What Questions Should Interim CEO Philip Rosedale Answer During His Second Life Meeting This Month?

Three weeks after announcing his return to Linden Lab as "interim" CEO (which was followed by relative silence from the company), Second Life founder Philip Rosedale has an update on Linden's strategy plans, and announcements of an in-world Q&A session for the community, to be scheduled sometime this month. The company's new strategy, he says there, is essentially about going "back to basics":

[R]efocusing our efforts to re-examine, repair, and where necessary, re-design the basic experiences and systems that are at the core of the Second Life experience. First on the list should be a big attack on lag and crashes, clearly things that very negatively impact all users.

That would include me: Over the last few months, Second Life performance on my main machine has become so degraded, I've had to learn how to write about Second Life without any expectation that I can reliably be in Second Life for any particular story. (Dis-embedded journalist?)

"Before the end of July," Philip promises, "we will also hold an in-world gathering where we can talk more about these plans and take questions." And what should those questions be? To start things off, I can think of three that are crucial to the future of Second Life:

• When will the promised "Second Life on a browser" viewer be available?
• When will the cloud-based version of Second Life that's reportedly feasible already be offered to general Residents?
• Will this "back to basics" strategy delay or cancel release of mesh uploads in COLLADA?

Suggest more in Comments! If they're really good and not answered in this July Q&A, I'll try to seek replies soon after!

Image credit: Changing Worlds Building Dreams.

Comments

[Botgirl Questi]

I've been giving him some coaching on the speech for the gathering, but not making much headway yet: http://botgirl.blogspot.com/2010/07/coaching-philip-behind-scenes.html

[Crap Mariner]

Your title is Interim CEO.

If money and current obligations were no limit, who would you want as permanent CEO?

-ls/cm

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

My Q for Philip:

Can LL open up Creative-Commons licensing options?

Many educators build in teams and with students who vanish at the end of a project. We often not only want, but are required to provide copies of deliverables out-of-world to present to evaluators, assessment folks, and those who give grants.

Just the way it is. The current permissions system does not serve us well, and, frankly, it's not strong enough to protect content creators who use SL to make money and get copy-botted.

[Celty]

A good start would be to fix search and the mono tp bug, that would be "getting back to basics".

[Marianne McCann]

With the cutbacks in the Community team over the last year - all but scrapping it entirely - what is your intention for supporting Resident-led communities within Second Life now?

What steps are you going to take to help turn your established Residents into your best advocates. What tools will you be providing to us to help us grow and foster a successful Second Life Grid.

What are you intending to do to support appropriate, effective communications to and conversations with Residents in the future, given what many consider a very poor track record in recent years?

[Little Lost Linden]

My questions for Philip are:

1. When will dynamic shadows be ready?

2. When will Second Life start to utilize GPU's instead of only CPU's?

3. When will traffic bots\campers become an Abuse Reportable offense?

4. If you were my alarm clock, how would you wake me up in the morning?

___________________
Little Lost Linden
http://thebotzone.net

[brinda allen]

Oh stop! Please...Never mind all this new crap for now. How about we go back to say January 2008 and just make all those features work really well.
(and if I wanted to look at a web page I'de just open another window)

[Ann Otoole]

Well we know Phillip understands the need for regions to support crowds and that people need to be able to get around SL without crashing. No need to ask that. So I have a few questions he probably will not answer anyway.

Does Phillip understand why the SLv2 search is causing people to quit SL (and abandon land and islands)?

Does Phillip understand why the SLv2 search has eroded socialization in Second Life? (cannot browse events)

Does Phillip understand that the most visible defects in the GSA based search appear to be associated with only certain search terms like rentals and building and that people are curious as to why LL would be attempting to alter those certain searches to change the relevance? (btw whatever is going on it is not having very positive results) For many search terms/phrases the GSA search is extremely relevant.

Does Phillip understand SLv2 requires 1/3 more effort to do anything at all? (which results in increasing numbers of people not using it)

Does Phillip understand 70% (and increasing) of the daily population of Second Life is using Emerald and therefore it is Modular Systems making the decisions about what client features will be available for the majority of Second Life users?

I won't be expecting any answers to these questions.

[Crap Mariner]

What anti-content theft measures can you enact to convince disguntled and repeatedly-abused content developers like Maxwell Graf to put effort into developing Mesh content for SL when LL has failed to protect his other content?

-ls/cm

[Komuso Tokugawa]

Philip who?

[Jdture Writer]

My question would be if he plans to keep the freebie removal plan from there web shopping. They have killed my desire to create and hardly go in world at all anymore. If they are going to do it, if they are going to drop the plan then let us know.

When I started in SL years ago I used many freebies and I would not have stuck around if it had cost me a lot of money starting out. Now I pass make things or did to pay it forward.

[Nine Warrhol]

Mine would be:

Will you or won't you make the move to prim hair this year?

[Tateru Nino]

"When will the promised "Second Life on a browser" viewer be available?" - He already answered that one in an interview: More than a year from now.

[brinda allen]

@Nine Warrhol..does make ya wonder doesnt it...and please stop with the bejeweld codpiece!

[Lem Skall]

How you doin'?

[Nine Warrhol]

@Brinda, I find the codpiece rather fetching..lol.the hair needs to go. Like yesterday, gooooo. haha

[Ananda Sandgrain]

Personally?

The same ones I asked nearly seven years ago:

1. Are there ever going to be different sizes of sims.
2. Will you ever make a low-population, affordable sim?
3. Will you ever figure out how to make a sim high-bandwidth and able to host a lot of people?

I'm actually tired of the notion that we need to fix stuff before advancing the technology further, that's been the mantra for years now and it's only led to stagnation. Maybe there's a point of diminishing returns in bug-stomping.

[Metacam Oh]

Will the Lab be working on some sort of Guest account so the masses can get a taste of SL before they commit their real life information to you.

[Juko Tempel]

I would like to know: how much has he been inworld?

How much user-created content has he seen? How many events has he attended? Has he shopped? or built anything? Has he lived on the Mainland or rented on a Homestead? Has he teleported or tried any sim crossings in a vehicle? Has he chatted with friends? Sent Notices to a group?

And.. did he use Viewer 2 and Search to try and do any of it?

In other words, does he REALLY know what we are trying to do and what it's like to do it?

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

Will Linden Lab follow Fred Brooks's advice: "Plan to throw one away"?

[Nalates Urriah]

When will new people have an easy way to find and connect with friends?

Gwyneth's article on how social networking could be added to SL brings up a whole set of questions...

[Shug]

1-LAG of all kinds, sim crossings/rez/inventory load.
2-Assets, availability/loss of/etc.
3- Linden attitude! - We the Residents deserve some real respect! we pay the bills! There can be no more phony asking for input so they can ignore it.
4- Many residents would be happy to be put to work, manning welcome areas / assisting with land management / holding newbie and Linden hands (2 classes who do not know SL)

[Henri Beauchamp]

The question I would pose is simple:

Is LL finally going to admit that the viewer 2 UI is a total failure and widely rejected among the *active* SLers ?

If yes, then will they consider reverting the UI to the v1.23 one, getting rid of the modal side-bar, reimplementing the good old floaters, giving the user the CHOICE for a less invasive UI (in particular that stupid new console which blocks the view with huge, opaque splash blocks) ?...

[comoro Infinity]

Forget about growth for the foreseeable future, LL needs to keep every customer no matter what and if THESE customers say SL 2 sucks they need to scrap it and go back to Snowglobe and to the 1.23 UI and to the old SEARCH.
And perhaps if they intend to float for a few more years while we barely float in this decade-long depression LL will need to slash prices. Tiers have become unsustainable and a luxury.

[Val Kendal]

Hamlet, what viewer are you using? I have not noticed any decrease in performance or stability of SL on my machine. I run Snowglobe 1.3 on a 5-6 year old Macbook Pro (I hate Viewer 2 and Emerald scares me). Course you are probably always in packed sims, given your line of work, but even in those kinds of situations it stills seems the same as ever to me.

[Simeon Beresford]

My question? How many problems in the Jira do you plan to implement solutions for this year?

[Paola Tauber]

*waves to Val above*

My questions:

- bug fixes/features improvements: more than 25 groups, working TPs, sims crossing "out of body experience". When they are going to be sorted (dates in Q will do), not if.

- improve the very basic and poor avatar mesh: when? We wants SL to look prettier and prettier (see Make Human project)!

- Havok 7 cloth, please let us know if there's a chance to see it coming. And if not, which are the obstacles to overcome. I'm getting tired of the ridiculous glitch pants (hint, the key word is "glitch"). Not to mention that the quality of some content will be far better.

Skipping questions about the mesh import, since it's a given LL must give us an answer on something they already announced and that now seems to be questioned.

As you can guess, my perspective is mostly about the visual experience. I know there are plenty of other things to sort out under the bonnet, so to speak (scripts, lag, etc. etc.), but for me SL is first of all "what I see on my screen" - back to basic. Also, before I get flamed, of course I wish all the improvements I'd like to see to be compatible with legacy content (SL needs to move forward nonetheless).

On a side note, I'm a v happy v2 user, v stable, fast and I can find everything in the interface. But maybe I'm just weird. :D

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Are announced plans to incorporate other scripting languages on the back burner?

and...

If you're taking this position on an interim basis, and you decide to leave again...

Cn I hav ur stuf?

[Pyewacket Bellman]

The grid has been running better and better - (iMac - Snowglobe). The bad sculpts are driving me mad!

[Little Lost Linden]

"As you can guess, my perspective is mostly about the visual experience. I know there are plenty of other things to sort out under the bonnet, so to speak (scripts, lag, etc. etc.), but for me SL is first of all "what I see on my screen" "

I feel the exact same way when it comes to SL. I would love to see dynamic shadows working in the main viewer, and any extra eye candy they care to throw our way.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

Only 10 days left in July.

[Anon]

Phillip already answered my questions. They are the same ones that Juko asked.

When Rosedale retired from active participation in SL, he bought a house, had it decorated, invited everyone to his sim. Then he locked the doors to the house, and had nothing at all on the sim to see or do.

The house and decor were not top quality. I'd thought his property would reflect the best of SL design. Nope. He didn't buy or place anything, let someone else do it for him.

Phillip does not experience SL inworld. Period.

My assignment to him would be to take 30 days with an alt avi and attempt to be a resident using a non LL connection with the typical hardware and software used by the average resident.

Only then, would I listen to a word he has to say. He simply does not know SL personally. He's only read the guidebook, he never lived there.

[Anon]

One more comment on my post.

Is there a corporation, a small business, any commercial venture in America where the owner or CEO has Never used the product or service the company is selling?

Unlikely. But there is one example that leaps to mind: Phillip Rosedale. Linden Lab's interim CEO and founder, who has never experienced Second Life the way every other Resident does.