I like Metareality Podcast, there, I’ve said it! I mean Draxtor can talk about his Xanax, Qarl can tell us he got jaded whilst being a Linden, Gianna can sound fed up whilst giggling and the two boys can swear like troopers, but it’s an entertaining affair. I’d like to hear a Linden being a guest, but Gianna has made comments that they keep cancelling at the last minute.
I can recall seeing Lindens make appearances on the former inworld chat show: Tonight Live With Paisley Beebe. Paisley has moved on, as have most of the Lindens she interviewed! Hmmm. Treet TV has a number of shows, although these days Designing Worlds seems to be the big one, not that that’s a bad thing. Some of the shows listed are no longer active but are fun to look back on. Media outlets like this are good for Second Life, it’s a shame they aren’t more widely promoted. Surely Linden Lab are the ultimate world designers? Would they fit in Designing Worlds? Saffia Widdershins of Prim Perfect could probably answer that!
Tomorrow will see the launch of something very interesting from Draxtor Despres who is unveiling a new show on his youTube channel at 10am.
I mention other media channels because I see on the Second Life blog, a blog about improvements to Second Life. The post talks about the CHUI beta viewer, improvements to region crossings, the new email options on the marketplace, the cocoa project viewer, which is intended to improve performance on the mac as well as talking about the forthcoming materials project, for which there will soon be a project viewer. I am extremely pleased to see Linden Lab making better use of their blog. However, how about making better use of their world too?
A Linden appearance on Designing Worlds or in some machinima, would be a good example of usage of Second Life. These sort of areas of Second Life often go beneath the radar because most people are inworld, watching videos of inworld interviews seems a bit of an odd thing to do, but these productions are worthy of our support in a lot of cases because they promote Second Life very well.
I’m not saying all logout and go watch Designing Worlds, but if you do get time to watch some of these shows, they give you a new appreciation of use cases for Second Life and they should be positively encouraged.
There’s also something to be said for watching interviews inworld, it creates a different atmosphere. I’ve been at Tonight Live with Paisley Beebe shows and I attended the Prim Perfect talk with Judy Chestnut of Dwarfins fame at the SL Christmas Expo, very interesting it was too.
As I said, I’m happy to see Linden Lab making good use of their blog, but is it possible to tempt them to come out and play in other media areas too?
Thank you for the lovely words about Designing Worlds (and the Prim Perfect talks too).
We have had Lindens on the show – way back in the day, we had a designer make over a house for Catherine Linden (and she kept it until she left Linden Lab too). We also had Jack Linden on once – talking about mesh (which was forthcoming at that point). And we had three (not one – but three!) Lindens on our Pathfinding show last season.
To set against that, we have asked Lindens to appear on many other shows, but they’ve been able to make anyone available. The most recent one we approached the Lab about was the griefing show – we really, really wanted to ask about the griefing tools being sold on the marketplace and if there was any way this could be prevented. But no-one was available.
I guess this is understandable – in the same way that government spokespeople suddenly become unavailable for current affairs programmes when really bad news is coming out (or is that just in the UK?). I can understand Linden Lab employees believing it really isn’t part of their job description to take part in those sort of shows.
However, it is disappointing that we can so rarely get Lindens, especially when the Designing Worlds show is, by and large, a huge shout out for virtual worlds, especially Second Life. Rodvik has an open invitation to appear and chat to us any time – and we would happily film him with some of the amazing things that exist in Second Life.
Catherine was great, it’s a shame she’s not around. I saw Jack appear on Paisley Beebe and some other Lindens, they used to be more vocal. I’m glad they still turn up now and then and it’s good to hear they were there in numbers for Pathfinding, it would be nice to see more of them appearing on other issues although I can understand why they wouldn’t want to do a griefing discussion.
The last major round of Linden Lab appearances was, I believe, the “Pathfinding Interviews”, which saw the likes of Lorca, Falcon and Maestro doing the rounds, being interviewed and talking about pathfinding, as Saffia mentions.
What was interesting about this was, in the case of the DW show at least, not only did they show-up for the the recording of the show, – Falcon Linden as Production Manager for pathfinding made himself available at a public screening of the show, and stayed for an informal Q&A session afterwards.
If nothing, else, this is something we could do with seeing more of, particularly with the likes of projects such as materials and Server-side Baking, as it all adds to the awareness campaign, and offers the likes of us bloggers material we can also help to disseminate to a wider audience.
I think part of the issue here is perhaps one of cost / benefit from LL’s perspective. They doen’t see their blog reaching people, others note that while they have a large user-base in the community, the level of interest shown in their blogs is minimal (Firestorm, for example, estimate that of their many thousands of users, only around 2% actively use their blog). So the perception is that the impact they have on the community as a whole in having staff participate in interviews, etc., might be minimal, and therefore not worth the time they have to devote to any recording.
This is something which could well have been reinforced by the fact that despite appearances by Falcon, Maestro, Lorca, et al, despite blog posts and forum posts, despite efforts from bloggers across the grid trying to separate fact from fiction & present accurate info on pathfinding out to users – people still preferred to go-off half-cocked, accept misunderstandings and misinformation (as accidental as the latter may have been when circulated) as “fact” and simply rail (and wail) at LL and the pathfinding project.
Even so, measuring any appearance / interview purely in terms of technical cost / benefit is something of a mistake. The PR value of putting people able to talk about the Lab’s work and take the time to address questions is worth its weight in gold-plated L$. As such, the Lab really should do more to positively respond when shows like Designing Worlds reach out to them.
Their blog reaches some people, other blogs regarding meetings and new initiatives reach other people, shows like Designing Worlds, The Drax files etc. reach other people and the message gets more reach, in PR terms it’s a better strategy.
I’m glad to see them making better use of their blog, even if the reach is small it’s better reach than them not talking at all or keeping it confined to user groups.