This is an absolute must-read post by Chris "Fleep Tuque" Collins, formerly a director at the organization which ran the Second Life Community Convention, the user-run conference that was cancelled this year for vague reasons. As I suggested yesterday, it turns out Linden Lab was reportedly unwilling to spend enough money to make it viable; just as crucial, however (as I read Ms. Tuque), the Second Life user community itself shares equal or more blame, by making SLCC impossible to run through a combination of apathy and hostility.
First, the blame with Linden Lab, according to Collins:
"[T]here is no SLCC this year is because Linden Lab opted not to sponsor one. Instead of being treated like valuable customers who had just volunteered months of our lives working for no pay to organize a fan event for their product, we basically got chewed out for not producing the equivalent of BlizzCon. Seriously, that’s what they said. (Note to Linden Lab, if you want BlizzCon, you have to pay for it – BlizzCon had a budget in the millions.)"
However, she goes on, "These kinds of community events require many things to be successful – but a company and a community that is actually supportive instead of antagonistic is essential." Emphasis mine. Because as she goes on to write, much of the community was the opposite:
- "A very vocal contingent of the Second Life community is pretty darned mean. Some of the 'celebrities' and thought leaders in Second Life seem to really enjoy trashing the event (and by extension the people organizing it).
- "Griefers and lawsuits make the risk not worth it. [At SLCC 2011] we were forced to deal with people’s personal vendettas against each other (!), threats of harm against other attendees (!!), vandalizing of sponsors’ booths (!!!), and even threats of lawsuits (!!!!).
- "[T]here just weren’t enough volunteers to cover all the bases without requiring some people to basically have no life outside of SLCC for months on end – and that’s not sustainable or fair for anyone. If more people had been willing to volunteer, things might have been different."
There's much more, which you should absolutely read. Having been to two of the last three SLCCs, I can attest to the high amount of community drama, including the threats and general unpleasantness. (Along with, of course, all the well-meaning attendees just there to have a good time.) In the end, this leads Fleep to a highly negative conclusion --at least in relation to SL:
"The thing that inspires so many of us is the concept of the Metaverse, an open, freewheeling 3D internet, full of amazing experiences and opportunities – but Second Life is not that. It is not open. It is not free or even reasonably priced, in fact, it’s ridiculously expensive. The experiences that were amazing and cutting edge in 2003 or 2006 are no longer either, the technology has stagnated. And the opportunity for profit, or creativity, or fulfilling your real world mission is limited by a shrinking user base, constant changes in direction and management, canceled programs, bad policies, and the simple fact that you can’t “own” anything you create if it’s locked on their servers. As sad as it makes me, I honestly believe the story of Linden Lab and Second Life is the perfect case study of how to screw up your competitive edge while screwing your most passionate userbase."
I somewhat disagree with her thesis, but she brings up some important points. The core problem, I think, is that Linden Lab has bought into its own hype. Yes, SL has one million monthly users, but most of them are first-time noobs, or lightly engaged, casual players, and we are years from the era when actual major companies and organizations were interested in attending SLCC. Consequently, the userbase is no longer large enough and engaged enough to support and finance a user-run conference. By refusing to fund it adequately and leaving it to its own devices, it's no surprise that such anger and waning interest would follow.
Anyway, that's just my take on Fleep Tuque's take, so you should read the whole thing here. And be sure to offer condolences to her late beloved cat while you're there.
I totally understand the frustration. It is though to please the crowd.
Honest this year I wanted to skip with MetaMeets the European Virtual World Meetup for the same reason as Fleep describe. Bloody drama...even and still grateful for those that helped and made it a great event.
But thank to someone in the Community with brilliant ideas we will continue only a bit later this year in a different concept.
Maybe it is good for Avacon to skip a year or to make a little meeting and rethink their concept.
As MetaMeets we gave up on LindenLab long time ago. Ofcourse we asked support but they didn’t even read the mails that we wrote with advices of Avacon Team in that time.
We were almost blamed for copying Avacon while we were really working together in that time and still when there is a SLCC or a MetaMeets we support.
Instead we had to change the thought of a European SLCC it became a meeting about all kinds of user created worlds and its community. Most important it is about what the community is doing from various discipline. We really tried as much to show how much co operations are going between artists and businesses and educators etc.
That faith will never be lost. But indeed give it a break.
LindenLab should be ashamed of themselves. They have here a group of free advocates promoting their product! Cherish that I would say!
The community makes Second Life but it can also break.
When I read this last night I was almost like lets have a few days not supporting Second Life / Lindenlab and not loggin for a few days to show how bad it is not supporting its community.
I wonder mainly if you hear about major events inworld that normally was visited or supported they are not there What are they up to?
Anyway I hope Avacon Team does not lose faith and will rethink. There are more user created virtual worlds out there. There is still more to explore with the community as technic is getting better. We must realize inclusive LindenLab some of us are big inworld but out there people still think that user created virtual worlds is cult or whatever. It has been demonized by the press..LindenLab is not stable enough to convince real businesses that is why they pulled out.
The outside do not see yet what we see all together as a usefull 3D tool to communicate, connect innovate on a low cost base. That it gives people ability to show what they can do. Takes people out of isolation and brilliant solutions ideas are created.
My hugsz to them for organizing it all these years.
Posted by: JoJa Dhara | Wednesday, July 11, 2012 at 03:02 AM
I read Fleep's post and felt rotten. She worked very hard on this event in the past and I want to thank her for that. She embodies the spirit that made SL intriguing to me five+ years ago.
What is it about our "community" today that makes this sort of stupid behavior happen?
What it could/should have been:
"But the most important thing I want to say and leave you with is that with the privilege of creating a new world or new worlds, I believe, comes responsibility. And really the responsibility is to make that new world a better place."
This is from a transcript of Mitch Kapor's talk at SLCC 2006. Read it all here.
Kapor noted in his blog that the post provides a very good transcription of what he said at SLCC.
Posted by: Iggy | Wednesday, July 11, 2012 at 03:24 AM
The problem with the SLCC is that it was not designed as an event that works for or represents the REAL Second Life community. The whole format of expensive conference rooms in expensive hotels in expensive downtowns somewhere in the US lead to a situation where a visitor would actually not meet most of the important community members. It more and more became an event where "real lifers", Lindens and a relatively small group of regulars and geographically local SL players would talk ABOUT SL and the SL community. They would not BE the community.
What Second Life needs is a real COMMUNITY convention in an affordable and accessible vacation resort with both hotels rooms and a camping or dorm type offering and with lots of pool partying, socializing and some workshops. It foremost should be FUN and about PEOPLE.
Posted by: Guni | Wednesday, July 11, 2012 at 04:43 AM
If one uses Second Life as an extend of His/her dreams and fantasies, avoiding at all costs to be connected to His/her real identity, what is the purpose of this convention and its need?
To not understand that a vast majority of its user basis thinks and acts this way is still, the major flaw, not only of the Linden Lab, but of all that by choice, link and choose to be on Sl the same as on RL!
Real life id one thing, Sl is another and many just pain refuse to mix both!
Posted by: foneco zuzu | Wednesday, July 11, 2012 at 06:34 AM
No one can justify spending the shit tons of money it takes to travel and pay for this conference, especially like Fleep said above that there is very little profit going on in SL, and anyone who does own land is already spending probably more then they like on Second Life. Unless you are a casual person who is well off, there really is no business justification for going to SLCC.
Posted by: Metacam Oh | Wednesday, July 11, 2012 at 07:05 AM
So a bunch of people stepped up for LL because they love VR and their communities. They sunk their time and money in, mostly for LL's benefit. And LL kicks them in the teeth for all of their money spent and work done because it didn't benefit LL as much as LL believes is its due.
Seems a perfect synopsis for how LL treats all its customers.
Posted by: shockwave yareach | Wednesday, July 11, 2012 at 07:30 AM
"Consequently, the userbase is no longer large enough and engaged enough to support and finance a user-run conference."
The Second-Life musicians community, a small subset of the total userbase, manages to have not one but multiple user-run jams around the U.S. and Canada every year. And the closest it gets to high drama is usually when the mandolin player tosses his cookies in the bushes.
So the userbase is NOT too small or disengaged for a successful conference. And if it looks that way, maybe the conference needs new lenses to focus.
Posted by: Arcadia Codesmith | Wednesday, July 11, 2012 at 08:05 AM
Celebrate what was. Learn from what has been. Create what will be.
Posted by: Pathfinder | Wednesday, July 11, 2012 at 08:49 AM
It's sad to see any tradition go, but in light of the comment that LL expected SLCC to be BlizzCon, all I can say is "heh".
The best thing that can possibly happen to SL now is that LL is left completely on their own to handle their userbase, advertising, bug reporting, etc. and to find out what they're actually capable of doing on their own.
I imagine it'd be a learning experience for them to find out that their failings are completely on them and not their users.
$300/month, sinks to milk more money from already purchased L$ and expecting users to fill out endless Jira's (said bugs wouldn't exist without them being a screw-up by some employee or another in the first place), etc.
It's yesterday stuff on a platform that's buggy and out-dated, that has driven entire sectors of users away already.
The only thing LL cares about is the eternal startup and the millions of new users they can't get ahold of due to the expense and failings of their own software.
Virtual worlds never were a "startup" kinda thing. They've always been here, and will be long after SL is gone. It's a niche that has always commanded a strong dedicated userbase because of the amount of investment required to be creative and partake in a virtual world.
It was over-hyped by management and the platform can't live up to the false expectations it pushed on both employees and users alike.
The day will come eventually when anyone can set up their own virtual world with all the features we expect.
Until that day I'm enjoying my $15/month island on another platform with no economy, no false hype, no sinks, upload fees, no Jira, and virtual world features that are up to date despite being early enough beta to be called alpha.
For the same $300/month I can have modern features, not be monetized to death with some idiotic floating fake currency rates and having to be "approved" to cash out what I make and then given the run-around if it exceeds anything resembling minimum wage... and 750,000 square meters of land. Admittedly less "prims", but something at least I can say is actually worth the money.
Any decline that LL sees in community involvement, drops in users or land or what have you has nothing to do with a faulty userbase, as odd and as persnickity as we may be at times.
If you believe LL numbers (which I don't, they've never, ever reconciled) despite claims of 1 million active users to date (umm, right), some 20,000 people a day sign up and don't find SL to be the virtual world they were looking for either due to expense or a beastly outdated overly complex app.
The metaverse is potentially so much bigger and better than SL.
Here's to hoping for bigger, better, more with virtual worlds RL events in the future.
There's a price to be paid for years of disrespect and over monetization of your customers who donate years of time and tens of thousands of dollars.
Thanks to those who spent so much effort in years past for SLCC.
Onwards and upwards.
Posted by: Dartagan Shepherd | Wednesday, July 11, 2012 at 09:39 AM
Yup. BTDT. To quote a friend: "If there's one thing we Myst fans know, it's how to somehow survive through years of apathy, whether we want to or not"
SLCC will, if the people who care keep caring, happen again. Albeit as something that may be smaller and more intimate than a full blown multi-track convention, but something.
Posted by: Eleri Ethaniel | Wednesday, July 11, 2012 at 09:46 AM
Well, even Blizzard cancelled BlizzCon this year.
Posted by: Sans | Wednesday, July 11, 2012 at 09:50 AM
We are not the customers the Lab wants, and we never have been.
http://catherders.com/?p=133
Posted by: Recka Wuyts | Wednesday, July 11, 2012 at 11:29 AM
Running SLCC was the most thankless non-paying job ever...but hanging with a couple hundred of your good friends once a year made it worthwhile. The SL community's best and worst both came out every year during the planning. When the worst started heavily outweighing the best (including certain curmudgeons calling my wife and I "evil incarnate", lulz), it just isn't worth it any more. Best of luck to Fleep. I whole heartedly understand her frustration.
Posted by: FlipperPA | Wednesday, July 11, 2012 at 12:44 PM
This kinda sounds like politics 101. If one side has a large negative that they can't deny, they simply re-direct it by saying it's "everyone's responsibility" - When it may not necessarily be, but it does take a lot of the weight off the ones who should be carrying it.
Posted by: Jessicka | Wednesday, July 11, 2012 at 12:57 PM
Having attended two past SLCC's (2006 in San Francisco and 2007 in Chicago), and observing much of the planning that went into 2008 in Tampa (which we were unable to attend due to my illness), I feel qualified to state that one of the huge problems with past SLCC's was the dichotomy between how LL and many of the major players such as Rivers Run Red, Involve Inc., and the Electric Sheep Company wanted the convention to be (Second Life networking for real life businesses), and how the average Second Life Resident in attendance wanted it to be (a relaxed time to see friends, get loaded and celebrate the fact that SL enabled us to become friends).
And yeah, SLCC has never been up to Blizzcon standards. Bring in a few hundred PCs that are capable of running the next big thing (read: unreleased version of SL) and we'll talk.
What? There is no expansion pack forthcoming for SL? No new product? Well, there you go. I think you answered your own question.
P2
Posted by: Phoenix Psaltery | Wednesday, July 11, 2012 at 01:36 PM
@Pheonix - it's not difficult to run a con to satisfy both business folks and fungoers. Most SciFi cons are able to do so just fine, with panels and a dealers den and an artist alley as well as art shows and dances and game rooms.
Posted by: shockwave yareach | Wednesday, July 11, 2012 at 02:53 PM
You know I was part of the convention for several years and I was part of SL for several years and I can tell you at my height of spending in SL which was substantial, Linden lab only sponsored an amount equal to 2 months of my spending in SL and we had to Jump through a dozen or more hoops to get what we got. When I think of the Millions and I mean Millions that LL takes in monthly The amount they spent on the convention was less then 0.001% of one months gross. So maybe if they moved that decimal over a few digits to the left they could have a great convention. I am still amazed at what was pulled off in the years I was with the convention and how little was spent.
Posted by: Pet | Thursday, July 12, 2012 at 12:04 AM
AOL..1988-1998 never heard of it...
1 million users... nice beach office Phil.
Hamlet bringing the masses the "news": a decade after it happened.;) Party on.
Posted by: froggie | Thursday, July 12, 2012 at 02:43 AM
I remember back when Linden Labs and the employees actually seemed to care about the User's experience. Now it's all about how much money they can get off of you. Even the market place basket sneeks items in you have to double check the numbers or I've had an odd 50l or 15l item in there that I never chose.
The Metaverse is moving foward whether or not Second Life will keep up with that is pretty clear. It wont. There is more development happening with the opensource code at the moment so many innovators from SL have moved into that area. I don't blame them, as I've done the same. Who wouldn't want to have a free REGION on their own computer to enjoy and use and invite others to enjoy, like we USED to in SL. All they seem to be doing is breaking more an more ties with the community and proving that they no longer care about their involvement in the metaverse. As it is, they've broken the most important code of OPENSOURCE, IE, they took open source and ....stole it to make their product then said...well now we wanna call it our own. How RUDE. Whether or not they wrote the code in the beginning, opensource is supposed to REMAIN opensource so the community can keep freely innovating. Way to mess it up, LL....pfft.
Posted by: OhMySomewhere | Monday, October 01, 2012 at 05:35 AM