Philip Linden (known as Philip Rosedale in RL), co-founder of Second Life and Linden Lab CEO, last night hosted one of his regular "town halls," casual audio conversations distributed through streamcast, and also with a central gathering point within the grid as well. These town halls are a landmark of the Second Life mythos, in fact, a concrete reminder of the company's hippie-like attitude and embrace of the individual user experience; but of course that was when SL's population was in the tens of thousands, and rarely did more than 50 people want to attend one in the first place. With a total population of 750,000 now, though, and growing by thousands each day, such intimate in-grid town halls are no longer possible; of the 1,200 who listened in to this one live, for example, 1,150 of us listened through iTunes and other "internet radio" software, including yours truly, which is why I have no accompanying photos.
That said, it's still run in a remarkably egalitarian way, for something being attended by 1,200; it's basically a Skypecast conference call, where anyone who wants is allowed to call in, and with half the meeting time given over just to questions and answers. This is then paired with an opening half-hour by Philip alone; he simply addresses some of the biggest issues being talked about in the grid, items that have been in the news, and nicely confessional stories about what it's like to actually work at Linden Lab. It's a great way, I think, for the top "god" of the universe to converse directly and regularly with a small sampling of random residents; kind of like going to a temple in Greece, I suppose, but with a random chance of actually talking to Zeus Himself.
Philip ended up addressing a dozen issues, from the recent database break-in to their decision to shut down the forums; of everything he covered, here are the items I thought most interesting:
"Don't worry; we're always going to be a freak-friendly company." With the recent invasion of RL companies into SL (including Coke, Adidas, American Apparel, MTV and more), a growing amount of residents are wondering if there is to be a "MySpacicazation" of the grid to come soon, a drubbing of all the prurient elements and individual business owners, to make way for lucrative backdoor Linden deals with huge corporate conglomerates. Not so, says Philip; not only is the Linden staff counterculture-friendly at heart, but according to him, even the technology running the grid itself prevents them from doing such a thing. He's glad that the corporate entities are there, he's quick to point out; but it's for the same reason he's glad a 19-year-old programmer is there too, or a BDSM enthusiast, in that it ultimately makes the grid that much more diverse a place.
"We're building a way to accommodate thousands on an island at once." One of the legendary limitations in the grid is in how many people can attend an event simultaneously; the cap is near 50, to be precise, with things getting unbearably slow for most even after 30 or 40. Such a limitation was fine for when the grid was first created; but with groups such as the BBC, Duran Duran and Suzanne Vega now holding live events there, the need for accommodating hundreds and maybe even thousands at once has become a pressing issue. The problem, says Philip, is in rendering that many avs at once, which is why they're thinking of a novel solution; of maybe only giving the performers the chance to visually rez, but to give everyone else a camera and a chance to chat. This would then require not much more bandwidth per visitor than a typical website; and a robust website can accommodate thousands of simultaneous visitors at once, so theoretically there's no reason why it shouldn't work in the grid too.
"You'll be able to bar anonymous people from your land soon." For those who don't know, this summer Linden Lab started its first-ever SL marketing campaign in Europe; a major one, an expensive one, and one with high hopes. One of the big changes that had to be made, though, was of forcing people to verify their information with a credit card, before being allowed to finish their sign-up; although credit cards are ubiquitous throughout America, many more in Europe simply don't own one. Now that such verification has been removed from the sign-up process, those running adult businesses (and doing adult sexual roleplay) are starting to get panicky about who they're actually interacting with; we do live in an age, after all, where alarmist warnings about online predators are being broadcast almost every moment of the day.
Many have wondered what Linden Lab is going to do about the situation; and while not fully addressing the question, Philip did say that you'll have a chance soon to only allow verified residents on your land. This will effectively prove that the person on the other end is over 18 in RL, although of course with always a couple of people sneaking through; and this will also be a tool for filtering out griefers, many of whom simply sign up for multiple anonymous accounts in the grid, each time they get caught griefing with a previous account.
"We don't know when voice is coming. And we're not sure how much we even like it, anyway." One of the big technical pushes within Linden these days is in getting its game engine communicating with the rest of the world; to not only integrate websites, blogging tools and social networks into the game interface, but also such multimedia elements as voice and RL webcam. Many have been asking about voice recently, in fact, and specifically about Voice over Internet Protocol (or VoIP, the technology behind Skype, Vonage and others); and the official answer from Philip is...eh, we'll see, but it's not a big priority.
Linden prefers in these situations, he admitted, to watch third-party companies for awhile first, when cutting-edge technologies are first introduced to the game engine; it's because of that, he said, that an "official" one-button voice interface within your game controls won't be coming anytime soon. And besides, he confessed, most of them at Linden are very old-skool when it comes to the subject; that they are all veterans of text-based chat, are very comfortable with the medium, believe that it adds an element to SL that would be missed if overtaken with voice, and something that contributes to the ease of "re-inventing yourself" there, a desire that even Philip admitted is the number-one reason most residents join.
Anyway, the Linden town halls are held pretty regularly; they're announced on the log-in page beforehand as well, so merely playing regularly is a good way to keep informed. And if you want to be doubly-sure, you can always of course read the official Linden SL blog.