Guest Post: Shava Nerad’s Top 5 Takeaways From SLCC 2010: Viewer Goes LGPL, Educators and Developers Fret, Vivox Expands, Convention Goes Pro

Metaverse developer Shava Nerad's top five highlights from the 2010 Second Life Community Convention. Read her interview with Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale here, and a summary of Rosedale's keynote address here.

A Smaller SLCC With More Pros Than Fans

This year brought us an SLCC with nearly the same registration count as last year's in San Francisco -- but less than Tampa, and less than half the registrations for Chicago in 2007. In ways that showed, it was a smaller SLCC, with smaller tracks, and barely a vendor hall. Overall, the conference was more about virtual world professionals than Second Life fans. Consequently, there was far less of a party bus environment – and very few room parties, and no party schedule. Among the attendees, there were very few not in the business of virtual worlds, either in-world or with a real world company: Vivox, Linden Lab, treet.tv, a couple dozen developers, performers, teachers and artists, etc. And in comparison to the general population of Second Life, where most residents are consumers, and the creators and professionals are less than 10%, SLCC reversed that proportion.

Educators React to Teen Grid Policy Shocks

Peggy Sheehy did not initially take the Teen Grid changes announced by Linden CEO Philip Rosedale lightly. As she put it to Rosedale during his keynote Q&A, some educators had traveled around the world, fought with their administrator and security groups, just to get access to Second Life. People had grants in progress and upcoming. “It is a tragic error to close the Teen Grid,” she told Philip passionately, to applause from SLCC attendees. She warned that this might cause educators to leave and not come back.

Unsurprisingly, when Philip dropped in for the last hour of the Virtual World Education Roundtable meeting, he was challenged with some tough questions.

Ultimately, Philip left the room with an apparent consensus that the end of the Teen Grid was not necessarily a tragedy for education in Second Life.

AJ Brooks, convener of the VWER session, said that Philip fairly addressed the EDU crowd’s concerns. During the session, Philip observed that Teen Grid educators are a small proportion of the user base, and use a disproportionate amount of resources that must be freed up for the common good. Some educators even speculated that programs for older teens would be more attractive with main grid access, and more resources would be available in the form of volunteers and teachers. “Sometimes you have to make hard decisions,” said Brooks.

However, Phelan Corrimal of Rockcliffe University was puzzled and dismayed by the decision to abandon the younger teens. “The Lab's activity seems to have consisted of shooting themselves in the foot all year.” He thought the Teen Grid decision was emblematic of a string of bad decisions. K12 teachers plan their curricula over the summer, if not before, he noted. Phelan felt the timing of this decision showed radical insensitivity, coming at the threshold of a new school year, and pulling the plug between semesters, scuttling any year-long curricula. On top of that, the social implications seemed poorly thought out. “This is a community, not just a business. I don't know where their head's at.”

By Sunday, however, Peggy Sheehy had cooled down. Educators had to look at this as an opportunity, she said. “Let's take a deep breath. Let's see what there is to see.”

And while most educators walked away satisfied if not happy, some observed that demand for a virtual world environment for education was there – and if Linden Lab didn't fill that demand, someone else would.

Linden Lab’s Increases Its Open Source Outreach, Viewer Goes LGPL

The entire codestore for the Second Life viewer is being open sourced, and moved from a GPL to LGPL license, which allows broader 3rd party exploitation. That was one of the high points at SLCC’s Open Source panel, attended by new hire Oz Linden, a key member working with community open source issues, along with Esbee Linden, the Snowstorm viewer development group lead. Kent Quirk (Q Linden) Skyped in his audio comments for the viewer open source panel, as he’s recovering from a mild stroke. (His prognosis is good, although he's suffering from some paralysis on one side.)

The Lindens laid out their plans for open source going forward: Their whole process – including the historical codestore changes back to 2007, sprint list [short term priority list], group emails, and more – will be entirely transparent and open to the residents. “You get to see the list. You get to see the way we run development,” Oz Linden assured us. Builds will happen daily. Releases will be more frequent – with a goal of every two weeks for a non-mandatory release, allowing incremental testing and improvements. About fifteen scrum groups have been established at the Lab, which could allow developers and Residents first look at new individual features, giving them new opportunities to provide feedback. One upcoming feature mentioned: A widget API, which is on the radar for future development – but not this year.

How much new can we expect from the viewer? Oz Linden seemed a little rueful: “From now to end of year will be devoted, as Kent would say, to 'broken glass.'” In other words, most time spent will be on bringing Viewer 2.0 up to standard for creators and general use.

Developers can look for Espy, Q, and Oz at new weekly viewer developer meetings in-world.

Did You Know: Vivox Has a Voice Echo Canyon in Second Life

Vivox, the company which officially provides VOIP communication for Second Life, hosted a session which promised some new developments in voice fonts, including voice font authoring. (But with no promises on release date.) A small but intensely interested group showed up for the talk, most of whom were surprised to learn that Vivox already has a Second Life sim for testing and troubleshooting issues with voice chat, the Voice Echo Canyon sim [SLurl teleport here]

SLCC Attendees Worry What’s Next For Second Life

In my observation, attendee consensus seemed to be that Second Life is now in a critical state of flux. Hopeful signs include the new transparency of the open source viewer process, and “green shoots” in the economy; worrying signs include the alienation of some educators, the potential social and PR controversies that might come with minors on the grid, and technical and organizational instability. SLCCers are not giving up on Second Life, but they are braced for disappointment. But despite all the changes of the past year, the cut backs and missteps, most of SLCC seemed willing -– as they are with Second Life itself -– to extend suspension of disbelief.

New World Notes guest reporter Shava Nerad (Shava Suntzu in SL) is the CEO of Oddfellow Studios, which is creating a virtual world platform and entertainment hub for MMO gamers. She regularly co-hosts the psychedelic music show Odd Ball in Second Life [SLurl teleport link]

Comments

[Graham Mills]

Shouldn't that be Esbee rather than Espy?

[Hitomi Tiponi]

Also Esbee is now the project/business lead for Snowstorm

[Phelan Corrimal]

Rockcliffe University not Rockville :-)

[Hamlet Au]

Thanks, I think we've fixed all the typos.

[Adric Antfarm]

Echo canyon was cool. Loud, but cool.

[Todd Bently]

I'm wondering if you're currently accepting guest posts. I
have a few articles I'd like to contribute, but wanted to check with
you first.