M Linden hints at what's coming up in 2010

This is really interesting, as M Linden "sets his draw distance 10 years into the future" as well as giving us a glimpse of what is in store for Second Life in 2010...

Back on topic to the question M originally asked, I find I can't look 10 years into the future; there's some big closer-term things that I think will have a huge impact on where SL ends up 10 years from now..

Narrative 1: Early 2010, LL decides that happy customers are what make a business successful. Issues internal corporate directive saying so but keeps quiet to residents.

- Spawns the ResidentAmbassador Linden account. This Lindens time breaks down more or less equally between: wandering the grid, forums and blogs; blog/forum posts on what they see, both good and bad, LL-internal blog/forum/lovemachine on the how the residents are feeling; ongoing various "what's the top 5 things that annoy you?" and "what's the top 5 improvements you want?" discussions in the (scripting, building, merchants and general) forums
-- This position evolves constantly and goes through many successes and mis-steps. Eventually gives birth to WhyResidentsSuck Linden and WhyLindensSuck Linden, both of which give honest straight-talk in blogs/forums
-- In the future, this is widely seen as the first step in saving SL from BM


- Magellan reappears, riding Pony. Older residents rejoice, newer residents look confused


- M directs T or FJ or one of them to drive a vehicle across the old mainland, shore to shore, then blog about their experience. Asking Moles to build roads & such is allowed, using their Linden account or other God-mode stuff is not. Also, they must wear whatever Babbage declares is a normal "medium" load of prim/script attachments. Doesn't need to be completed in one day but this is the biggest thing on their plate until completed
-- After the first blog, residents demand that Management Lindens lose 1% of their bonus each time this task produces: an audible scream from their office, a forced relog, each inventory item lost, an AR against them for littering vehicles, each "you cannot log in again until ..." message. The LL board quietly laughs at this demand
-- T/FJ/etc begin to require that other members of their teams also complete this ritual at least once/quarter
-- Prices for parcels bordering Protected Land shoot through the roof, a new market for objects that shoot hippos and water balloons at passing Lindens explodes
-- In the future, this is seen as a "The Big Stability Turning Point"


- ResidentAmbassador Linden goes on a quest to find anybody that doesn't think groups need a serious overhaul
-- Comes up empty
-- Starts discussions with residents & enterprises to determine requirements
-- Eventually leads to new residents thinking groups still need work but also produces many smiles on old land owners and enterprises, just because land is now ACL-like controlled


- Premium & Tier are reworked, new tier levels are added
-- Premium no longer the only way to get LL TO AUTO-DELETE YOUR ENTIRE INVENTORY!!
-- Short term, more tier steps produces a drop in tier revenue for LL as people drop to their nearest level, which is now lower
-- Mid term, LL makes it back as many residents between the 1/8th to 1/2 sim tiers acquire more land without the huge recurring-price jumps
-- Long term, net change isn't much to LL but residents are happier as tier changes are no longer such a "big decision" thing


- New RL peripherals become available. LL works hard to make such things easier to integrate
-- 3D monitors
-- Avatar controls via eye/one hand/brainwaves get LL good press with the disabled
-- Full-body controls are tried, repeatedly, then discarded as they're too much damn work while having to watch a screen
-- 3D HMDs revive full-body control cult, discarded again as people start suing because they keep walking into RL walls and getting hurt


- Land barons push for ability to allow regions that are neighbors on the gird be on the same physical sim host
-- Leads to the MegaSim product, 16 contiguous full regions all one sim host, which becomes popular with the action game and serious RP crowds
-- Thousands passionately love the cache-hit and overall performance gain
-- Thousands passionately hate their whole continent going away on rolling restarts
-- WhyResidentsSuck Linden blogs about all the details and pros/cons then declares a US$100 fee per region to change this setting on existing regions and walks away to leave residents forevermore debating pros/cons


- LL adds read-only API to rolling restart progress
-- People to get more than a "sometime during this 4 hour window Monday or that 4 hour window Tuesday" idea of when their region will be down
-- Residents still complain about every rolling restart
-- Enterprise/businesses love it and cut back on the blood pressure meds whenever they schedule a big event


- LL declares the forums are to be closed and not replaced
-- Residents sharpen pitchforks
-- Two days later, a WhyLindensSuck Linden blog points out that it's April 1st then proceeds to upgrade vBulletin software


- LL notices that the SL Louvre recently folded. And that Black Swan is gone. And that Blackwater tiered down a bit
-- Starts discussions on how to help art-for-arts-sake builds without getting gamed
-- Future unclear but residents are overwhelmingly in support of helping them somehow


- LL revisits Nebraska product, intros new versions on the lower-end instead of the higher-end
-- Smallish up-tick in growth
-- LL changes pricing to be by land-size instead of by number-of-avatars; sees big growth at the under-US$15k product


- LL gives non-estate-owner land owners Top Scripts/Colliders On Parcel
-- Finds that parcel/avatar script limits aren't really needed


Narrative 2: Business as usual.
- BM declares they are out of beta
-- LL struggles to maintain current numbers


- BM creates Blue Mars, Red Lights
-- LL staggers as revenue numbers falls off a cliff, continues to miss connection between "regular people using" and "businesses knocking at our door"


- Google, Microsoft or Amazon buys LL on the cheap

One thing that I was happy to see was M's recognition of the "us/them" situation.

I didn't see anything in the comments that haven't been said many times before.

Very true, but the difference this time may be that M is (finally) being exposed to those ideas.

We don't know for certain that M read every post in that blog entry, but we can be pretty sure he read the posts to which he replied---and that's more actual-reading-of-our-suggestions than we knew of before..

...but I also don't expect there's going to be any huge changes coming soon either, even if I think some are needed.

[CLIENT] The changes that make Viewer2.0 special are new features and UI, not the render pipeline. Snowglobe's render pipeline is mostly the same as the viewer2.0 render pipeline.

[SERVER] Linden lab actually have a Havok7 branch that they'll submit for Quality Acceptance soon. Maybe it will even get into server-1.38.

However, don't expect much changed in the Havok7 port -- a few performance optimizations is all -- all in the physics engine, doesn't improve scripts or other stuff the server does

From this point on (with this thread), I'd like to follow along for the next couple of days, then declare it closed and write a wrap up back to you. Fair?

After a healthy run, we're going to close this one down. Thanks very much, however, for the passion and creativity included herein! M indicates that he's been following along and will post a reply this weekend. See you then

Hmmm. Never good to make your employee a liar. Also a bad idea to break promises to residents within a week.

I'm sure the delay is because I've changed his whole outlook on things. Probably busy restructering LL right now!

Well, yah, obviously!

Of course, personally I choose to believe he didn't reply because he's started an affair with Lady Gaga in SL, and he's spending his time perusing the latest "Is it cheating?" thread.

Given only silence, we all get to choose what we believe.

Hmmm. Never good to make your employee a liar. Also a bad idea to break promises to residents within a week.

Emergencies sometimes come up that prevent one from following up on smaller promises like this. But more often, an executive will simply forget because its not important to them. Perhaps in this case, M simply decided he has nothing more to say.

Given nothing but silence to go on, we all get to choose what we believe.
.

I'm wondering what would happen to a Blog thread asking about this silence? Would it be deleted immediately? (Obviously we can take note of this broken promise here, but would such attention be expunged from the record over on the Official communications-forum?)

(Who knows if there may already have been such a Blog---how would a person find it in that disfunctional mess?)

This should show all the blogs including all obscure ones https://blogs.secondlife.com/blogs

As for M's response, I think he will ... eventually, but I'm not sure how much he will actually say beyond what has already been said plus a few "oh you're such a feisty bunch", "we're really listening" and "stay tuned for some exciting announcements".

This should show all the blogs including all obscure ones https://blogs.secondlife.com/blogs

Hmmm. Never good to make your employee a liar. Also a bad idea to break promises to residents within a week.

Emergencies sometimes come up that prevent one from following up on smaller promises like this. But more often, an executive will simply forget because its not important to them. Perhaps in this case, M simply decided he has nothing more to say.

Given nothing but silence to go on, we all get to choose what we believe.
.

To start, I am inviting everyone who posted a comment on my post to 2-3 inworld office hours in February. We will schedule them at times that are comfortable for different parts of the world. It will take a couple of weeks to get scheduled so if you commented on my previous post, expect an invitation by the end of the month.

Hey Nika ... looks like we're getting a special office hours invite from M

https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2010/01/12/responding-to-your-feedback

Well, interesting!

It is unwise to speak to a CEO unless you are very clear about what you want, and how exactly s/he can best make it happen. CEOs are loaded guns ... an essential job skill for them is making decisions in the absence of all required information.

Now, what do I most want, and how to make it dovetail with what he wants ...

Since seeing the news that he'd meet with us, I've been wondering how to make the case that doing the unglamorous stuff like Grid Stability and Decreasing Lag COULD be made to look good on his resume.