Beyers Sellers of Metanomics has just published an epic, multi-part interview with Philip Linden, covering everything to mainstream adoption of SL to his management of the company when he was its acting CEO (the role he vacated last March.) Beyers also corralled some metarati to analyze Philip's observations, and sought my comments on what Philip will do in SL, now that M. Linden has replaced him as CEO, and his management philosophy during the company's founding years. "[M]uch of Second Life's limitations are directly attributable to a lack of a central and unifying vision," I say there. To expand on that, here's something I used to half-jokingly say to Lindens, when I was a contractor:
"Working for Linden Lab seems like working in a Berkeley food co-op. It's fun and democratic and you can do creative things, but if the kitchen catches on fire, you have to get everyone together to take a vote before putting it out. 'Like, I don't want to sound fascist or anything, man, but maybe we should drop everything we're doing and stop the kitchen from burning down. But that's just me.'"
Not entirely a fair observation, I readily admit, but in certain situations, such as the un-improved user interface, I maintain it has a grain of truth. Of course, with M. Linden in charge, my sense is we're already seeing more hands-on management and longterm direction.
Anyway, go here to read Beyers full interview, and be sure to check out what people like Bettina Tizzy and Dusan Writer have to say.
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