SL's Next Gridmaster ?

What if... Usually it's pretty useless to talk about 'what ifs', and perhaps it is in this case too, but it's an opportunity.

Yesterday we received the news that Philip Rosedale is stepping down as CEO of Linden Lab, the Metaverse Service Provider (MSP) for Second Life and as far as the news goes, no successor has been named yet.

I am of the opinion (and there are others with me apparently) recognition of the fact that a big, grown-up company (which Linden Lab has now become) requires an entirely different sort of leadership then the hip, young start-up LL has been in the first years of development. Though not everyone has the same idea though, one of the contradictory views is voiced by Prokofy Neva in the comments to my previous blogpost as she writes:

"I find it really distasteful seeing all these tekkie male Internet gurus slapping each other on the back and saying "I told you so" about having Philip, the visionary, "log-off" and have "the grown-up management types" come in, as if
this is progress." (full comment here)

Linden Lab, Headquartered in San Francisco, has grown rapidly over the past year and a half, but has been one step behind the explosive growth of Second Life for most of the time. A lot of metaversal residents still feel LL needs to improve its service, the stability of the grid and so on...

The question is:

What would you do if you were appointed Second Life's Next Gridmaster?

This almost sounds like a contest like America's Next Top Model or American Idols, but I challenge you to write down your ideas for the future of Second Life. What are the things you would change. What are the things you'd choose as keyprojects? What would the future of Second Life and Linden Lab be in your eyes?

Coffee with Linden

After a long touristy trip through San Fransico we (me and Ruud Latthrop) found out we'd accidentaly parked our car in exactly the best spot for the last part of our visit... just 2 blocks away from Linden Lab Headquarters.

Actually, this is their postal address. A few employees still work at this site, but most have already moved on to the new office building just down the road. This is the old warehouse where it started out being a small company.

We were a little late for our appointment and as LL is putting out a big update tomorrow, our inside man was quite pressed for time. Still we left with some good intel.

First of all is that the mono support will be up and running very soon now to provide more power to the people. Possibly C-Sharp support will come too. Another upcoming implementation is Havoc 4 to provide more stability. We've been promised to see a huge increase in stability in the coming months.

Stability and performance is also the keyword for an upcoming Electric Sheep television show which would recruit over 1 million new residents (target) in a few hours.

Well, that's about all I can share for now. Tomorrow will see the start of the VW conference and I'll be back with more tales from the metaverse.

Reclaiming land from inactive Residents

Here's something to keep track of (from the official Linden Blog)

Reviewing Inactive Resident Parcels
Monday, April 9th, 2007 at 7:20 PM PDT

Recently, we have received a number of requests from the Second Life community to seize land from long-term inactive Residents on the Main Grid. While we are unprepared to reclaim land from Residents who haven’t logged recently, we’ve decided to embark on a different approach, one we feel will produce more palatable results for both active and inactive Residents. Keeping your concerns in mind, we have reached out though e-mail to Lifetime Residents who own land and yet haven’t logged during the past 12 months.

It goes without saying that we would all prefer to see those Residents return and participate again in the Second Life community. In this vein, we invited them to rejoin. In the event that those Residents are unable to return and in keeping with our commitments to active Residents who would prefer to see unused land folded back into the larger SL community, we have offered to auction inactive Resident land and deposit all L$ proceeds into the corresponding Second Life L$ accounts. We hope this approach satisfies all parties involved, and we will keep the community apprised of further developments.