Recently I’ve been tag teamed by the dynamic duo from Tribe Islands, namely Driftwood Miles and Alexxa “I’m not Mrs Driftwood Miles” Despres. I mean there I am innocently browsing my own blog and Drift abuses me about The Villa … this could be self inflicted and then I quietly lurk in my evil drow wizard tavern inworld and Ms Despres accosts me! I was an innocent party in all of this but it did remind me of The Jack Linden office hour.
I’ve blogged before about the lack of office hours, or user groups as they are now known. We used to have a lot more and one of the more popular ones was The Jack Linden Office Hour, some of which can be found on the wiki: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Category:Jack_Linden_Office_Hours. These archives have been preserved by residents.
Basically what happened was you’d arrive and find two dragons strategically placed, most weeks anyway, they would be there. I’d try and stand in a normal spot away from the madding crowd and then Jack would come and talk and sometimes the fireworks would fly! There are plenty of missing archives, the infamous Septmeber 10th 2008 invasion of the Ad Farmers meeting, which saw the clash between Cytherea Eagle and Sarah Nerd in the twinkie – *CENSORED* flashpoint! I have that log but it’s not suitable for the wiki! There’s a link to it via Sarah Nerd’s old blog at your2ndplace, thankfully there via the wayback machine, which you can read here, but be warned, serious swearing! I keep meaning to bring my own old your2ndplace posts over here, but it takes so much time! There were also some strange exchanges in that September 10th meeting, such as:
Resident: jack r u accual a linden
Jack Linden: yes, I’m afraid that I am!
Lots of issues were discussed at Jack’s office hour, land cutting, ad farming, tier pricing, the adult continent, the price of mainland plots, community issues. I’m not sure Jack always enjoyed them, indeed I’m pretty sure he didn’t but he was always there to either stall people or answer them when he could, Jack never hid and people may have been frustrated that they weren’t hearing what they wanted, but at least they felt they had an ear.
There were also issues that never quite got addressed, such as a new web page for land searches and sales:
Alexxa Despres: Jack..I am still going to ask… when will LAND be added to new webpage? *smiles sweetly*
Jack Linden: Alexxa.. lol.. I passed on the comments. It’s down to the web folks now.
Alexxa Despres: Hmmmm…can you give me their address…i can smile sweetly at them too ;)))
If Ms Despres ever got their address, she seems to have kept it to herself, or maybe Drift intercepted it and hid it away! There would also be general chit chat in these meetings:
Driftwood Miles: has anyone seen the PG Sex Bed doing the rounds?
I have no idea what that was all about! Drift would usually ask about super sized sims! The point is, these meetings probably seem more fun now that I look back on them, than they were at the time, but they were important meetings, well attended and they had a community feel despite the disagreements, we no longer have anything like this in Second Life and it really is a great shame. I’m glad that people have archived the minutes because you can see that Second Life had different concerns, even only four years ago, than it does now, but in other areas, the concerns are similar, tier, search, private region viability, these are all concerns today, but unfortunately there’s no Jack for us to shout at and laugh with.
Jack Linden always going to famous/infamous for:
“there will always be a mainland” and “there is always another buyer”
even if maybe he never said the last one. is still attributed to him now
both was actual true in those days when he was in known to be in charge of mainland
+
i think is not the audiences with the gods that made it better in the olden days. i think it was knowing who was actual in charge of the different parts of SL
us knowing seemed to make linden more accountable in some/many ways. even if they actual werent any more then than now. it seemed that way. i think the seeming/appearance of direct accountability is quite important
if linden could lift their game again this way then i dont think it would matter to us as much when they not show up inworld as often as they used to
I think they’ve lost something by being so distant, this has been a slow process, year on year interaction with the Lindens has diminished and it’s a shame, they seem so distant now.
Wow, how did I miss this blast from the past. Funny how I raise my ugly head after a particularly bad evening for the Villa!
“You woz robbed?”
Funny post Ciaran , I really enjoyed reading it. Particularly because of the memories that came flooding back. For all the back biting and vitriol they WERE as you quite rightly say participated in by an engaged Linden and a community that valued this platform to voice their opinions.
As for Jack (I do wonder how he is doing these days) he was always the diplomat and tried as hard as he could to impart the Linden view where it was possible. Where he couldn’t he was as slippery as a slippery snake on slippy day.
Now, about those Super Sims 🙂
I was there at Villa Park! I’m still traumatised by the whole experience!
Yes Jack’s office hours could get feisty and Jack could come under fire and wiggle around matters like a very wiggly thing but there was a definite sense of community engagement that is sadly missing these days.
I watched it on the Box. The atmosphere at the beginning looked to be electric. To be honest with you, I was looking and hoping for Villa to go through. Not because I thought Bradford were somehow unworthy but because I want to see Villa turn things around. Would be a strange Premier League without them. I used to love watching them during the Atkinson era. And I think they need a heroic result to give them belief.
Maybe a good result at Millwall or Newcastle or against whoever, it has to be soon.
I like to think that Lambert has something about him even though he sounds like a drunk glaswegian after a particularly heavy night.
Good Luck