allows global and mobile teams to collaborate in ways that aren’t possible other ways—improves efficiency, creativity, communication, and keeps travel costs in check. But, seriously—does working in the virtual world work?
My first official meeting in Second Life was an important and jarring experience for me—waking me up to how powerful the medium really is. The meeting took place in the Isabel conference room, here at the Battery Lab. The physical conference room—Isabel—has a virtual counterpart that is an exact replica—Virtual Isabel. A camera in Isabel captures what’s happening in the room and displays it in the virtual space. Simultaneously, the participants in Virtual Isabel are projected on the wall of physical Isabel. The result is a seamless experience—two conference spaces, one real and one virtual, merge into one. At first, it was a bit strange, but then I became absorbed into the discussion and the lines between the physical and virtual spaces blended. Then, in Virtual Isabel, I saw someone floating outside the window with a box on his head. What was my first reaction? I looked outside the physical window of the conference room to see if there was really someone floating outside. My colleagues caught me—in a completely confused state about what’s real and what’s virtual–and we all burst out laughing. I learned something very important that day. The virtual medium is extremely powerful and the ‘sense of presence’ is real—and that’s the magic ingredient that makes a meeting truly productive.
Virtual Isabel
To that point, I believe that the only good alternative to virtual meetings is a face-to-face meeting. It would be a hard to argue the teleconference calls or WebEx can create as immersive an experience. I mean, how many wasted hours have we all spent staring at a Polycom or ‘multi-tasking’ (i.e. barely tuning into the meeting) during a WebEx presentation? Don’t remind me.
Video conferencing is increasingly being used as an immersive meeting technology, but there are some psychological aspects that limit its potential. Caleb Booker recently blogged on this very topic. He posits two very interesting theories. First, usually when you’re in a video conference, the camera is zoomed in on the speaker and—unconsciously—we pull back because we feel we’re in a conversation with a ‘close talker.” (Anyone remember that Seinfeld episode? A classic.) He makes the case for virtual worlds and says, “The entire virtual world phenomena works because it accomplishes one simple thing: the perception of space. This is one of the most underestimated and wildly powerful tools of the past decade. Without even needing 3D glasses, a virtual space moves another person’s “presence” to a comfortable distance while still creating a sense that you are somehow physically together.”
His second point is even more compelling. As you know, there are three types of learners—visual, auditory, and kinesthetic (or experience-based). The virtual world is a perfect mix that accommodates all three. He says, “Visual folk can look around the room to ’place‘ the voice they’re hearing or the text they’re reading (critical for them if they want to remember anything that happened!). Auditory people can just sit back and chat, occasionally glancing at the typed text. As for the kinesthetic people, well, they’re in absolute heaven.”
In fact, there really isn’t any other collaboration platform that can successfully do all three for distributed teams—except for a physical meeting. And, with travel budgets completely decimated these days, the luxury of a physical meeting is no longer a viable option for day-to-day interactions.
These days, I’m spending at least 2-3 hours a day in Second Life, meeting with my colleagues distributed all over the world—collaborating, brainstorming, learning, and decorating my new office space in LindenWorld. Using Second Life as an enterprise solution is helping us get our enterprise solutions to market smarter, cheaper, and faster than we might otherwise.
Ok, I’m the Marketing gal who drinks my own Kool-Aid—true. But, I’m also a believer, and if you’re not already—you will be, too. Just try it and you’ll know what I’m talking about.
As those of you who follow Linden Lab have probably noticed, I’ve been expanding the executive team since I joined in May, 2008. Each hire has been focused on major initiatives within the Lab designed to make Second Life more reliable, more relevant and more usable.
We are reworking the user experience end-to-end. We started with the website (we recently launched a new home page which is the start of a larger redesign), are hard at work on the viewer and will shortly start redesigning the first landing locations for new users. Last week, we made two ecommerce acquisitions that will be more fully integrated into the Second Life experience as well. We have a new land store in the works. We’re developing a behind-the-firewall product for enterprise customers.
Put all these things together, and you will see we are intent upon making dramatic improvements to the Second Life platform and experience. At the same time, the team has been hard at work on stability and scalability. Last year, we halved the user hours lost to downtime in the second half of the year. But, with growth ahead, we have more to do and the team is hard at work on continued platform and network improvements to enable us to break peak concurrency records on a regular basis as we did this past Sunday when we hit 82,653. [As you know from FJ’s blog posts, it was “all hands on deck” this past weekend to ensure we delivered a stable experience to Residents. I watched the action on our internal chat channel during peak sessions on Saturday and Sunday as we broke our peak concurrency record without a hitch.]
All in all, we have a long list of ambitious projects on our “to do” list for 2009. To help us move the platform, product and the user experience forward, we’ve added two senior executives to an already excellent executive team:
Brian Michon (Michon Linden) will take on the role of VP of Core Development. Brian will be responsible for the voice, database and simulator infrastructure of the Second Life platform, scaling it to support our growth and our product expansion. Brian has over twenty years of technology experience with Fortune 500 companies. He joins us from Intuit, where he managed the development and operation of Web-based services and made popular products like TurboTax and QuickBooks easier to use and manage, both for organizations and individual consumers.
Judy Wade (Judy Linden) has come on board as VP of Strategy and Emerging Business. She’ll be responsible for working with the executive team in refining Linden Lab’s overall business strategy, including seeking out key partnerships to expand the capabilities of Second Life in key geographic and vertical markets. She joins us from Kapor Enterprises, the investment company of Linden Lab board member Mitch Kapor. Prior to Kapor Enterprises, she was a partner at McKinsey and Company, where she worked with a variety Fortune 500 companies, helping them define and implement significant strategic and organizational transformations across multiple sectors.
Brian and Judy join a stellar crew of Lindens on our executive team, including three hires I made over the past six months (in reverse order of appointment):
Howard Linden, SVP Customer Applications, responsible for improvements to the Second Life experience and the development of new products and features that enhance the usability and overall customer experience of Second Life
T Linden, Chief Product Officer, responsible for driving the product strategy for Second Life
FJ Linden, SVP Global Technology, responsible for processes, systems and tools to maximize the scalability of Second Life’s network architecture
I’m really pleased and honored that we’ve been able to bring on such extraordinary individuals. Each is a great talent in their own right and together form what I feel is a superb team. Our ability to bring on such great talent is a testament to the power and potential of Second Life and to the wondrous content and experiences you – our Residents – have created.
I can tell you that going into 2009, everyone at Linden Lab is focused on making Second Life an even more important, more useful, more joyful experience for the Residents and we’re pleased Brian and Judy are joining us. Thanks to all of you for making Second Life what it is today. I look forward to all that we will accomplish together.
If you’d like post some questions, thoughts or congratulations on the Forum, you can do so here. I won’t be able to read and respond until after 5PM Pacific, but I’ll jump in then to answer questions.
The world of Second Life is full of creative, innovative people from around the world, and the educators who teach and work inworld are no exception. Every semester hundreds of students participate in unique learning projects in Second Life. We’d like to highlight a few of 2008’s projects that we can all learn from and enjoy.
Second Life Education blog
Visit the Second Life Education blog (SLed blog) to read about many more great education projects from 2008.
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University used Second Life for orientation for 400 freshman students.Over the course of three weeks, the inworld orientation program consisted of 7 individual learning activities: learning styles, multiple intelligences, active learning, academic honesty, classroom etiquette, citing references and hotel room design. They also held 3 competitions – parachuting, through the hoops and a fashion show, as well as 8 live sessions on learning challenges, plagiarism, library and open Q&A, finishing with a dance night and fashion show.
Virtual State Fair (Morrill) and Virtual County Extension (Morrill2)
The Virtual State Fair is home to the Cooperative Extension System, a collaboration of over 70 colleges and universities in the USA, providing educational outreach to communities and individuals via a network of county-based educators. Originally agricultural, the programs have expanded to include a broader range of topics such as personal finance, parenting, disaster preparedness, natural resources, and more. The Virtual State Fair offers a combination of entertaining activities and useful information for the general public.
College faculty, researchers, and educators are meeting regularly to collaborate on projects both in Second Life and real life. Second Life projects under development include family caregiving, turf grass, and integrated pest management. Classes on consumer education topics will be taught by extension educators’ inworld during 2009.
A short video of the Morrill islands can be seen on YouTube.
Creator: LuAnn Phillips aka Thynka Little
School: Cooperative Extension System
SLurl: Morrill/128/128/24
Republica Dominicana Virtual
The Republica Dominicana Virtual project brings virtual worlds to the Dominican Republic. Several universities participate in the project including: students and faculty from the Technological Institute of the Americas (ITLA); the philosophy department from the Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo (USAD), oldest University in the new world; and the virtual headquarters for Funglode (Foundacion Global Democracia y Desarollo) hosting art gallerys, various historical landmarks, and a library.
Creator: Jan Herder aka Pausanius Raymake
School: Funglode (Foundacion Global Democracia y Desarollo) of the Dominican Republic
SLURL: Ontos /82/114/23/
Counselor Education in a 3D Virtual Environment
Victoria L. Walker – PhD. Candidate at Regent University – built a counseling training facility in Second Life providing student counselors a location to practice and develop their counseling, interviewing, and diagnosis skills with avatars that display many of the physical and emotional features students may encounter once practicing in their communities. The inworld counselor training simulates the features of a community counseling facility or a school counselor’s office while providing instructors with access to observe without distracting the student counselor or the “client” avatar during sessions.
Creator: Victoria Walker aka Zeana Tammas
School: Regent University
Really Engaging Accounting
At the University of Central Florida, Steven Hornik aka Robins Hermano uses Second Life to teach a financial accounting course, and hopes to publish data he feels is among the first statistically significant empirical data showing a relationship between student engagement using SL and student performance. The course uses Second Life to help students learn the basic concepts of accounting through nontraditional methods.
The reason behind the project is simple, to engage the students in what is normally a very non-engaging course. Taught since the fall of 2007 when class size averaged 250, this fall class size was close to 900 students in one section, with 75-80% of them completing assignments inside of SL.
Creator: Steven Hornik aka Robins Hermano
School: University of Central Florida
SLURL: Teaching 4/68/158/22
The Hopkins Tibetan Treasures Multimedia Archive Project – The WylieWriter
Write Tibetan in Second Life. Tibetan presents a challenge for Second Life educators because of the complex way Tibetan words are written. This project allows Second Life educators to overcome the challenges of translating Tibetan words and write in Tibetan with the help of a proprietary system called the “Wall of WylieWriters”. This innovative teaching tool enables students and teachers to interact in Tibetan language classrooms in Second Life. Developed by Wamlabs of Shipley and the Eepaw Shop of Smoky. The project name refers to Wylie, the standard Tibetan transliteration method.
Creator: Bill Magee aka Wam7c Macchi
School: Dharma Drum Buddhist College, Taiwan, Funded by the Taiwan National Science Council.
SL Education Roundtable (SLER)
Hosted by Montclair State University, SLER’s mission is to provide a roundtable setting for interested parties to discuss various topics relevant to furthering the use of Second Life for education. Roundtables occur weekly and often have up to 50 participants. All are welcome to attend, whether presenting or just sitting in to learn about new possibilities Transcripts of past meetings are available in the Library Building just outside the CHSSSouth Amphitheater inworld.
Happy New Year! I hope that one of your New Year’s Resolutions was to finish and submit your Linden Prize applications, because time is running out to be one of the top ten finalists we’ll announce, able to show the world what hard work, inspiration and creativity can achieve in Second Life. Finalists will see their projects appreciated and utilized by Residents, written about by bloggers and press, and be eligible for the Grand Prize of $10 thousand US dollars.
Yes, the deadline of January 15 is almost here, so whether you’ve been procrastinating, gathering your documentation, or finishing up those final touches, it is time to get cracking. And if you think a friend with a wonderful project may not have applied, suggest they do so! All the application information is still here at the Linden Prize, and the forum is open here.
We’ve added two features for our Residents who are more comfortable in other languages than English.
Need help translating your application into English? Right now you have help in German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Polish, French and Italian. Thanks to your fellow Resident Translator volunteers and Lexie Linden, you can check the Linden Prize Translation Project to submit your application.
Now, a personal message: Some of you might be thinking, “Nah. Linden Lab would never consider my little project.” For example, I happened to talk the leader of an inspired project that supports servicemen and women in a way that’s uniquely Second Life. But that leader hadn’t considered applying for the Linden Prize.
“Wow!’, I thought, ‘That’s exactly the kind of project that the world needs to hear about!”
So, if that scenario describes you—or your modest friends– take the next week to apply for the Linden Prize. When you see your project announced with the rest of the Finalists, not only will you able to see the project you care about receive well-earned recognition from a much larger audience, but you will be teaching us all about what hard work, inspiration and creativity can achieve in Second Life.
What a way to start 2009!
Applications due January 15th 2009
Applications must be complete and submitted no later than January 15, 2009.
Announcement Dates
The Winner and Finalists will be announced no later than April 30, 2009.
Linden Prize Criteria
We have several core principles that will influence the choice of the 10 finalists and the winner.
Work in Second Life that also achieves tangible, compelling results outside of Second Life.
Distinctive, original work using Second Life that clearly demonstrates high quality, execution, function, aesthetics and technical sophistication.
Work that has the capacity for inspiring and influencing future development, knowledge, creativity, and collaboration both inside and outside of Second Life.
Clare Linden here, with an interesting challenge, to write a few words about Second Life in 2008 from the point of view of International, at Linden Lab. Not wishing to disappoint, I begin at Wikipedia, and note this intriguing definition of International: ”In American English, “international” is commonly used to signify “outside of the country”. For the rest of us (non-American English!), the word “international” would describe interactions between two or more Nations as in “an International football match”.
And there it starts; on our interconnected, mutually dependent, symbiotic, globally incorporated planet, the definition of “International” is different in two Nations that share the same language!
Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia. — Charles M. Schulz US cartoonist (1922 – 2000)
Second Life in 2008
So, perhaps the answer is to take us to a world where such trivialities are removed and it is much more likely that you will find yourself in an Irish Pub singing along with at least 4 other nationalities or maybe visiting an art installation by talented people who come from countries you haven’t heard of before, or learning a language with native speakers, all thanks to technology visionaries who wanted to make the whole world a better place.
There’s been much to do and quite a bit of change around Linden Lab during 2008, not least a realization of how truly global the appeal of Second Life is. Almost every country on the planet now has Second Life devotees who enjoy unleashing their creativity, taking part in community activity, or communicating with colleagues and friends in their own Second Life world.
During 2008, 60% of the residents in Second Life were from countries other than the US. For much of the year M Linden has spoken passionately about the improvement Linden Lab wants to bring to the Second Life experience, and that includes the International experience. (more…)
As we roam the grid enjoying Winterfaire in Second Life, we wanted to take a moment to update you on some of what we did and learned at a different Resident-created event this year, Burning Life. The 6th annual Burning Life festival of fire, art and community took place from Sept 27 through Oct 5, 2008.
First, we would like to extend our appreciation to all the Residents who did such amazing work creating an environment that felt unique, held true to it’s real-life inspiration, and still used Second Life’s wonderful properties to full advantage.
Burning Life 2008
Much of what we report here builds on the Resident, Builder, Volunteer and Ranger surveys, conducted in part so we would be able to learn how we might improve Burning Life next year. We’ve learned a lot this year as the event grew in scale and ambition, and so we share those revelations to continue to build upon the legacy of Resident Burners before us.
Let’s start with some new things we tried this year:
Co-Community hosting with the Burning Man organization, which enabled the following:
As you may have read on the blog last week, we’ve been testing a redesigned home page for new visitors, those who have never logged in to Second Life. The goal of the new homepage is to show off the breadth and richness of the Second Life experience. Test results show the new page performed well, so we’re going live this week. For Second Life Residents, the current homepage will remain the same for now.
Over the past week we’ve been comparing the core metrics (traffic, registrations, logins, economic and inworld activity) of the new page with our existing new user home page. The data is encouraging: the new design performed better in almost all aspects, so we are moving full steam ahead with launching the redesigned page.
Redesigned Homepage for Non-Registered, New Visitors
We’ve been paying attention to the conversations on this topic in the forums, and we’d like to address some of the great questions Residents have posed:
Ongoing improvements and considerations include:
Flash – a very small number of people who come through the new user home page either have flash disabled or not installed, so we have provided an alternate, non-Flash experience for them.
Accessibility – the header and footer are CSS/HTML, so the global navigation will quickly get folks with screen readers to the content they need.
Business friendliness – this iteration of the new user home page has two pods dedicated to education and virtual meetings, but our next task will be to make sure that people who are focused on the business uses of Second Life can find the information they need rapidly.
In the next two weeks, we will keep a close eye on the metrics to make sure that the page is performing as we expect. As we noted in the last post, this is just the first of several changes that we will be rolling out to improve the new user experience and to increase registrations.
Thank you to all the Residents who have contributed great feedback and ideas. When the page is live, let us know your thoughts in the forums.
Join us for the Winterfaire Grand Tour, through January 5, 2009 in Second Life
Festive holidays are upon us, Second Life is experiencing widespread snowfall, and Residents are decorating and celebrating. While our individual cultural traditions are diverse, Residents have created their own, homegrown fun, throughout our shared virtual world. It’s a cheerful sight to see so much gleaming snow, with delicate snowflakes falling….
Winterfaire runs until Jan. 5, 2009, and along with the many Resident-built and hosted locations and events to keep you busy and having fun all around Second Life, we’ve also got some delightful Linden-hosted events for you to join in as well. Click here for details on our:
Showcase Hot Spots! Daily updates through January 2nd
Snowman Building Contest, Dec 23rd, 11 AM-1 PM at Rainieron the Teen Grid!
Don’t Miss It! Residents vs. Lindens Snowball Fight, Dec 23rd and 24th
Look for your favorite Linden targets at the annual Residents vs. Lindens Snowball Fight in the following regions: Egan, Hatton, Moritz, and Prancer. December 23rd Noon til 10pm and December 24th, Noon til 7pm.
Shiver me timbers me hearties! If you’re a fan of all things nautical then we have exciting news! A new Mainland sailing area will soon appear off the coast of Nautilus in a joint community project between Linden Lab and the estate owners of the United Sailing Sims (USS) group.
For those that don’t know, the USS is made up of 9 private estates with 130+ regions between them, themed around sailing, yacht racing and similar sports.
Blake Sea, named after the legendary sailor Sir Peter Blake, will be to the east of the Nautilus City landmass and will cover over 40 regions in size, and almost all of them will be Homesteads. Around the eastern edge of Blake Sea will be the estates of the USS.
Blake Sea Map
This is the first time that we’ve allowed estates to connect to the Mainland in this way, and it is testimony to both the great community the USS has built up, and our desire to work with Resident groups to improve the Mainland experience in different and innovative ways.
Whilst the Sea will be Linden Land, we will be working closely with the USS to provide Sailing and other water activities, games and fun things to discover.
For all Residents, as well as the USS, this offers unprecedented open water to sail through, hang out in or just explore. There will be islands for viewing the regular USS race events and scripted boats or planes to ferry our intrepid residents safely across the Sea from Nautilus. If you haven’t tried sailing inworld, it might soon be time to give it a whirl!
As this project moves along, expect to see updates either here on the Blog or on the DPW wiki page.
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