Digado argued eloquently about needing more WHY and less HOW when it comes to Second Life in a running thread from my attendance at the NMC conference. His argument is that:

In actually communicating the advantages/application of virtual worlds beyond the developers and early adopters, the WHY question is the more relevant. It identifies a problem, gives direction to development, addresses a niche that could truly find a use inside the application and create a buzz based on achieved accomplishments rather than expectations (overly simplified, but a proven strategy and well documented in ‘Crossing the Chasm’). I haven’t seen that many solid attempts to see the WHY being answered yet, certainly not within the Second Life development.

When M Linden talked about his first week at Linden Lab he talked about the concurrency monitors on the walls:

“Everywhere I went a concurrency monitor (a big screen with a chart tracking the number of concurrent users over time) was in view. Any blip in the line would indicate a problem and it was comforting to know that everyone at Linden is attuned to platform stability.”

But I ran across this on Wired…a brainstorm board over at the offices where the launch of Spore is being planned. Looks like a sort of cluster of promotion ideas. And it made me wonder, are there signs up at the Lab with words like “Inspire Not Inform” or “Provokes Curiosity”?