So it seems things sometimes can happen when you really ask for it…

The cart where the 130 Lindens took place also made a stop at Mark Kingdon’s office and took them all for a new adventure… In French we use the word “charette” to talk about a lay-off, and a “charette” is this old open cart which used to take the aristocrats to the guillotine during the revolution… Fortunately no one should be guillotined here. Mark Kingdon surely tried his best, considering Second Life is such a different “product”, and actually I really wonder if Second Life is a product… It is in a way, but maybe you need a really 2.0 or 3.0 Marketing approach here, considering the community is really judge and part of the product.

Anyway, as I explained in my post “Second Life, engage me one more time!”, the place is cleaned and fit, and the Lab can start to work again. And they need it to be fast enough to stop the hemorrhage and reconquer both old resident hearts’s and new young hearts…
What is there in the head of Philip Rosedale? How do you feel after you stopped working on what was your motivation during so many years? How do you feel to return?

“Our thinking as a team is that my returning to the CEO job now can bring a product and technology focus that will help rapidly improve Second Life. We need to simplify and focus our product priorities—concentrating all our capabilities on making Second Life easier to use and better for the core experiences that it is delivering today. I think that I can be a great help and a strong leader in that process.

It is an honor to have a chance to help more directly again, and I come to this mission with energy, excitement, and an open mind about what we need and how we need to do it. I want to see Second Life continue to grow, amaze, and change the world. It’s what gets me up in the morning. Despite the challenges of such a big change, I am happy to be drafting this blog post while sitting in our San Francisco office, surrounded by the many Lindens who have made it all possible. »

Hopefully, that 2 years break was a time for Philip to resource, learn and take strength because he will need it. We all know when the community will have finish to rejoice, critics and resistances will come as usual.. And we also guess lots of things are in the pipe and that only a man with a deep inside vision is able to break the walls.

3 keys for the next 100 days.

As politics say, next 100 days of the new realm will be crucial in designing the future, even if we all know that the complexity behind Second Life forbid us to think it can be achieved in 100 days… Qui va piano va sano… but sometimes situations are willing men to take risks… and anticipate the moves as in a chess game.

My deep thought is that accessibility is a major key for a success. We definitely need to have :
- a Second Life for everyone, for residents, for education, for enterprise.
- a Second Life accessible no matter what is your system, firewall, terminal, etc.

Second key is called customization. I want to be able to build my own screen and design my own experience of Second Life, according to my needs. Compared to Ajax UI, Viewer 2 is pushy and generate lots of disorder if you use it multitasking. So the viewer should naturally leads to :
- an interactive, immersive and stable platform able to offer its residents all means to choose what and how they want to use it, and all means to create and produce content.

What about if third key would be the cool old long tail effect based on the fantastic collective intelligence that only Second Life residents can provide. Not only it would take part of a natural process of governance but it would also allow Second Life to definitely take the lead on its competitor.

Adoption and engagement will come naturally if the Lab is able to lead Second Life on those tracks, and give us a new kind of future called My Second Life, my world, my imagination…(does it ring a bell?)


I am born in a culture where idolatry was a sin and I definitely reject all kinds of cult of personality. But talking about Philip Rosedale’s soul last week, was a true feeling. Second Life is a piece of Philip’s soul and right now, Second Life cannot work without Philip Rosedale. That is a fact than Linden Lab’s board has realized. No matter if they are about or not to organize a beauty contest and sell the Lab. For sure, there is money and politics involved here too, but the whole story is also about a dream, and dreams are powerful, can move mountains especially when leadership is based on solid and complementary partnership. Think about Louis XIV and Colbert, or on a lower level, Yves Saint-Laurent and Pierre Berger. Big projects are made of realism and dreams. Second Life definitely needs both, to achieve its goal. Your dream Philip, and our dream too… Let’s make it happen together.

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Did I miss something ? Sometimes I think my english language escapes from me to hide away things that I would naturally see in french… But no, I think I did not, things are just the way they seem to be. We entered in a new era and we are going to adjust, as usual.

This week end, while I was writing the last post, Engage me again, I went thru the readings of a lot of twitts and blog posts, to see what was the general mood. Coming out of those, were a lot of doubts, a lot of anger, like if everyone was deeply concerned by what happened last week. M. Linden was often seen as the bad guy of the film. Some were even calling Philip Rosedale to come back. But Philip was silent, M. Linden was short on his post and his letter, and the rest of the team was not responding to mails… Maybe they were all watching the football worldcup…

So Clara decided to go to SL to see how was the mood inworld and to catch up with a few friends. Or maybe just go and work on some new trees. The problem is that when you work out of virtual worlds to promote virtual world, you gradually end up losing the sense of it. When evening comes you rather want to keep it quiet, away from the computer, away from work… Hanging around the sad Linden graveyard at Rouge, Clara met a friend she has not seen for a while, and started a conversation about life and jazz, then solved a few problems with lands, and end up exploring the forest of Leni and Timmi. A couple was riding a horse, a fairy was flying the site, avatars were popping in. And Clara finally started to design a pine-tree. No noises from the outside world, no conversations about the lay-off. The world was just going on its own way. And one more time the magic was there, in the smooth breeze of the wind… there was the soul of Philip Linden.

Early morning, I opened the Second Life website from a browser which I do not usually use, (which means where I am not logged in), and fell on the new home page of the website. A nice graphic and  motion welcome interface, including full panoramic machiminas. As I clicked to join as a noob, I was proposed to choose between 3D very real animated characters (maybe it is in test, because I could not find it again). So far away from the world we found in 2006. But so close to what is our world, our imagination… Today’s world, in all its facets…

The words of Philip Rosedale, talking at SLCC 2007 in Chicago came back to my mind.

« (extract from Virtual World News) (…) I think as a company we’re at a transition point. Part of that is the size of the room, the number of people building, and so on. We’re at a very interesting point here. The company that built Second is called Linden Lab. And on a bad day, you might feel like the subjects of the lab. Labs are organizations that have a vision about what can make the world better and then will try them out on people, unsuspecting or not, to try and make it happen.
Here’s the point. Second Life is exceedingly complicated, and it’s a dream that people have tried to make happen for years and many of them have failed to achieve the critical mass and spark that we have now. We got there now because we were a Lab. We were a small group of people willing to work very fast with little concern for the troubles people would face using it.
(…)We haven’t tipped yet. Everyone is always jumping ahead and eager to say that the future has arrived. We’ve built the metaverse, and we’re all going to walk in and disappear. We’re still building it. I think some of you here, and even I, don’t appreciate how big these things can get. I worry about crashes and revenue with my head in my hands, and I don’t remember how big these things can get. We’re just the first people to the party. This is an incredibly small phenomenon right now. This is something everybody on the earth is going to use. 
This is bigger than the Web. That’s a bold statement. How can I defend the statement that what we’re all working on is going to be bigger than the Web. (…)

One year after, at Tampa, Philip had given the lead to Mark. Second Life had to become a serious business to keep the leadership of the new born industry. Philip Rosedale seemed sad (like if some light was out of him) but resigned. I guess it is like to see your child going away from home. But, unless Steve Jobs who claimed he was fired of Apple, Philip Rosedale was proclaiming that this was the right choice… and if you think of how SL was before and what it is now, you can see that Mark did a lot to professionalize Second Life, and I think he could do so because he did not have the same history with the residents. The resistance to change, especially when the relation to SL is so affective, must be a real challenge.

Reducing the Lab team to make the vision happened, targeting new populations to enter in the platform and bring new blood and energy to the world of Second Life, accelerating the move to make virtual worlds bigger than the web, all of that was also the will of Philip Rosedale.

Strange thing though is that we feel something is missing. We can’t say it with words, it is just a feeling, irrational and empirical. The magic is still around, the possibilities are infinite, the challenge is everyone’s, but it seems that the soul of Philip is away... maybe watching the football games...

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The reduction of 30% of its workforce announced by Linden Lab last week has been a bombshell in the small business world of Second Life and in the fledgling industry of virtual environments.

Adopted by most major media and blogs and, as always, interpreted as another sign of the agony of the company and the end of an era, this information is to be analysed in details at different levels.

Restructuring and downsizing practices are fairly common in the business world. What the press does not mention is that under the influence of Mark Kingdon, Linden Lab had expanded its workforce in the last 2 years to stabilize its platform, professionalizing its concept and completing a cycle of development.

In addition to a faster and more efficient platform, localized into over 10 languages, ant to a simpler viewer (but still not simple enough) with features that allows to share all types of media (including html and flash), Linden Labs can count on its many targeted websites, independent, efficient and functional, integrated in the user experience, and more specifically on a real platform for e-commerce rebranded XStreetSL.

Moreover, Linden Lab is about to finish installing the new grid (built from Havok 7 physics engine which manages the interactions between avatars and objects), and a new version of its browser will soon allow the import of 3D mesh, and the opportunity to name his avatar the way you want. This development opens Second Life to the classic 3D players and aligns with what is practiced in all social networks considering digital identity. The recent purchase of United avatar suggests an extension of brand presence on online social network Facebook-covering and all MMO players to federate around their common passion.

The Second Life of 2010 no longer has much to do with what was in 2006/2007, at the height of the media wave. And the company's strategy remains firmly focused on the "consumers", the creators and more generally the ecosystem of the Platform. The intervention of Tom Hales at SLPro (NMC) was quite clear on that orientation.

This cycle started 2 years ago, ended in a real world where the virtual worlds industry has changed, opening the way to various competing solutions, open-source alternatives to proprietary, where users, players or not, have increased ... With this restructuring, Linden Lab confirms what makes its profits: the rental of its servers, the trade of virtual goods, the exchange of its currency. And even if M. Kingdon said nothing about SL Enterprise, it is clear that the departure of much of the team assigned to its development suggests that the project SL Enterprise will not continue in its current form. Not enough income ? Sure, the sale of thirty solutions do not satisfy the requirements of ROI, but how could Mr. Kingdon hope that this solution would sell in just a few weeks, with an entrance ticket around 80KE, and the necessary mobilization of a chain of business decision often hostile to innovation (especially that one !).

Strategic error or timing error. Linden Lab intends to deliver its servers behind the corporate firewall when companies think more and more to cloud-computerize their infrastructure ... Yet Enterprise Solution is interesting ... but it requires from Linden Lab, a true support that can pay for itself which is not the case now... So, let's be optimistic and let's hope that the beta of Second Life Enterprise will give birth to a new generation of solutions competitive and attractive ... or that Linden Lab will be able to move quickly on projects in progress ... for current projects, there seem to be, Kingdon said in his press release. « It will also enable us to invest in bringing 3D to the web and will strengthen our profitability… »

For here lies one of the keys for a mainstream adoption of 3D web: the simplification of entry requirements, to be able to access 3D on a single click from the browser. Second Life Viewer 2.0. had improved, but access to the platform remains complicated and for businesses, UDP protocol and ports, application installation and the requirement of an advanced user configuration is often a show-stopper in the process of technology adoption.

Linden Lab seems to stake everything today on a radical simplification of the access to Second Life, and ensures that it restructures to accelerate this process. How, that is the question ...

It seems from different interviews that we will not see a Second Life like Habbos or Farmville... that is a Second Life 2D or 2D&half, and that's good, because that vision is the opposite of what is fundamentally a virtual environment in real time 3D.

Linden Lab confirmed to James Wagner: " We're Developing a Second Life Viewer FROM access the Web (Not a Second Life ON the Web ) " What Wagner interprets as possibly a browser that works on WebGL, a specification for 3D display for web browsers and potentially distributable on all terminals quoted by Mark Kingdon (web, iPhone, iPad ...)

Alternatively a Cloud type technology, maybe…. A few months ago, the VP in charge of platforms announced that Linden Lab had conducted several trials of this nature, ..."Rather than using the 'cloud service' metaphor here, it sounds like what you’re talking about is better termed 'server-side rendering' and streaming that content down to machines that would otherwise be unable to run a full 3D client. That is technically possible with Second Life, and we’ve actively demonstrated it internally, with a full Second Life client and all graphics settings set to maximum, while maintaining an impressive framerate.."

Technology is changing rapidly, and competition accelerates the movement, Linden Lab needs to develop ways to offer maximum quality and innovative solutions, to keep the leadership. This could also explain the restructuring.

In fact if you look closer, there is really no big problem with Second Life though he is lacking to reach a broader audience. There are errors of assessment, communication, and a lot of prejudice. There was always something Freudian in the attitude of journalists when they talk about Second Life, a sort of quite incomprehensible love-hate relationship, often seen when it comes to innovation vision (cf Apple and many others). Question of cerebral preferences, forms of intelligence, opening ...

For what other technology today can provide the opportunity to meet and share experiences in real time with more than 6 people in a rich 3D environment? Facebook ?  Linkedin ?  Twitter ? The comparison is senseless and not relevant, and those who use it do not really know what they're talking about ...

What other technology can help create a setting as close to reality for training, online learning and collaboration? (800 universities are present today in virtual worlds)

Yes, virtual environments are frightening, because they offer a potential reality and that reality is disturbing. Yes, virtual environments are certainly a technology transition to new practices that virtual reality should be able to offer in the coming decades.

Restructuring or not, Second Life can continue to live through their community, although less vibrant than before, because often destabilized by changes in "political" (Rosedale departure, increased land prices, closing of games, adult continent, bots ...), but always with its thousands of creators and innovators. And it is conceivable that by posting record profits after restructuring, the company is endowed with all the attractions to a sale or IPO. Open to its residents also, perhaps ....

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Just a quick buzz to give you a taste of the video from the Caleb Booker Virtual Keynote for Treet TV . It was a great experience and a really special moment for me to experiment talking about virtual conferences and being filmed and recorded at the same time. Caleb Booker is in Canada, the Treet TV is in Australia, and I was in Paris, at 11PM local time. That is the magic of virtual environments... Tomorrow, I'll be back to speak about Viewer 2.0 and the SL Pro Conference....

Real World Expos In Virtual Worlds

View more presentations from Helene Zuili.

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Oh boy! That was a nice break! Not a work break, but this kind of break we all need once in a while just to gather our ideas, clean the place from all those things you drag with you from a while and you can’t never achieve because you are too busy, too full of things to do here and there, take care about the one you love and who always complained that you are never free for a diner, a theater, a concert… just an instant of life to share.

So my time has come to wish all of you a great new year 2010, health and happiness. I wish you to keep your joie de vivre –joy of life- no matter what, because this is what keeps us going on every morning, this great energy of life that is so precious, so fundamental. And I wish you love too, for love is that unique dimension which add perspective to our lives, love without which everything is flat like a 2D cartoon!

Health, Joy and Love, this is my 3D wishes for this New Year ;) And peace of course…
I mean it, deeply, sincerely, may this year bring all of you the best, wherever you are in the world.

For weeks, I have wondered if I could write those predictions for virtual worlds, since everyone does, at least professionals. No client ask, but professional just feel obliged to say « hey, those are my predictions for the next year! ». And on the top of it, a lot of them wrote predictions for the next decade… But how many Jules Verne, how many George Orwell, hmmm

My idea of consulting, especially in my field, new medias and immersive Internet, is that you should be able to anticipate. Anticipation is the key of a concept, a product that meets desires and needs of an audience. The more the production of your product is delayed, the more anticipation is a necessity if you don’t want its release to be already old fashion when it reaches its market.

But anticipation should be the result of a strong analysis, based on a deep understanding of the past, the history, a deep feeling of the present, what’s in the air, and a wide watchfulness not only about technology but sociology and above… One can have flair, but is it enough in those days when all is going so fast, when transversality and globalism are the main keys that can modify at any instant the course of the time. In fact, I would think "trends" is more appropriate than "predictions"...

So, let’s go back now to so called “virtual worlds”.

Past

What is past for virtual worlds? Is it an addition of the past of virtual reality plus the past of video games? Or would it be the past of humanity pursuing its old dream of ubiquity, of being in different places at the same time, of belonging to different realities thru the quest for a perfect medium?

The dream of an ultimate medium driven by the ancient desire of physical transcendence associated to the search of the essential copy, has crossed the centuries until we entered into Second Life… until this very moment… until now.

Present

Which reality do we talk about when we speak about virtual worlds? Persistency? Real time? 3D? Or do we talk about this great ability we have to go back and forth to cross and leave the membrane, this magic circle that separe the physical world from the synthetic world?

When I logged in, at the beginning of my Second Life,  I used to think about Matrix (guess now Avatar would be THE reference !), because when I am inworld, my brain is totally there, with all my senses. It is not just a question of screen and mouse; it is its capacity to take me in, to set me in the state of “flow”. And when we are in the flow, we lose perception of location and time. We may reach that flow on the Internet, when a website is ergonomic, when the user experience is well done. But virtual worlds are much more immersive because they offer our brain representations and archetypes which are totally familiar, natural.

We do not see a synthetic world on our devices: we are in the world. We do not look at an avatar that we love, we see the person behind it, we feel his soul and hear his heart. All our perceptions are changed, and this is why people outside do not understand until they give themselves the opportunities to immerse, thru games, thru education, or work.

Second Life and virtual worlds, as they are now in early 2010, reflect the state of technology: quicker processors, better graphic cards, large servers and broader bands. We do not realize it because we are part of it, but slowly our experience get closer to the real thing, which is virtual reality. It is not yet there, we still can’t really teleport, smell a mimosa, or feel the skin. But we are on the way, and this is why so many people are afraid of it. The membrane gets more porous every day.

As Marshall Mc Luhan said, media is the message, and virtual worlds like Second Life are mediums which allow us to extend ourselves above physical frontiers, push our possibilities, our limits exactly like newspaper, radio or television did it. And this medium changes us. We are now ready for more.


Close Future

More, in a close future means a few different things.


More means easier: easy interfaces, ergonomic and customizable to each one according to its brain preferences.

More means more realistic (if we want it): more realistic avatars with face expressions and smoother body movements.

More means more interactivity with other applications, social, transactional, operational.

More means, that slowly slowly we forget about virtual worlds to talk about immersive internet, immersive platform which gives us more power to interact with others on private or professional matters. On this ground, I would think that virtual worlds will change name to slowly be called something close to internet 3D….

Sure, it is difficult to separate virtual worlds from the evolution of technology and of our societies.
Convergence leads the debate on a technological point of view and 3D seems to be in the center as a must for a user experience. The success of Avatar is not only due to the story itself but also to a conception that relies on 3D. 3D representation invading all other medias will changes the whole perception of the human being exactly as it did in the Renaissance times with the intrusion of perspective in painting.

The first effect of this change should be that getting use to 3D mass medias with television and movies, will slowly make people unsatisfied with online 2D conversations or representations.

Best example is to compare a browser based 2D exhibition and an exhibition in Second Life… The example of Linden Lab Solution Providers conference was a great demonstration and I will give more details of it in my next post.

The second effect, more subtil, is that watching ourselves thru 3D will reinforce hyper-ego and offer social and global movement, a gentle way to gather in real time in 3D environments as decors for brainstorming, conferencing, live-showing, etc…

Many gurus will find a way to extend their consulting offering by organizing virtual consultations or conferences in a more sophisticated personal atmosphere. Big corporate companies in need of strategies for crisis communication will invest virtual media centers where they can react in real time in a more emotional way than just press releases.

So to end with those predictions which do not want to look as predictions, what about Second Life is 2010 ?

New viewer 2.0 with the Media-API and the html-on-a-prim (expected first term)
New generation of avatars with the possibility to name them as you want
New social widgets linked to the major social platforms we all know…
New secured transactional features to make payment directly linked to a real life logistic (not linked to the internet but directly linked to the server)
Import of 3D Mesh Objects Into Second Life
New offer on land with higher speed servers for special event or businesses needing more resources
More internal meetings and the organization by Linden Lab of a mass event
Main partnerships announced with the official launch of Second Life Enterprise
An improvement of the general image of Second Life in Europe and in the world
We’ll be passing the 100 000 accounts online simultaneously on a regular basis….

Waiting for those changes which will open Second Life to other great minds like you all, once again a very happy new year 2010! 


P.S. Want to read more predictions ? And please, feel free to give your predictions ...:)


Mark Kingdon - M Linden
Daniel Voyager
Dusan Writer
New Worlds Notes
Gwins Home

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What is the common point between Second Life 2008 and Second Life 2009 ? Or let's figure the question as one of those wine lovers friends, and since we are almost at the end of the year, can we assert the Second Life 2009 vintage is one that will show a definite break between the old Second Life and something that we do not know yet but which is on the way.

So much changes everyday announced on the Second Life blog, new website, adult policy, new policy for the newcomers, new premium accounts, new rules for merchants, new enterprise program, new viewer in perspective and so much more is showing a deep change and it is hard to believe Linden Lab is not onboard to announce some main change.

I am not reading the cards but I really would like to be in one of that movie where you could read the newspaper of december 2010, then come back and use that news to achieve the best position for the future.

Today I was having a closer look to Blue Mars strategy with content partners, reading about the lauching of NearLondon , listening to people talking about Eve, downloading pdf about web.Alive and finally ended by watching James Cameron talking about his movie Avatar which I am looking forward to see next wednesday with my nephews !

I celebrated my 3rd rezz day a few days ago. At the time I entered SL, blogging was the hot thing. My Space was this music thing, Facebook was a joke, microblogging was not even existing, Apple was talking about the iPod Phone and Second Life was wowwww. So much is going on with web 2.0 and time passing, we dont realize how we have ingest that change, how all that has changed us, but also shaped a whole generation coming in the ring and for whom Second Life looks not so wowwwwww.

I love Second Life and the way we were. I am working as an evangelist for 3 years, and integrated it in my personal and professionnal life but let's face it. Change we need & change the community needs to accept.

I remember Philip Rosedale in Chicago saying " we know virtual worlds are here to stay and grow. We just don't know if Second Life will be the one..." and disappear in the boiling flow of technology as Netscape did in its time. And because I want Second Life "to be the one" (dont know why really, but this is how it is), I think we all should work to accept and manage this change and the opportunities it offers each of us.

More than this, I think nothing will really change for those who dont want to change. Second Life is just opening to other users, other needs and wishes, other type of consumers, and why would it not ? Why would we want to keep the old Second Life the way it was like a jealous lover who would ask you not to ever change ! And for this move, all of those changes make sense :
- a new viewer to simplify the first hour experience for those who are not video game oriented
- a new premium account with land and basic house to enhance that experience
- a new enterprise product to feet corporate needs
- an adult policy to run away from usual scandals that pollute the image of the world
- a change of Xstreet to enhance the shopping experience and maybe avoid crazy dumping
- Second Life Answers with Resident Help Network like the aardvark model
- an energetic solutions providers program to chart quality and extend "a B2B sales force" (affiliation program ?)
- a reorganization of the P.R. program to reinstall the real image of SL

I am sure I forget a lot of announces but what I feel for sure is that the change behind all this is leading to a swift in the economic model. More income, sure, but also more money to finance more technology and therefore more services.

More technology also means different versions of the viewer and maybe a lite SL browser based, real time, acting as a twitter inworld. Means also integration of 3D meshes, and interoperability with other social medias.

And to get back to the image of Second Life, this change would take us to a really new Second Life, a Second Life 2.0 that would certainly needs a change of name. Is a suffix enough to identify what is your Second Life, entertainment, enterprise or education ? Or is Second Life already a brand of the past that needs a total fixing with a new name ? Is Second Life ready for a change of name ? What do You think ?

My opinion is that name must be relevant to the user you are talking to, and I am sceptical on the fact that a radical change of name would carry the idea of a total new change without losing the benefits of 6 years experience and work. Except if SL would be totally integrate by a larger company, what is the point ? A suffix would be a good start so each consumer will associate it to its own interest. The first talks we had with corporates mentionning a new product called Second Life Enterprise are showing us a slight change of attitude and a positive concern.

Whatever will be chosen, wherever leads those changes, we may all agree Second Life has definitely opened the way and changed the life of millions of people all over the world, introducing the era of 3D web real time... Let's continue, let it be the one, let's move on and share !


"Life 2.0" documentary teaser from Jason Spingarn-Koff on Vimeo.
This feature length documentary follows a group of people whose lives are dramatically transformed by a virtual world, Second Life - reshaping relationships, identities, and ultimately the very notion of reality.
Premiering at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival

Related articles by Zemanta

• Linden Lab to raise Xstreet fees, loses vendors, products (massively.com)
• Exclusive interview with Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon (massively.com)
• Linden Lab to alter third-party Second Life viewer policies (massively.com)
• Second Life is Still Around but Media is Less Interested (shoppingblog.com)
• Second Life Economy Healthier Than First Life (manolith.com)
• Second Life Takes Virtual Goods Corporate (marketingvox.com)
• Virtual world workers need avatar dress code policy (blogherald.com)
• Dusan Writer Blog
  

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Press release :
Following a thorough application and vetting process, MakeMyWorlds has been selected by Linden Lab as one of his 39 gold solutions providers all over the world, for Second Life and the brand new Second Life Enterprise.

"The Gold Solution Provider program identifies highly qualified providers who have demonstrated a high level of client satisfaction (through the review of client references) and have developed successful projects on behalf of businesses, governments, educational institutions, and other business organizations in Second Life. For example, Gold Solution Providers have created projects for companies and institutions such as Adobe, Cisco Systems, Michelin, Wiley Publishing, Imperial College of London, and the Goethe Institute. ..

Gold Solution Providers are top-quality providers for large businesses and international corporations looking for a Solution Provider to help them develop their Second Life strategy and presence. Services that Gold Solution Providers offer include developing facilities to hold company meetings and events, holding trainings and seminars, creating simulations for educators to recreate science experiments, organizing and managing conferences and mixed media events, and growing successful Second Life communities around client brands and experiences. "

Created by Kai-Michael Schmuck (Hambourg) and Hélène Zuili (Paris), MakeMyWorlds is the first franco-german agency coming from Second Life to get this qualification. MakeMyWorlds helps its clients to integrate virtual worlds by engaging into powerful communication strategies, both internal and external, on very diverse audience & targets, using technologies coming from games or immersive internet. MakeMyWorlds also builds specific products based on training and coaching to accompany changes, and this can be done in french, english or german. Among its clients, MakeMyWorlds is happy to count the Swiss Stem Cells Bank, Konolive 2go, FrontRange, the National Realtors Association (NAR), a few european communication and advertising agencies and a few educative departments from universities or schools.

For any information , contact Hélène Zuili - "helene (at) makemyworlds.com" - or Kai-Michael Schmuck - "kms (at) makemyworlds.com"

Second Life and Linden Lab are trademarks of Linden Research, Inc

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Diesmal was in eigener Sache. Es ist passiert und wir sind ein ganz klein wenig stolz darauf: Seit dem 2. November 2009 gehört makemyworlds.com zu den weltweit 39 Firmen, die aufgrund ihrer speziellen Erfahrung und der zahlreichen Projekte in virtuellen Welten von Linden Lab (dem Anbieter der 3D Plattform Second Life) in den erlauchten Kreis der Gold Solution Provider berufen wurde.

Das von Linden Lab ins Leben gerufene Solution Provider Programm steht für die eindeutige und letztendlich auch konsequente Ausrichtung auf Business, denn hier wird Know-how gebündelt und für Unternehmen, die virtuelle Umgebungen als Collaboration Plattform nutzen wollen, zur Verfügung gestellt. Und einer muss es ja machen. ;-)).

Nimmt man die jüngste Verlautbarung Linden Labs hinzu, in der das Release der neuen »Behind the Firewall« Solution namens Second Life Enterprise angekündigt wird, dann wird die Sache rund. Denn jetzt ist es möglich, eine virtuelle Umgebung auf dem eigenen Server zu installieren, mit den gleichen und noch mehr Features zu nutzen und dabei gleichzeitig die Sicherheitsrichtlinien von Unternehmen zu integrieren. Das war bisher immer ein Showstopper, denn wer will schon gerne, dass eine Horde von abgedrehten Pferde quer durch die eigenen Pressekonferenz läuft.

Eben.

SLE – welche Strategie dahinter steckt und wie Unternehmen davon profitieren können, erzählte Mark Kingdon (M Linden) auf der Enterprise 2.0 Conference. Bitte beachten: die kleine Performance mit den Laserpointern. Sehr nett.

Sie kann also losgehen, die Verknüpfung von virtuellen Umgebungen und Business. Und niemand ist so gespannt wie ich. Aber ich glaube ja stets an das Gute.

Liest man übrigens die einschlägigen Blogs, dann scheine ich allerdings der einzige zu sein, der das Gute sieht. Da wird gepostet was das Zeug hält, und nimmt man alles zusammen, dann machen sich die üblichen Verdächtigen gerade mal wieder ein wenig ins Hemd. Da sagen die einen, dass Linden Lab den Aufwand besser in die Verbesserung der Performance des Main Grid hätte stecken sollen, anstatt eine isolierte SL-Lösung zu entwickeln. Die anderen klagen, warum nur Gold Solution Provider SLE vermarkten dürften und nicht alle. Und dann gibt es welche, die einfach nicht verstehen, warum der ach so schnöde Mammon nun auch Einzug in diese virtuelle Welt hält. (Als ob das nicht schon längst passiert wäre.) Und so weiter und so fort.

Die meisten scheinen nicht zu verstehen, dass SLE so rein gar nichts mit Second Life zu tun hat, wenn man von der Basistechnologie einmal absieht. Es ist keine Business-Parallelwelt zu SL, nichts wird verdrängt, nichts gerät in den Hintergrund. Im Gegenteil. Ich bin davon überzeugt, dass durch den Einsatz von SLE die Akzeptanz virtueller Welten generell steigen wird. Und davon profitiert auch SL. Glaube ich.

So sei es.

PS: Der Kontakt zu makemyworlds.com ist ganz einfach!

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A couple of weeks ago, Philip Rosedale (aka Philip Linden) announced that he was quitting his job at Second Life to work on a new company of his own, though staying in the Linden Lab Board. Same day, Amanda Linden was publishing a post called "The Time for Work Avatars has Arrived". A few days after, Linden Lab was announcing the date of the official launching of Nebraska on November 4th, the enterprise project which will allow companies to create their own virtual environment on their own server, so called "behind the firewall solution".

It has been a long way since I entered Second Life for the first time in 2006. At that time, it was all about socialization, sex, games, shopping and money. THE PLACE for your imagination. I came to look and to undertand what it was all about, I started to create and to meet people from of all over the world, and despite the mockeries of all kind around me, I stayed there and started to really integrate Second Life to my real life, thru work and thru personal relationships.

I had no plans. It just happened. At this time of my life, it just perfectly met my needs and my lacks, with many ingredients which stimulates my brain : creativity, people from "elsewhere", technology, game, experiment, adventure... It was as we say the meeting of chance and necessities.

I was lucky enough to make the right choices and met the right people, but maybe i just met the people i could only meet considering who I was. A friend of mine told me one day that virtual meeting on the net were all about our unconscious and maybe it really is.

I entered very quickly into a semi-professionnal project with the creation of Feel At Home and of one of the first virtual "ClubMed", bungalows on the beach, meeting center, pool parties etc.. I remember my astonishment shared with my first friend ab Vanmoer from Canada, while preparing a bungalow for a "just married" couple ... "What I am doing here ? LOL !"

At that time, Second Life became the darling of the medias and a lot of professionnal actors came inworld to see what they could do with it, thinking for a lot of them, they could just transpose some kind of communication means they would do with print or traditionnal medias. That is how I met Pietro Veragouh, from Switzerland, working on behalf of the Swiss Stem Cells Bank and created for them my first immersive Headquarters site in Second Life. We encoutered many challenges on a technical point of view which were hard to complete. But we did it, and that project was really nice to do. Thru it, I met new friends like Blaise Timtam from the Guided Tour System or Porky Gorky from Hydro Houses.

On my first sim Tulip Island, I still had time to share and meet. And I met a lot of people of all kinds, among whom some became real bonds : Master Quatro, my good friend from Boston who was at that time the main "commercial director" for Anshe Chung land business, Aron Chapman from Heidelberg, whom I shared many important conversations before he became a virtual assassin, Waldfon Shwartsman, a german wine lover, who divorced and marry the Californian Kitty in real life, Darko Okamoto, a young widow from the midwest who relearnt to socialize, Linda Sautereau, a american university teacher who develops great educative projects, and so many others that opened my eyes on the many ways Second Life could help or change once person life.

I also met Kai Michael Schmuck from Hambourg in Germany, aka Kigh Kline, with whom I created my second project for the Cebit. Kai is a dear friend and my professionnal partner for makemyworlds, the company we created to offer business solutions in virtual worlds.

The list could go on like this, and I am sorry if I can't mention everyone with whom discussions and sharing were important to me as they would bring me to learn, open my mind and question myself. Some are still here, some left Second Life, some died and will only be remembered tru their SL name. Thanks to all of them.

At some point I decided I needed to know more about those people who were hiding behind the avatars and decided to join the Second Life Community Convention in Chicago. There I saw and maybe understood much better that Second Life was all about life and people. And a lot about community. A community of people who wanted to push the borders and move the lines : librarians and academics with knowledge sharing, architects and creators with expression, entepreneurs with global business projects, and regular people from all over who could just be themselves deeply and sincerely without all the restrictions of their appearance, look, opinions and that this world could allow to extend their own perception, vision, friends and relationships.

That was Second Life at that time, a kind of enormous cauldron of ideas, creativity and research under the protective look of Philip Linden and the Linden "family". Philip who was there, with his big tee shirt "Missing Image" already explaining us hs great vision that we all could hopefull shared. Talking with him in Chicago and a year later in Amsterdam, I knew at least 2 things. That Philip was a real (blue eyes) visionnar and creator, an active dreamer who was on had no other choice that to "leave his baby" (translated from french) so the baby could grow in the best direction. And that Second Life would change to make it possible to happen and I wanted to be part of it.

And Second Life changed. And we also changed and adjusted. The change went thru the co-direction with Mark Kingdon, the new CEO, who softly but smartly conducted his team and processes to modify Second Life. Technically. How long has it been since you really experienced a real crash ? Stability was a must for making Second Life a real application. Implementing voice was a deep change also though some might not consider it this way. Socially. By banning casinos and banks, closing ad farms, separating adult territories, and I guess I forget some other measures. Professionnaly. By creating diverse services turned towards professional needs and expectations, a real website with serious conversations structured for a better feedback, a service provider list and offer, etc.. And soon Nebraska.

And hopefully much more is coming along. Philip says he will be working on some project based on the existence on Second Life. Could that be a browser based Second Life which will defintely open it to Mister and Misses Everyone... ? Or some kind of no browser, no viewer platform that could allow us some kind of virtual reality total immersion... like in Total Recall... ?

Second Life as we met it 4 years ago has disappeared, but Second Life as it is today is really worth to try and to experiment, and still surprises me. It is different in many ways, but its maturity makes it even more enjoyable for creative people and dreamers. Second Life is more than ever your world, your imagination. Join us ! We'll be opening our Makemyworlds Business Center in a couple of weeks and be happy to welcome you there in english, german ou français !

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All designers and entrepreneurs will tell you, there is often more pleasure in the dream and the mobilization of energy to achieve this dream as the fulfillment of the dream itself.

Second Life is an incredible platform because it offers to all creators and entrepreneurs the opportunity to express freely, to imagine and create with all the existing media, without complexes and without the means that would be required in real life.

And the creators meet the entrepreneurs, and researchers and educators are working to try new teaching models, collaboration, and little by little the world grows beyond its own limits through the synergies that are formed in the community, outside the community, across languages and cultures. Thanks also to the desire of its creators to push the dream to the limits of what technology can offer.

The collaboration between Philip Rosedale, the visionary, and Mark Kingdon, the maitre d'oeuvre, will push Linden Lab far ahead, even further, where even our imagination dares venture. I believe so, at least for a part of the way . What we saw those last days at the Solutions Providers Conference suggest us the second life of Second Life to come soon .

Professionals of virtual worlds bet on a rapid growth over the next 3 years. A new industry is shaping gradually with individuals and companies coming from the convergence of media, computing, web and telecom. The pre-launch these days of Blue in March 2150 by the company Avatar Reality in collaboration with the National Geographic Society, lets us imagine that the competition looks tough. Linden Lab has clearly understood that to go faster and keeps its leadership, it must rely on its community of entrepreneurs and creators and diversify its proposals for allowing everyone to continue to imagine a world where everything is possible. Where dreams meet everyone without the geographic and social distance.

For us, early adopters, the improvement is really tangible. The simple fact to spend 3 days on a collaborative seminar with people from all over the world speak for itself.

Preachers of a virtual-inhumanity can keep on going.... There will be something for everyone ...

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