Survey Results: 12% Want a Discounted SL Sim for Educators & Non-Profits

This is a much smaller data sample than I usually get (25 respondents, as opposed to hundreds), so take this with an additional grain of salt, but here's the results of my survey for educators and non-profit workers, asking them: Will your school or organization take advantage of Linden Lab's post-Coronavirus discount offer for sims? 

Of the 25 who took this survey, 12% said Yes, while 4% answered "Likely will". From one point of view, this is a poor response for Linden Lab. From another perspective, if those answers scale to the thousands of educators and non-profits which use virtual worlds, that could translate into hundreds of new customers.

But yes, most respondents were overwhelmingly negative about the offer -- for instance, "Iggy", who used to be one of SL's biggest boosters among educators. But now he comments:

Colleges and universities are ahead of the Lab, technologically. We have been holding multiple sessions daily to train faculty on ZOOM. Business resumes Monday. My Google Sites, Drive, and handy video apps will take on the slack.

No avatars needed, no clumsy and GPU-intensive client, no adult content lurking nearby. Best of all, no LL price-gouging after this desperation move disguised as altruism.

Reader Dick Dillon had a helpful suggestion for Linden Lab to consider:

If LL wants to make a dent, and be truly helpful in this uncertain moment in history, they might want to give educational institutions, nonprofits, etc. a six-month free trial before charging them a single cent. This would be adequate time to allow for any proof-of-concept work that new users might wish to do. If using SL proves effective, the sim costs will become a marginal piece of the equation. People and organizations who have to move to virtual in the short term are faced with many options (e.g. Zoom Meetings, MS Teams, etc.) and don't have money to spend on all of them. I suspect SL is a ways down most people's priority list at the moment.

More comments here.

Comments

[Former Bear Maker]

In breaking news, Linden Research has been sold to Wookey Virtual for an undisclosed sum, both Sansar & Second Life are in the process of being rebranded in the coming months. It also means an end to all Adult Content in Second Life, Unfortunately!

[Alicia]

@Former Bear Maker, got a link to that info?

[Stan]

I knew that Ebbe guy would end up killing SL or bankrupt the company forcing them to sell.

I am cashing out my linden dollars today!

[Mart Lou]

Those who seen this in Iwz knows they better cash out ASAP!!

[Argo N.]

So, another topic -- SL friends who manage a large university site are very busy gearing up to bringing many virtual classrooms online using SL by the end of the month. I certainly hope this works out well but I expect it will depend on prior investment, staff depth and clever student interns.

Others faced this challenge, below is another perspective.

https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2020/03/it-s-ok-feel-anxious-how-professor-china-faced-coronavirus-disruptions-and-fears

I've followed Iggy's writings on SL since I got into this racket (SL)
more than a decade ago. First praise, followed by disillusion - he is, I believe showing all the signs of a failed romantic. Like the secret fan
of a once great baseball team, I think he still believes that second chance magic sometimes happens.

[Iggy 1.0]

@Argo, yep. Not even a secret fan.

One of my colleagues remarked that we are both jilted lovers: we saw SL's utopian promise, only briefly, before it faded. Yeah, we'd both like it to come back. I recall how Burning Life with its interactive artwork showed me what was briefly possible.

I have been logging on a bit recently, even taking a few laggy, border-crossing (at one's own risk) road trips along empty mainland roads. Kinda like the RL roads now: less crowded, a little spooky even. Thanks for reading my stuff. I've not posted for years to "In a Strange Land" but may do a "Van Winkle" post about waking up and finding what I found. Got a bit of spare time and bandwidth now.