Second Life 101 with James Au, Linden Labs embedded reporter

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I recently had James Au come over my house for beers and a conversation about Second Life. Who is James? He was the embedded reporter that was hired to study what is going on in Second Life. If you’re a marketer and keep hearing the hype about Second Life you’ll want to watch this series. It’s long, about an hour and a half in total (split up over four videos) but we cover a lot of ground. If you’ve heard the hype but have never had a good tour, this is one way to get educated about Second Life. James is also writing a book about Second Life that’ll come out in January 2008 and he has a blog called New World Notes.

If you’re an expert Second Lifer (Eric Rice, are you out there?) then you might get a little bit out of this, but probably not. Instead we tried to answer all the questions I get from marketers who hear about it.

Part I: Intro to James Au and Second Life.
Part II: Cool places to visit, keeping kids safe, a game inside Second Life called Tringo.
Part III: Avatar customization, camping chairs, teen grid, Second Life going open source.
Part IV: Tax revolt, pregnant avatars, memorial plots, fundraising.

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Published by Robert Scoble

I give you a front-row seat on the future. Focusing most of my efforts now on next-generation augmented reality and artificial intelligence, AKA "mixed reality." SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTER: http://clevermoe.com/scobleizer-news/ BUY OUR NEW BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Transformation-Robert-Scoble/dp/1539894444 "The Fourth Transformation: How augmented reality and artificial intelligence will change everything." WATCH MY LATEST SPEECHES: State of VR with Philip Rosedale (done in VR itself, very cool): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zAA1EVGUZU At GEOINT, June 2017: http://trajectorymagazine.com/glimpse-new-world/ Augmented World Expo, June 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4xHILvLD8E At Leade.rs, April 2017: https://youtu.be/52_0JshgjXI +++++++++++ BIO: Scoble gives you a front-row seat on the future. Literally. He had the first ride in the first Tesla. Siri was launched in his house. He's been the first to share all sorts of technologies and companies with you, from Flipboard to Pandora to Instagram. Today he's focusing on mixed reality, AKA "next-generation augmented reality" which will include a new user interface for EVERYTHING in your life (IoT, Smart Cities, driverless cars, robots, drones, etc). That's based on his view thanks to his past experience as futurist at Rackspace. Best place to find Scoble? On his Facebook profile at https://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble He has been a technology blogger since 2000, was one of five people who built Microsoft's Channel 9 video blog/community, worked at Fast Company Magazine running its TV efforts, and has been part of technology media businesses since 1993. ++++++++ SPEAKER PITCH: Apple and Facebook now have revealed their Augmented Reality strategies, which means your business needs one too. Rely on Robert Scoble, the world's top authority on AR, to bring to your conference what businesses should do next. SPEECH ABSTRACT #1: TITLE: The Fourth Transformation: What's next in mixed reality (AR and AI) and the future of technology? Here's an example of this talk at Leade.rs in Paris in April, 2017: https://youtu.be/52_0JshgjXI Why "the Fourth Transformation?" Soon we will have phones and glasses that do full on augmented reality. Everything you look at will potentially be augmented. This world is coming in late 2017 with a new iPhone from Apple, amongst other products. Microsoft is betting everything on its HoloLens glasses that do mixed reality and the industry is spending many billions of dollars in R&D and funding new companies like Magic Leap. This future will be the user interface for IoT, Smart Cities, autonomous cars, robots, drones, and your TV. This is a big deal and Robert will take you through what mixed reality is and how it will change every business. Learn more about Robert's speaking style and contact his agent at http://odemanagement.com/robert-scoble/Robert-Scoble.html ++++++++ SPEECH ABSTRACT #2: "The Next Two Clicks of Moore's Law." Over the next four years, or two clicks of Moore's Law, a ton about our technology world will change. Scoble will bring you the best from his travels visiting R&D labs, startups, and innovators around the world. He views the world through his rose-colored-mixed-reality glasses, which will be the new user interface for self driving cars, Smart Cities, IoT, and many other things in our world. He'll send you off with some lessons for companies both large and small. ++++++++ SPEECH ABSTRACT #3: "Personalized Meaning: What is Augmented Reality For?" As we enter a far more technological world where even cars drive themselves, I predict we'll see a blowback toward the analog, more authentic world. What role does augmented reality play in both worlds? Get Scoble's insight into where augmented reality is going, see tons of real-world demos, and understand what he means by 'personalized meaning.' CONTACT: If you are looking to contact me, email is best: scobleizer@gmail.com. ++++++++ ENDORSEMENTS: IZEA Top 25 Tech Influencers: https://izea.com/2017/07/07/25-top-tech-influencers/ Time: One of the top 140 Twitterers! FT: One of the five most influential Twitterers! Inc. Top 5 on list of Tech Power Players You Need to Know: http://www.inc.com/john-rampton/30-power-players-in-tech-you-need-to-know.html Next Reality: #4 on top 50 AR influencer list: https://next.reality.news/news/nr50-next-realitys-50-people-watch-augmented-mixed-reality-0177454/

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38 thoughts on “Second Life 101 with James Au, Linden Labs embedded reporter”

  3. Can we go ahead and post all the textbook crap we KNOW we’ll hear?

    1. More like ‘get a life’
    2. I don’t have time for a first life
    3. Clay Shirky playing with Excel spreadsheets again and not social issues
    4. I don’t get Second Life
    5. Insert something about gaming here
    6. Child Porn
    7. Gazillion damn dollars being spent via corps
    8. BTW, Microsoft and the Visual Studio thing is KICKING MUCH ASS IN SL
    9. More like ‘get a life’ oh wait I said that already haw haw haw it was funny the first 9842309482098 times.

    Okay, wtf did I forget? Cuz really, I wanna save everyone the bandwidth.

    10. There are other Second Life competitors out there, also. Some of them are better and worse. But, see #1 if this worries you.

    Like

  4. Can we go ahead and post all the textbook crap we KNOW we’ll hear?

    1. More like ‘get a life’
    2. I don’t have time for a first life
    3. Clay Shirky playing with Excel spreadsheets again and not social issues
    4. I don’t get Second Life
    5. Insert something about gaming here
    6. Child Porn
    7. Gazillion damn dollars being spent via corps
    8. BTW, Microsoft and the Visual Studio thing is KICKING MUCH ASS IN SL
    9. More like ‘get a life’ oh wait I said that already haw haw haw it was funny the first 9842309482098 times.

    Okay, wtf did I forget? Cuz really, I wanna save everyone the bandwidth.

    10. There are other Second Life competitors out there, also. Some of them are better and worse. But, see #1 if this worries you.

    Like

  7. As someone who just doesn’t get Second Life (I’ve tried to play it a couple of times) I’ll definitely take a look.

    I think it’s definitely a great way to brand a game, but I’m unsure as to whether a game can be any good based on just its concept? Especially when the concept is as over arching as Second Life’s. Perhaps I look at it too much as a game, when really I shouldn’t be playing it but living it?

    Unfortunately I don’t have the time, unless I can read Scobleizer in game?

    Like

  8. As someone who just doesn’t get Second Life (I’ve tried to play it a couple of times) I’ll definitely take a look.

    I think it’s definitely a great way to brand a game, but I’m unsure as to whether a game can be any good based on just its concept? Especially when the concept is as over arching as Second Life’s. Perhaps I look at it too much as a game, when really I shouldn’t be playing it but living it?

    Unfortunately I don’t have the time, unless I can read Scobleizer in game?

    Like

  9. I personally get frustrated with hearing about the same old well-trod five smooth stones being brought out — Svarga, Lost Garden, the Prim Tax Revolt, Tringo, Ice Dragon.

    I suppose for those very new to SL those are must-sees but…then what? It’s like going to New York City and going to the Central Park Zoo, seeing the panda, eating those too-sweet peanuts from the pushcarts and then you go, ok, now what? And…that is the question. What next? How will *you* live in Second Life?

    There is so much more, but it really is a very, very long tail of a wide variety of demographic niches.I’m flying out of the dusty atoll continent with Magellan’s plane crash under the sky temple, now I’m looking at the Norwegian waterfalls and rocky cliffs (now made by real Norwegians lol!), earlier this evening I was in the Amphibian gardens listening to Frogg Marlowe and Jaycatt Nino live. Now a tenant is IM’ing me from a motel to open the door in a flat grassland sim next to a cobblestone road and somebody from England is asking if I can put out a poster of the lost British girl…and somebody is clicking on the Aids Memorial Quilt object on a mall plaza, donating a square of virtual quilt. Maybe SL just needs to become more twitterable.

    And I think the answer to those worried marketers is: people make their own amateur content, and it’s not just about the very tiny percent making the highly polished professional content that gets consumed by tourist-like activity.

    What people enjoy about SL is putting together their own lean-to and primitive garden at first, or buying a prefab of some style they like, like a goth house or a Frank Lloyd Wright house, and then the thrill of making their own table or buying one from a friend or going to a yard sale. So the pleasures are simple and often have a home-made effect but that’s what people like there, and marketers have to follow them doing that, not hope that if they park content on a big, expensive island that people will come.

    I would submit that to follow them, you’ll have to spread out and do a whole bunch of things — sponsor live music, sports, games, clubs, events, discussion groups that people themselves make, then have more activities like that on your own high-end sim or it will moulder with no traffic no it.

    I think the other advice is that if your company does have it’s own IT staff or even if it has people reasonably familiar with gaming or Internet new media, that it’s worth them going through the steps of learning some of the basic interface rather than shielding yourself from learning the world from the ground up by hiring an expensive metaversal dev company. I think if you’re there for the long haul you’ll want to do that anyway.

    I think Hamlet’s comment about “no script” and “no build” and such need to be supplemented by the obvious for those who don’t understand yet the concept of “land tools”: if you buy or rent land in Second Life, it’s like a website, you will be able to block entry to it, you can publish it just for your family as some photo sites are or you can open it to the public. You can “moderate comments” if you will, limiting it to only a certain group, or you can do the equivalent of banning the IPs of people who verbally harass you by putting them in a ban list, etc.

    But you have to balance whether you want a sterile experience where people can’t come and rez out or demonstrate out of inventory things they’ve made or bought, or can’t build because you turned that function off. Putting “autoreturn” on for 5 minutes is another way to clear content constantly that isn’t set to the owner or his group.

    Like

  10. I personally get frustrated with hearing about the same old well-trod five smooth stones being brought out — Svarga, Lost Garden, the Prim Tax Revolt, Tringo, Ice Dragon.

    I suppose for those very new to SL those are must-sees but…then what? It’s like going to New York City and going to the Central Park Zoo, seeing the panda, eating those too-sweet peanuts from the pushcarts and then you go, ok, now what? And…that is the question. What next? How will *you* live in Second Life?

    There is so much more, but it really is a very, very long tail of a wide variety of demographic niches.I’m flying out of the dusty atoll continent with Magellan’s plane crash under the sky temple, now I’m looking at the Norwegian waterfalls and rocky cliffs (now made by real Norwegians lol!), earlier this evening I was in the Amphibian gardens listening to Frogg Marlowe and Jaycatt Nino live. Now a tenant is IM’ing me from a motel to open the door in a flat grassland sim next to a cobblestone road and somebody from England is asking if I can put out a poster of the lost British girl…and somebody is clicking on the Aids Memorial Quilt object on a mall plaza, donating a square of virtual quilt. Maybe SL just needs to become more twitterable.

    And I think the answer to those worried marketers is: people make their own amateur content, and it’s not just about the very tiny percent making the highly polished professional content that gets consumed by tourist-like activity.

    What people enjoy about SL is putting together their own lean-to and primitive garden at first, or buying a prefab of some style they like, like a goth house or a Frank Lloyd Wright house, and then the thrill of making their own table or buying one from a friend or going to a yard sale. So the pleasures are simple and often have a home-made effect but that’s what people like there, and marketers have to follow them doing that, not hope that if they park content on a big, expensive island that people will come.

    I would submit that to follow them, you’ll have to spread out and do a whole bunch of things — sponsor live music, sports, games, clubs, events, discussion groups that people themselves make, then have more activities like that on your own high-end sim or it will moulder with no traffic no it.

    I think the other advice is that if your company does have it’s own IT staff or even if it has people reasonably familiar with gaming or Internet new media, that it’s worth them going through the steps of learning some of the basic interface rather than shielding yourself from learning the world from the ground up by hiring an expensive metaversal dev company. I think if you’re there for the long haul you’ll want to do that anyway.

    I think Hamlet’s comment about “no script” and “no build” and such need to be supplemented by the obvious for those who don’t understand yet the concept of “land tools”: if you buy or rent land in Second Life, it’s like a website, you will be able to block entry to it, you can publish it just for your family as some photo sites are or you can open it to the public. You can “moderate comments” if you will, limiting it to only a certain group, or you can do the equivalent of banning the IPs of people who verbally harass you by putting them in a ban list, etc.

    But you have to balance whether you want a sterile experience where people can’t come and rez out or demonstrate out of inventory things they’ve made or bought, or can’t build because you turned that function off. Putting “autoreturn” on for 5 minutes is another way to clear content constantly that isn’t set to the owner or his group.

    Like

  15. I think, as Prok verbosely points out, much of the magic of SecondLife is missed. The same kludgey points of where to go, what to do… the landscape changes, and exploring *with friends* is probably the best way to get around.

    That said, I think the basics have been beaten to death. Being an expert in SecondLife isn’t necessarily a matter of how long one has been there – it is a matter of how well one keeps up. James has managed to do this and do it well, and that in itself is admirable. But like any social experience, the proof is in the pudding and you can’t really tell people where the pudding is. They have to find their own version of the pudding.

    Of course, that is the failure of most marketing.

    Like

  16. I think, as Prok verbosely points out, much of the magic of SecondLife is missed. The same kludgey points of where to go, what to do… the landscape changes, and exploring *with friends* is probably the best way to get around.

    That said, I think the basics have been beaten to death. Being an expert in SecondLife isn’t necessarily a matter of how long one has been there – it is a matter of how well one keeps up. James has managed to do this and do it well, and that in itself is admirable. But like any social experience, the proof is in the pudding and you can’t really tell people where the pudding is. They have to find their own version of the pudding.

    Of course, that is the failure of most marketing.

    Like

  21. Prokofy: those are all legitimate criticisms, but I wanted to get all the basics down in a video to give people some framework to start with. It’d be fun to do a more advanced video next time where we get more into how to build something, especially using scripting, which James admits he’s weak on.
    But I do wonder if you watched all four videos cause we cover a lot of stuff beyond the usual. It’s just that in my descriptions I pulled out the biggest things we talked about.

    Like

  22. Prokofy: those are all legitimate criticisms, but I wanted to get all the basics down in a video to give people some framework to start with. It’d be fun to do a more advanced video next time where we get more into how to build something, especially using scripting, which James admits he’s weak on.
    But I do wonder if you watched all four videos cause we cover a lot of stuff beyond the usual. It’s just that in my descriptions I pulled out the biggest things we talked about.

    Like

  25. Pingback: Web Strategy by Jeremiah » Second Life, what you should know before your Corporation goes there

  30. Eric, yah forgot a few. 🙂

    11. Ponzi scheme, done faux new economy MLM. Buzz is up, goldrush it, get bloggers to foam over it, and bam quick economic tank-out crash. Fake as fake is. 12. Pyramid scheme serious, Giza to the 100th power. Linden dollars go pop.
    13. Church of Scientology SL style.
    14. Microsoft Island, MICARMA Initiative (Gillian as Supreme Leader)
    15. World of Warcraft crack-like, for the weak-headed, Pick a safer drug, like pure cocaine or something.
    16. IBM briefings, serious product pitches gone bezzerko…I hope the team that thought this was a good idea, got sliced in that downsizing.
    17. ROI? Wotchatalkingaboutwillis?
    18. Real relationships aren’t in pixel-form.
    19. It employed Beth Goza at one time, complete with her style of Marketing, trained Pitbulls and Secret Decoder Ring Insiders.
    20. Griefing as sport. Boredom begets griefing all the live long day. John Edwards de jour.

    But an overhyped artificial environment, be perfect for all those Social Marketing types, they can talk to themselves and their cult, all the live long day, and think it actually means something. Keeps the bug-eyed freaks outta normal society at least.

    Like

  31. Eric, yah forgot a few. 🙂

    11. Ponzi scheme, done faux new economy MLM. Buzz is up, goldrush it, get bloggers to foam over it, and bam quick economic tank-out crash. Fake as fake is. 12. Pyramid scheme serious, Giza to the 100th power. Linden dollars go pop.
    13. Church of Scientology SL style.
    14. Microsoft Island, MICARMA Initiative (Gillian as Supreme Leader)
    15. World of Warcraft crack-like, for the weak-headed, Pick a safer drug, like pure cocaine or something.
    16. IBM briefings, serious product pitches gone bezzerko…I hope the team that thought this was a good idea, got sliced in that downsizing.
    17. ROI? Wotchatalkingaboutwillis?
    18. Real relationships aren’t in pixel-form.
    19. It employed Beth Goza at one time, complete with her style of Marketing, trained Pitbulls and Secret Decoder Ring Insiders.
    20. Griefing as sport. Boredom begets griefing all the live long day. John Edwards de jour.

    But an overhyped artificial environment, be perfect for all those Social Marketing types, they can talk to themselves and their cult, all the live long day, and think it actually means something. Keeps the bug-eyed freaks outta normal society at least.

    Like

  32. “Tweakers, lokers, slammers, coming and going, swearing eternal allegiance and undying love for one another, only to wake up after the binge and realize you wouldn’t walk across the stree to piss on one of them if their head was on fire.” – The Salton Sea (2002), Tony Gayton

    Like

  33. “Tweakers, lokers, slammers, coming and going, swearing eternal allegiance and undying love for one another, only to wake up after the binge and realize you wouldn’t walk across the stree to piss on one of them if their head was on fire.” – The Salton Sea (2002), Tony Gayton

    Like

  34. Pingback: renaissance chambara | Ged Carroll » Blog Archive »

  35. But in the meantime, people are saying my world is reminding them of Half-Life 2 and various titles from XBOX 360.

    Given where I’ve been in blogging, podcasting, vlogging, etc… what could be my potential opportunities in the game space…?

    Life waits for no one.

    Like

  36. But in the meantime, people are saying my world is reminding them of Half-Life 2 and various titles from XBOX 360.

    Given where I’ve been in blogging, podcasting, vlogging, etc… what could be my potential opportunities in the game space…?

    Life waits for no one.

    Like

  37. Well…
    Second Life is a nice 3D virtual community.. but it wasn’t the first..

    Second Life is a copy and not the other way.

    I played around in Internet 3D commities in late 1999, before Second Life started. The Blaxxun VRML communities and so on.

    Project Entropia was first with real money economy..

    Like

  38. Well…
    Second Life is a nice 3D virtual community.. but it wasn’t the first..

    Second Life is a copy and not the other way.

    I played around in Internet 3D commities in late 1999, before Second Life started. The Blaxxun VRML communities and so on.

    Project Entropia was first with real money economy..

    Like

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