April Linden (Systems Engineering Manager, Operations) and Oz Linden (Senior Director, Second Life Engineering) two of this year’s participants in Meet the Lindens at SL16B. Credit: Linden Lab
Don’t forget that the week of Monday June 24th through Friday, June 28th marks this year’s Meet the Lindens sessions at SL16B.
Each day at 14:00 SLT will see one or more members of the Lab and their helpers sit down to discuss their work, Second Life, (and in one case, possibly Sansar as well), and answer questions.
As I’ve previously noted, all the events will take place in the SL16B Auditorium and will feature the following participants:
Day (14:00 – 15:00 SLT)
Participants
Monday 24th June
Patch Linden, Senior Director, Product Operations
Tuesday 25th June
Oz Linden, Senior Director, Second Life Engineering and April Linden, Systems Engineering Manager, Operations
Wednesday 26th, June
Ebbe Linden (Altberg), Linden Lab CEO
Thursday 27th June
Xiola Linden, Lead Community Manager, and Strawberry Linden, Marketing Specialist
Friday 28th June
Meet the Moles – the Linden Department of Public Works
Some of the Moles and Lindens of the Linden Department of Public Works
You can read some brief liner notes about the Lindens taking part (and the Moles!) on the official Second Life blog post reminding people of the events. In addition, I offered some brief introductions to the Lindens who will be appearing in my article SL16B: Meet the Lindens – when and who.
As I noted in that article, and as with past Meet the Linden events, I hope to record all of these sessions (or as many as I can), for a series of summary reports on the sessions, complete with audio extracts for those who may prefer to read about them, rather than watching the full video – although the latter will be appended to each summary.
For existing users, SL16B is part of the scrolling banner of images featured on the secondlife.com log-in page. It marks one small part of marketing work around the birthday celebrations
The celebrations for Second Life’s 16 birthday commenced on Thursday, June 20th at 10:00 SLT, and will run through until July 8th. It is a time of a lot of in-world events marking Second Life’s “birthday” – and it’s also an opportunity for Linden Lab to remind the world just how long-lived, – and potentially relevant – the platform is.
This outreach can take various forms. It can, for example encompass direct outreach to the media at large, as we’ve seen with SL’s 10th and 15th years, with media interviews with the CEO, press releases and the release of materials such as infographics offering snapshots of Second Life in facts and figures.
For 2019 the Lab has already produced a special Second Life landing page for SL16B. Landing pages are those seen by people attracted to Second Life via adverts and marketing campaigns, and I’ve covered how these pages work in my 2015 piece Landing Pages: marketing Second Life. However, given it is available, I took the opportunity to contact the Lab’s Marketing Manager for Second Life, Brett Linden about what else the marketing team are working on to promote Second Life during its 16th anniversary, and he was only too happy to talk me through some of the work.
The entire marketing team has been working to promote SL16B through multiple channels, including organic, paid, email and social campaigns. Most of our energies on SL16B have been on re-engagement of existing or lapsed Second Life Residents but we do hope that the event will draw the interest of outward (non-SL) media, as well.
Our Senior Marketing Manager Darcy has been promoting via paid display and search ads, most of which are being primarily used for [this] “re-targeting” [of] existing Second Life Residents to encourage (and/or remind) them to log back in. The landing page is referenced in some of the paid campaigns that link directly to it, [some of which] include 15 second and 30 second edits of our main SL16 “first look” promo video.
– Brett Linden describing the marketing work around SL’s 16th anniversary
While it may sound a little odd trying to market Second Life to users who have not logged-in to it for a while – after all, if they’ve not logged-in, then surely because they’re no longer interested? – it does actually make a lot of sense. There are many potential reasons why people might take a break from logging-in to the platform or who opt to put it to one side with the intention of coming back – but never quite get around to it. Thus, reaching out to “lapsed” users can be beneficial.
Certainly, it’s an approach that has yielded worthwhile results for the Lab, hence why it continues to be a staple part of their marketing efforts. If nothing else, re-capturing the interest of those who were once engaged in the platform is potentially a lot easier than trying to draw in an entirely new audience (not that this shouldn’t also be done / isn’t done).
Some of the paid advertising and search ads Darcy Linden has been working on in the run-up to SL16B that will be used in marketing campaigns around the birthday celebration
Part of this outreach will be in the form of e-mails. Target groups for these e-mail are being identified by one of the Lab’s marketing analysts, Maveric Linden, and e-mails will start going out during the week commencing Monday, June 24th. Part of this campaign will encompass active Second Life users as well, in the form of one e-mail promoting activities at SL16B, and another promoting the new Premium Gift released for SL16B (a retro ’50s diner already available through the Premium gift kiosks).
Social media plays an important role in marketing, both for SL16B and in general. In this the reach of a message can be greatly amplified through the likes of Twitter re-tweets, both by Second Life users and others.
Lead Community Manager Xiola has been leading the charge with promotion across all our social channels including working with the community to help spread awareness. It was exciting to see that founder Philip Rosedale tweet the video, but we’ve also had dedicated outreach to many Second Life vloggers and bloggers, such as yourself that allowed many influencers to get an advanced sneak peek to prepare their coverage for opening day.
– Brett Linden describing the way social media can help amplify a message
Of course, reaching out to vloggers and bloggers engaged in SL (you can catch my pocket guide to SL16B if you haven’t already) is to be expected. But what about more outward (non-SL related) marketing? Brett acknowledges that SL16B doesn’t specifically have a direct focus here, but that doesn’t mean the more mainstream media is being ignored.
We are engaged in ongoing efforts for outward press opportunities covering multiple other angles including reminding the media about our pioneering role in the mainstreaming of virtual worlds, virtual currencies/economies and VR. One of the things that we’ve noticed some recent media traction on is the “Love Made in Second Life” mini-series and some of the other non-romance ethnographic videos featured on our social channels.
For example, we already have a major cable news network and an established podcast creator working on extended pieces inspired by some of those videos. We’ve been very happy with the attention received by our “Made in Second Life” series and the recent Destinations videos since they serve the dual purpose of showcasing SL and surfacing great stories to both the existing community and external audiences.
A practical demonstration of this broader engagement with the media actually came as this article was being finalised, in the form of How Virtual Reality Is Changing Healthcare, a techopedia article by Terri Williams, which includes comments by the Lab’s CEO, Ebbe Altberg, directly referencing Second Life’s relevance to healthcare.
Marketing is a complex topic, but it is one in which LL are constantly engaged, even if we may not always see what is going on or the results – or even see it in the form of press interviews or similar. As such, I found it interesting to hear from Brett on just one aspect of the work; and I hope this article helps shed some light on work we, as users, don’t often get to see.
My thanks to Brett Linden for his time in allowing me to write this piece.
The SL16B celebratory regions have opened their doors to mark the 16th anniversary of the public launch of Second Life. As with previous years, the event includes music, entertainment, talks, presentations, performances and the opportunity to explore themed builds and exhibitions by participating members of the Second Life community.
This year marks something of a departure from recent SLB events, in that for the first time since SL9B, these celebrations have been under the direct management of the Lab and the Linden Department of Public Works (LPDW), rather than being community-led. The most notable aspects of this change are that this year, the celebration doesn’t feature things like the familiar 4-region Birthday Cake stage – in fact there are only two official stages: the Main Stage and the DJ Stage.
The second notable aspect is that the exhibitor spaces are considerably fewer this year than in previous years, and these are located in the five regions on the west side of the SL16B estate, being: SL16B Astonish, SL16B Captivate, SL16B Enchant, SL16B Incredible, and SL16B Sparkle. Each of these is marked by a large central exhibitor display with a landing point associated with it, with smaller parcels laid out around it in a grid pattern of roads (traversed by the familiar pod tours) and footpaths.
The rest of the celebratory regions are given over to public spaces, the stages, the auditorium, a large central lake and beach, and a couple of Linden Homes preview regions, of which more anon.
This year’s SL16B regions include many open spaces that offer room to breathe whilst visiting
The theme for this year’s celebrations is “Sweet Sixteen”, with a focus on a 1950’s, the start of the “youth revolution” and a general period of social change in America that continued through the 1960s. Given this, there are the inevitable core elements of diners, drive-in movie theatres, bright colours, vinyl and 50s B-movies and typically 50’s views of “the future” that involve rocket ships and the like to be found throughout the exhibitor displays, but there are also those that put the 50s into context as informative pieces, and those that cast their net a little wider.
In this latter regard, I admit to particular liking the International Space Museum / National Space Society’s central display that celebrates our once and future presence on the Moon. Yes, we didn’t reach the Moon’s surface until 1969, but NASA was a child of the 1950s (officially formed in 1958), and July 2019 does mark the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s historic landing.
Part of the ISM / NSS exhibitor display Back to the Moon!, marking the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11
The community spaces offer attractions of their own: the lake and beach noted above, meandering parks, and spaces that can help take the load when dealing with large numbers of avatars bunching together in the core events areas. And here I might sound a little critical, but having become used to fantastical builds for the various stages and event centres over the last seven years in particular, the core builds – stages and auditorium – for Sl16B come across as – well – a touch bland.
Yes, I can understand the reasoning; some of the more fantastic builds seen in the past were doubtless resource heavy for both servers (with a scripting load) and – more particularly – viewers (lots of mesh and textures, for example, clogging up local computer resources). The builds here are a lot more economical in these respect; but while they do reflect the teens / 50s theme, they do seem to lack the attractive lustre and thrill of previous community designs.
Events and Activities
But in terms of major events, what does SL16B hold? Well, the best way the stay abreast of all that’s going on is via the official calendar of events, which I’ve embedded below.
However, there are a couple of significant events taking place which you might want easier reminding about – the weekday Meet the Lindens sessions, and the SL16B Music Fest, so I’m including a few notes on them here.
Meet the Lindens
Now a staple of SLB activities, Meet the Lindens features the opportunity to listen to and ask questions of, employees of Linden Lab at 14:00 SLT, Monday 24th June through Friday, 28th June at the SL16B Auditorium.
You can find out more about who is taking part this year in my blog post, SL16B: Meet the Lindens – when and who, however, the schedule for the sessions is given below for ease of reference.
Day (14:00 – 15:00 SLT)
Lindens
Monday 24th June
Patch Linden, Senior Director, Product Operations
Tuesday 25th June
Oz Linden, Senior Director, Second Life Engineering and April Linden, Systems Engineering Manager, Operations
Wednesday 26th, June
Ebbe Linden (Altberg), Linden Lab CEO
Thursday 27th June
Xiola Linden, Lead Community Manager, and Strawberry Linden, Marketing Specialist
Friday 28th June
Meet the Moles – the Linden Department of Public Works
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SL16B Music Fest
The SL16B Music Fest will take place on Friday 20th and Saturday 21st June, at the Main Stage at SL16B. Again, for ease of reference, the line-up of live performers is given below.
Time
Friday, June 21st
Saturday, June 22nd
10:00
Parker Static
Dreama Summerwind
11:00
R4 Anne (oXoRyanneoXo)
Mimi Carpenter
12:00 noon
Tempio Breil
Grif Bamaisin
13:00
Gabriel da Silva
Donn DeVore
14:00
Alazarin Mobius
Skye Galaxy
15:00
Evely Lane
Effinjay
16:00
Zak Claxton
Quartz
Other Points of Interest
The Welcome Area
The best place to start your visit, the Welcome Area features:
A click-to-teleport map of the celebration regions that will deliver you to a destination (or the closest landing point to it).
Free gifts and free 1950s-style avatars to help you fit the mood of the celebrations (and potentially reduce your rendering impact on others visiting the regions, should you choose to use them).
The Welcome Area, on the east side of the SL16B regions is a good place to start exploring – there’s a click-to-TP map, and various freebies (including 1950s style male and female avatars) and the SL16B hunt swaginator HUD
The Tapestry of Time
An anniversary celebration is something the evokes memories and gives us cause to look back, and SL16B is no exception. Building on an event from 2018, this year’s celebrations include an expanded Tapestry of Time, a full region devoted to providing in words and video, the chance to look through SL’s long history from 2003 through to the present day. True, not everything has been recorded, but there’s enough within the region for the historically minded to find of interest.
The first – SL16B Stunning – presents the current crop of Traditional land-based homes, and the existing Houseboat type of home that can been found on Bellisseria, the Linden Homes continent.
The second – SL16B Spellbound – presents the upcoming trailer-style homes that will form (a part of?) an upcoming new Linden Homes release.
The four new styles of trailer / caravan based Linden Home that will be coming up soon and can be seen at SL16B
The Linden Trailer Homes are liable to be gaining a lot of preview coverage, and they are certainly an interesting idea. However, the preview comes with an important note from the Lab:
Please keep in mind this region is just a PEEK at content that is still in progress. The final live regions will be somewhat different and will have some variety built into them just like the previous themes do, but this gives a taste of what is coming.
Patch Linden will have more to say on these units during his Meet the Linden presentation on Monday, June 24th. Following his session, I’ll have a more in-depth look at these new trailer homes including comments from Patch.
SL16B Shopping Event
While not a part of the SL16B regions per se, don’t forget that running from June 20th through until July 8th, 2019 is the SL16B Shopping & Gift Event. This can be found in the familiar Second Life shopping event mall, covering 15 regions (five for shopping) and decorated in the SL16B colours. See SLurls and Links below for the region SLurls
The SL16B Shopping and Gift Event – June 20th through July 8th. See the links below for SLurls
On Monday, June 17th, 2019, Linden Lab announced the line-up of performers and the schedule for the SL16B music festival.
The Music Fest has been a part of the Second Life Birthday celebrations since SL12B in 2015. This year, the event will take place over the two days of Friday, June 21st and Saturday, June 22nd, on the performance stage in the SL16B region.
The event schedule is as follows:
Time
Friday, June 21st
Saturday, June 22nd
10:00
Parker Static
Dreama Summerwind
11:00
R4 Anne (oXoRyanneoXo)
Mimi Carpenter
12:00 noon
Tempio Breil
Grif Bamaisin
13:00
Gabriel da Silva
Donn DeVore
14:00
Alazarin Mobius
Skye Galaxy
15:00
Evely Lane
Effinjay
16:00
Zak Claxton
Quartz
Note the SLurl given in this piece will not be available for general use until SL16B opens.
The 16th anniversary of Second Life’s opening to the public at large – SL16B – is just around the corner (starting June 20th). And, as has been the case with SLB events over the last few years, the celebration will feature a series of Meet the Lindens sessions featuring members of the various teams within the Lab who work on Second Life.
The sessions will run daily through the week of the SL16B celebrations, and will be hosted at the SL16B Auditorium. They offer an opportunity to hear from – and likely ask questions of – Linden Lab staff who work on the platform.
All of the sessions will take place between 14:00 and 15:00 SLT, Monday, June 24th and Thursday, June 27th, with the schedule lining up as follows.
Day (14:00 – 15:00 SLT)
Lindens
Monday 24th June
Patch Linden, Senior Manager, Product Operations
Tuesday 25th June
Oz Linden, Technical Director for Second Life and April Linden, Second Life Operations Manager
Wednesday 26th, June
Ebbe Linden (Altberg), Linden Lab CEO
Thursday 27th June
Xiola Linden, Lead Community Manager, and Strawberry Linden
Friday, June 28th will see a (currently unadvertised, as awaiting names) session with some of the Moles.
For those who may be unfamiliar with some of the above names and their areas of expertise:
Patch Linden oversees the content development teams, the Mainland Land Team, and the Linden Department of Public Works – LDPW, aka The Moles. As such, he oversees things like the development of the new Linden Homes continent, the Lab’s games and experiences such as Linden Realms and Horizons, and so on. He is also responsible for managing the individual Second Life and Sansar support teams, and the account support team.
Oz Linden oversees the engineering side of Second Life – this encompasses viewer development, simulator development and a lot of the back-end services required by SL (e.g. the asset service, the appearance and baking services, etc.). This includes managing the development and implementation of SL projects and features such Bento, Animesh, the Environmental Enhancement Project, Bakes on Mesh, etc. On the simulator side of things, His team works closely with the Operations team.
April Linden manages the team responsible for keeping all aspects of Second Life’s infrastructure – servers, network, etc., running. This involves more than just the simulator servers, encompassing as it does core systems such as the log-in services, and the back-end services as well. This is the time that is directly engaged in handling service outages, protecting SL from things like DDoS attacks. When things do go sideways, April also takes responsibility for informing Second Life users on what happened and why (and LL’s efforts to avoid any future repeat) through her excellent post-mortem blog posts (like this one) which are recommended reading for anyone interested in understanding the complexities of Second Life.
Ebbe Linden, as the Lab’s CEO since 2014, really needs no introduction. Open and honest, he has always endeavoured to keep SL residents appraised of business at the Lab – including Sansar – and on the manage perspective on Second Life. Should anyone want a potted biography on him however, I offer the one I pieced together when he officially joined Linden Lab.
Xiola Linden oversees the Second Life community team, which includes Strawberry Linden. Like many at the Lab, both Xiola and Strawberry are “former” residents of Second Life (quotes used as both remain active in-world on their personal accounts outside of their official capacity as Lindens). Part of the Marketing Team, the community team is responsible for community relations, running the Second Life social media accounts, working on marketing projects, etc.
As with previous years, I will hopefully be recording each of the sessions, and will be producing a series of audio reports for each. These will comprise bullet-point summaries of the topics covered (I regret to say that producing full written transcripts of every session is too time-intensive for me to commit to), with accompanying audio, as well as links to the official video of each session.
Again, all these sessions will take place at the SL16B Auditorium – but please note that this SLurl will not work until SL16B officially opens.
Catch the SL16B page in the Destination Guide for more information on events and activities during the celebrations.
On Wednesday, May 22nd, 2019, Linden Lab issued an invitation to live music performers to apply to be a part of the Second Life 16th Birthday celebration’s Music Festival.
2019 marks the fifth such festival the Lab has organised. It will be held as a part of the official Second Life Birthday celebration, taking place in mid-June 2018.
We’re holding an audition showcase to highlight some of the musical talent in the Second Life community. Many of you have been performing for years in virtual venues all over the grid, and we’d love to have you come showcase your talent. All genres are welcome! From bands to solo acts, rock and roll to electronica – we encourage anyone to sign up for consideration.
The Second Life Music Faire is an opportunity to perform at one of the biggest celebrations in Second Life and will be held on June 21st and 22nd this year from 10 am until 4 pm SLT.
All Residents are welcome to participate in the auditions as audience members. Again, I can’t stress enough what a great time it is to see so many musicians perform and support one another!
Those interested in taking part are invited to complete the audition application form – and to do so no later than Saturday, June 1st. The blog post notes that completion of the application does not signify a commitment on the part of the artist to take part, nor a guarantee they’ll be called upon to audition before a panel of judges comprising Lab personnel and residents.
Musicians who are selected to audition will receive word directly from the Lab via e-mail. Those successful in their 5-minute audition, as judged by a panel of Lab staff and residents, will be invited to perform a 30-minute set at the Second Life Music Fest.
For those who are interested, the audition location will be shared in a future official blog post from the Lab. subject to applications, showcase dates and times are currently planned as follows:
Monday, May 27th through Thursday, May 30th: 06:00 SLT through 18:00 SLT.
Friday, May 31st: 06:00 SLT through 15:00 SLT
Monday, June 3rd through Thursday June 6th: 06:00 SLT through 18:00 SLT.
Friday, June 7th: 06:00 SLT to 15:00 SLT.
Other SL16B Applications
Please note that applications for Exhibitors and Performers at SL16B and applications for the SL16B shopping event have been extended as follows:
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 