Tag: Ebbe Altberg

Lab Gab: Second Life in 2020 with Ebbe and Grumpity (and Keira!)

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

The 14th edition of Lab Gab was live streamed on Friday, February 21st and featured as guests, Ebbe Linden (aka Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg) and Grumpity Linden, Vice President of Product, who between them discussed the Second Life roadmap for 2020.

As might be expected, a call to Second Life users to submit questions that might be asked of Ebbe and / or Grumpity generated a lot of feedback, so little time was lost in getting down to hearing their responses. Note that this summary may not reflect the chronological order in which questions were asked; however, time stamps are provided for those wishing to jump to a specific point in the video, and a complete video is embedded at the end of this article.

But first – Sansar and Linden Lab

[1:09-5:06]

At the top of the programme, Ebbe confirmed Linden Lab is no longer “sponsoring”, as he put it, Sansar, and are actively seeking a new home for the platform.

So as you might have heard, sadly we have decided that we, as Linden Lab, couldn’t continue to sponsor the project financially, so we’re looking for a plan B for Sansar to continue. I can’t say much, but we’re having very interesting conversations with several parties to help that project move forward, which I’m really excited about. But no deal is done yet, so people will just have to be patient and see what happens with it, but yes  it is true that Linden Lab going forward will focus entirely on Second Life and Tilia. I’m still busy making sure that Sansar finds a great home and that the great work that that team has started can continue.

– Ebbe Altberg

He went on to note that the company is continuing to work with those they have laid off to help their secure their futures, and that overall, Linden Lab remains in a strong financial position with strong confidence in the future, vis Second Life and Tilia Inc.

You can read more on this in Lab seeking a “plan B” to secure Sansar’s future.

Current Technical Projects

Cloud Uplift

[5:51-8:28 and 10:30-11:03 and 27:13-28:41 and 49:47-51:51]

  • Cloud uplift is the term now being employed by the Lab to describe the project to transition all of Second Life to cloud-based provisioning.
  • This has been a long-term project, with considerable planning and preparation work having thus far been completed, and 2020 marking the time when the actual transitioning of services takes place (“lifting them to the cloud”).
  • The work is long-term not just because of the number of services that must be transitioned, but also the amount of operational  / engineering requirements required to ensure that services that are linked by physical proximity and connectivity in a single hosting environment continue to function  and communicate with one another when moves to an environment where they no longer share that proximity or direct line of communication.
  • There are a lot of perceived benefits from the move, most noticeably that hardware / infrastructure renewal will no longer be a significant factor for the Lab, while longer-term the grater spread of geographical options, hardware options, etc., may mean the Lab will be able to offer broader simulator products or reduce latency between physical groups of users and  the servers they most regularly access, etc.
  • The downside of this is that for the time being, the focus for engineers and developers at the Lab is very much on the cloud uplift, and not on developing new features.
  • The hope is that his work will be completed by the end of 2020, otherwise the Lab starts incurring costs (e.g. Cap Ex costs) they’d prefer to avoid.
  • Once the transition has been completed, a further benefit could be with LL being able to experiment with different (and more recent) server types to help with simulator-side performance, and perhaps even offer different product offering based on different servers, with suitable price points (e.g. those running venue that have high numbers on attending avatars can opt to pay to have their regions hosted on very high-end servers capable of managing the script, etc., load.
  • Currently, there are no plans to make private regions an on-demand service in the cloud (that is, only spinning up a region when there is one or more avatars in it).
    • This is primarily because of the persistence model around which Second Life has been built, and the expectations of some of the operations services have around this.
    • However, at some point after the cloud migration, it might be possible for LL to offer a kind of on-demand private region product with a suitable price-point.

Mobile Access for Second Life

[11:13-14:03]

  • Lab is developing a “companion” app for Second Life, that will initially be for iOS devices (see: Lab working on a Second Life iOS client?, Linden Lab confirm Second Life iOS client in the making (both January 2019) and Second Life iOS companion app – mini update (March 2019).
  • It is currently in internal alpha, and does *not* have 3D rendering but does provide chat, group chat, IM, and other core communications capabilities, although additional functionality may be added over time.
  • Development will be iterative, and there will be opportunities for users to help test the app when it is ready to be public-facing. The exact mechanism on how this will work is still TBD.
  • There is no formal ETA for the app, but the hope is some form of (closed?) alpha testing period may be made available in the next few months (or sooner).
  • [54:28-55:15] The focus is on iOS, with the hope that once done, it will not be a major effort to port the app to Android.

Premium Plus

[14:05-17:35]

  • Premium Plus is the upcoming new Premium subscription offering that will sit “above” the current Premium, and jokingly referred to as Premium Plös (“ploos” with a French sounding accent).
  • No formal release date as yet – as LL prefer not to commit to specifying dates so as not to disappoint should things get delayed.
    • It has, however, been stated at the monthly Web User Group meetings, that Premium Plus will not be released until some time after Name Changes has been implemented – so it is in the Soon™ category .
  • When introduced, it will have a pro rata option, so existing Premium users will have any remaining balance on their subscription at the time they upgrade credited to Premium Plus.
  • Premium Plus will have a range of additional benefits – most of which are still TBA. However, it will mean Name Changes will be “around” US $20 cheaper for Premium Plus members (so if the Name Changes fee in US $39.99 for Premium, Premium Plus many only have to pay US $19.99).
  • Focus at present is on putting in place the coding and updates required to support multiple Premium account levels.
  • Lab will continue to add value to both Premium Plus and Premium.

The Marketplace

[23:05-25:53]

  • A lot of work has been put into the Marketplace in responding to a lot of long-standing feature requests, etc, from users and in dealing with some of the low-hanging fruit of MP fixes, etc.
  • More work is planned, but again, the cloud uplift project  – which includes the MP and all of the other Second Life web properties – is the primary focus at the moment.
  • In terms of questionable content on the MP (e.g. the mis-selling of No Copy items), this isn’t an issue that can be solved via any automated means, and is thus resource intensive and does require the support of users in flagging items, etc.
    • However there are plans to replace / update some of the existing processes around these issues, so that issues can be more readily reviewed and dealt with.
  • LL are conscious of being vague on matters like this, but feel they need to be, as saying too much publicly could open the door to those less-than-earnest actors trying to circumvent actions that might otherwise impact them.
Ebbe, Strawberry and Grumpity (+cats!) in Lab Gab episode 14

Performance Improvements

[25:53-31:55]

  • A major cause of performance issues is sub-optimal content  that the viewer has to deal with when rendering (e.g. poorly-designed mesh, heavily tortured prims, sculpties, flexies, etc.), and which impact performance.
  • There’s not a lot that LL can do about this, other than appeal to content creators to consider performance when designing their models, and to region creators to do likewise when designing their regions and the impact overly complex content or the over-use of unique high-resolution textures has on the viewer.
  • In time, the more powerful server options that will be available for running simulators once they have been transitioned to the cloud may help improve server-side performance (e.g. thing like script processing, etc.).
  • In the future, more work may be put into providing better tools to help creators ensuring their content is more performant.
    • As an aside, and as reported in my CCUG summaries, work is already in progress to provide creators and user with better means of understanding the impact various content is having on their system’s performance – remembering that it is the *viewer*, not the simulator , that does most of the heavy lifting.
  • Elsewhere there have been subtle performance improvements:
    • A move of Marketplace infrastructure to a new environment means page loading times are measuring an 11% improvement; changes made to the asset services have improved inventory stability.
    • There are currently simulator updates that are being / about to be deployed across the grid sever channels that should see improvements in region crossings (updates on server deployments can be found in my weekly SUG summaries).

Name Changes

[38:08-]

  • No confirmed date for deployment.
  • Last Names competition has seen EIGHT names (rather than the originally stated five) selected to go into the first list of last names that will be available when the service is deployed: Conundrum, Dismantled, Huntsman, Littlepaws, Nova, Ravenhurst, Wumpkins, Yeatley.
  • These are the only names that will be in that first list, and the winners will be informed via e-mail.
  • The time taken for the project to be implemented is due to it touching every aspect of SL, and thus requires careful implementation and testing.
  • Rather than using a credit card or similar to pay for a Name Change, Premium members can opt to use a USD dollar balance in the Tilia Wallet, including by converting L$ to USD via the LindeX. Note that anyone who has not previously held a US dollar balance associated with their account will have to accept the Tilia Terms of  Serivce, but no identification documents need be submitted, unless any remaining US dollar balance is to be cashed out.

Environment Enhancement Project (EEP)

[44:10-46:45]

  • Again, no confirmed release date.
  • As per my CCUG summaries, the are around a dozen remaining rendering bugs to be resolved, but the hope is the deployment is now weeks rather than months away.
  • There will still be changes in how some region environments are seen in an EEP viewer compared to a non-EEP viewer, but the decision has been made to deploy rather than constantly trying to strive for a like-for-like look in all cases.
  • There is a pending rendering / graphics project that is held-up by EEP, partially prompting the desire to get what is available deployed.

Land

[17:36-19:58]

  • Transfer costs for buy-down / grandfathered regions is to be reduced from US $600 to US $300.
  • No plans for other land price reductions at this time.
  • The aim is[18:00 to continue to balance revenue generation between land and other sources.
  • Overall, the Lab feel that the reductions in land pricing introduced since 2017 (see: Linden Lab announces SL Mainland price restructuring (March 2018), and Linden Lab announces major SL private region pricing restructure (June 2018) for example) have been positive in helping move the land market forward.
  • The Lab also remains conscious of the fact that too many changes in too short a time period can disrupt the economy.

User Retention

[32:07-35:50]

  • Will be covered more in-depth in a future Lab Gab segment with the Lab’s marketing team.
  • The best way for users to help with new user retention is a) bringing friends into SL and spending time with them, getting them engaged and making friends; b) offering support and friendship to newcomers.
  • There has been some success with recent attempts to re-introduce new user mentoring.
  • LL has also invested a lot of time in bettering understanding the traffic coming to SL, allowing for more refined approaches to user acquisition.
  • There is a firm belief within LL that SL’s user base can be grown.
  • [53:54-54:25] There are roughly 5,000 new accounts logging-in to Second Life every day.

Other Items

  • [8:30-10:30] Will LL resume issuing economic stats for SL?
    • The reports were stopped many years ago. Currently the focus is on the cloud uplift, and this together with the work on projects the Lab does have in-hand or planned, means there are no plans for the present or foreseeable future to re-implement reporting economic stats.
    • However, it might be possible to implement some form of “spot” economic reporting via one of the official blogs.
  • [20:00-23:00] Does Linden Lab manipulate the LindeX L$ exchange rate?
    • Short answer: no, they do not.
    • The most LL do is sell into the market if there is a genuine need for L$, but even then, this is kept to a minimum both in terms of frequency and amount.
    • [52:02-53:52] There will be a blog post (/ series?) on how the LindeX works, etc., appearing in the near future.
  • [35:55-] Account security and two-factor authentication (2FA)
    • Yes, there are plans to introduce 2FA.
    • The first step is providing notifications of possible attempts to wrongfully access your account. This is to be rolled out in the near future. However, notifications will only be sent to verified e-mail addresses (see: Important: verifying your e-mail address with Second Life).
    • The next step will be to disallow unverified log-ins from unfamiliar locations until verification is given.
    • There are some complexities in implementing 2FA as a result of SL’s age and design, but these are being worked on.
  • [47:32-48:18] VR and Second Life:
    • There are no near-time plans to revive the work on supporting VR headsets in SL.
    • The requirement for 90-ish fps throughout for a really smooth experience is considered as mostly beyond SL’s reach due to the nature of the content.
    • However, once the cloud uplift has been completed, and after the major rendering / graphics overhaul has been delivered (e.g. 18-24 months hence), the question of VR support in SL may be re-evaluated.

SL16B Meet Ebbe Altberg- a summary with audio and video

Posted on by Inara Pey
Courtesy of Linden Lab
On Wednesday, June 26th, 2019 at the SL16B celebrations, the third of five Meet the Lindens sessions was held at the SL16B Auditorium. It featured the Lab’s CEO, Ebbe Altberg, aka Ebbe Linden.

The following is a summary of the session covering the core topics raised, with  audio extracts where relevant.

 Table of Contents

Note that there are three videos of this event that I’m aware of:

When reading this summary, please note:

  • It is not a full transcript:
    • Discussion points have been grouped by topic, and not necessarily in the order raised during the session.
    • I have focused on those topics liable to be of the most interest to readers / generated the most informative answers, so this is not a summary of all comments. etc..
    • Topics are give as bullet-point highlights for ease of reference.
  • Audio extracts are provided.
    • These have been cleaned-up in places to remove repetition or pauses, etc.
    • Audio extracts may concatenate comments on specific subjects that may have been made at different points in the discussion, and so do not always match the chronology of the video.
  • Timestamps to the SL4Live – TV video are provided for those who would prefer to listen to Ebbe’s comments “in the raw”. This video is also embedded at the end of this article.

About Ebbe

[Video: 2:40-11:55]

Note: the following is taken from both Ebbe’s comments and my own research into his background, carried out when he joined Linden Lab in 2014, and which also included input from Ebbe.

Swedish by birth and still by nationality – he is still working in the US on a green card -, Ebbe graduated from Tärnaby Skidhem in 1983. His time there was focused on skiing, as he wanted to be a ski racer, with his eyes on the Swedish national team and the world cup. Unfortunately, a back injury stopped him pursuing that particular career option, and so he crossed the Atlantic to study Middlebury College, Vermont, USA.

Ebbe Linden, aka Ebbe Altberg. Credit: Strawberry Linden

Founded in 1800, Middlebury is regarded as one of the oldest liberal arts colleges in the United States. While there, he “spent a lot of time in the art studio and the computer lab in an extreme left brain / right brain type of education”, before graduating with a degree in Fine Arts and a concentration in Computer Applications.

From Middlebury, and with the clock ticking down on his visa, Ebbe “slipped into Microsoft on a random banana peel”, where he spent twelve years. Joining in the pre-Windows era, he was particularly involved with the Office products (Word, Mac Office, etc) and multimedia products.

In March 2000, he moved on to Ingenio, a company that created marketplaces for people to buy and sell information over the phone. While there he was responsible for managing the engineering, program management, operations, and quality teams, and served as the company’s interim CEO before taking on the mantle of  the Chief Product Officer. And while he doesn’t often mention it due to not being a huge fan of the patent system, he “racked up quite a few patents there.”

After Ingenio, Ebbe joined Yahoo! n February 2008, filling out a number of senior roles, including Vice President, Head of Audience for the company’s EMEA division, being based in Rolle, Switzerland, managing some 180 people and multiple products across six countries. During this period he also served on the board of Yahoo! SARL (Société à responsabilité limitée) – think the equivalent of a Pvt Ltd company in the UK or a limited liability partnership in the USA, before returning to the United States to become the Senior Vice President for Media Engineering at Yahoo!  with global responsibly for Media Engineering, a position that involved managing an organisation of more than 600 engineers, architects, program managers and quality engineering staff, as well as having dotted-line oversight of some 150 product managers and designers.

Linden Lab’s chairman of the Board, Jed Smith, is a long-time friend of Ebbe Altberg, and had previously tried to get Ebbe to join the company prior to his appointment as CEO in 2014. (image: Owl Ventures)

Following Yahoo!, he took up the challenge of turning around a small tech company called BranchOut, based in San Francisco. Around two years old at the time of his joining, BranchOut had been through a roller-coaster ride with its product, a Facebook oriented application designed for finding jobs, networking professionally, and recruiting employees. Seven months before Ebbe joined the company, the app boasted 25 million users across 60 countries – but by the time he came on board, the user base had shrunk to just 3 million. Under his guidance, the company pivoted the BranchOut app into a new workplace messaging application called Talk.co, launched in October 2013.

Ebbe was actually aware of Second life  – and had experienced it first hand – a long time before joining Linden Lab in 2014. His son Aleks, had been heavily involved in SL, starting with the Teen Grid, making content and then moving to  developing a successful in-world business there (Aleks is now an Lab Employee, working on Sansar, where he is a regular at in-world community meet-ups and product meetings).

More particularly, Ebbe has had a long-standing friendship with the Chair of the Lab’s board of directors, Jed Smith. LL was one of Smith’s first investments when he became a venture capitalist, and through Jed Ebbe gained an awareness of the Lab, its product, and met Philip Rosedale.

So I fell in love with the idea, and understood what Philip and Second Life was trying to achieve, but it wasn’t until many, many, many years later – well, five years ago now – that it came up that they were looking for someone, and it was the right time and place for both the Lab and me to hook up and see how I could help keep things going here.

I have not regretted that decision for a second, it’s been absolutely fantastic; it’s an incredible group of people I get to work with. Having the Second Life team is just an absolute privilege … Everyone is just incredibly passionate about the product … that’s just been a very, very enjoyable ride for me so far.

– Ebbe Altberg, Meet the Lindens, June 26th, 2019

The Lab’s Battery Street staff (image: Ebbe Altberg, via Twitter)

One of the greatest rewards he sees in being with the company is diversity, be it within the people working the Lab or using Second Life, or the equally rich diversity of uses people find for Second Life – be it as a means of expression or as a platform for business, as tool for health improvement or an aid education, and so on, and the multiple ways Second Life can benefit those who engage with the platform.

He is also drawn to the technical aspects of the platform, including its multiple challenges, and the way it combines so many different capabilities: tools for content creation, options for social engagement, the ability to run a virtual economy, etc., all of which combine with the need to constantly discover / learn new things about the ways in which SL is being used, to continually refresh interest in, and enthusiasm for, managing, improving and expanding the platform.

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On Fees and the SL Economy

[Video: 12:16-18:16]

  • As a world Second Life has a huge diversity of uses, and there is no single “one size fits all” solution.
  • Has always and consistently stated a belief that virtual land in SL is too expensive [it has been a major theme from users throughout his tenure as CEO as well, and preceded his arrival at the Lab].
  • HOWEVER, Land fees generate the majority of the Lab’s inflow of revenue, even if it has been over-monetised by the Lab in order to meet that revenue requirement.
  • Therefore, if land fees are to be reduced, the Lab must find ways to move its revenue generation from virtual land to other opportunities that have previously perhaps been under-monetised in their ability to generate revenue. These include things like Premium fees and consumer-related revenue generation options.
  • Also feels there has been an imbalance in the way SL operates, as a merchant without any land can produce goods and sell them (via the Marketplace) without really paying for the opportunity to do so (just 5% commission on sales), and could then cash-out with very little cost to their revenue.
  • Unfortunately, both trying to broaden LL’s revenue generation options to decrease a reliance on land fee, and trying to correct some of the balance in where fee are obtained to help with that revenue generation, can result in some feeling hurt.
  • LL are attempting to be careful in how these shifts are made, as there are major risks involved (for both in-world business and the Lab itself), and so are progressing in small steps – the recent Premium and processing fee increases being the latest of those steps.
  • Believes there are still opportunities to further re-balance things, and to reduce land costs.
  • Also believes it is fair to say that while things like credit processing fees have been increased, they are still well below what might be regarded as “industry standards” for many digital transactions, which can be 30% and upwards.
  • Understands that the increases have impacted people, notably creators with very low margins, and who may have to make adjustments to their pricing, etc., and recognises that changes like those now implemented (as of June 24th) might make it tougher for some to survive, but believes the changes are necessary.
  • Points out that one of the consequences of high tier is that SL so often loses stunning public regions that have been built, and which people miss when they vanish.

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Continue reading “SL16B Meet Ebbe Altberg- a summary with audio and video” →

“Dear Ebbe II” (on the subject of Basic account changes)

Posted on by Inara Pey

The Colder Water; Inara Pey, April 2015, on Flickr The Colder Water, April 2015

Update, June 1st: Following the amount of feedback concerning the planned reduction in the Basic account group allowance, Linden Lab has amnnounced this will not now be changing on June 24th, 2019. See: Group Limits Update: No Changes for Basic Members (Linden Lab) and LL reverse planned Basic account group limits reduction (this blog).

=======

Dear Ebbe,

Five years ago I wrote to you as you formally joined Linden Lab as the company’s new CEO. At that time, there was a certain degree of disillusionment among Second Life users about the platform, and I took it upon myself to comment on one area in particular: that of communications.

In the years since then, Linden Lab, Second Life and its user community have come a long way. It’s no exaggeration to say that things in 2019 are a lot different than 2014. Not just technically, but across a range of fronts, most especially that of the relationship between users and Lab.

You’ve seen this first-hand with regards to people’s attendance at Lab Chat and SLB Meet the Lindens events, where audience support and response has been positive and supportive to many of the programmes and developments the Lab has implemented, and towards the drive to increase awareness of, and involvement with, the platform.

True, things have not always been plain sailing; there have been hiccups along the way, but the Lab’s drive to improve SL and respond to many of the requests put out by the user base has been enormously appreciated. However, the most recent changes announced by the Lab with Land Price Reductions, New Premium Perks, and Pricing Changes (May 29th, 2019) have given me pause, and to take the time to write to you once more.

Throughout the last five years, I’ve personally appreciated the efforts Linden Lab have put into trying to meet the demand for lower land tier and to make virtual land holdings in Second Life more attractive. I also understand the need to offset such reductions with increases elsewhere to ensure LL as a company mains a good revenue flow. As such, while the fee changes announced on May 29th have caused me something of an “ouch!” reaction, I can understand the motivation behind them, and will learn to live with them.

However, what I feel is ill-conceived are the proposed Basic account changes.

Although I can understand there may well be technical reasons for doing this (load balancing to enable the increases to the same capabilities that are to be offered to Premium subscribers, perhaps?), the fact remains this these reductions come across as best as being punitive and at worse entirely mean-spirited towards Basic account holders. As my friend and fellow SL user Will Burns has noted:

One increases the value of a Premium account by actually increasing the value added proposition, not forcing the issue by reducing the value added of the free account.

I would therefore urge you to re-consider this move, and allow Basic members either retain their current 42 group limit, or as a compromise (and while I appreciate this is easier said than done), seek to allow current Basic member retain the current 42 groups cap whilst restricting those joining after June 24th to a maximum of 35 groups.

I am not the first Second Life user, Premium or otherwise) to voice concerns over this move. Please do take the time to consider what is being said the changes to Basic accounts via Twitter, in the SL forums and other social platforms, and how they could stand to significantly alienate a good portion of a user base that, while they may not pay subscription fees, nevertheless play an important role in both the economic and social fabric of Second Life, and who – like all of us engaged in the platform – want to see it continue to thrive and grow and remain a part of our lives.

My best,

 

Inara

September 2018 Town Hall with Ebbe Altberg: transcript with audio

Posted on by Inara Pey
Ebbe is still into his T-1000 look. But then, he does keep to his promises to “be back” (and take people’s questions and offer thoughts and insight into the Lab, SL and Sansar) 😉
On Thursday, September 13th, Linden Lab hosted a further Town Hall meeting at which questions were put to the Lab’s CEO, Ebbe Altberg.

Those wishing to ask questions were asked to submit them via the forum thread September 2018 – A Conversation with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg, a thread that is now locked from having further questions added, but remains available for viewing.

As many of the questions require a technical response, the decision was made to have the Lab’s subject matter experts address them directly through the forum thread itself after the Town Hall meeting, a process which may take several days to complete. So if you did ask a technical question that wasn’t raised at during the event, be sure to check the thread to see if an answer in provided there.

The following is a summary of the answers to questions asked during the Town Hall session, audio extracts and video time stamps provided as reference. The video is embedded at the end of the article.

Please note that this is not a full transcript of the event. Producing a word-for-word transcript takes a lot of time. Instead, I have attempted to bullet-point the replies offered, and have included an audio extract and a time line to the relevant point in the video.

Also note that:

 Table of Contents
  • These notes don’t necessarily follow the chronological flow of the session, as I’ve attempted to group subjects by topic for more concise reference.
  • There is a degree of choppiness in Ebbe’s audio (present on the videos as well). This is down to Voice issues in SL. Because of this break-up, some of the audio clips are edited to remove elements where the break-up is particularly bad, but hopefully without losing the actual context of what was being said.
  • Video timestamps will open the official video in a separate browser tab at the start of the specified time period, allowing readers the choice of listening to the audio extract, or the video recording.
  • Due to the brevity of some answers, not all replies given below have an audio extract – but they all have links to the official video.

Opening Comments

  • Exciting year for Linden Lab – 15 years in the business, lot of investment in SL going on + growing the SL team. There’s a lot going on that has the Lab optimistic about the future, and looking forward to being on the journey for a long, long time to come.
  • In March LL announced a very aggressive roadmap, possibly more than could be achieved within 2018, but goals have been pursued and people hired to help meet them.
  • Perhaps most noticeable work has been the re-balancing the economy: reducing the price of land and finding other means by which the Lab can generate revenue that are fairer for everyone – users and the Lab.
    • This means some things get cheaper [e.g. land], and other may get more expensive [e.g. transaction fees] for people as things are adjusted.
    • Overall response has been positive – particularly the lower Mainland costs – increased “free” tier, which is still keeping the land team busy in handling purchase requests.
  • Roadmap also noted new games and experiences, and the next one is “not far away”.
  • Themed learning islands were mentioned, for more vertical acquisition of new users, and tests have been run.
  • Marketplace improvements are starting to come in, with more on the way, helped by a new hired in the commerce team.
  • New land auction process was deployed, but has had issues, so user-to-user Mainland land auctions still to come.
  • There have also been performance improvements.
  • Animesh is very close to release, and the Environment Enhancement Project (EEP) is close to public testing. Bakes on Mesh is following behind them.
  • More value for premium members is coming, but no announcements to make during the town hall.
  • Return of last names may not roll-out before the end of 2018; there’s still a lot of work to be done.
  • Grid-wide experience operation for users also may not be deployed before the end of 2018.
  • Work is continuing on Linden Home improvements, but not clear if this will be deployed all at once or in stages. The hope is to start releasing some of them before the end of 2018.
  • Moving SL to a cloud infrastructure will not be completed until “well into” 2019. Work is progressing on a server-by-service basis.
  • He is personally every excited with all that is happening, the SL team is dedicated to the work and is growing, and Lab is very pleased with the positive responses from users to the changes and improvements being made.

Video: 4:05-12:54

Audio:

 

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Ebbe and Xiola at the September 13th Town Hall.

Q&A Session

Land and Pricing

What was the rationale the up-front higher fees for grandfathered regions?

  • The 2016 buy-down offer was to encourage people who knew they were going to keep land for at least 6 months to obtain lower tier.
  • The structure meant that the up-front cost (US $600) could be recouped in 6 months, allowing the land holder to continue to enjoy a much reduced monthly tier.
  • The transfer fee of US $600 for grandfathered / bought-down regions (compared to the US $100 for “retail” prices regions) is intended to operate the same way: to encourage those who wish to obtain grandfathered land and will hold on to it for a period of 6 months or more to do so, and so continue to enjoy the lower monthly tier.
    • The US $100 transfer fee can still be applied to grandfathered regions, but they will revert to the full monthly tier rate, so the US $600 isn’t necessarily a barrier to selling the land.
  • Currently no plans to make further changes to tier rates – Lab still absorbing the data from the June private region pricing restructure.
  • However, there is still a commitment from the Lab to do more where land is concerned, once with economic situation resulting from the June 2018 change can be fully understood.
  • Personally has a belief that those who commit to holding land for a period of time should be able to benefit from doing so.
    • This may again involve a higher up-front cost that is recouped over a period of time.
    • Does mean that tier pricing differences (e.g. grandfathered to retail) could vary over time – just as the June reduction narrowed the gap between grandfathered and retail monthly tier.
  • But even with the June retail price reduction, those who used the buy-down offer are still enjoying a lower tier than those who buy at retail.

Video: 18:42-23:15

Audio:

 

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Will there be further land pricing reductions / increases in land capacity (prim allowance)?

  • Both are things the Lab wants to do.
  • Land price reductions depend on the Lab being able to generate revenue and remain healthy as a business via other means – increased transaction fees, increased check-out fees, increased and broader Premium subscription options, etc., all of which are constantly being looked at.
  • Increasing the land capacity is a matter of performance and hardware improvements. If these continue to be made, then further increases to land capacity might be possible.

Video: 23:28-24:54

Audio:

 

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Continue reading “September 2018 Town Hall with Ebbe Altberg: transcript with audio” →

September SL Town Hall with Ebbe Altberg – reminder

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Town Hall meeting venue

Just a quick reminder.

The next in the Lab’s in-world Town Hall series, again featuring CEO Ebbe Altberg, will take place on Thursday, September 13th, at 09:30 SLT (17:30 BST / 18:30 CET). The event will take place at the Town Hall meeting regions, with the landing point URLs as follows:

Selected questions from the Town Hall meeting forum thread (now closed) will be put to Ebbe during the session, and there may be an opportunity to ask questions from the audience, if time permits.

All things being equal, I hope to have a summary of the session up after the event, which will be similar in nature to my summary of the April 2018 Town Hall – see here for more on that.

September 13th 2018: Town Hall meeting with Ebbe Altberg

Posted on by Inara Pey

Linden Lab has announced the next in their series of Town Hall meetings, this one again featuring Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg. The event will take place.

Unlike the April 20th event, this will be a single event rather than offering two time options for users to chose from when attending. The date and time being:

Thursday, September 13th 2018 from 09:30 SLT onwards.

Once again, users are invited to offer questions for consideration via a forum thread.

The blog post announcing the event reads in full:

With SL15B behind us (and SL16B to look forward to!) we thought it was time to have another Town Hall, and give Residents a chance to ask about Second Life and hear the latest news on what is being worked on and planned in Second Life. We’ll also share specific updates on our product development roadmap, as discussed earlier this year.

Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg will be appearing at a  “Town Hall” chat session on Thursday, September 13th 2018 at 9:30 a.m. (SLT/Pacific). This is your chance to interact directly with Ebbe as he discusses 2018 and beyond. 
Got a question you want to ask? Post it in the Community Forum thread “September 2018 – A Conversation with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg” in advance of the Town Hall. Questions will be selected from all submissions made prior to Sept. 10, so make sure to weigh in now!

Don’t forget to mark your calendars for Sept. 13 to see if your question is selected. On that day, you can join us live for the Town Hall meeting. Location will be publicized closer to the event – stay tuned!

I have a full transcript (with audio and video) of the April 20th event for those wishing to catch up with what was said then, and I full plan to attend the September 13th event and offer both a transcript / summary of the session, again with audio recordings of the answers given to questions.