Rosedale resigns....

I think it has a lot to do with the size of the company. A manager needs to know enough about everyone's job that they don't ask for things that are unreasonable, impossible, or make their employees think they're a know-nothing (or be gullible enough to get snowed while employees play Team Fortress on the company LAN all day). You have to know enough to have reasonable expectations, set reachable goals, and avoid the dreaded "you told them we could do WHAT?! By WHEN?! Were you HIGH?!!" I once overheard my boss at a multimedia production house tell a prospective client that we could fit two gigs of data on a CD. Fortunately for him the guy being given the dog and pony show knew even less than he did. He may not have needed to know enough to be able to burn one himself, but he should have known a lot more than he did about his employee's jobs and the technical constraints of any given department's tools and technology. I'm sure that kind of thing isn't a problem at LL since Philip is such an uber geek, but the new CEO will need to have his nose in every department enough to strike the right balance between task master and enabler.

I think this is a smart move, and my comments aren't meant to disparage anyone at LL at all. I have immense respect for everyone there. Really I just want to see a new CEO come on board and say "We need more texture layers on avatars. Get it done in four months without breaking anything, or else!"

btw, i kinda doubt anyone working under philip (sorry hon, i was mispelling ya all along!! would say that he's 'laid back' about sl or the job at hand... maybe from our perspective, but probably not from inside. i dunno, i just suspect us 'quixote' types can be like that...

but i really don't know; just offering that as a 'devil's advocate' position... i don't think we can just think 'he's been all too laid-back' about this whole venture.

heheh YAH just what i was thinkin' well i don't want them to be -too- out of it, for sure!!

gosh gee but i would like more clothing layers... we all would. sure that would break everything?? (lol i know, i know) first i want networkable vendors to work -reliably!!-

seems like a big yawn to me, nothings changing but a few titles.

That's exactly the type of CEO this company needs. I'd be ecstatic to see one come on board that showed results instead of the same excuses on the blogs over and over again. Like you said, this is not to disparage anyone currently at LL, I just don't think they had the right person in that position all along. Talents just haven't been in the right place and no one seemed to be demanding results.

LoL I somehow think it wont be texture layers

more like -

"By the end of three months I want a working plan to support 100,000 concurrent users with no unplanned downtime. "

QFT

you must be disturbed now, i command you!

Some more

"By the end of three months I want a functional plan for you to deal with all Abuse reports within 24 hours."

"By the end of three months I want a functional plan for you to deal with all support tickets within 48 hours"

By the end of three months I want a functional plan for you to deal with all billing problems within 72 hours"

------------------

My guess is a CEO would want even FASTER response times on Media sensitive things like Sexual Age Play, Scams and Gambling.

Especially being an outsider ..

He's reading the blogs getting ready for his new job.

where is tipper in her pleasure silks?

Holy crap. Get that guy something to read. He's got no sensory stimulation at all!

lol!! yes gee 'he looks too out of touch to me' :\

(woe for the past four years...) poor guy. he's gotta'nuff on his plate as is.

Plus, where are his intertubes? He invented them, after all.

Panther girls stole them.

I sure hope not.

Something that Internet-savvy folks reviled, to the point that AOL-er became a synonym for "clueless newbie with no knowledge of and less respect for existing Net culture", the 90s equivalent of a user with a box on his head, a particle poofer, and a waving prim dick? A company that, despite its reputation for trying to restrict users from the real Internet and giving them a walled-vanilla-pablum version instead (that they tried to convince the clueless newbies was the real Internet), we would have forgotten about after 2000 if they hadn't made themselves even more of a joke by junk-mailing us thousands of environmentally unfriendly CDs?

I... really don't think that's what you meant by comparing SL to AOHell. But I honestly have no idea what you do mean. I can't think of a single positive connotation to AOL, other than that it became a household name. Elaborate, please?

errrrm what's an environmentally unfriendly CD?

To be fair, that is exactly the view of SL held by a lot of uber geeks. I had a fight with someone (over on Volokh Conspiracy, of all places) who insisted that nobody real actually played SL and anybody who actually did was hopelessly lame. You can get pretty much the exactly same commentary on any SL related thread at Slashdot.

Somehow I am comforted by the fact that some ubergeeks do not like Second Life.

One manufactured with environmentally unfriendly processes, transported in the hundreds of millions by fossil-fuel-burning vehicles, to a recipient who doesn't want it, for the sole purpose of ending up in a landfill.

Unless, of course, the recipient is one of those who uses to them to make thrones, lamps, giant fish, or other crafty things: http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2007/10/aol-cd-art-bike.html

So Trout, when you are CEO, where do I send MY CV (or resume if I must call it that lol) as someone with blue chip multinational Customer Service person???????)

Most CD's make cool drink coasters after a few seconds in the microwave

AOL was an extremely cool place to be back in the early 90's. It was populated almost exclusively by early adopter types and the mean IQ level was very high - rather like the early days of SL. (Full disclosure: on AOL's TV commercials from around 1993-1996 I was the person driving the cursor). What AOL did was make the internet easy and accesable to the mainstream at a time when it wasn't (with very few exceptions). Not everyone thought BBSs were the end all be all. The geek squad was there in force (and at CompuServe) until there were greener pastures.

SL is following a very similar path. It started out as almost a private party for techy geeks and artists but now has opened up this relatively new genre to the mainstream. That's a good thing. Anything that posters at Slashdot look down their enormous ego-swelled coke-bottle lensed glasses supporting noses at must be doing something right. Personally I find that place pretty insufferable most of the time. I'd say SL becoming the AOL of virtual worlds would be a best case scenario, not worst.

I'm not.


Seriously? I was traumatized once by putting a porcelain mug with a gold rim in the microwave, I'd be terrified of putting a CD in one now.

I'm running away now so I don't derail the thread any further...

I agree with this. 100%. The games dev industry in particular are in massive contempt.