Addendum: The Magic Hat

ADDENDUM 6.13.11

Due to all the chatter that has happened over my last post, please read the following addendum:

The person who originally asked me for a design did so in good faith (not a Linden). I said yes in good faith because they were a friend and also the one to ask me for the Burn2 logo (flaming hoops) and that turned out ok. It was not design-by-committee. So I said sure, despite the BurningLife experience...

I admit that art can be influenced from a variety of sources. The logo is just different enough; I suppose also you might argue that the Hat would be a natural pairing with a theme of "magic" (as it was to me). I do remember the pitch and that Courtney Linden brought up the issue after my pitch with "I like this idea of the Hat" and then the discussion after that was about color schema as I mentioned (and my question that had to be "fed to Legal" about using The Hand).

I, not being paranoid, did not keep chat logs of course. I kept one photo of the session as a silly joke for friends ("look! I was with Lindens!"). I've been looking for the jpgs of the design but can't find them; I sent them to both Courtney and to the person who asked me to go for the design initially. I'm not sure if I have the prim mockup either; I am OCD/prim-thrifty and probably just deleted it; it was only a rough (to me) and not a sculpture I'd want to keep, especially when I heard nothing back for so long. I don't remember any "Jillian Linden" at that meeting (and I was keeping tabs because it seemed funny to me that I'd be in a meeting with Lindens!!!! lolz)



I have no intention of getting a lawyer on it because... that's just nuts. That's something a corporation would do, not me. I am neither mercenary enough nor greedy enough nor do I think that would really make a difference. I certainly did not copyright a rough design. It was an obvious lift and I had my little hissy about it. I'm not going to run to my friend who originally asked me to do the logo (who has been absent during this, engaged with a family emergency). I'm not going to go to my friends I sent the "Linden Meeting" photo to and ask them to dig through Trash for something they probably viewed as a quick joke and then tossed (and probably cleared their Trash folder like I do obsessively). I'm not going to get crazy going through my horribly-unorganized and uncategorized "SLUploads" folder looking to "prove" anything.


There was no "contract"; there were several hours of work involved in the 3D mockup, the photographing of the primset and the back-and-forth with my friend. There was one meeting I was at where I pitched the idea and an additional IM from Legal via Courtney about a week later about not using The Hand. After weeks of silence I just... blew it off. I figured they were cherrypicking for ideas and changed their minds or didn't like the proposal. I also have the experience with good professional people who actually want something done (other logo design work I have done through SL) and figured this was just another "mess by committee." If I knew in the first place I'd end up in a meeting with a couple Lindens and a bunch of other people I never would have agreed to the friend's request for a design.


I am certainly not going to go Full Metal Legal on anyone. That's a corporation thing; it is not my thing. I have ideas, and I will have more ideas. To me it was just more graphic practice. Certainly no one's going to make money off that logo (like if it was licensed for use as a cereal box or television logo) so the whole discussion about "legal copyright" and "lawyers" just hits me the wrong way and I do not plan to pursue such a course; it's ridiculous. It's in the modern area of "copyrighting concepts not executions" which I am opposed to as ruining the creative and common culture of us all. I was peeved and I had my little hissy. I'm just sorry I had it in public.



Maybe I am just lame. I never viewed such work (esp solicited by a friend, who remains a friend) as a moneymaking opportunity. I never expected to be paid. I don't plan to be a golddigger; that is not a "business model" to me. I just thought it would be a nice thing to include in my portfolio.

With the first BL logo, at least my name was included (although after the redesign I asked it not be included lol). The Burn2 logo, as far as I know, is still being used (maybe it won't be after this) which is nice, because that one didn't go through committee revision; I can point to it on my resume as a nice piece of design that I was happy with.



I was up late and in physical pain when I blogged and probably should have kept my grouse for the few friends who'd listen instead of blogging my bitchy. I was miffed about the whole business of not being able to using The Hand in a design for the Lab (which I thought would be a great thing for the Lab), the inclusion of my name under Estates/Buildouts when I had no intention of being involved in SL8B and the switch on credits for the logo but no revision of Estates/Buildouts list... but had blown it all off until someone sent me the New Logo.


At this point, it is more a caution to me about "new media" and how a minor blog like mine can repercuss and end up to be a whole bunch of trouble and that I sometimes I should keep my mouth shut and not throw a fit in public. For better or worse I had my say, and like the deleted prims I'm done with it. That doesn't mean I am unthankful for all the nice things people have been saying to me about that post and the situation.

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I'd also like to clearly state that I know Linden Lab is people, not some monolith. Some of them make stupid decisions and others do nice things. As Saffia says in the comments to the previous post, some things are just cockups. My particular complaint is for a couple particular people (and Legal for just being so dense). The only Lindens I have ever met in three years were the two at that meeting and M when I did the design for his Doodle Art show (although it was only a handshake-nice-to-meetcha thing; the design was solicited by White Lebed, who did her best along with Jayjay Zifanwe to make sure my name showed on the credits, which is all I really cared about). I still like Rod ^_^

A Tale of Two IPs

About 7 weeks ago I was contacted to design a logo for the Second Life Birthday 8 Celebration. I was contacted by a friend because of the work I had done on two other logos for LL - one for Burning Life and another for Burn2. I said yes, despite my experience of the last time working with Lindens.

Did some mockups of design; main elements, approach, focus. Tried to ask questions about the parameters, because I was being told "needs to look good at 64x64" but then also about "the maaaaagic of SL" and etc, so I wanted to know if they wanted a LOGO or a GRAPHIC so I could design for a poster (denser, busy) and also a logo (spare; recognition at a glance).


Went to a meeting with all kinds of Important People and some Lindens. Pitched my idea about the Magician's Top Hat as a main element/metaphor of "magic" and the particles/stars & letters coming from it and showed them both the physical mockup (it was made in prims for shooting photos) and the photo of the 3D mockup. A lot of stuff came up about the colors and people not liking this one, that one, whatever one ("we had green last year, I don't ever wanna see green again!"). I told them basically please come up with a color set/theme so I could work without having to redo the whole thing if people decided the "theme colors" were going to be different somewhere down the road; I suggested purple because of the obvious "magicness" associated with it, but there was no consensus so I said I needed to know the color schema in order to redesign the logo in the colors picked...


Then a few people IMed me about a week later, "congratulations!!!" - this is how I found out I was listed on this page as Logo/Graphic Designer AND under Estate/Buildouts/Exhibits, although I had not requested a plot and had no intention of building at SL8B.

I heard nothing from anyone associated with this for 6 weeks (except for the Legal Dept.'s "no!" on use of the Hand) and figured they got pissy after my little quiz on what they wanted and blew me off.


Well, today someone tweeted this logo - which is pretty much the graphic design idea I showed to that Committee. Oh yes; they tilted the letters and the Hat about 38 degrees... they used little paint tube stars (mine were multi-colored with particles also); they used a flat-style lettering instead of my beveled chrome letters... but this is my design. And who is this logo attributed to now on that Linden Lab Official: SL8B page? Jillian Linden.

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Now, you need to know a few other things: when I was asked to design the logo for Burning Life (you remember, the one that looked like a cheap western KOA/motel sign) I went through this same process; spent a good amount of time going back and forth with it.... and ended up in the same position: I got my design lifted, rearranged and attributed to other people. I thought the redesign so tacky that I demanded my name be taken off the credits (they had stuck my name on it with two other names).

I also had the Linden Hand incorporated into this design, backing up or holding the Hat; I mean, SL8B is an Official Linden Thing, right? Brand awareness and all that? Well, it took 8 days for a Linden to get back to me with this message from Legal: no, you can't use our logo in our own logo.


So Linden Lab has a big bunch of wind to say about Intellectual Property, but when it comes right down to it, they are happy to lift design work from other people. Did I mention there was no pay ever involved for graphic design? Of course not. No, I am not being bitchy because I wasn't getting paid, but it's interesting that Lindens who get paid to do stuff are ok with asking someone to spend a couple hours design and graphic time for free so they can use it... like I should be so happy to be asked to work with Lindens.


Well, I'm not. This is the second time I've been worked for ideas that are then appropriated and redesigned and attributed to someone else. Hey, Photoshopping is all kewl 'n stuff (I mean, check out the lovely ersatz metallic sheen on those flat tin letters!) but design is 80% ideas and 20% execution.

To add insult to injury, someone changed the Logo/Graphic Design credits to Jillian Linden on that official wiki page but still left my name in Estate/Buildout/Exhibits (which I had never volunteered for, and specifically chose to ignore SL8B this year).

So am I such a big name they need to leave my name on this page? When the real work I did was appropriated, sucked up and regurgitated with someone else's name on it? If I was a meaner person, I would have copyrighted that logo design and be in the process of jamming some DMCA takedown notices up LL's butt. I mean, that's what they do, isn't it?


So here's a little note to any Linden who'd think I'd be thrilled to be used again:

Talk to the hand

DISCLOSURE: hand turkey credit to plmiller@ makefive.com

A Reply Part III - Recalcitrant can also mean Faithful

"And where do we go from here?
Which is the way that's clear?"
- David Essex, 'Rock On'

In 1997, Apple had just completed a fiscal year where they lost about $1 billion on $7 billion in revenue. The company was worth about $4 billion. Rivals like HP and Dell were worth about $62 billion and $8 billion, respectively.

User dependence on desktop software meant that only the very loyal or the very strange used Apple’s products. Everyone else wanted a common desktop platform. This was the worm in Apple's vision. Apple, like many companies today, wanted a cornered, captive market; specifically the education and professional graphics markets, where they could sell 1000 computers at a time in big chunks. They weren't really concerned with the small desktop user.

We all saw how that went for them. Apple lost out to the ubiquitous desktop market at a time when people were tired of being under IBM's thumb, itching to escape it and Apple had a huge lead in product awareness that could have leveraged them onto the desktop, avoiding the Microsoft catastrophe. An inferior architecture and shady business practices became the norm because Apple had myopia. They also lost untold millions in revenue from this practice.

Apple is now the world's second-most valuable company, after Exxon Mobil Corp. On April 20, it reported net income of $5.99 billion for the January-to-March period. What Steve Jobs did for Apple in 1997 was restore vision and purpose.

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The real problem at Linden Lab

This series of posts are less about technological problems with Second Life then they are about the entire experience of SL. There's a real reason Google was once considered the Holy Graal to work at; the company was geared towards its employees and its vision.

From the material I have gathered and thought on from countless articles, blog posts and conversations with many people, I am convinced that nothing LL can do in the technological department will help them stem the tide of user attrition if they do not address the serious problem they have in their relationship to their product and their customers. No fancy tricks, no sparkly eye candy; not even datafarming is going to do more than delay the inevitable. That is, the inevitable if Linden Lab doesn't revitalize its vision.


The overwhelming "user experience" that LL covets so highly can be reduced to a simple statement: No one cares about a company that doesn't care about them. I only need point to the ongoing debacle of Sony, its stance towards its own failure to follow even nominal security procedures with its customer data and how this may destroy everything they built with the PS series as far as customer desire and loyalty. As I write this, Japan is refusing to let Sony restart the PlayStation Network due to revelations this week that not only did Sony know its network was horribly insecure months ago, the network can be still be hacked from a simple browser-and-google-search [google hacking]. Sony did not secure their network as they said they did and the word is out that Sony is untrustworthy. How much current and future revenue do you think Sony has lost and will lose over this episode that could have been avoided or staunched with a little conscientious action and foresight?



Many voices, one perception

From many points of the customer base the perception is widely-held: not only does LL not care about its customers but it doesn't seem to care about its world anymore. It's running on inertia. People who have been inworld for a combined total of thousands of hours are screaming "iceberg!" but the helm isn't listening.


From the hostility of the "Welcome" areas to the arrogance on the JIRAs and forums; from the cavalier stupidity of reducing edu discounts (clue: educationals bring new eyeballs; some of those eyeballs stay around; edus bring new users and great publicity/awareness) to the reneging of openspace use parameters and pricing; the stone deafness to the overwhelming feedback on Viewer 2.mistake; all of these problems reduce to one: bad management.


This is an image problem. When you have an image problem this big, you can't stonewall it. You won't fool investors and you won't fool customers. You must address such a problem directly. In the age of the Streisand Effect, you can't sweep your troubles under a rug, move on to another market segment and expect to avoid the consequences of your bad business decisions.

I do not see a concerted effort from Linden Lab to publicize the most positive and compelling justifications for Second Life. Why do LL's Marketing and Publicity departments seem to consistently push vapor-talk and abstractions when there are so many sterling examples of the importance and use of this technology?


Where are the articles about the groundbreaking arts scene? Where are articles about what UWA, UTSA and the rest of the universities are doing? Why did I have to go outside SL to find out about the FEMA Emergency Trailer training program in Second Life? How about the work being done by the Autism community? The monies raised for Relay for Life? The money raised for the relief of the Japanese people impacted by the Fukishima disaster? The efforts of the American Cancer Society in SL? Why are the logon screens the same stupid pics I have seen now for three years; outdated, uncompelling, boring? Why did Marketing not make more than a token effort to publicize Burning Life/Burn2 and other high-profile events? Why are they silent about Skye Galaxy's amazing use of SL to bootstrap a RL career? What about Pop Art Lab? What about Bryn Oh's recent RL grant based on her SL work?

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SL seems to be being promoted as some Barbie-world now, where you can dress up your avatar! Have a virtual breedable bunny! Have sex with strangers! Play dollies! BUY STUFF!!!! You know, if I want to play Barbies, I go to Barbie Girls. If I only wanted raw cybersex I'd be sexting or hanging out in Red Light Center.


As one commenter stated on my blog, "I don't want SL to be Facebook. I already have Facebook. If I wanted to be on Facebook, I'd go there, and I do. But I'm in Second Life." That is the perfect capsule argument voicing the opinion of many. I think trying to make Second Life like Facebook, or Twitter (which, btw, survives on venture capital, not income) or MySpace or Google or whatever company-du-jour catches the "oo, squirrel!" attention of the Board is a mistake in many ways. There's already a Facebook; SL ain't gonna be Facebook. You're late. You shoulda been there. You can't catch a running train. You lag, you lose. Hasta la vista, baby.

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Vision

Clifford Stoll most famously opined in a post from 1995 "This internet thing is just a fad. It won't last." I guess 25+ years of existence and growth have proven Mr Stoll wrong.

"Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms, but this is nonsense."

Wrong: we have all three now. You can get valid degrees from online universities. Many people telecommute. There are quite a few interactive libraries (pushing the definition, Google Sketchup is an architectural library)



"They say the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic. I doubt this."

Wrong: Egypt, Syria, Libya, Tiananmen Square, etc. Wikileaks. The use of the net as a political tool is still in its infancy.



"The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works."

Wrong on three counts: ask the WSJ, NYTimes, etc. etc. See above.



"Try reading a book on disc. At best, it's an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can't tote that laptop to the beach."

Wrong: Ipad, Kindle, etc.



So what was so far off in Stoll's 1995 assessment of "this internet thing"? Why were his predictions and observations so far off the mark a mere 10 years before the almost-essential digital world connectivity of 2005-2011? He was only seeing what was already extant and not thinking in the future. He suffered a lack of vision, judging the future potential of the medium on his past experience with computers and networking in a closed and hierarchical system, not understanding that the Internet was a total departure [game changer] from these types of systems.

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Assets

1. The most important asset LL has right now is their user base. Many intelligent, technically-competent and experienced people are in Second Life now. As a class, these people ooze potential. Many spend much of their free time in SL and have for years. They deal constantly with technical, political and creative problems endemic to their environment and solve problems. There isn't enough money in the world to pay "normal" people to work as hard as many of these people.

Someone like Jeri Rahja has put her own money where her mouth is by single-handedly supporting many virtual artists through sponsorship at her own expense. Volunteers like Wizard Gynoid help out at Welcome Island, wading through the incredible chaos and griefing to help new customers with no help from Linden Lab. Thinkerer Melville continues a superb series of newbie "kit" posts to help and orient new customers, independently doing a job Linden Lab should be doing. White Lebed had the RL experience and knowledge to run a terrific arts scene... this list could go on and on with hundreds of names of people I have met inworld in three years and not be at all encompassing or thorough, as my cross-section of personal experience is limited. I'm not even conversant with the legions of coders, scripters and "under the hood" developers who have contributed to the huge knowledge base available in the JIRAs and help forums. We can’t be “customers only” if Linden Lab depends on us to take up the slack churning out new user Help pages, mentoring, bug tracking and publicity…




2. The second asset that Linden Lab has at present is their workers. Reading the entries for Linden Lab at glassdoor.com is very disheartening. Some of the best technical workers in this growing field are frustrated in their inability to do the work they signed on for because of bad departmental decisions and petty interdepartmental politics. Some of the best work done on the infrastructure and architecture in this field is mothballed by managers who don't understand the technology making decisions about the technology.


Warnings of a technical nature (like overloading sims on cores being a severe problem down the road) are undercut by accounting types who do not understand anything beyond "we can squeeze 16 sims onto a dual-core machine and save moneh." These uninformed decisions and are the equivalent of a computer being sold with Windows 7 and 1GB of RAM: sure, it will boot up to an opening screen and will appear to function... until a typical user actually starts using the machine; adding programs, antivirus, active desktop widgets, open browsers, watching streaming content... in short, starts using the computer as advertised. It quickly becomes apparent that the promises made/selling points were either disingenuous or outright deception; a machine with 1GB RAM running Windows 7 (or even WinXP) will quickly become unusable for anything other than staring at a Windows logo. After such an experience, the consumer is liable to never go to that store or buy that brand of computer again. Penny-pinching can be the ultimate company sabotage.


If you are going to hire some of the brightest and best in the field, you can't hamstring them. When a techie explains a problem, they are envisioning the future consequences of that problem. They are trying to save you money and trouble in the long run. They are working for you. Viewing them as a drain on your bottom line is stupid.



3. The third huge asset that Linden Lab has is their experience in architecture. Despite their stumbling and fumbling, Linden Lab is still the pioneer in hanging together a true virtual world. They have reams and reams of information on technical challenges, sociodemographics, server load, distributed computing, programming and the rest of what it takes to develop and maintain such a huge platform.

LL could be the leader in this field. LL could understand that they are doing the initial pioneer/groundbreaking work that Google did from 1996 until its first IPO in 2004 [it's useful to remember now that Sergey Brin and Larry Page went to Excite CEO George Bell in 1999 and offered to sell their new search engine for $1 million USD (which Excite could have easily afforded at that time) because it was "taking up too much of their time from academic pursuits." He rejected that offer... history must make him gnash his teeth daily]. LL could have some faith not only in their own vision but in the vision of many people who have stayed with this field for over 30 years, have experienced the rise and fall of many companies and business strategies and have come to intimately understand this medium and its potential.


Linden Lab might not end up to the "the only VW" but surely it would be both respected and profitable as "The Progenitor" with the amount of talent, research and resources it can command today. It might become the Mercedes of VWs. It might, through licensing of server space, code and content, become the Google of tomorrow.

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The Answers Are There

Wikipedia entry for Excite:

"In the 1990s, it was one of the most recognized brands on the Internet"

"Excite continued to operate until the Excite Network was acquired by Ask Jeeves (now Ask.com) in March 2004. Ask Jeeves promised to rejuvenate iWon and Excite, but did not. Ask Jeeves management became distracted, according to the East Bay Business Times, first by a search feature arms race with Google and Yahoo!, and then by its merger with Barry Diller's InterActive Corporation, announced in March 2005."]


There are many grids operating now that would not be in existence except for Linden Lab/Second Life. Most of those grids came into existence because of the general feeling of untrustworthiness, instability and questionable customer service on the part of Linden Lab. Most of those problems stem from bad management, not technical hurdles. With good management, the people who could have solved the technical problems could have done so, or could have made a lot of headway on problems that have plagued the platform for years. Instead, they were let go for "cost counting" reasons... resulting in the negative flow of profit because of these endemic technical problems! As is readily-apparent if you travel other grids, there are technical problems there also… but people stay despite them. Why? Because they feel the management is better/closer/available/listening.

LL has lost some of the most innovative, experienced people in computing through their own worst-practices. They have squandered resources. They have alienated their customers, most of who should be considered as PR assets. They treat the best PR/Marketing aspects of their product like embarrassments and allow outside media to direct and control the perception of Second Life.


Virtual worlds have given birth to the art of machinima, which is widely-expected to be the next Hollywood Golden Plum, advancing the art of cinema in the same way sound recording, Panavision and camera dollies did. VWs show enormous potential in the fields of sociometrics, demographics, psychology, architecture and design, synergy, collaboration, visualization of concepts, disaster training, the arts & sciences... This could be an entire series of posts in itself. I needn't delineate all these possibilities; you can read them yourself from some of the leading bloggers and thinkers in Second Life/virtual worlds.

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Thy Rod, it comforts me

The recent presence of Rod Humble, new CEO of Linden Lab, is a hopeful sign. Mr Humble's experience in many online communities (Sims 2, Sims 3, Everquest), his hands-on experience in developing games ( The Marriage, Stars Over Half Moon Bay and Last Thoughts of the Aurochs) and his recent Twitter presence and willingness to engage customers of Second Life give me more confidence in his knowledge of this medium than did the previous CEO Mark Kingdon, whose experience was confined to marketing and accountancy [I worked for an accountant for 20 years, so I can safely say that in my experience, accountants are good at counting all the little beans, but they are very bad at seeing any horizon beyond a balance sheet. A balance sheet only shows you what you've gathered so far; it does not show you a road].

I am not a blind believer or fangirl; I am giving Rod some time to settle in, poke around and gather intelligence and information. It's a big job turning a company around and I am not OCD enough to demand a day-by-day state change in such a large endeavor; neither am I a fawning sycophant who will accept empty words without backing actions.


Rod's engagement on Twitter in asking honestly for suggestions from the customers of Linden Lab (Mentoring, Mentoring, Mentoring) and his involvement in the Elf Clan payment problem (only one instance of a real financial-flow problem inside the Lab that I think a good CEO would be very concerned about) show more potential in his short tenure as CEO than all of Mark Kingdon's lofty pronouncements and rule-by-fiat or the showboating "return" of Philip Rosedale.


I am not the only person who has taken this involvement as a Good Sign, worthy of watchful trust; taken this "hands-on" approach to company management as more hopeful than anything coming out of the Lab for the last 2-3 years; taken this as a much more compelling reason to remain in Second Life than any new viewer, dongle, jiggly bits or Achievement Systems offer to me.

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"The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." - Samuel Clemmons


The people rushing in now to declare "Second Life Dead" or "failed" are the same people who tried to throw up a web page in 1995 that was merely an electronic replica of a business card with no information, no use of the resources and no idea of the possibilities of the net.


They were the people that declared the Internet "a passing fad"; the people who blew multibillion-dollar deals because of myopia and miserliness; the people who waited for a gold rush from their 1-page non-informative, bland, dull, technically-challenged and ugly offerings and whined like babies when their pitiful excuses of a "web site" didn't bring them buttloads of ca$h in a year while the net proliferated because they wouldn't listen to web designers, who tried their best to explain that the WWW was not like The Yellow Pages and that they needed a little patience and follow-through. These are the people who cannot envision another system outside their own past experiences. These are tomorrow's buggy-whip makers.


These people have already moved on, sniffing at the new, unable to understand the fundamental sea-change coming but merely splash about in the shallows, disappointed that they hadn't caught a marlin or discovered sunken treasure in their 2-hour jaunt to the local beach. These are the Grazers, the Nomads moving constantly from here to there, stripping an area of its resources, plundering the treasures of other civilizations for their own ends, contributing nothing towards the future and making no lasting cities or monuments. They pass through Ephesus or Alexandria chiseling off bits of gold and stealing mummies to be sold for profit. They whirl through art museums buying paintings and hiding them in vaults as "investments." They contribute no research; they buy up patents merely to blackmail or destroy other companies. They don't truly invest in anything. They think too small.

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I've tried to stay away from a lot of blue-sky material in these posts, offering instead a pragmatic reality-check from a business standpoint. I am not ignorant; I know that even the most selfless endeavor on the part of people needs an income stream. I am not suggesting Linden Lab become a philanthropic organization (despite the yammering of Wolves who put words in other people's mouths). I believe the profitability of Second Life and virtual technology can be made to work.


I do not believe Second Life is dead. Nor do I believe its technology has failed; the proliferation of grids beyond Agni demonstrates the truth of that belief. I do believe that Linden Lab and Second Life are at a crux. I believe that Linden Lab and Second Life could, with some good management, attention to PR and the help of its many knowledgeable customers, turn around and become once again a leader in this technology. I believe the uses and potentials of the platform to be a fundamental part of the future architecture of communication. I believe that VWs and grid technology are at the same point that the early Web was in the late 90s.


It will take some vision on the part of LL's management to recognize what they have and how it could be put to use to further the Company's aims (profitability). It will take work to rectify the mistakes LL has made in their relationship with their customers (bad PR) and their employees (over-micromanagement). It will take the admission that fundamental architecture is not a thing of moods; to paraphrase Gurney Hallack in Dune, "Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It's not for business."


Business has moved into the next phase; the paradigm shift. Modern business is not chess, it is Go. Lateral, orthogonal thinking is needed for survival and profitability. This truth is readily-available in the business and financial sections of your daily newspaper (or daily news aggregator).

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Recalcitrant


We are the Recalcitrant, aye. We have stuck with this revolution in communication and technology for a quarter of a century and more. Along the way we have discovered, created and invented things that are now highly profitable. We have evangelized; we have encouraged. We have poured our time, talent and money into this continuing evolution of the next paradigm because we have vision.


I and the other Recalcitrant, who might also be labeled Adamant [unshakable in purpose or determination], Faithful, Visionary or plain old People Who Stick With Things Because They Believe In Them continue to work and play in virtual worlds as we have done for 14+ years; to offer suggestions based on observation and long use of the technology; to offer our creative visions of the possibilities for future growth. We are not at all averse to business but we think in terms of long-term stability (which means long-term profitability) and identifying problems and bottlenecks that prevent the smooth flow and growth of the Company, because the Company provides us with the platform we believe in. We have some chops and we think about the future.

The only thing we are really asking of Linden Lab is to reconceptualize the parameters of the problem.

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ok, I'm done ^_^

For Want Of A Nail - The Elf Clan ripples

Today something happened that spotlights some of the issues that plague Linden Lab and is quite a good example of the ripple effect a company's actions can have on the public perception of that company.

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It began with a small tweet from Elf Clan, one of the oldest groups in SL, that they were closing the last EC sim - ElvenMyst - and moving it to InWorldz, where they had already migrated most of their sims. The issue is outlined in this blog post.

Basically, ElvenMyst's Eldar/Admin tried handing LL money to pay tier... and tried... and tried... filed a Support Ticket like a good elf... no answer... and finally received an email (after a week) informing him that... he needed to pay tier.

"When Peter tried to log in to Second Life... his account had been closed. He could not enter a grid for which he has paid $350 a month for the last four years-- faithfully and without missing a single payment. Linden Lab has informed him that in 30 days his entire account will be wiped... including a significant investment in inventory. "

You can read the rest yourself. What is interesting and instructive is what followed on Twitter.

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Many, many voices chimes in, retweeted this tweet and adding comments. Whether or not they were past or present members of EC, many people spoke out in dismay because Elf Clan is a very old, large and respected group in Second Life. At one time they owned an astonishing array of sims, all of them incredibly crafted. Many newbies came to the Elven Lands; it was one of the first terms I searched for myself in Second Life (I mean, virtual world, elves; it just seemed natural).


Elf Clan has always been known as a newb-friendly place; I always found unpaid Mentors and Guides there; EC put on some of the most wonderful group events in SL; they were very tolerant of avatar types and people in general. EC and Wayfinder have contributed an enormous amount of time and talent to Second Life, as well as trying to help LL troubleshoot various technical problems over their years of residency. As their blog notes, "in 2008 Elf Clan was paying Linden Lab almost $15,000 a year.


Not only has $15,000USD per year walked away to another grid (not counting Premium Membership fees), but let me assure you of something: elvenkind are a huge group of consumers. Elves buy enough clothing and an even more-amazing amount of weapons, magic wands, staffs, unicorns, bangles, particle effects, vehicles, horses, homes, trees... enough to stun several oxen. I cannot begin to guess how much income was lost from this group (and the tithe to LL of course via Marketplace).

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Sure, you might write this off as just another glitch in Support. Unfortunately, this scenario can be retold countless times with countless players. For every person who says "I never had a problem with Support" there are at least as many who have had the kind of experience EC had. As was graphically-illustrated on Twitter today, EC's reach was far beyond "a couple sims of crazy RPing elves" and dynamically affected a lot more people than would at first be accounted for on some little income-graph, giving them yet one more sad and upsetting story to add to their opinion of Linden Lab's management of Second Life.


This is the type of problem I have been outlining in my Reply posts; the kind of problem that really should concern LL with all their talk of "retention" and "falling concurrency" and the rest. This isn't an isolated incident, as acknowledged on LL's own Grid Status and blog pages; the Euros have been having problems paying LL for at least a month. Other people have found themselves in the same position EC was in; unable to hand Linden Lab the money they were ready to pay and threatened with the loss of their sims, accounts and inventories.


It is this kind of cavalier inattention to user needs that is a very sore point with customers (residents). It is this kind of problem that is losing LL tier, Premium Memberships, and a lot of freakin' money. Despite all the babble coming out of LL, it really seems like they don't want our money; they don't want our participation/consumption; they don't want our presence in their world. After all, actions trump words every time.


If LL can't deal with this very real and very deep problem in management and public perception, nothing will help them. I do hope that Rod Humble, by his acknowledgement of this problem today on Twitter and his willingness to hear, will understand that this incident is not an isolated problem but reveals a much-deeper rift that is recognized by many Second Life residents, indicating a wide-area effect that is critical to the continued existence of Second Life's customer base. We are your customers and we bring through our experiences and words other customers to you.


Yes, we can put up with technical glitches; yes, problems happen. But when they happen over and over for several years, increasing with time, frustrating some of Second Life's biggest paying customers enough to have them scale back mightily on their land holdings, Marketplace ads and Premium Memberships... then the company has a very large and significant problem. It's certainly recognized by them; they publicly talk of future signups and retention...


The (forced) migration of the last Elven sim in Second Life is the small leaf that in its falling makes visible widening ripples in the deep pool that is SL. I sure hope someone at LL is paying attention; that's a whole lotta real money leaving Second Life (or already has) and adds another large weight to the opinion and calculations of other customers on whether their investment of time and money into Second Life is worthwhile, and whether they'd bring someone else into such an unstable world.

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.