Re: Project Promotion

It is sad to me when people put thier effort and creativity into projects that truly advance second life as a platform for something other than selling clothes and skins, and then LL avoids publicizing the project because the person is a forum hot potato.

Sl has huge potential as a platform for non-commercial educational uses. It also, because of the diversity of content creation tools availble, has huge potential for things like machimation (yes I know proper native video capture tools might help). Projects like these answer the question of "yeah but what do you with it." Sl is not a good platform for game design, and it has not really been pushed as a web-alternative, but wow in education and machimation SL has goldmines of potential.

Yet somehoe the people who are pursuing this aspect of second life seem to have thier projects shut down out of fear of forum backlash, or perhaps backlash in general. A couple of projects that I know of have gotten minimal media attention, whent hey should be hyped up in all official SL channels. And presented to the world as valuable examples of the sorts of things that can be done with the platform. Projects like the ones I have in mind should be the revipients of developer's incentive awards because they truly do advance the platform. But no. Certain issues of politcis and drama keep these projects for the limelight out of fear of causing a stir.

This makes me sad.

Because to me this is a case of policy bent to the will of the mob. Not because the mob has, in fact said anything, and even irrespective of whether any mob exists, but its the very notion that LL's publicity and promotion have become influenced at all on how much of an uproar will attach to promoting the particular creator.

In all the back and forth about projects and economics and FIC favoritsm, I have maintained that LL needs to set down defined standards and procedures. the policies need to attach to all projects and need to focus on equal opportunities for all. Again not because of any favoritism in fact, but really to shut down the potential allegations of favoritsm from happening in the first place. If you set down a policy, an dclarify expectations, then you are free to promote projects as you see fit.

The question of "how will they take this in the forums" should not enter into the equation of "should this project get publicity?" It is for this reason that I back the developer directory, and beleived strongly in the "publicity panel" of resident who want to be availble for comment about thier projects in SL.

I know allthe arguments that LL is a company and can do what they want. Unfortunately LL is not that unresponsive to the user community. LL needs to set policies or where by user projects are promoted, supported and publicized. Interestingly enough these same policies might go a long way to revamping how developer incintive awards are handed out.

To me it seems simply a matter of Linden Lab continuing to develop the software. They're not ready for the world to see it as a useful platform. It's too soon; the buzz would die before the marketing stage was set. We'll likely see such projects heavily promoted after they finally break through the beta barrier and are ready to sell or license the platform to other companies and individuals.

Well thats an interesting point but then How long do you think SL can wallow around as some beta version of software that will be improved at some point? The issue is that people are doing things with the platform right now. If people are turning out high quality content as it is, that tells me the platform is ready.

And the value of the content to the platform is a greater priority than the reltive public stature of the creator.

I completely agree. LL is so concerned with appearing impartial because of the cries of favouratism and FIC. It's a shame. There's lots of stuff I'm sure they would like to promote but they just can't anymore. There is always someone around the corner who will scream "BUT WHAT ABOUT ME!!?"

It's never Linden Lab's job to "hype" up projects. Projects have all the tools they need, including forums, blogs, podcasts, portfolios, press releases, press kits, myspace.com, Flickr, trade shows, etc. Sometimes projects have to go out of thier way to be creative outside of SL and not wait around for first of the month hand outs. It has been working well for usand we deal largely with education and other serious games projects.

There are official channels for submitting neat, press or homepage worthy projects. Two that come to mind:

The PR Suggestions Box

Showcase Submissions

It is a paralyzer, I find. Instead of being able to blast off rockets into the sky, too much is stuck on the ground. Which is awfully, horrendously, terribly, putridly limiting and disappointing. And worse. I'm not even talking about product endorsements, but simply naming them. Must we be so lame and impotent that we can't even list specific examples of excellence in SL?

"If I've forgotten something, PLEASE let me know what I've missed out! I can always use more!" is what I like to say.

It is for this reason that when I name what I love in Second Life, I always like to keep it open so that fellow Residents who know things I don't can school me. This has several advantages, a couple of which are: 1) I get to love more kewl schtuff and 2) I quite possibly make new friends because of common interests.

Fear is such a horrible crippler. Thank goodness I can still see so many bright auras here—they may be murked under the dim of sameyness, but in the long run, I'm convinced passion and enthusiasm will still shine through.

ha. yeah exactly.

"Bad stuff is going on, but I can't give you any details"?

Excellent!

What projects are you refering to?

I can't name names per the TOS, and details aren't important, policies are.

I can't name names. I don't want to do so in fear of adding something to the fire.

Assume hypothetically if you will, that a person did a project, the project is exceeding well done and benefits SL, this person is the subject of controversy because of past projects and complaints by many residents, and that LL is not choosing to support the projects because of the prior controversy.

I know this does not help much, but i am being obscure to not name names. I am really not trying to talk out of my hat. sorry.

my point is that is saddens me that this would happen, and that some definite and coherent policies could resolve the situation, in my opinion.

Without knowing details, I have no way of figuring out what policies you're referring to.

Honestly.

I don't know what you're getting at.

PM or IM me with details if you think it needs to be a big secret.

Besides the obvious - what are you talking about? - what do you mean, "LL is not choosing to support the projects"?

What kind of support do you expect them to give individual businesses in SL? That they don't give to others?

As someone mentioned, there is the handy PR Suggestion Box for us to bring projects to their attention.

coco

Not even a dozen posts in, and we are having the "I cant talk about concepts, I need details" conversation. And of course the natural life span of details is about half a heart-beat until they are picked to death.

I agree that if LL posted policies and procedures covering how they would evaluate and promote to the community-at-large any on-going projects, it would be easier for everyone to know how to apply for such assistance, to rest comfortably that any such assistance was meted out with a fair hand, and for the commuity-at-large to participate in projects of interest.

Well, that's the part I'm most interested in, Jim. I can't figure out what the "Linden promotion" is supposed to be, aside from the ways we already have for bringing attention to our projects, which I assume are open to the individuals involved.

coco

LL promotes SL in a variety of ways outside the SL community, such as articles in magazines, listing on websites, etc.

In addition a vriety of Linden Sponsored vehilces exist for project promotion, the most obvious being new world notes, and of course inclusion on the SL web Page. Other avenues of promotion also include things liek the wells fargo project.

OK, well, I'm guessing I'm just not going to get what you are getting at without knowing more details.

But as it stands, anybody can put their info into the PR Suggestion Box, and anybody can be considered for being referred to for articles.

As for the New World Notes, I have never considered that something which is equally available for everyone. I have always seen it as one guy's very personal viewpoints, and his own personal selections, which he gets paid by LL to do, for some reason. If it is the case that he has refused to cover something newsworthy because of who is doing it, then I would agree that wouldn't be right, unless those are the only people he always covers.

The Wells Fargo project - I'm not sure what you mean by that, but that was something somebody else did, and the Lindens just picked a resident group to get that whole deal. That resident group then picked who they wanted for their goods to be on that land. (Whatever happened to Wells Fargo, is it still going on?) So those people just got all this, with no announcement or anything. Presumably this will be different in the future, in that people can at least bring themselves to the attention of the Lindens via trying out for the Developer Directory.

As for the Infonet, I have no idea why the Lindens decided to promote that and give the Infohubs to them.

The Web Page - it has improved some with, at least, the inclusion of more faces, and there was a call put out for inclusion in that.

The best we can do, I think, is ask that they make all such opportunities known to everyone (which they did not do in the case of Infohub), and to make their selections from the ones submitted. Beyond that, I don't think we get to choose which ones they will finally select, or why.

At least a person can try OUT for the Developer Directory, for instance, though, and that is about all one can ask for, unless one wants to get into some sort of SL affirmative action, or unless it is obviously just window dressing for selecting the same individual all the time, which I doubt it would be. I think the Lindens like getting a lot of talent and content from a variety of people, and they can, whenever they put out call for it.

If it's a charity thing, I know they have promoted that in the past, and I would imagine (could be wrong) that there aren't so many people trying to do those that they wouldn't help promote one again.

But - I still don't know what I'm talking about, so, I don't know what I'm talking about. Just rattling on!

coco

This is what I think it is:

(insert generic witty yet sarcastic statement here, include allegations of FIC and general hints about the IQ/age of other posters).


- Newfie