Long-term residents of Second Life would probably experience the little shiver of recognition that I did during a long-ranging interview with Rod Humble, the new CEO of Linden Lab.
“For me, the hook was the moment I created something,” Humble told me. “It was the moment I made a cube and then checked off ‘activate physics’ and watched as the cube fell to the ground and bounced to its side.”
For many Second Life users, that initial ‘aha’ moment is often something so simple that it later seems difficult to describe the power of the experience: the moment you rez a prim and realize that the ability to create the world is in your own hands; the day you buy your first pair of virtual shoes or hair and just somehow feel, well, emotionally connected to the way your avatar looks; the night you go dancing in a club and it suddenly dawns on you that you’re in a “room” with people who are spread all over the world.
At its core, the Second Life experience isn’t terribly complicated: give users rich tools for creation and communication in a shared 3D space, and see what magic arises.
Humble agrees: “Early on I was exposed to the idea that if you can tap into the power of people’s creativity you’ll have something incredibly powerful. I was exposed to that idea through things like Maxis and the insights of Will Wright (creator of SimCity and Spore). Second Life is onto something really powerful – the ability to create is the magic and I want to help build on that.”
It was incredibly refreshing to have a conversation with Humble and not hear him talk about things like “the long tail of virtual goods” or “making bank”.
In fact, I don’t actually think he mentioned “Linden Lab” itself – his focus was the world, the experience.
After several years where the only press that came out of Battery Street was always about the Lab and how wonderful the Lab is, and how awesome its latest hire (or feature, or product, or market) is….well, it’s nice to just talk about Second Life again with someone who might still be a noob, but who at least gets the power of the prim.
Because after a while, that prim becomes things of increasing orders of magnitude – the prim becomes a table which becomes a dock, a home, a village, or a whole island. Our virtual shoes become vast virtual wardrobes containing not just clothes but shapes, attachments, genders and species, ages and sizes.
And our conversations move into increasing orders of magnitude as well, and it can start because we realized one night that we were in a place with other people, and the ways that we could express ourselves were our own.
The Quality of Conversation
I was reminded of the power of Second Life a few months back when we hosted the first Virtual Veteran/Civilian Dialogue. This event was the virtual equivalent of a broader initiative that brings equal numbers of veterans and civilians together in a facilitated conversation.
From a New York Times article on the Dialogues:
“By the end of the evening, there’s this unity, and the two groups do understand each other better,” Ms. Dolan said. “I think it breaks barriers. That’s why I’ll keep going.”
“The goal,” Mr. Winters said, “is to create a space for a story to be told, to try to counter isolation.”
“What surprised me the most,” he said, “was people’s willingness to be emotionally naked in front of groups of strangers.”
And I couldn’t help thinking that those quotes sound a lot, to me, like Second Life. That maybe the mission of using a virtual world to enhance the human condition isn’t so far off.
What starts as a prim becomes a table, becomes a dock, becomes your home.
What starts as a casual conversation finds increasing orders of magnitude: a chat, a love affair, watching a movie together, attending a lecture, or using a virtual world to heal the effects of war.
Humble seemed to agree but had the same trouble many of us do in explaining the quality of virtual conversation:
“I compare what we’re doing to a conference call – but this is so different. There’s something really special and unique about the fact that we’re talking but I can sit here and look at you, and look at the beach or the world around me. That’s a really special thing.”
But Humble might not have visions of using this special quality to achieve world peace just yet:
“One of the first things that occurred to me was I just want to bring a bunch of friends in here and watch a soccer match together,” he said. “I’m a soccer fan and I want to hang around with other soccer fans, and be here as fans because that’s what you do.”
A More Immersive Web
It’s early days, Humble admits, and he’s nowhere near ready to lay out a grand vision for where Second Life goes next. He’s still looking under the hood a bit, and he has some immediate goals in mind:
“I want to do some of the non-sexy stuff. There’s a magic to the Second Life experience, but what kills me are the little things – those little edges that kind of stop the whole magic feeling. So it’s things like lag, or when things render just a bit too slowly. Those might not be sexy things but it’s really important I think to fix them so they don’t detract from the magic.”
But his broader vision will come from thinking about how Second Life can play a role in the broader digital landscape.
The walls might not be coming down, but Humble seems to have a decidedly different world view than his predecessor: the goal isn’t just to get people in and keep them in, the goal is to understand how Second Life can contribute to the wider digital landscape.
“Look, with things like HTML-5 and more immersive types of things on the Web in general, I can’t help thinking that maybe Second Life has a broader role to play in sort of shaping how we think about interacting and communicating.”
Humble’s vision isn’t just the world – it’s finding a place for that world in the larger digital domain.
It’s Not About the Viewer
Typically, the question you ask is “will we get Second Life on an iPad” but Humble seems to think that the Second Life experience isn’t so much about the device or the viewer or the widgets.
“I’m way less interested in how we program viewers, although we can get into that stuff,” he said.
When Linden Lab founder Philip Rosedale returned to the CEO role, his main contribution seemed to be, um, SCRUM development teams for the Viewer, which struck me as a decidedly geeky way to tackle strategy.
Humble doesn’t put as much stock in how things get programmed or in the idea of the Viewer being such an over-riding focus:
“I’m really interested in new ways we can interact with the world that we haven’t done before. Maybe they’re really simple things or radically simple. Like being able to access text chat when you’re not in-world. Or being able to “see” the world without logging in, as if you can set up a camera to help people take a peek into what’s happening at an event.”
Humble isn’t sure yet what those things are – but what’s clear is his belief that the focus on the Viewer has perhaps come at the expense of thinking about the different ways people might want to interact with the functions of the world. What those ways would look like, it’s too early to tell.
The Ethical Obligation of Privacy
But any talk of the Web, of the wider digital world immediately puts Second Life at risk of a conflict with different views on privacy.
I asked Humble whether he subscribed to the conventional wisdom that in the digital age, privacy is dead:
No, I don’t think that the conventional wisdom is the only way to look at it. Privacy is extremely important for anyone putting themselves out there, expressing themselves, or expressing a side of themselves through an avatar. People don’t want other people to connect the dots from their avatar to their real life person – or even, for that matter, to an alt. One of the ethical obligations we have is to protect people’s privacy.
People come to Second Life because they want a story, they want to be in a story….and we have an ethical obligation to protect that.
I’m not so sure that the conventional wisdom makes any sense. Yes, it might be technically easy to track people and all that. But in the long-term I’m optimistic that we’ll see the pendulum swing back in the other direction towards more privacy.
Frankly, to hear Humble say that he’s optimistic that we’ll see a return to more privacy is – well, for me anyways, heart-breakingly awesome.
The Avatar
Humble doesn’t just believe that we need privacy and control over what we disclose – he believes the avatar is a powerful and deep-seated vehicle for expressing and exploring ourselves:
“It’s not unlike the persona I portray on Facebook I suppose. I mean, I’m very deliberate about what I post on Facebook. It’s a persona. I’m not sure it’s a construct, but it’s certainly an aspect of me.
Now, Second Life lets you really extend those dimensions, the ways you can show yourself.
I don’t want to get all geeky about it, but I sort of see this day coming when there’s a formalization of identity that happens. We haven’t had the tools before to formalize our broken up bits of identity.
See, there’s the me who goes to school meetings with my kids and that’s a very well established identity. And there’s the me who plays shooter games online and I don’t want those separate identities to mix up. It’s not appropriate.
We can increasingly go deep on each element of identity and they become more valuable and I can’t help thinking that if we formalize the structures around those identities and have the tools to do that it might actually change us – it might change the person.
The identity system itself influences the person.
For many of us, Second Life led to a profound rethinking of our concepts of identity and the meaning of “self”.
Humble’s comments were far from geeky – they sound more, to me, like he’s experiencing what many of us have – a thoughtful exploration of what it means to be “me” in these brave new digital worlds.
And any CEO who uses the words “construct” and “formalization” in an interview – well, give them a gold star. 
A Year to Go
I concluded my chat with Humble asking where he think we’d be a year from now.
If we sat down next February and I asked him: “what’s your biggest achievement of the last 12 months, what would it be?”
His response was, I thought, telling:
“Well, first, I hope we’d be sitting down and talking about all the new kinds of content and creations and categories of creation. I mean, that’s what it’s all about – creating new ways to create. I want to be able to sit down and say “Wow, it’s amazing, look how far we’ve come in having ways to make stuff.
But I have a bit of an internal milestone as well. Because what I’d like is that next holiday season, by Christmas say….that anyone in Second Life will be able to give an invitation out to an intelligent person and have them come into Second Life and that person will then thank you that you made the invitation.”
As I was thinking about this after our interview I felt, at first, a bit confused. I wasn’t sure whether his choice of the words “intelligent person” was intentional – but in reviewing my notes he made the point twice.
On reflection, Humble doesn’t preclude anyone, he isn’t saying you need to be intelligent to “get it” (we had talked at length about usability and discoverability) – but what he seems to be saying is that if Second Life can continue to, well….to NOT be IMVU, I suppose.
To be about a quality of experience that can be about dancing, and prims, and watching a soccer match with your mates.
But which can also generate higher orders of creativity and exploration, understanding and connection.
“Your World, Your Imagination?” I asked Humble.
“That seems pretty appropriate to me,” he said.
Thanks for your interview Dusan.
It’s encouraging to hear Rod Humble talking about *creativity* now that he has to manage the evolution of Second Life.
It’s even more encouraging since his personal research into interactive art and uncommercial art videogames demonstrate he’s pretty sincere about this.
It is so refreshing to see that our CEO “gets” Second Life. It would be nice to return to the principles of the YWYI slogan (mantra?) even if we never actually use it again. I think 2011 will be a year to record in the plus column for Linden Lab and Second Life. I look forward to being a part of it. Great interview Dusan!
So, third time lucky?
Maybe Pip Linden had the overall vision, but not the management/business skills to fully realise it? Maybe M Linden had business skills but no real sense of direction? Did we finally choose Bachelor No.3 who both gets it and might just be able to deliver on it too?
While it’s still difficult to see through the ennui fog hanging over SL right now, Humble is a welcome glimmer of light in the distance.
So much for those people who state that Linden Lab is “Facebooking Second Life”.
Just compare what Facebook’s Zuckerberg said about multiple identities
(”Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity”)
with what Humble said:
“There’s the me who goes to school meetings with my kids and the me who plays shooter games online, and I don’t want those separate identities to mix up. It’s not appropriate”.
(personally, I found Rod’s statement very reassuring as well)
On a different topic, it’s also interesting to compare what Humble says in “It’s Not About the Viewer” paragraph with the “Vurl” idea explained last year by Grace McDunnough.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Dusan Writer and Grid Jumper, Russell Holt. Russell Holt said: Virtual Dialogues: My Conversation with Rod Humble, CEO of #LindenLab http://me.lt/1×8ro #secondlife [...]
Thanks everyone! One of the things that was difficult to express was how refreshingly, well, “normal” Rod seems. Interested, curious, engaged, attentive – he asked as many questions as he answered…and he speaks like, well, just a slightly brighter than average bloke who can still use words like “construct”.
Never once mentioned SCRUM, and I never once felt like he had been ‘managed’ by the PR troops to stay on message.
Football! It’s football! Supporting the greatest football team the world has ever seen does not get you off the hook here!
That was a really refreshing interview, especially the privacy parts, one of the reasons I passionately dislike Facebook is because they want everyone to reveal too much info, which will, with the advent of workplace social networking policies, stifle open debate and criticism as well as stifling creative thought and expression.
I’ve been impressed with all of the interviews from Mr Humble so far.
Really good interview Dusan and I think Eris has hit on a very interesting point in the comments here with this comment:
“Maybe Pip Linden had the overall vision, but not the management/business skills to fully realise it? Maybe M Linden had business skills but no real sense of direction? Did we finally choose Bachelor No.3 who both gets it and might just be able to deliver on it too?”
I’ve always though of Philip as an idealist and M as a realist. That’s quite a broad generalisation but let me try to explain:
I love Philip. His vision and idealism was necessary for SL to even exist. Without his idealistic approach I don’t think SL would have grown to anywhere near the size it has. However, I do think that sometimes his vision suffered from being to ‘Utopian’ (for want of a better word). He sometimes sold SL as some sort of wonderful alternate universe where you can be or do whatever you want. While this is true to some extent, I think it ignored the unavoidable fact that there simply *has* to sometimes be tough business decisions to me made. I think that sometime Philip’s idealism promoted unrealistic expectations in it’s users. SL *is* a wonderful world where we can be and do things that we could never do in RL. However, we need to always remember that at the core of this world is a real world company that naturally has to come with all the facets (both good and bad) of a profit making business.
Don’t get me wrong, Philip obviously does have a strong business mind or he wouldn’t be as rich and successful as he is. I still think his idealism lacked a bit of realism sometimes though.
M on the other hand was very much a realist. He was a man of business who was prepared to make tough business decision, probably knowing full well that those decisions were going to be controversial and unpopular to some people. It’s not a popular type of person to be, but I think it was a type of person that was necessary for SL at the time. You could perhaps even argue that it was Philip’s over emphasis on idealism that ultimately made it necessary for a heavy dose of realism to bring things back in check.
The point is that I think both types of people were necessary for SL at various points in its evolution.
Now we are hopefully reaching a stage where it’s no longer necessary to over emphasise the idealist nature of SL because it is generally accepted that you can do and be wonderful things in SL. We also shouldn’t need to over emphasise the tough and unpopular business decisions any more. Those tough decisions have been made to bring SL back in check and what we now need is balance.
There are now enough people in SL to make the need to oversell it’s wonders unnecessary. LL as a company is now stable enough to make the need to take a tough business approach unnecessary.
What we now need is someone who can carefully balance the idealism and the realism. Someone who recognise all the wonderful things that SL is and can be, but who also recognises that at it’s core it’s still a business. Someone who can make SL even more wonderful and get even more people interested in SL without trashing everything that SL already is. Someone, it seems, like Rod.
He won’t please everyone, that is a fact. I think there will always be some who want SL to be like the very early days where, essentially, anything goes. It can never be that again though. It’s appeal has become to broad for that and is only likely to get even broader. What is important now is to balance that broad appeal which, ultimately, is what is best for the majority of SL users.
Bring it on Rod. Bring it on
“creating new ways to create.”
For such a short and sweet set of words, I don’t believe I could’ve read anything better in part response to the question you asked.
Congratulations on the first interview. I imagine a lot of us are as delighted as you are to see a new Linden Lab CEO so optimistic about empowering the company to empower us.
Great presentation of what sounds like a fascinating interview! I’m so glad to see that he (unlike M) is interested in Second Life itself, the experience. I’m glad that he took the time at the very beginning to get inworld and try stuff. I know we’ve been repeated burned in the past, and yet the way he talks makes me hopeful.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Grace McDunnough, Opensource Obscure. Opensource Obscure said: Wow. Compare what @rodvik says in "It’s Not About the Viewer" block http://bit.ly/ikwozW w/ @GraceMcDunnough Vurl idea http://bit.ly/9hXP9O [...]
I really am liking this guy a lot. And not because he’s into something I am but that he sees the possibilities and doesn’t limit the perspective. I commend LL for the addition. It shows a lot of foresight on their part as well. so….YAY! Team! I say……
@dusan:
“People come to Second Life because they want a story, they want to be in a story” (quoting Humble)
Sounds more like a marketing statement than an overall representation of all stakeholders. Not everyone sees Virtual Worlds as storytelling/storymaking platforms.
“I never once felt like he had been ‘managed’ by the PR troops to stay on message”
Oh, but Humble *is* very faithful to Philip’s directives. Dressing things as his own, relaying past messages in his own words. Without explicitly mentioning things like ‘fast easy fun’.
Doesn’t give any indication of Humble’s capabilities when it comes to Virtual Worlds/Second Life, though.
@OObscure:
Having multiple identities indeed does show a lack of integrity, etc. Big difference between using a few reputable aliases to maintain privacy etc versus juggling multiple identities.
Thought this remark was very telling and very true-
“I can’t help thinking that maybe Second Life has a broader role to play in sort of shaping how we think about interacting and communicating.”
In the age of Social Media, Second Life, which is one of the most dynamic, real time, immersive and interactive platforms is not usually included. We do have a broader role to play and that is in the scope of what we can broadcast, how we can integrate media into what we create and how that message can be heard by actually distributing it onto other platforms as well.
Thank you Dusan for this excellent interview with our new CEO.
Yes folks, we have a Winner!
ok. soccer. fine..:)
so who’s sponsoring the “teams” and paying for the 300.00 usd sim a month… and who can afford to do that in medium that can only have the 22 players on the field and then maybe another 10 “in the stands” at a single time…? before it lags to a screenshot and a blog post fuax pr release.( which by now the realworld has caught onto;)
when you’all figure it out, let me know and ill get “podball” funded to be “back” in SL….;)
live cameras to the web- from LL a part of the service fee– great start…
still, if its anothers(creators) world as well.. remember they need to be able to afford to use it- and resell the service offered from it….
LL making all the bank, changing the rules via TOS, not contract… thats been the issue since day one…. so decide who WE are.. and tell us WHAT you want to SELL US… and hold to it.
or else, we;ll just continue leave and go back to whatever, theres no need to risk anything on the streets like in Egypt… were as virtual as LL.
so forget the “virtual nation building” meme of the LL founders..they have already been forced from the palace.
either make your own soccer games with FIFA licenses inside of SL… or service better server/tool systems for others to “license”-rent.
otherwise, the dilemna of SLs continued existence and non growth(shrinkage)will remain.
the Silly valley idea of the PIVOT— its already been found out…:) So the time is to make one final pivot for the customers/clients/residents/??? and finally decide who they are..cause they have now (finally-good lord) decided who you -LL inc has truly been.:)
CEO gets paid to be the messenger at this point.
many are listening… many now maybe not more intellegent, but at least more educated:)
OMG! Maybe…just maybe my dream of 2007 isn’t going to die.
This is the first guy that seems to really understand the magic you spoke of… the simple magic of creating that first cube, of hearing that “boom” and seeing the magic.
Thanks so much for the post!
[...] speaks Rod Humble in what is quite possibly the best interview held with him since he took office at Linden Lab, and Kudos to Dusan Writer for bringing it to [...]
Increasingly impressed & increasingly optimistic .
I have been seriously committed to SL for just 27 months,
but am Inworld 12 hours daily & want to stay
If Rod Humble can get his new team behind him
if he can get these nonsexy , but so important basics addressed
if he can revitalise a currently very sick customer service mechanism
I will look forward to inviting others to come into SL
& I will maintain my presence & $ investment
Great Interview Dusan …. thanks
[...] [...]
[...] [...]
As a long time resident and in the face of some major drama in SL surrounding privacy and tools used to circumvent privacy I am glad to see what our new CEO says about privacy. Hope he takes some notice of what we have been saying for such a long time and our efforts to communicate via the very limited tools we are offered to help guide LL in ways that we the residents want.
This interview does spark some hope that we might finally see a substantial change in the Lab’s attitude towards SL. One thing that always struck me was how the Lindens seemed so focused on the software and hardware, ignoring altogether elements such as presentation and design.
I was admiring the sim “Hangars Liquides” two nights ago with a friend. We were standing in the little bar near the sim entrance. A large, open room facing the street and an impressive vista beyond. I couldn’t help but think how different a new user’s impression would be if they saw a view like that rather than the aging, poorly constructed builds at Ahern and Moosehead.
I’ve often wondered how the Lindens could ignore something like proper camera placement, something the video game industry has wrestled with for years before figuring out how best to handle the third person view. A critical look at SL’s camera will reveal it to be the root of many problems every SL user is frustrated by.
When I visited the public orientation sim I found the new user experience had been reduced to a small, bland hallway littered with signs. An extremely passive way of trying to teach new users how to control their avatar. One that does not even attempt to explain much beyond walking and flying.
I remain convinced that what success SL has had can be attributed to the strength of the concept, despite it’s poor execution. There is much untapped potential and I would love to see Mr. Humble set Linden Lab in the direction it needs to go to finally realize that potential.
“Your World, Your Imagination?” I asked Humble.
“That seems pretty appropriate to me,” he said.
Nuff said.
Thanks for a great interview. So down to earth!
The comments on creating new ways to create screams (to me) of Humble’s background in the Sims, which to me is a good thing. He knows that people want to be able to change their virtual world to suit themselves, at least within the constraints of the world.
And the thing about multiple identities very much rings true. It’s part of the human condition, and Humble is aware of that! I mean, you act like a different person towards you spouse in comparison to your workmates, right?
Here’s hoping Humble can live up to what is so far a good reputation.
Shiva Draconia – Simmer since the start ^_~
Well with that view, I hope the CEO takes some action to help improve the resident experience, Tools designed to circumvent user privacy really kill it for me, and I really would like to see something done about that and see tools such as redzone CDS and quickware done away with, I have an alt that I use for the marketing side of SL and get really annoyed with these tools trying to connect the dots as you put it between my personal main account and the account I use for marketing the content that I have created. Looking forward to seeing the action you take towards improving the privacy of your users, because right now, there is none.
“I really would like to see something done about that and see tools such as redzone CDS and quickware done away with,”
I am with you on that topic Trem. I am glad that the new CEO of LL can understand a persons desire for privacy in SL without their RL or alts in SL being linked by a person using scripts to sneak into another residents computer without their permission and glean information that residents do not want disclosed about their RL or SL.
I realize Rodvik is new, and needs the benefit of the doubt, and seems to be off to a good start emphasizing the wonder of creativity and “story” and all, and hitting all of the right words to sound “OK” especially to Dusan.
But I’m completely over the “new guy infatuation” now very quick.
He says this:
““Look, with things like HTML-5 and more immersive types of things on the Web in general, I can’t help thinking that maybe Second Life has a broader role to play in sort of shaping how we think about interacting and communicating.”
And what I find profoundly scary is that men like this, with power and connections, and really, more connections and power than Philip Linden had, when you come down to it, think that voting is something you casually and quickly remove from a platform.
It comes from a very old-school MMORPG game-god belief that game gods, never, ever give the vote to the players: “The client is in the hands of the enemy,” is their concept.
Anyone who can talk about how SL shapes the rest of the Internet *and takes out voting* is profoundly troubling — and oppressive — in my view.
As for what he’s saying on privacy, once you take off your rose-coloured glasses about him having any notion of privacy at all, you find something also profoundly scary, a la Clay Shirky and Beth Noveck, and that is “the self is constructed online”.
When you view the self as a “construct on line,” it becomes very relative, very collectivized, very controlled by platform owners. You might do the constructing, but that construction is in the hands of the coders.
A different view says that individuals have “certain inalienable rights” or that their civil rights are inherent, that their individual isn’t a construct, but an inherency.
This “construct” stuff comes from the Marxists, the Derida, the deconstructionists, whatever modern clap-trap — or very ancient tribal ritualistic beliefs that game gods always tap into.
The bottom line is, this lovely man has taken away our voting, he has disenfranchised us. And he has declared us a construct.
You have to resist this sort of thing now, or all of the Internet and all of life will be like this.
Suella, you’re spouting nonsense. Rodvik is no different than Philip in terms of idealism — listen to him natter on about the creative godlike powers, etc. He may be less market-oriented than M Linden, but he’s in fact more scarily ambitious in that he has plans not for just SL but the entire Internet. In fact, he may be the one brought on by the board to work toward a sell-out to some other larger entity.
Your notion that we’re now past the utopian phase and in a more moderate or business-like phase — and therefore can junk things like voting as some sort of idealistic trapping — is what makes your interventions on the forums so odious.
The goal of the platform should be to enable as wide a pluralism as possible and not just what Suella Ember, creator and seller of men’s fantasy costumes for women like maids and nurses, finds useful for her business.
The problem is there are in fact too many places where “anything goes” still very much left unattended in SL as griefing continues on a regular basis due to the same coder nihilism we dealt with 6 years ago, even if some of the more obvious miscreants like Rodney Linden who blatantly palled around with griefers are now removed.
By the same token if there isn’t a lot of scope still for utopianism, SL is no longer useful as a prototyping machine.
RE: “There are now enough people in SL to make the need to oversell it’s wonders unnecessary. LL as a company is now stable enough to make the need to take a tough business approach unnecessary.”
What is is that seizes people like you, Suella, and makes you so *damn* sycophantic?!
This company isn’t stable — what are you smoking? It took on rapidly and then shed more than a third of its force — more than 100 people — some of them very visibly in charge of community activities like Blue or Pink and some of them with very long stays at the Lab like Koha Linden — that’s not health.
They’ve had to convulse through several big unpopular changes like closing the teen grid and merging teens on the adult grid that is continuing to make large and influential constituents, both the teen grid program managers with grants and the educators, and the adult content merchants, filled with anger and continuing problems as it shakes out.
So, Suella, idealistic enough to allow people to have adult fantasies with costumes, but pragmatic enough to enable merchants to sell lots of costumes. We get it!
But SL is a governance model for the whole Internet and all our lives, not just for that one store on our block with the blinds closed.
Good interview.
I’m very hopeful that this is the guy that can turnearound SL’s fortunes. I’ve liked all his soundbytes to date.
I guess if we don’t see the current epidemic of privacy invasion spyware banned in the next week we will know the guy has either no authority to make changes or has no intention and is just saying stuff he thinks people want to hear.
[...] this. Linden Lab, the company which built and operates Second Life, has a new CEO, Rod Humble, and people I respect seem to be very impressed by him. But I’ve been through this before, I liked and respected both of Linden Lab’s previous [...]
Thank you, Dusan. Mr. Humble, the world is watching.
It would be fun to see the “magic” come back and Second Life again suggest untapped potential for something new online. Too often with non-SLers it’s either the butt of retread jokes from “The Office” episode or a “oh, that still exists?” moment.
I rarely agree with Prok, but she’s got it correct: the company hit a rough patch and made some unpleasant choices. They need to recover some lost ground. But then, so did Apple Computer in 1997.
Idealism will only take us so far. At least Mr. Humble has a sense of what’s needed. I don’t recall Philip Rosedale talking much about lag, but maybe I’d just stopped listening.
… this interview just makes me very happy
ps- 85-97..mac years, but yes.. the original apples computers did help build the software industry and early DTP.
Build. Create. Stories. Identity. Privacy.
Your World, Your Imagination.
Hmm. Rod is on the right track!
@Prokofy in my case, I’m waiting to see what will replace JIRA voting. As I recall you saying for so many years, JIRA voting as a “tool for democracy” was more than flawed. Now you seem to support it again, possibly for the only reason that there is nothing else in SL to vote for (well, except for ratings on the SL Marketplace). Hmm. “JIRA as a tool for democracy” pretty much meant that a thousand residents would make “decisions” (for the lack of a better word) on behalf of millions who wouldn’t care to log in on the JIRA (most not even being aware of it; and perhaps half or more not even able to *understand* the issues, either because they were too technical… or because they don’t speak English anyway).
No, if we want democratic governance in SL, it’s not going to be through the JIRA. Then again, I’m biased; I never believed (and still don’t) in direct democracy of any sort and are all for representative democracy anyway…
[...] Myös Dusan Writer on julkaissut Rod Humblen haastattelun blogissaan Dusan Writer’s Metaverse – Virtual Dialogues: My Conversation with Rod Humble, CEO of Li…. [...]
I am very pleased to hear this focus on creativity and interaction. Before SL I was VERY interested in developing in virtual worlds. I had attempted to land a job at a game studio to explore my passion for creating interesting non-violent content. There was this wall of “no experience” that I was unable to climb over. There I was with a huge desire to create with no tools or environment to work in.
Enter Second life. I searched around for a suitable place to move my virtual life that wasn’t focused on combat and happened upon SL. My first day I customized my pants and shirt, shaped my avatar, and began to adjust to the interface. I had a lot of experience with game controls so in a few days I was using the client just fine. I instantly saw that I could import my light photography photos and hang them on the walls of my first house on my first tiny piece of land. I’d spent countless hours customizing my homes in other worlds and had wished for a toolset like SL provides. I even went back to the old world’s forums and said “the controls should be more like SL for moving things”.
But this is only the beginning of the story. In the next few months I brought in an old friend I’d done lightshows with in real life with in the past. Together we started creating anything and everything we could think of as the power of our tools and ambition to create took hold. Soon, Inspire Space Park was born. We met a new friend from Switzerland who volunteered his creativity to our team and things got really interesting. He too had a passion for developing with no place to develop.
So each of us, had untapped talent just waiting to come out. SL gave us the opportunity to create and collaborate but the big win was being able to share this with the rest of the world. Thus began the legacy of our park. An all volunteer staff creating a place simply because we wanted to. People from all over have come to our park and shared this space with us. Artists have shared their music with us, their particle creations, their machinima skills, and their time.
All of this happened because SL is the people’s development environment. Instead of having to buy thousands of dollars of software we can’t afford or spend years obtaining “experience” enough to work in a professional studio, we download a small free client and connect to a world of creative opportunity.
Yes you can run a successful business and even market products if you are wise enough to find the right way. Yes you can buy as many clothes, cars, boats, homes, etc etc… but what makes all of this work is creativity and the sharing of that creativity.
Now all that creativity aside, another valuable part of SL for me has been learning about myself. What are my boundaries? What am I like when I don’t have to answer to anyone? When I stare into the void who am I? SL removed me from any box I might have been thinking inside of. SL is a limitless expanse of personal growth potential. Not everyone can see SL so seriously but for me, it changed my life. It showed me if I have a will there is a way and likely many others who have the same will. It showed me who I was inside and helped me share that with others.
I hope this helps Mr. Humble understand that he is on the right track. This interview has convinced me that my decision to stay connected to SL has been a good one. Apart from what has been said in this interview I would highly recommend that Mr. Humble take a look into the customer support side of SL. Other than a few shining star support reps, I’ve been continually disappointed by the level of technical support I have received as a concierge level resident. My guess is the support team is grossly understaffed or underexperienced and that is simply not acceptable in a world that exists within a technology platform.
Thanks for bringing some light to the darkness Dusan and Mr. Humble. Cheers.
wow, it’s like time travel to 2005! what can we do with this? how can it fit in the grander scheme of things? we need less lag? blah, blah, blah
[...] Virtual Dialogues: My Conversation w/ Rod Humble, CEO of Linden Lab (Dusan) [...]
[...] in many, many blogs. This will not be one of those places. I’ve read many of the interviews (Dusan Writer had a very good write-up), listened to Phaylen’s interview, read other people’s [...]
[...] direction towards more privacy.” – Rod Humble, CEO of Linden Lab – February 12, 2011 in an interview with (the wonderful) Dusan [...]
[...] towards some-more privacy.” – Rod Humble, CEO of Linden Lab – Feb 12, 2011 in an talk with (the wonderful) Dusan [...]
[...] this. Linden Lab, the company which built and operates Second Life, has a new CEO, Rod Humble, and people I respect seem to be very impressed by him. But I’ve been through this before, I liked and respected both of Linden Lab’s previous CEOs, [...]
[...] Humble, the new CEO of Linden Lab was quoted in an article as saying “People don’t want other people to connect the dots from their avatar to [...]
I found Dusan’s notes in a dumpster. They, of course had sections that didn’t make it verbatim to the final report
[QUOTE]See, there’s the me who speaks to journalists and says things like “People don’t want other people to connect the dots from their avatar to their real life person – or even, for that matter, to an alt. One of the ethical obligations we have is to protect people’s privacy.” – and that’s an identity that I am trying to establish
And there’s the me who is CEO of a company that sees a gross invasion of privacy but that doesn’t have the principles or ethics to call it out.
I don’t want those separate identities to mix up. It’s not appropriate.
[/QUOTE]
Go placidly amid the noise and haste. Talk the talk. Limp.
[...] that got SL up in arms. The primary issue here is privacy, which, according Dusan Writer’s interview with LL CEO Rod Humble, is also in line with the Labs’current way of [...]
[...] talking to Dusan Writer recently, Rod Humble made a very interesting [...]
[...] [...]
I’m feeling sad that Linden Lab seems to be gone into hiding. No real information on the official blog since two weeks.
Here are the last three posts on the blog:
• 03-11-2011
Support the Japan Earthquake & Pacific Tsunami Relief with Linden Dollars
•03-08-2011
2011 Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference
I’m feeling sad that Linden Lab seems to be gone into hiding. No real information on the official blog since two weeks.
Here are the last four posts on the blog:
• 03-11-2011
Support the Japan Earthquake & Pacific Tsunami Relief with Linden Dollars
• 03-08-2011
2011 Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference
• 03-03-2011
[VIDEO] Macros Save You Time with Frequently-Used Text and Images
• 03-03-2011
Finding Land in Second Life
Important information, isn’t it? /me smiles sarcastically.
No news from the new CEO – no information. This kind of interview you post here might be interesting to some virtual academics but doesn’t answer my questions which way this virtual world is going. The Lindens promised “Improving our Lines of Communication with the Community” [Quote] on their blog on 02-09-2011. Well, looks to me as if improved communication means no communication at all.