Category: News-Opinion

Enemies known: The Linden Lab Board and their thinking

Posted on by Inara Pey

In 2008, Mitch Kapor spoke at SL5B, finally coming clean with the community and voiced his belief that the time of the “pioneer” in Second Life (i.e. you and me) is now drawing to a close, and it was time for the “pragmatist” (largely identified as corporations and business entities and maybe not-for-profits) to come in and take over.

Since that time, LL have seemingly worked on two levels:

The first took the form of the development of an Enterprise tool (“sim-in-a-box”) for the so-called “emerging” corporate market which has also seen:

  • A hiving-off of “worthy” sections of the business community in SL, the development of closed groups such as the Gold Solution Providers group (complete with much angst and/or outright misunderstanding on the part of the wider community)
  • LL spinning out what – when all is said and done – is set to be a pretty dumbed-down version of SL in terms of a simplified viewer (Viewer 2.0), potentially lacking functionality that many of us not so much enjoy, but need
  • The suggestion that even things like Landmarks are no longer sacrosanct, and are somehow better being replaced by an “address bar”, and SL being “webbified”
  • Most tellingly, this approach has lead to what can only be described as thinly veiled hostility towards existing residents / users from the likes of Amanda Linden, to a clearly stated wish to limit the freedom of “casual” users around Mainland areas, as voiced by LL’s bed-partner, Justin Bovington of Rivers Run Red.

The second thrust has been at the social engineering level. This has come in many forms.It started innocently enough, with a desire to improve the “first hour experience” for new users. To be honest. this move was actually required in some respects, as the sign-up process was tedious and one had to grit ones teeth and just persevere if one wanted to make some sense of SL and its interface. However, what started as a worthwhile move seemed to grow viral-like across LL’s planning, including:

  • The hiving-off of “adult” themed activities and content
  • The GOMming of SL Exchange and the destruction of its independent forums / the closure of On Rez
  • An open bias against small communities within SL, as exemplified by the Community Partnership Program
  • The closure of the information-rich old forums in favour of a system many users were, and remain, highly critical about due to both its lack of reasonable functionality
  • The heavy-handed “moderation” of discussions within the “new forums”, including stomping on any – even reasonable critiques of the company
  • Public statements from Mark Kingdon that LL is pretty much about “streaming” new users – i.e. directing them into pre-defined silos LL intends (one presumes) to manage and control  – including extending the “first hour experience” for new users to their “first FIVE hours”
  • The provisioning of Linden Homes which a) provides a direct demonstration of Kingdon’s desire to “stream” users, b) sees the Lab further move into the business of content creation (and is an experient which actually fits quite well with what I have to say below)
  • Linden Lab seeking stronger ties with the likes of Facebook – both directly through their own pages there and indirectly through innocuous-seeming “fun” – presumably in the hope of finding a mythical wellspring of “new users”
  • The promotion of their new viewer (see above) as “the” tool expressly for new users coupled with the suggestion that anyone seeking “power” from their viewer should redirect their attention to third party viewers – thus again driving forward the move to dumb-down SL in the mistaken belief this will make it “more popular”

And now – and thanks to Prokofy Neva for pointing this out – we have Board Member Biil Gurley waxing lyrical about virtual goods as rental items as a means of generating revenues. Despite the caveat given at the end of the piece, vis: I have received several comments that concern this post and how it relates to SecondLife…..SecondLife doesn’t actually sell virtual items, its residents do. As such, this post does not relate to SecondLife at all.  It pertains to the 98% of virtual worlds where the hosting companies ALSO is in the digital goods business; it is pretty clear that Gurley is thinking in terms of SL.

It is hard to believe that a post that relates to virtual goods, server space, monetarisation and turnover, written by a current Linden Research Inc board member, coming at a time when all four of these points are very much on the minds of said board & the company’s executives, can be purely coincidental. Further, of the six points Gurley raises in defence of his position, the first two, if adopted, would directly benefit Linden Lab far more than anyone else. Beyond these, it is easy to see how items 4, 5 and 6 also benefit LL in terms of simplifying their metrics and encouraging more in-world transaction turnover which proportionately feed into LL’s coffers in terms of tier and – in the case of XStreet – listing fees and sales commissions.

But it goes much deeper than this, and Prok herself gives a very direct and balanced rebuttal to Gurley’s points.

What is really appalling about Gurley’s suggestion, and his oblique references to LL opting-in to such a system (again discounting his view that the idea “does not” apply to Second Life) is that – as with the recent social engineering trends prevalent in LL’s thinking over the past 18 months – this idea essentially breaks the very thing that makes Second Life compelling to its existing user base.

This is the fact the Second Life, unique among virtual environments, allows each and every one of us to create our own narrative. We have the ability to so much within Second Life that is forever out of our reach in real life, and on so many levels from “simple” role-play escapism through to the ability to be genuinely creative, and have the opportunity to make a real and lasting contribution to the richness of Second Life, be it through the painstaking development of breathtaking sims or the creation of in-world art, goods and services.

If growing the platform is really LL’s concern, then they really should focus on extending this capability, of giving more people the means to write their own narratives. If these means investment in terms of time and energy and, admittedly, outlay, then so be it. Rather than limiting users’ abilities to develop their own streams of narrative, their own abilities to create and contribute, LL should be proactively enhancing the tools and services that make this possible.

Yes, Kapor – we may well be pioneers, but we are hardly the “misfits” you are so dismissively of in your SL5B address. By making this assertion – and possibly imprinting it on the minds of the executive team at Linden Lab – you forget one thing. Rather than being socially inept, we rather represent the majority of your potential users. We are, so to speak, the tip of the iceberg. While we may be small in number on the surface, we represent the mindset of people willing and able to invest time and money into Second Life if they see it as a compelling environment.

And no, these people are not Facebook users or Flickr users or users of any of the latest flat social media tools that are all so busy chasing their own tails. Rather they are the people using the likes of Eve, WoW and other immersive environments. You appeal to these folk, you offer them a compelling, rich environment that offers them the opportunity to experience new ways and means for them to express themselves in a virtual environment  – and give them the freedom and ability to constructively express themselves within the SL community – and you’ll generate a far greater new user take-up than you will through trying to dumb-down SL to the point where it is a 3D mirror of Facebook.

As to Gurley’s view – as I said, Prok has done an admirable job of rebutting his argument. So much so that my saying anything here would be redunant. Certainly, there is space in SL for a purely “rental-driven” market (outside of land)  –  but it should not become the only market model or be thought of in any way as an absolute, as Gurley’s article suggests. At the end of the day, any move towards this model on a larger scale – and I can see some in LL relishing the thought simply because of Gurley’s listed inventory “benefits” will spell the complete marginalisation of SL as viable community platform.

Hobnail Linden

Posted on by Inara Pey

We’ve all become depressingly familiar with LL’s continued push to drive all open discussion / debate that does not meet with their liking out of their flogs. Despite proclaiming that they are “listening”, and that time and agin, they are “consulting” with us, and that our views are “important”, their actions demonstrate precisely the opposite.

Take the recent outcry over the proposals to shut down the vBulletin forums in favour of the all-but-unavigable and utterly depressing Clearspace flog. We got lots of head nodding from LL, and lots of soft words, but at the end of the day, nothing changed.

When people challenge controversial posts from Lindens on matters that are of deep concern to residents, we get a telling commentary, thus: we’re a corporation that’s driven by decisions made in the executive suite and the board room. Those decisions are made with an ear to the ground of what current Residents want, and what we think we need to do in order to grow the population. We very certainly do listen to what’s said here and in the forums, and inworld, and in user surveys, and elsewhere. But the prevailing voices on this blog or in a particular forum thread don’t always determine what choices we make. (Wallace Linden, in a reply in “Will the Real You Please Stand Up“).

In other words, “Well, we’ll listen, but what we choose to hear and from whom is entirely up to us, and we reseve the right to cheery pick what we hear. And even then, if what we’re hearing doesn’t match what is being said in the board room and executive suite, tough.”

Now – once again – when Residents try to reasonably and openly express concerns to Linden Lab through the only medium they have left to them that Linden Management allegedly read, along comes Lexi Linden to stomp all over efforts with hobnail boots.

And even when an attempt is made to precis the concerns and post them to the “discussion blog”, where “lengthy discussions” are supposedly allowed….in comes Lexi to shut things down.

Whether or not the latter of these two threads came over as shirt-tempered; whether or not SL answers was the right place to post the original (and well-worded) letter is entirely beside the point. Why? Because both posts show the breadth and depth of frustration MANY long-term users of Second life are feeling as a result of actions and attitudes taken and demonstrated by Linden Lab.

As such, these questions, asked by people who are willing to part with (in LL’s own words) thousands of dollars of hard-earned, real world income each year deserve considered replies.

What they don’t need is someone stomping all over what is perceived as unwanted voices of dissent that spoil the look of the nice, glossy flogs.

If residents raising concerns are going to continue to be treated in this way, then let’s at least see Lexi Linden given a more appropriate name.

My vote is for Hobnail Linden, in honour of her oversized boots….

Addendum

It’s actually ironic in a way. Lexi linden trounces on three SL Answers threads that are critcal of LL as being “inappropriate” for that area of the “forums” (despite two of them being posted under SL Answers > General > Discussions (my emphasis). and she does so within 10 minutes of said thread being initiated.

Yet this thread, which demonstrates misunderstandings, potential intolerance among residents, etc., is allowed to roll on unabated…

Double standards?

Let’s talk – on our terms

Posted on by Inara Pey

Not too long ago Mark Wallace Linden burst upon the scene as the new “Conversation Manager” at Linden Lab. At the time, I found the whole idea somewhat of a mockery, and an attempt to further co-opt the forums and chatter in the “official” SL blogsphere – after all, Wallace loudly proclaimed that his primary role was not so much about encouraging conversations with existing users is it would be about “reaching the people LL want to reach”.

Even if one is prepared to give Wallace the benefit of the doubt, and try to look upon his appointment in a positive light and as a means of trying to bridge the credibility gap between the Lab and its existing user base, it has to be said that the guy got off to an alarmingly bad start in his first attempt to start a conversation. Not only did this ill-conceived, poorly worded and badly defended post cause a storm of controversy, as witnessed by the comments that follow it – it also turns out that Wallace himself was shooting pretty wide of the mark in attempting to pave the way for Mark Kingdon to make his announcement on LL’s latest acquisition.

Yes….once again LL, through accident, design or the sheer ineptitude of a “front line” member of staff (Wallace), royally put its foot in it.

Now it seem the “conversation” is to be further strangled at source, with the announcement today that the old vbulletin forums are to be done away with next week.

That LL have long been intending to shut down the old – and highly popular – forums is no secret. The “plans” have been out there for some time.  What is upsetting is that – despite repeated pleas from a vast number of residents  – LL are going ahead and scrapping vbulletin in favour of the cumbersome, nigh-on unmanageable (from a user perspective) Clearspace toolset which has been a blight on “conversations” and “communications” since its ill-considered introduction last year. What is equally startling is the claim by Linden Lab that, For years, vBulletin has stymied our attempts to maintain the forums as well as they should be maintained, and for this we do apologize. But our resources have been limited, and we chose to focus them on the platform instead — a choice we think you’ll agree was the right one.

Excuse me? vbulletin….one of the most popular, easy-to-use and most widely accepted forum software toolsets has stymied Linden Lab in trying to maintain a forum environment?!

Are we really to believe that vbulletin – something that in used around the world by large corporations down to hobbyist clubs running their websites through small-scale subscriptions, a software toolset that is provided as the ideal low-maintenance forum system by ISPs the world over forces Linden Lab to choose between maintaining its forum OR maintaining the grid? My God, are things really that desperate at LL?!

Or is it more the case that vbulletin is not to LL’s liking because it does not provide them with the level of control they wish to exert over “conversations” among residents? Does LL view vbulletin’s relatively open format as one that allows people too much in the way of choice in the communications they choose to start and the debates they opt to engage in?

Certainly, the reasons for making this long-protested move seem to back this latter view up a lot more than any idea that vbulletin is simply too unwieldy. Under “More focus”, for example, we read: As part of the transition, we’re removing some redundant forums and streamlining others, so you can more easily find the information you’re looking for. We want the forums to be about conversations with a purpose; to that end, we’re paring down to some of the most focused forums. In other words, we’ll determine what it is that can be viewed, and we’ll determine which “conversations” are “valuable” enough to be transitioned and continued under our control.

We’ve already seen that under the “new” system, Resident Answers – which can admittedly be controversial at times, but which has a rich history of meaningful content and debate  – has been usurped by the sanitised “SL Answers” in which any debate or discussion is almost instantly nixed by LL foot soldiers.

Even the assurances that the old forums will still be “available” as they are to be indexed and “archived” after the switch-over seem to ring hollow – and things don’t get much better in Yoz Linden’s follow-up discussion thread.

Here, God help us, the Lab’s frontmen latch on to the idea, put forward by one BlueGin Yifu that LL should consider limiting the number of individual comments a person can make each day under the pretext it would avoid self-appointed moderators of columns and – worse, that LL should consider Limiting the length of individual responses. indeed, Lexi Linden is so enthusiastic about these points that she invites BlueGin Yifu to open a JIRA on these “great moves”!

Yup…limit people’s ability to post and limit their capacity to give reasoned responses or raise issues worthy of wider debate. That is “really” going to get conversations going, isn’t it?

But then. Lexi has hardly been about the more community-building aspects of conversation and debate, given she is the Linden that generally leaps all over for blogrum in hobnail boots, summarily closing threads and issuing statement that threads X Y or Z are unsuitable mediums for “debate”…..

Doubtless there are valid reasons for the changeover – LL seem to be able to throw most of the maintenance issues over the fence at Jive / Clearspace, rather than having to tinker with things themselves – even though, as mentioned, vbulletin shouldn’t be THAT labour intensive by comparison. There may well be licencing issues that win out in Clearspace’s favour; I’m certainly no expert here.

Doubtless, to, the new system will – indeed already has – gain its own horde of fans and users. Nevertheless, the underlying feeling that we’re losing more than we’re gaining by this move is one that cannot be easily shaken, nor to can the feeling that a great wealth of debate and discussion is about to be lost – much as the wealth of interaction within the XStreet forums all but vanished when these were replaced by Pink Linden’s narrow-minded “commerce forum”.

Conversational Identities….

Posted on by Inara Pey

(Mark) Wallace Linden fires off his first topic for “conversation” this week, and it is a doozy on so many levels.  Will the Real You Please Stand Up brings what several Lindens have been mooting for some time  – the linking of real life information potentially directly to your Second Life avatar(s) identity/ies – in to the “public” domain of the flogrum.

What interests me about the post – other than the intense and understandable reaction from users to Wallace’s words – is the lengths to which Linden Research is prepared to go to in order to justify their decision to start putting in place “open” links between people’s RL and SL identities and the fact that the decision has clearly already been made.

As such, Wallace Linden has not so much initiated a conversation around the idea of bringing in the tools to make this possible, he’s more-or-less making a pronouncement LL will be actively undertaking to implement the tools in the coming months.

Let’s start with the former first: the degree of negative feedback from the majority of “residents” – the likes of you and me, whom I’ve opted to start calling “casual users”, on account of the fact that by-and-large we use SL purely as a form of “entertainment” (even if we run in-world “businesses”) as opposed to the “emerging market” of so-called “corporate users” LL seemed determined to try and find woo – is on record. Many are concerned over Facebook’s recent policy changes which have effectively made revealing much of your personal information filed with the company an opt out process, rather than, as it should be, an opt in (or so I understand, having never, ever gotten involved in Facebook in my life).

Yet, rather than confronting these concerns head-on and using them as a means of opening a two-way dialogue, Wallace instead opts to go back further in time – using Friendster’s 2003 approach to “false” identities to somehow further justify the need to link rl and SL identities more closely.

Indeed, were I a total cynic, I might even conclude that there is a veiled threat hidden in Wallace’s choice of example as an opening gambit.

From this dubious outset, Wallace goes on to paint a rosy picture of online interconnectedness that is  – in essence – fair and true. For, as he states, The thing not to miss here — and it bears stating despite how obvious it sounds — is what all these online “identities” have in common. At the center of them all, the hub that ties all these personae together, is the very real, non-virtual, analog and offline “you.” Whether the connections are public or not, your Second Life avatar, your World of Warcraft toon, your Facebook profile, your LinkedIn employment history — all of these and more are just different aspects of a single entity: the person reading these words. They are all already connected to each other, via you.

Yes, yes, absolutely, Wallace. But here is something else not to miss – and it bears stating despite how obvious it sounds – is what, for the majority of us, these online “identities” have in difference to one another. Whether the connections are our Second Life avatar, our World of Warcraft toon, our Facebook profile, our LinkedIn employment history – they are all what we have chosen to reveal of ourselves through these differing media to meet different aspirations, wants and needs. They are all already connected to each other via our real-world self. And as such, we don’t need you, or anyone else at Linden Research trying to engineer / persuade / cajole / drive us into greater degrees of self-revelation than we’ve already opted to make.

Strong arguments to this effect have been made in response Wallace’s post, but what is interesting  – to turn to my point on this having been a “done-and-dusted” decision on LL’s part – is not so much that Wallace has replied to critiques, but rather the wording of his replies.

Not once does he reply directly to the arguments raised against such a move. Not once does he even suggest that LL are seeking to engage with users on the pros and cons of the matter.

No. The only assurance he will give is that there (presumably) still-to-be-defined tools will “opt in”. and really, even this is a pretty bland reassurance, as “opt in” cover a variety of “up-front” sins. Yahoo Messenger, for example, has a default “opt in” user must then physically opt out of in order to ensure the messenger doesn’t deposit cookies (or “biscuits”, as I believe Yahoo calls them) on their computer that enable Yahoo to target users with adverts based on their web browsing. It is only AFTER you’ve gone through the process of creating your account, editing your profile and tracing down the “opt out” function that the “biscuits” are actually removed from your computer…

The only other assurance we get from Wallace is that “I don’t think anyone at LL is in favor of forced identity publication.” Which again, is pretty bland, given it is immediately followed by, “That said…..” – which immediately carries the implication that there is nothing inherently wrong with forced identity publication.

Does this mean we should roll over and accept the inevitable? No. Whether or not this is a done deal within LL’s ivory towers is moot. This kind of social engineering simply is not needed. As Ciaran Laval states, it’s time to say no to this invasive function creep and take care of our own identities, we certainly don’t need social networking sites to manage our identities for us, it seems as if George Orwell was two or three decades premature.

This is the message we need to carry to LL through the flogrum, through posted replies, our own blogs and posts to any and all metaverse sites that report on this move: we are all intelligent adults and we’ve been perfectly capable of managing our online identities for as long as the Internet as a whole has been available to us; we certainly don’t need the likes of Linden Research and/or Facebook or any other organisation or partnership telling us how to do so going forward. And we need to fight every step of the way to make sure than any such “tools” alluded to in Wallace’s post are fully, truly and demonstratively opt-in in every meaning of the term, and not just in some facile “well, it’s sort-of opt-in…” half-arsed implementation that we’ve tended to see in the past where LL’s policy moves are concerned.

Closing the (conversational) circle

Posted on by Inara Pey

It’s funny how cyclical things can be. Back in May 2008 I questioned the arrival of Katt Linden as the new “Communications Manager” at Linden Lab – specifically asking whether her appointment marked a genuine change in LL’s traditional lack of open discourse with users, or whether it was merely window dressing.

While many were initially enthusiastic about Katt’s arrival, I was somewhat cynical – for a start, her role was clearly regarded by many senior Lindens as merely a by-the-by, and not something that would be taken seriously: first mention of the post came in the form of two tacked-on comments to announcements by Robin (Harper) Linden and Catherine (Smoth) Linden the latter of what was in a post on an entirely unrelated subject, and it was still more than a month before we heard anything from Katt (aka former resident Kathleen Craig) herself.

So effective and important was her role that within twelve months, she was gone, again without so much as a whimper, leave alone a bang.

While it would be grossly unfair to blame Katt for her lack of impact – she was obviously employed on a whim and probably had her powers and role rigidly controlled by those above her – it is also fair to say her own attitude at times did not curry favour with residents at large, as I’ve recently commented in my review of 2009.

Now it seems the circle has closed as we’re introduced to (Mark) Wallace (Linden), the new – wait for it – “Conversation Manager“. His arrival on-scene seems to mirror that of Katt, inasmuch as first word of his upcoming arrival came in the form of a by-the-by announcement from a senior Linden  – in this case Mark Kingdon himself, admittedly – and Wallace has been in the role for over a fortnight before he’s actually been able to say anything.

OK – so fair enough, it takes time to get feet under the desk and to begin to understand a new working environment, so one can forgive Wallace for not having hit the blogrum sooner – and at least his position would seem to have a greater weight assigned to it because a) M actually took the time to mention it, and b) he’s a journalist who has actually co-authored a book on Second Life.Valid points all.

Even so, colour me unimpressed.

I’m not going to get into the debate about Wallace’s credentials. Others more knowledgeable than I have done that, and even if you discount some of what is being said as personal bias elsewhere, one has to raise an eyebrow at Wallace’s past and his potential suitability for the role.

No; what has me discounting his arrival as an effective communicator from the outset comes primarily as a result of his working title, Conversation Manager. Sorry, however you dress it up and trying and make it touchy-feely, the title is indicative of one thing, and one things only: control.

Back in the 1990s, British Telecom instigated a series of saccharine laced touchy-feely television adverts fronted by the “hard man” actor Bob Hoskins. These adverts were intended to portray BT as a kindly, warm-hearted enabler of conversations betwixt families and friends under the catchy by-line it’s good to talk. In reality, the adverts were an attempt to cast a warmer, friendlier light on a monolithic corporation that was seemingly growing ever more distant from its customer base, was just beginning to feel the pinch of fledgling competition in the residential communications market, and which seemed to give the merest lip service to the concept of “customer services”.

Reading Wallace’s first post, those old BT / Hoskins ads came instantly to mind: comfy to watch, jolly in their japes – but wholly lacking in substance and utterly divorced from reality.  It’s very clear that despite the flowery language, Wallace’s role is not about encouraging open, two-way and involved conversations between LL and its residents. Not at all. If one read his post carefully, it is clear that his role is about directing one-sided “conversations” outward from Linden Lab towards those the company most wants to reach.

And the people they want to reach are not the residents – not by a long shot. Wallace himself admits this in a throw-away line, I want to help both the company and the Residents of Second Life — as well as the people we’re trying to reach (my emphasis).

“As well as the people we’re trying to reach.” Here, in a nutshell, we have the core aim of LL’s broader “communications policy”. The primary aim of LL’s communications is not to engage with existing residents. Its aim is to bypass us completely in the drive to entice new corporate and (probably to a lesser degree) “casual” users into signing aboard the good ship Second Life.

Hence Wallace’s focus is not so much on the blogrum – which is the primary (in theory) means of communicating with the majority of existing SL users – but rather on the already over-hyped use of other social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook.

Some are hoping for good things to come of Wallace’s arrival, and are trying not to let cynicism creep into their posts. Good on them. Me? I’m altogether too long in the tooth when it comes to LL’s view on “communications” and “conversations”. It’s not so much the I don’t believe the leopard can change its spots as the more optimistic are hoping; I tend to believe that in this case, once again, the leopard has no intention of changing its spots.

Assessing Assets

Posted on by Inara Pey

I’m not overly technical. I make no bones about that; but I do have two redeeming characteristics that help overcome this shortfall, however: generally, I’m a quick learner, and while the devil of th details in terms of coding, etc., may well elude me, I can quickly grasp concepts, and meanings; secondly, I’m ready to got out and read-up / find out about things that aren’t obvious to me, even after they’ve been patiently explained.

Which is why, amidst all the Linden spin and twirl, I’ve always appreciated posts from Frank (FJ Linden) Ambrose. Here is one of the few senior members of LL’s staff who is prepared to communicate openly and honestly with residents. His postings are refreshing because they are devoid of spin, and he tends not to simply cherry-pick the rosy replies residents post in response, but actually takes the time to tackle the harder questions and deal with concerns and fears head-on.

This is visibly demonstrated in his latest post on recent updates to in-world services. What is warming about FJ’s posts is the disarming and genuine honesty, We have tried (and failed) in previous attempts to upgrade our mysql version he openly admits, before going on to express both pleasure that the updates performed on Wednesday 6th Jan 2010 went smoothly, and regret at the fact that Residents were still inconvenienced in order for the update to be rolled out.

Personally, I see little cause for regret, Frank: you and your team worked hard to develop this much-needed update, you carefully planned and communicated it to all – and the resulting outage  / issues users experienced during the update process were, frankly (no pun intended) absolutely trivial.

Leave us not forget that a few short years ago, this kind of work was regularly shutting down the grid every Wednesday for anywhere from three to six hours at a time; in this respect, the technical bods at Linden Lab have performed a marvellous job, and if anything, they should feel a justified sense of satisfaction in the professional manner in which this update was handled, with residents being “inconvenienced” for around an hour.

Kudos all!

FJ’s post is not limited to what has happened, however. Rather than simply dwell on the past, or make (in contrast to others I’ve recently commented on) sweeping generalisations about “future directions”, he takes the time to spell out what he and his team will be looking at in the coming year to further enhance grid performance. Of course, some of the technology being looked at does raise concerns – as shown in the responses from residents on the subject of cloud computing and outsourcing. And again, FJ wins kudos for responding to these concerns, rather than (again as is the wont of some of his colleagues) to sweep past such questions and simply respond with touchy-feely la-la-ness at comments that are more gushing with praise towards LL or which focus on trivialities.

Indeed, his responses are considered and balanced. No promises are made (such as guaranteeing no outsourcing will take place), while every assurance is given (such as LL retaining as much control over data as possible). In this it is again evident that  – refreshingly – there are efforts being made in LL to improve the grid not just for a select few or “emerging market”, but for us all.

So thank you again, Frank, for taking the time and effort to make sure our virtual lives suffer minimal disruption during what are very necessary (and beneficial) changes o the grid infrastructure, and for advising us on how you see things developing and the options you and your colleagues are considering for further improvements over time.