In late June and early to mid July, the Second Life Birthday celebrations will be taking place. Among the events will be "Meet the Lindens," in which residents get to listen to members of Linden Lab explain what they're doing and answer any questions.
During the celebrations, there will be a series of Q&A events where
you can meet the Lindens and Moles – live at SL22B! Here’s your chance
to meet and interact with executives from Second Life as we celebrate 22
years of Second Life!
The founder of Second Life Philip Linden will be among the
participants, which also include many leading executives and team leads
from Second Life’s Product, Engineering, Product Operations, and
Marketing departments.
To submit a question, go to this page in Google.doc (here). Residents have the option of "having the question directed at a particular Linden," and being mentioned by name when it's answered.
On Wednesday, people on Reddit had the chance to ask Philip Rosedale, the founder of Linden Lab and later on High Fidelity, any question they wanted. For three hours, he answered a number from the future of virtual reality to what surprised him the most about Second Life and a number of others.
Do you have a question that you've always wanted to ask Philip Rosedale, the founder of Linden Lab, and Second Life as well? Well, tomorrow may be your chance. On his Twitter, Rosedale announced he would be doing an "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit.
Join me for a @reddit_AMA on Feb 23 from 11am-2pm PT.
Ask me about #SpatialAudio, #VR, virtual worlds and virtual economies, avatars, and … anything.
An "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit is "a scheduled
question-and-answer session hosted by anyone from a high-profile
celebrity to a regular person with extraordinary life experiences."
Of the "Meet the Lindens" events last week at the Second Life Birthday, perhaps the most anticipated aside from the one where Linden Lab's CEO spoke was the one featuring Oz and April Linden. As they cover the more technical aspects of how the virtual world works, they would know the most about certain issues such as the moving of Second Life's data to "The Cloud" and when might new last names once again be an option for those with the surname Resident. They had much to say about those issues, such as the plan being to allow residents to have the option to change first names as well, and more.
There are no additional fees for having to use Tilia, aside from the Inactivity Fee.
The Inactivity Fee applies only to those whom have a US dollar balance
in their account that remains inactive for 12 months or longer.
The changes for personal information requirements apply only to those who cash out Linden dollars for real world currency.
For those whom use Linden dollars only for Second Life, there is no change.
Tilia is not needed to buy Linden dollars with real world money.
Tilia will not replace Paypal, though the Lab is working on enabling it to work directly with banks in the future.
Of the reason why the Lab needs the additional personal information, they cited, "The ID verification requirement is
necessary for compliance with U.S. money transmitter laws and
regulations, such as the USA PATRIOT Act and the Prepaid Access Rule." As residents continued to ask questions, the number on the FAQ has been growing. It probably will continue to do so for at least another day or two.
From Monday to Thursday this week were the "Meet the Lindens" events at the Second Life Birthday. Today, the Moles of Linden Lab get their event at "Meet the Moles."
The Moles are builders, scripters, and content creators employed by
Linden Lab to work in the Linden Department of Public Works. Meet
Naughty, Abnor, Squeaky and other Moles on Friday, June 28th at 2pm SLT
at a special Town Hall Q&A session at the SL16B auditorium.
The event is today June 28 at 2PM at the Second Life Birthday Auditorium
Yesterday, November 15 at 10 AM, was the time of the Town Hall. Oz, Patch, and Grumpity Linden were joined by Xiola on stage as they talked to the residents in the audience. They answered a number of questions that had been posted in the forums. At the end was a short Q and A taking some additional questions from the crowd.
There were a number of question answered. Will there be resident to resident auctions? Not until next year. Will Premium residents have some choice in their style of Linden Home? Yes. What does the SSP in the new mystery continent stand for? "Super Secret Project."
On the issue of bringing back last names as an option for new residents and allowing those who don't have them to get one, "As with many things in Second Life, it's complicated. A lot of things in the background we need to upgrade." They stated that it was looking like last names would not be back until sometime in " the second quarter of next year" at least. As for how much the fee would be, one stated, "on the order of a few months of premium membership" or close to $30 USD, "not impossible, but not throwaway money."
Addition: I've been hearing from others that getting a last name or changing one's last name for an account may be limited to Premium Residents. So for a free player looking to get a last name could be spending about $40 USD.
Another Linden Lab Town Hall, this time with Director of Product Grumpity Linden, Technical Director Oz Linden, and Senior Director of Product Operations Patch Linden.
Just a reminder, the Town Hall with Oz Linden, Grumpity Linden, and Patch Linden is tomorrow, November 15. As of the writing of this brief, Linden Lab has yet to give the location of the Town Hall, but they have given a time: 10 AM to 11 AM SL time.
Keep an eye on the Linden Blog for where it will be.
Several issues were discussed. On the issue of last names, Ebbe backed off a bit from Linden Lab's earlier commitment for the option of them to return for newer accounts by the end of the year, "Maybe we'll get that done this year. ... We don't have an exact date or time."
Someone asked why the grandfathered sims from 2016 weren't included in the land tier cut in June this year. Ebbe responded that those taking part in "the 2016 buy-down" benefited if they kept their land for six months or longer, and while grandfathered land might not be as cheap compared to retail as in the past, it was still cheaper. Ebbe went on to say that Linden Lab would likely lower prices again sometime in the future, they were still waiting to see how much of an effect their last price cut had, "when and how much is still undecided." He did say when they did cut them again, they would likely raise other fees to make up the difference. Ebbe went on to say that they preferred that sim owners hang onto their land for a while.
On the issue of why spend so much time with "backwards compatibility?" Ebbe answered it was to avoid breaking things and"When
you have an economy in which people buy things ... and then the things
they paid money for stop working, people get upset."
On the issue of future transparency on economic data, would the statistics about Second Life once reported by Linden Lab earlier in it's history be done so again, such as the number of unique 30 day logins, Ebbe answered that they had started to publish again some statistics that they had been quiet about foa while, but, "We probably won't restore all." He went on to say the Lab wants information that helps create business for Second Life, and some info wouldn't be in their best interest if revealed. "It's a balancing act."
On Animesh, Ebbe stated, "Animesh around the corner. ... a few bugs away." On environment enhancements, "possibly in weeks." Of the next Gridwide experience, Ebbe wasn't sure if the next one would be finished before the end of the year. On Linden home improvements, he hoped to release them, either all at once or in stages, later this year. Of plans for Marketplace, upcoming changes included options for "wish lists" and "favorite sellers." Gachas might also be more clearly identified on the Marketplace, "maybe."
The new SSP region was asked about, someone asking, "What does SSP stand for?" Ebbe just joked about it, suggesting the "P" stood for "Plesiosaur," a flying dinosaur. Someone also brought up the empty gaps in the Second Life map, asking why they couldn't just put water sims between them. Ebbe responded, "we can't afford to put water sims in all the blank spaces between sims, and some private island owners might not want us to."
The last twenty minutes were a "Casual Q and A" with questions from the audience. Ebbe stated some questions were best left to Oz and Grumpity Linden, "The more specific you get, the more you lose me" Someone asked if Linden Lab could come up with 24 hour support. Ebbe answered no, "I don't think you would be willing ot pay for that service."
Someone asked if the Lindens personally use SL? Ebbe answered, "I rarely have time to use it like a proper user" as he has ten hour work days. He did say of Second Life, he will "drop in now and then ... get inspired by the stuff you all do." He considered himself more of a "test user" there. Of Sansar, he spends "99%" of his time there in a VR rig, "That's the killer feature for me."
Recently on their "Second Life Community" blog, Linden Lab posted an announcement that their CEO Ebbe Linden, Ebbe Altberg in real life, would be appearing at an inworld Town Hall event. While he would answer questions, Linden Lab asked that they be sent to a community forum thread, and they would pick which ones would be answered.
With SL15B behind us (and SL16B to look forward to!) we thought it was
time to have another Town Hall, and give Residents a chance to ask about
Second Life and hear the latest news on what is being worked on and
planned in Second Life. We’ll also share specific updates on our product development roadmap, as discussed earlier this year.
So far, about two pages of questions (and comments to other posters) have appeared on the thread. Among them are questions related to the return of last names as an option for more recent accounts, to questions of Linden Lab plans to make improvements to Linden homes to "restoring the public economic information that LL once published years ago?"
The event will be Thursday September 12 at 9:30 AM SL time.
Yesterday, Thursday November 19, was the first session of "Lab Chat," the new Q an A show organized by Linden Lab. The show started at 10:30 AM, taking place at the LEA Theater, and went "well over an hour." Jo Yardley and Saffia Widdershins hosted the show with Ebbe Linden.
Due to real life, none of the Newser reporters could attend the show. But Ciaran Laval was there, and wrote some about the event on her blog. She described it as going "quite smoothly, which was quite impressive with a four region setup that
attracted over 150 people. The show launched on time, without any
technical issues ... The questions had been selected from a pool of 46 questions submitted via the official Second Life forum."
Ebbe was described as talking "about land, commerce, Marketplace, experiences," and other topics. Of the Grid's land, of which there was a drop in sim set-up fees earlier this week, Ebbe stated that the Lab was continuing to look at options, but there were limits that could be done. Ciaran wrote that "reading between the lines," Ebbe was essentially saying there would be no drop in sim prices.
Ciaran reported there were a number of other Lindens there, "some lurking backstage where they were also joined by some of the Lab Chat production team, bloggers and of course residents who found backstage a less taxing location for their graphics stage than the main theater." She stated the team was "taking unscheduled questions and even asking their own questions."
The official page of Lab Chat (https://labchatsl.wordpress.com/) stated they hope to have a transcript of the event soon, and hope to have a recording of the event available by Tuesday.
TRADING DREAMS by J.L. Morin Is Occupy's 1st bestselling novel. Meet the author J.J. Morin LIVE in Secondlife at 2pm SLT on Oct 10tth for an author reading plus audience Q&A. Event Portal: http://INTEROCCUPY.net/ovw17
Organizers will annouce final SLURL location an hour before the event. RSVP to be notified by email to occupyvw@mail.com. Use Email Subject: RSVP TRADING DREAMS. You must RSVP to be notified!
From occupyvw@gmail.com, advanced copies of Trading Dreams are available free to the Press, Citizen Journalists, and Occupy-or-Occupy-Related Event Organizers.
