I was extremely disappointed to learn that Blondin had left the lab, and all the more disappointed to see it via a post at SL Universe. That post was inspired by a notice from Marianne McCann in the Bay City Alliance Group where Marianne thanked Blondin for his care and attention and wished him all the best for the future.
Why Blondin has left, I have no idea, but I certainly hope that it is for the right reasons, because Blondin worked hard with communities of all ranges and whereas I largely spoke to him at Zindra user group meetings, or office hours, he’d also been at the community tools user group meetings, the events users group meetings, he was here, there and every bloody where.
I must admit that I did wonder aloud whether he was bored at a recent Zindra group meeting, they really can be like Groundhog Day but he IM’d me to say he wasn’t bored:
Blondin did seem to come to the fore during the adult content fiasco, although this wasn’t Blondin’s fault and I’ll talk more of that in another post, it was such a wasted opportunity by Linden Lab, but it was during this time that his community office hour was besieged by concered adult merchants and residents, however there were often signs that Blondin was a man of many communities and I can recall the Chilbo folk turning up sometimes to talk to him, or representatives from the Bay City Alliance, possibly wondering what all these Ursula and then Zindra complaints and questions were all about, as they had a community issue of their own they wanted to discuss.
Blondin’s office hour used to clash halfway through with Blue’s office hour and Blue is another Linden who had community interests at his heart. Linden Lab as a whole need people like this, it holds the whole together and allows people to talk about issues that are happening inworld. There aren’t many around, to a degree Amanda Linden (AKA Miss Communication) fills this void for those who participate in the forum, but there’s less and less of these kind of community style issues that can be raised with a Linden.
Blondin at one stage used to try and look like Jumpman Lane:
Blondin is on the left! Blondin was also helpful when it came to finding bots during the bot farm extravaganza when people were playing ridiculous traffic wars, he’d also try and help when people were talking about adult parcels that had remained on mature, trying to explain some of them were fine, why some of them wouldn’t be fine.
Blondin was also involved in the Linden Prize and recently he had been highlighting the SL Tunes Twitter account, inviting people to test new search, telling people about the SL Sailing Community and even getting involved in the thorny issues of concerns around IP Protection.
I really hope that Blondin has moved on to better things, because he will certainly be missed, he’s a loss to the SL community.