{"id":4309,"date":"2014-10-08T20:07:02","date_gmt":"2014-10-08T19:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=4309"},"modified":"2014-10-08T20:07:02","modified_gmt":"2014-10-08T19:07:02","slug":"designing-worlds-ebbe-altberg-interview-has-strong-community-focus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=4309","title":{"rendered":"Designing Worlds Ebbe Altberg Interview Has Strong Community Focus"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you want the full kit and caboodle on the Designing Worlds 250th episode<\/a>, which features an interview with Linden Lab CEO, Ebbe Altberg, then head over to Inara Pey’s blog post on the subject<\/a>. Whereas I will embed the video at the end of this post, Inara also has the transcript in text form. I’m not going to cover anywhere near all of the interview, so for \u00a0even more commentary, head over to Inara Pey’s commentary on the subject!<\/a><\/p>\n

The interview itself was conducted by Elrik Merlin and Saffia Widdershins and was held on Mantanzas, a sim owned by Skate Foss. The interview has a lot of meat on its bones and covers a wide array of subjects, including, but not limited to, communities, group chat, Terms Of Service, The next generation virtual world, marketing and much much more.<\/p>\n

Ebbe talks a lot and appears to be extremely enthusiastic about his work at Linden Lab. This makes for a largely positive interview although it does have some stumbling blocks for me on a personal level, the most glaring being the terms of service which briefly gets touched upon with Ebbe responding to a question from Saffia regarding the use of user groups to try and avoid issues such as the terms of service :<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if you could have avoided the Terms of Service \u2013 and there was quite a bit of engagement, and a lot of voices heard. I wasn\u2019t here, but I think the way it was rolled-out created more complications than what the change actually was. But obviously, being in touch with the community, understanding the needs of the community is critical, and that is something we cannot do just by watching, But sometimes for us just looking at the metrics might be more efficient for us to get to answers rather than talking to individuals.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Later in the interview Ebbe says :<\/p>\n

OK, but we\u2019re trying to make it clear to people that the content is yours, and we just need to have sufficient protections to protect ourselves. But again, it\u2019s obviously not in our interest to make a mess for content creators by ourselves stepping in and starting to be part of the problem, rather than the solution with regards to IP protection.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They really could have done the terms of service differently and the first step there would have been to actually recognise what the issue with the terms of service is and why it still exists today. Linden Lab have never ever made that move and it remains a very disappointing element of Ebbe Altberg’s reign. Ebbe’s words here also don’t encourage me that Linden Lab have much interest in addressing or understanding the terms of service issue from the other side of the fence.<\/p>\n

However that aside, I found this to be a vibrant interview. Ebbe talks of opening the Jira back up, how he was quite shocked about the level of engagement between Linden Lab and their community when he arrived and how Linden Lab have made strides towards better community engagement. This has certainly been exemplified by Linden Lab taking a far more active role in their blog postings and therefore leading the conversation.<\/p>\n

Ebbe recognises the importance of communities in Second Life and the importance of getting the new user experience right. Ebbe hints that the idea of community portals coming back to Second Life might be on the agenda in a part of the discussion regarding onboarding new users :<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know exactly when we\u2019ll have time to give it sufficient energy to really get it off the ground. We\u2019re working on a number of other initiatives right now that are ahead of it \u2026 and it\u2019s one of those things that\u2019s near the top of priorities for Second Life to bring back the idea of the community portals or something like that, where it\u2019s easy for experience creators to attract users directly into their experience from the outside world.<\/em><\/p>\n

Because ultimately, there are too many experiences in something like Second Life that we can\u2019t mass market to all of these niche experiences that exist. we don\u2019t even understand them all or know that they even exist. Whereas the creators of that experience have a very clear idea of who they\u2019re trying to be useful to and attract an audience. And so we need to give people the tools so they can attract their own audiences into their experiences.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is positive to read because Ebbe is right, there are lots of experiences within Second Life. A one size fits all new user experience probably isn’t ideal and wider community engagement could be useful here but let’s wait and see what transpires.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ebbe explains that more creators are getting involved with the experience tools, which is important when it comes to new user experiences too.<\/p>\n

Ebbe of course also talks about the new world and this is a touchy subject for some within the Second Life community. Ebbe insists that Second Life will be around for quite a while yet :<\/p>\n

We\u2019re going to continue to make Second Life better and faster and more performant in addition to the stuff that we\u2019re doing with the next generation stuff, so things will improve here, and I think we\u2019ll all learn and discover over time what thing works the best for what use case.<\/em><\/p>\n

And if the new thing ends-up being a superset of everything we\u2019re able to do here, and people actually rather quickly move over to take advantage of some new things, then that\u2019s one outcome. Another outcome could be that the new thing doesn\u2019t solve some things that are critical for people who are in this thing for a very long time for various reasons, whether it\u2019s hard to do or it not being in our interest to solve those particular use cases in the new world; because we don\u2019t want to assume it\u2019s going to be just a pure superset of everything people appreciate in this world, but it could be that that\u2019s the case.<\/em><\/p>\n

We\u2019re obviously looking at all the things one can do in this world and trying to understand if and when someone could do that [in the new platform]. But like I said, it\u2019s a long project, and I think it\u2019s easier to see it and take it as it comes and not have to stress about end date here, or anything like that.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m sure people will read this and come to different conclusions, some will feel it means that Linden Lab are looking to move everyone to the new world as soon as possible, others will feel it’s a sign that Linden Lab are committed to Second Life. I favour the latter point of view at this moment in time, I’m not seeing anything that suggests Linden Lab want to wind Second Life down.<\/p>\n

Ebbe talks about the future and how he hopes facial expressions will arrive one day to avoid the issue of “dead face<\/em>“. These sort of developments are in the pipeline but it’s early days yet as it is with peripherals such as Leap Motion and the Oculus Rift. There are certainly challenges with any new venture embracing these peripherals because they are in such an early stage of development.<\/p>\n

There’s so much I haven’t covered in this interview, I urge anyone who is really interested to watch the video (warning it’s over 90 minutes long) or read Inara’s transcript. One thing you should get from the interview is that Ebbe has a strong community focus and very much appreciates the importance of communities. This is very positive and let’s hope that Linden Lab continue to appreciate the importance of community.<\/p>\n

Overall, this is a pretty damn good interview.<\/p>\n

Let’s also not forget that this interview was conducted to mark the 250th edition of Designing Worlds (including its predecessor Meta Makeover) and that is a hugely impressive milestone. Whereas Elrik Merlin only joined around episode 20 (only!!!) Saffia Widdershins has been there since episode 1. The team deserve congratulations for not only reaching this milestone, but for also being able to keep the show fresh enough for people to welcome the 250th edition, long may it continue.<\/p>\n