Tech -- Culture -- Humour
The Austrade Music Office in conjunction with Cattle Puppy Productions are holding Australia’s first large-scale music event in SL. It’s called the “The Hoe-Down Under – Texas’ Aussie Music Party†and is coinciding with the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference 2007
The online event will occur on the 15th of March 2007 at 1:00pm to 4:00pm Australian Eastern Time on March 15. Bands scheduled to appear include The Beasts Of Bourbon, You Am I, Youth Group, Airbourne, Dallas Crane and more. Sydney-based vocal group Kaya will also perform (pictured below)
The “The Hoe-Down Under†will digitally recreate an island beach atmosphere with two stages, a dance area, swimming, jet ski rides, hot air balloons and more.
We continue our interview with Logan Linden. Part 1 is here.
Lowell: I know the metrics you released were greeted with a lot of interest as they at least gave a rough indication of the number of active Australian users..
Chris: That’s good. The Australian population is there, it’s relatively healthy. Being the only Australian working in the office here in San Francisco, there’s a strong side of me that does anything to comment on the Australian numbers.
Lowell:The estimates I’ve come up with based on your data puts the active population of Australian users at around 3000
Chris:Yeah, it’s hard to say. With Second Life, the way it works, there’s several types of Second Life residents. There’s residents that spend a lot of time in Second Life, which could mean going in every day. Then there’s residents that may come in once a month, once every two months. They see something they want to check out, want to experience, they go in at that point. The resident populations as far as active down to individual countries…it’s based on the residents who are logging in every day or week.
We’re looking to release externally more information on that, to be able to break that out a lot more efficiently for everyone to be able to look at. We’ve got that information here, it just goes through the process of saying ‘ok, let’s get that information into a situation where we can publish it externally, do we have the manpower to continually publish it’, and then we’ll send it out there. Yeah, it’s a nice Australian population.
Lowell: I think some people and businesses in particular, are shocked at how low the population is.
Chris: The thing is about corporations going into Second Life – if you want to grow a presence in Second Life and if you want people to come back to something you’ve built in Second Life, you’ve got to think about building up a community. And to build up that community you need to have something there that’s interesting for people to come back to, the ability to be able to contact those individuals. Whether it’s setting up a group that allows you to contact people interested in things you are having on your space or it’s making people go out to your external website and find out about events you might be holding, and in doing that it helps to pick up the population.
Lowell:What do you enjoy most about your role?
Chris: It’s having anything to do with Second Life. It’s really exciting, it makes me feel that everything I’ve done before here is boring where at the time I thought I was doing some really exciting things. This virtual world I believe is in a very early stage. I think that everyone who’s getting involved in it is going to be contributing to where Second Life goes, whether you work for Linden Lab or your just in the Second Life community. It’s the community that drives Second Life, just being involved is exciting and seeing where it goes.
Lowell:What do you enjoy least about your role?
Chris: That’s a tough question (pause). I don’t really know. Previously where I’ve worked at other corporations there’s a huge list of things I could dislike about other roles that I’ve done. I don’t seem to have those problems, there’s nothing really (laughs). People reading that are going to think ‘that’s a pretty crap answer’.
Lowell:At least you didn’t say the only issue was you couldn’t work 24 hours a day.
Chris:Even though there’s some residents that’d like us to work 24 hours a day, unfortunately we can’t (laughs). You know, I enjoy it all. We do a lot of hard work, everyone here is working hard. I’ve worked in companies where working really hard can be a negative to their work, but everyone is working hard and seems to be enjoying it.
Lowell:That leads nicely to the next question. Second Life is obviously undergoing huge growth in tandem with a frantic
development schedule for Linden Labs – does your workplace have the atmosphere of a warship or is it a little more laid back than
that?
Chris: It doesn’t feel like a warship and it’s not laid back. Our working environment is very different to other environments I’ve worked in – it’s a very open plan office. I know that term is used a lot in modern corporations but at Linden Lab we’re putting that into practice. What that means is that you are very responsible for everything that you work on. Everyone has the ability to see what you’re working on, to comment on what you’re working on and provide feedback. When people first join Linden Lab that’s something that they’ve never experienced before, and it can take awhile to get used to.
What that gives us is the ability to move very quickly as a company. As we’re going through this very large growth spurt, we can have everyone get involved. Because the Second Life platform, being such a complex platform, there’s so many areas that we can be working on, and we all are. We keep a clear head on what we need to do and we do it. There are companies in the past that have seen exciting growth like we’ve had and have lost track of what they’re doing. We know exactly what we are doing and what we need to do.
Lowell: So do you have a fairly standard organisational structure?
Chris: Yeah we do. The CEO, Philip Rosedale is the driver behind Second Life and he’s the driver behind how we work. He sits in a pod himself. We’re all in open plan pods and he sits in one on the main floor, he actually sits right behind me. Anyone can come up and talk to him, so yes he’s the CEO but he very much works how he preaches.
ABC’s Abi Goldflake has put out a call seeking input from the Australian SL community. The details in Abi’s own words:
“One of the things we’d like to do on our ABC Island is present some of the ABC’s range of science content in an interesting and engaging way that works within the SL environment. I’ve seen quite a few great science areas within SL (Troy McLuhan at the Science Center has a very comprehensive list). Many of these seem to display scientific objects accompanied by notecards and some let you actually experience scientific experiments or phenomena (such as NOAA Virtual Island with tsunami and hurricanes).
What we’d like to do is present some of the ABC Science Online content in a 3D interactive way as a scientific quest. For example, there’s a great feature on primitive parts of the brain at http://www.abc.net.au/science/features/surviveourbrain/– how would you present those ideas as a scientific quest in SL?
I’d like to set a challenge to the ABC Friends group, or any readers of SLOz with your collective expertise and ideas: can you come up with an interactive science quest based on a piece of content from www.abc.net.au/science using gadgets which avatars could pick up and interact with. Also clues and information presented physically so that at the end of the quest, the player has learnt something – essentially a virtual experiment?
Please IM me directly inworld if you want more info or email me at digcitizen at yahoo dot com dot au – interested both in ideas and people who could build the gadgets/clues.”
You can also respond to Abi on the related SLOz Discussion Forum thread
I dropped in to the RMIT island the other day and bumped into the island’s director John Guffey. As the students start this coming week, further development will take off as much of the building and design work will be undertaken by the students themselves. John indicated that access to the island will not be limited to students alone. In fact, they are going to open more space – and there is already talk of another island.
John had an interesting view that “we want aussie unis to clump islands together”. That kind of scenario would be extremely interesting from two points of view.
Firstly, the competition for students and research funding would dictate that “clumping” all Australian University SL islands close to each other sounds to be a curious goal as universities are traditionally seen to be vying with each other.
Secondly, the concept of an SL Archipelago of Australian Universities could attract interest from the global marketplace of students. It would set it apart from other countries with tertiary education presences in SL.
It will be interesting to see how the current Australian Universities in SL respond to this proposal and whether those without an SL presence are prepared to come on board if the Archipelago happens.
Australian online services company, Hyro has a full presence in-world at their island called The Snow Dome . It’s purpose is threefold – in-world recruitment, a showcase of services and awards and extensive conference facilities.
SLOz had the opportunity in the past few days to have a chat via Skype with Logan Linden aka Chris Collins, expatriate Aussie and Analyst for Linden Lab. Logan was very forthcoming on a range of topics so we’ll publish the interview in three parts in the coming week.
Lowell: Can you tell me a little about yourself Chris?
Chris: I was born in Sydney, had ten years there then moved to Perth – I call Perth home. I went to the University of Western Australia, started working in Perth then worked in Sydney for awhile. I worked there consulting for an accounting firm. I then moved to London for three and a half years, did the Australian thing.
I ran a CRM software consulting company then I started a job search engine in the UK. I launched that over in San Francisco. We got to a point where we weren’t progressing as quickly as we wanted to, so we decided to pull the pin on that. I then briefly set up operations for another technology company and started to look around for other work. I wanted to work at a company that had a really exciting product, that had smart people, had a smart management team and came across Linden Lab.
Lowell: When did you first start with Linden?
Chris: I started beginning of June 2006. It was just before everything got really crazy.
Lowell: What’s your role there?
Chris: I’m the analyst here, so with all the charts that I look at – in June / July when everything really started to pick up, it was obvious 2006 was a really big year for us. When we went to free basic accounts, the growth really started to happen. Being the analyst is a really exciting position. I don’t think I could be an analyst in any other company or industry compared to what we’re doing here – the data we analyse is very exciting and there’s so many different ways you can look at it. We’re in an interesting position in that everything the company does is in Second Life and for us to get any exposure to that we need to be able to look at the data, to be able to analyse and break it down into hundreds of different reports depending on the individual who’s looking at it. They need to be able to work out what needs to be done to enhance areas, from an economic standpoint through to a simulator standpoint. I’m the one they all come to to be able to get all that.
Lowell: And are you it as far as resources go?
Chris: I’m in the Data Warehouse team, there’s two of us. The other guy I work with does a lot of the Warehouse engineering. We’re expanding our team, another two analysts are joining in March. At Linden Lab we’re going through a phase where we need to find staff. We need to find a lot of senior staff in all areas. That should be of interest to any of your readers – we’re looking for people in all areas. It’s easy to be able to come and work in the US.
Lowell: So it’s sounds like you’re going to have a real Decision Support setup there in the near future?
Chris: Yeah, which’ll be great. A couple of weeks ago we released a whole lot more information out to the community. We’re going through a phase this year where we hope to put more and more data out for the community to look at and analyse for themselves. For business owners in Second Life to get more access to information. We’re going through a big phase with that and we need more people to help speed that process up.
Outback Online is a new virtual world option in development. At SLOz we’ll hopefully see a demo in the next few weeks but until then, read Robert Scoble’s blog posting on the demo he’s received.
The P2P networking and claims of 10000 concurrency per sim is enough to prick any SL member’s ears up.
Wolfie Rankin, owner of the Kookaburra pub on the Eragon island, has launched a range of t-shirts.
In Wolfie’s own words:
“I did some Rocky Horror ones, and may do more if people request the other characters.
‘Strewth Mate’ was one of my first, and most popular – a black shirt with text based on the 80s “Choose Life”
shirts was the inspiration there.
‘Dead Dingos…’ is a phrase that even the Americans understand and find funny, so I released that one on a shirt also.
There’s a few funny SL based ones also, such as ‘Object: Hello, Avatar’ which all the scripters would recognise.
I also have ‘The sit ball made me do it’ which is based on the old one about the devil.
Rather too often, Newbies would leave plain cubes around the sim, and that’s where I devised the term ‘Noob Cube’. The concept looked like a good idea for a shirt, and has a nice branded feel about it, currently there are three versions, but there will be more later.
While having something to eat, I had this idea about Linden Labs, and thought that changing the B to a D might work, it sounds like a gang, or some special
police division.
That’s about it.
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Graham Sabre covered a footy jumper shop yesterday and it’s becoming apparent that the Australian identity is well and truly being established in a ‘fashion’ sense.
With summer almost over and our cricketers lulling the world into a false sense of security, the beginning of the footy season is now in the offing and fans can prepare themselves by donning their favourite team colours at a little shop I found tonight.
Located at Martinis Bargain Clothes, this small venture caters for AFL team fans. And whilst it does state it is an outlet where you can buy NRL jerseys, that particular section seemed to be still awaiting stock.
At $100 Linden the AFL jersey’s are a little cheaper than their RL counterparts. If you have a hankering to be outfitted and ready to go barracking for your team, perhaps a quick venture to this shop will see you through the season.
As a Rugby fan I didn’t actually find anyone catering for that particular code at a Super 14 level but I did find a place where you can buy a Wallaby jersey. It was located at Taff’s Rugby and the range of footy oriented gear is quite large. With the World Cup not too far away, go the Ra Ra! Oh, they also have the round-ball footy code covered as well.
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