I just listened to
Ebbe Altber's keynote speech at the Virtual World’s Best Practice in Education.
Ebbe is the new CEO of Lindenlab. The best news is that he wants to make the
metaverse easier for all - consumers and creators! This speech was good news to us all!
He told us he was there to start the dialog, to figure out
where to go from here. He has looked at branding and TOS and integration... “I
am working with legal counsel to figure out how to make it more obvious or very
obvious that creators own content” and Second Life are not wishing to lock it
in but to make it easy to move to OpenSim. “We have a breadth of content creators for
many purposes. This is unique to SL. We should support everybody.
There is still so much to do to make the metaverse so much
easier for all consumers and creators, even with all of the work that we are
doing it is still too hard for many users.
Nobody else has an environment this open and where users
take it where they want to take it.”
Future Technology
Most of the responses here are verbatim but not in speech marks in case
there is something not perfectly accurate!
We are developing core tech, including Oculus. There is
already a beta version
As the hardware develops, we will be next to it, we want you
not to be looking at the world but being in it.
With Oculus we have worked focused on viewing experience, not
yet the user interface.
The keyboard disappears; we want to explore how to make
changes in how you interact with the world. With a full time liaison, you can
think up a million things we COULD do but we need to prioritize. You won't all
agree on what is top priority. It takes a lot of resources and time to engage
in that conversation and that is a cost. Many are not up to speed on the topic,
are biased, or are not experienced. It can add a lot of cost to involve
everyone in design, we want to be more transparent, we want feedback, to learn
from you, to correct things, we learn from watching what you do.”
Someone asked about the bad press
and if it was possible to improve that status.
Ebbe said that SL got overhyped too early, some was self-inflicted,
and maybe there was a hope that tens of millions would use it.
There came a backlash, it became bad or negative, that is
unfortunate, there is a lot of good stuff happening here, not seen outside. We want to correct this. The market is
starting to embrace virtual reality.
Could the linden dollar spread
outside Second Life?
Ebbe replied we
would love to do that but it is a massive undertaking.
“I spoke earlier of compliance, to do compliance on a scale
that bankers are comfortable with, we are fortunate to be so far along, nobody
else is this far, we want to make safer
high volume transactions. We are talking about that, we have done all the compliance
work to be in line with state and federal regulations.”
Are there any current projects you
can share that will make the viewer easier to use and more intuitive?
One effort was not received well, to simplify it. I don't
know why yet. Ultimately, in order for SL to grow, it has to become easier to
use. It takes too much time to engage and immerse people and make them
functional… we can't go mass market as we are today.
Following up, are there any plans in
improving transparency with 3rd party viewer -
innovations may come faster
We do a decent job of collaborating with open source, Oz
Linden interfaces with third party players.
That community adds value to provide other viewers optimum
for other audiences.
WE can't do everything for all, those with disabilities,
those on other platforms
We need those communities to help us.
I think we have a good relationship with the open source
community.
It is a double edged sword, some open source developers took
advantage and did nasty things.
What tech from HiFi be used in SL?
Ebbe- I hope it will create many advances many can benefit
from to move virtual worlds and virtual reality forward. The more new hardware
and interfaces, it moves us all forward.
Philip and I know
each other well, some of us will visit them in a couple of weeks to see demos
how we can help each other, it is early stages - I am
transparent with Philip, we have assets that are valuable to them, and I hope
we can collaborate.
I am interested in the work they are doing with bringing
emotion into your avatar experience, see the expressions on a face, what emotions
can be expressed visually, they are working in that area.
I want to be sure we provide that level of emotional
capability to our avatars
We are aware that latency increases and impacts performance,
further away from America you have increased latency and reduced sense of functionality
, we are testing what aspects cause these issues, we have to create a lower
latency tech, we need to push less data over the pipe.
You had mentioned that you
were looking to allow people to export their content/ Will there be an export flag that will help?
Nothing we are doing technically prevents export. Many get
their content out.
Maybe it is third party solutions, we are not preventing.
Are we making it simple enough from our viewer?
Maybe we need to make that more streamlined, we are not
preventing it, but we don't want it to be easy for others to rip people off.
I have to look at that. It's a permission issue?
Ebbe should there be permissions to allow export?
I need to understand it better. If you own it you can take
it. Ownership is a complex issue for us to reduce copybotting and stealing.
We don't want to be inflexible, permissions, monitoring
tools, preventing fraud, we want to protect you and your creations.
In the foreseeable future we will be working on the main
grid without restricting what people can do, once we solve it so adults can use
it, then we can go to attract other audiences, other special cases but no teen
grid in the near term, I would love to do it, but it is priorities.
We need to make SL more welcoming, If ease of use and
quality and tech more flexible, we may arrive at a place where it would not be
cumbersome to offer to more dedicated special audiences, but this is not a top
priority.
As people start to be inworld, with their relevant projects,
they will see how their work can improve.
I hope more Lindens will come inworld to interact with users
so that can be a more normal comfortable thing. If we do special meetings, what
topics, who would facilitate? How do we make sure something actionable comes
out of it? If there are interest groups, like an ed group, that wants to have a
more regular check in, we can see which Linden would like to participate.
As in RL every hobby and interest group, there are only a
few Lindens, how can we engage, that is a challenge. I am happy to spend some
of my time learning but how to do it fairly and efficiently?
We have to do what will have the most benefit for the most
people
None of this would exist without all we have done together.
If the community has things to do, if they want to invite us
to participate, today you will find more people who can and are willing to
participate.
We are all ears we want to figure out how to engage with all
of you.
Unless we do something technical, nothing will change. If we
have conversations, that won't be enough to create change.
My dream is to make this something a huge number of people
can enjoy and contribute to, this is just the beginning, there is more to come.
Facebook buying Oculus is excellent. They see the future we
have all been working on
OnLive third party using our open source technology will
make a viewer for the tablet
We do have conversations; we collaborate with all 3rd party
teams
They improved their pricing model.
You can reach out to individual Lindens if you think they
are interested.
Ebbe - like an
interest group catalogue to know meeting times and formats.
I know Torley. I understand his role. He can go inworld and hang out as
much as he feels he has the time to do so.
We are here. We are willing to listen and dialog. We want to talk about the future. The doors
are open again.
We want to know how to make you successful.
That's it. I'm here. I'm happy to talk with all of you.
I want to learn and listen. I want to make you successful.
