Starting over, or papering over?

Philip Rosedale today makes his first “official” blog post as the “returning” interim CEO (I use quotes around “returning” because face it – he never really left) – and it makes interesting reading.

The positive is that we once again seem to be moving to an era where Linden Lab is at least communicating to its user base. While Mark Kingdon cannot in any way be blamed for all of the woes that have struck Second Life since 2008 (for reasons I’ve mentioned before), it cannot be denied that one major failing within the Lab under his leadership was in the matter of open communication. Direct engagement with users whether in-world or via the blogs was a rarity. Kingdon himself didn’t really directly interact, talk to and listen to users in depth until February of this year – and then only once, albeit with a broadly positive interaction. While in the blogs, Lindens would occasionally appear, blog, and comment – but they turned cherry picking posts to which they’d respond into something worthy of the best politicians – if not an art form in its own right.

Now we have what amounts to – one the surface at least – some soul-searching from Philip, starting with his SL7B address and moving on to this blog entry which includes the welcome announcement of the possible return of Town Hall meetings – the (hopefully) first of which is to be held before the end of July.

Now, whether the old Town Hall meetings actually achieved anything or not can be debated; some will say almost certainly that they did, others will say that on the whole they were little more than PR and that the issues and directions for the future had already been determined within the Lab, and so feedback from such meetings would have little overall impact on matters.

While I’ll be returning to the first part of this view in a wider context in a moment, I have to say that  – in terms of the Town Hall meetings themselves – the fact that LL may not themselves taken much away from them that altered perceptions or thinking was entirely beside the point.

What the Town Halls did – and did well – was give those attending a sense of involvement with the Lab and with the future of SL as a whole. People felt engaged and motivated. While this may not have vastly altered the plans and ideas presented at such meetings (and I don’t necessarily subscribe to the viewpoint that the impact was minimal), the fact that people came away from them feeling engaged and having had the opportunity to say their piece doubtless contributed to the overall “good vibes” they had about SL.

However – and there is always an “however” – note that I did use the term “communication to” rather than “communicating with” users. The distinction here is important. Again, many of those who place blame for their woes squarely on the shoulders of Mark Kingdon should take heed: prioritised targets in Philip’s new strategy are – wait for it – the New User Experience (TM) and Viewer 2.1.

Yes, folks – Mark Kingdon may have gone, but his so-called “big mistakes” will roll forward regardless of anything you may say, think, feel or emote. The strategy around these was set a long time ago, and not by Mark Kingdon – but by Philip and the rest of the Board. While we may see some tinkering here and there and the odd shift in emphasis, rest assured neither is going to go away and nor is the Lab going to be swayed very far from the course it has set for itself.

And why should they, with regards to either of these things? Considerable time, effort and money have been invested in both. Frankly, LL would do itself far more damage by abandoning either than in sticking to their guns and trying to get both to work. and while they may have struck their collective thumb with a very heavy hammer in pushing Viewer 2 to far to fast – the fact that Philip has acknowledged this and is committing to rectifying matters is positive.

So, like it or lump it, Viewer 2 is here to stay. Now the important thing is to make sure that whatever voice we have is used to ensure genuine issues and concerns – Search and the rest – are heard clearly by Philip and LL and put towards the promised improvements.

Beyond this, Philip also identifies grid concerns as a major area of focus. While welcome news, this is not actually anything new. Frank Ambrose (F Linden) and the team have been hard at work on this issue throughout 2009/10 – and it has to be said that overall, the results have been significant. Yes there are still issues relating to smooth sim boundary crossings, some people still experience issues around Tping due to Mono attachments and the like – but on the whole, the grid is subject to far fewer outages, downtime and other glitches than ever before, and most of us – when push comes to shove – are enjoying a much better overall experience.

That said, there are still core issues that need looking at – even if they are much harder to address – as the recent series of server roll-outs / roll-backs from 1.36 through to 1.40.2 have more than demonstrated. And this is what I would hope Philip is referring to in identifying stability and performance as major points in the “new” strategy (simply because ensuring the grid is stable shouldn’t so much be a part of “new” strategies as it should be a part of “standard operating procedures”). It be sure, ensuring that every new release isn’t going to have some adverse effect on the main grid is a difficult thing to achieve: the beta grid is, after all, much smaller than the main grid and doubtless less impacted by things such as massive script usage, all-out combat scenarios, etc., – so missing potentially damaging flaws in new releases is a complex issue. But LL do have a habit of bundling comprehensive bug fixes together with new releases, so one cannot help but wonder if it would not be better to take a more cautious approach – as Philip seems to indicate, and reserve bug fix releases simply for that purpose and keep “big” features (such as Havoc 7) reserved for their own dedicated release – and then focusing interim releases primarily on fixing problems the new release has created incrementally.

The other major comment Philip makes is around the issue of XStreet / the SL Marketplace. This is interesting because the latter has come under much fire – and it has to be said that Grant Linden has been making a stupendous effort to engage with those with a huge spread of issues (many genuine, some perceived, a few down to simple confusion) and ensure that the appropriate feedback is given. Taken together with his actions, Philip’s comment should do much to reassure all of us that – again while LL are not going to abandon SLM as some of the wilder demands are insisting – the Lab is going to make every effort to ensure the new Marketplace is up to meeting its intended use and will be seen to be an overall improvement on XSL.

Taken as a whole, the blog post is broadly positive and encouraging. It indicates that while LL may not be moving away from its chosen path to any significant degree, some inside the organisation are willing to hold up a hand and state mea culpa and admit that the company needs to rescale its plans to a size that matches its actual capabilities and that whether they like it or not, at some point they are going to have to start, at least in some measure, back to engaging with the “pesky kids” (i.e. you and me) who run around their grid creating mischief.

I’ll be looking towards Philip’s planned Town Hall (or whatever he is going to now call it) in the expectation that what we’re seeing here is something of a genuine “back to basics” rather than another attempt to paper over the cracks which have now reached a size where even those in the lofty heights at LL can no longer ignore.