The event venue has been given as Linden Estate Services Meeting Area.
On Tuesday, October 29th, 2024, Linden Lab announced that the company’s founder, Philip Rosedale has been appointed to the full-time role of Chief Technology Officer (CTO), in a move that will undoubtedly cause excitement in some quarters.
As well as founding the company, Rosedale served as its CEO through until 2010, when he departed the company to work on various new ventures, including Coffee and Power and, most notable, the VR-centric virtual world / social spaces company, High Fidelity.
The latter actually became an investor in Linden Lab / Second Life in January 2022 in a deal which included the transfer of some staff from High Fidelity to Linden Lab, together distributed computing patents held by High Fidelity, which has transitioned by that time toy working on solutions focused on spatial audio that would allow people to work collaboratively whilst geographically separate. Also as a part of that deal, Rosedale took up the role as a special advisor to the Second Life management team and the Board at Linden Lab.
In this role he has spent the last 2+ years providing advice and support to the Lab’s Board under Executive Chairman Brad Oberwager and the executive team, and has been visible at a number of Lab-led town hall meetings and similar events as well as participating in various Lab Gab events.
In his new role as CTO, Rosedale “will guide technology and product strategy daily” alongside the executive management team, and he will also resume a seat on the company’s Board.
Over the last four years since the acquisition, Linden Lab has re-focused itself on improving and serving Second Life. We’ve divested ourselves of unnecessary projects, streamlined our operations, increased the quality of customer support, and grown our overall revenues and profitability. We’re now in a unique position to define the future of virtual worlds, and Philip is returning to help myself and the exec team achieve that goal.
– Brad Oberwager, Linden Lab Executive Chair, via the announcement
Philip Rosedale Round Table Event
The announcement also indicated the Lab will be holding a Community Round Table event on Friday, November 1st, 2024, at 10:00 SLT featuring Philip Rosedale. At the time of writing, the venue for the event was TBA – this post will be updated with details when available. However, questions are being sought from Second Life users, so if you have a question for Philip Rosedale, you can submit it via this form.
Related Links
- Philip Rosedale Returns as CTO to Help Build the Future of Second Life (Linden Lab)
- High Fidelity Invests in Second Life (linden Lab press release, January 2022)
- High Fidelity, Linden Lab, and the return of Philip Rosedale – updated (this blog, January 2022)
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 
Thank you for this writeup. I’ve submitted a question about the discoverability and trust implications of his interest in injecting AI entities into SL, per his comments in the recent NWN interview published on October 29th about “greeters or companions.” We’ll see if that gets taken up and answered—or ignored.
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