Tag: Ebbe Altberg

Ebbe confirms: “we’re working on a ‘next generation’ platform” (with audio)

Posted on by Inara Pey

Back in October 2012, I was pointed to an interview with former Lab CEO Rod Humble in Gamesbeat, in which he talked about the Lab’s (then) new products, the Lab and Second Life. In reviewing that piece, I picked up on a statement that Linden Lab is “still investing in 3D virtual worlds.”

Rod Humble first hinted that the Lab is looking at virtual worlds beyond SL
Rod Humble first hinted that the Lab is looking at virtual worlds beyond SL

In the middle of the comments following that article, Rod himself popped-up to reassure people that the Lab was (and is) still committed to Second Life. In this comment, he also acknowledged the use of the plural – “virtual worlds” – stating:

My comment about also investing in virtual worlds is correct. As you know I don’t like to detail things until we are close to something actionable, but we absolutely are investing in the large virtual world space which I think will make Second Life users, business owners and developers very happy…. but its a ways off 🙂

Making an unannounced visit to the TPV Developer meeting on Friday June 20th, Ebbe Linden (Ebbe Altberg, the current CEO at the Lab) went a lot further than hinting at “virtual worlds”. He made a clear-cut statement that not only  is the Lab working on a “next generation” platform, he’s been actively talking to the media about it, and that things have reached a point where they are ready for internal demos at the Lab.

Obviously, the idea that the Lab is working on something “other” that Second Life – particularly given it is another virtual world platform – is liable to cause a range of responses from excitement through to misgivings and outright worry (many of which were expressed during the meeting).

Ebbe Altberg popped-in on the TPV Developer meeting as Ebbe Linden, and spoke a little about the "next generation" VW platform the Lab is developing
Ebbe Altberg popped-in on the TPV Developer meeting as Ebbe Linden, and spoke a little about the “next generation” VW platform the Lab is developing

His comments on this platform can within a wide-ranging discussion on Second Life, issues of user retention, how best to tackle bringing new users into SL (including the role the existing user base can play, how users and Lab can support one another, etc.). I’ll have more on this in due course.

For the moment, I’m including an audio file of the conversation on the platform the Lab is developing, extracted from the wider discourse, together with some key bullet-points:

  • There are no clear details on exactly how the new platform will work and how it will be marketed
  • It is not going to replace Second Life per se, but will initially run in parallel to it. Second Life is still a viable product with a strong revenue stream. How long the two run in parallel and whether or not one or the other will eventually be closed down depends on a lot of variables, not the least of which will be the volume of users and the success of both in terms of continued revenue generation
  • It does not mean the Lab are stopping work on Second Life developments and enhancements – although it does mean that some projects (such as the introduction of a new scripting language or a complete overhaul of the avatar) are unlikely to go ahead within Second Life
  • The new platform is not Philip Rosedale’s High Fidelity, nor is it based on High Fidelity (although conceivably it could leverage some of what High Fidelity is doing  – and possibly vice-versa). As I’ve frequently pointed out in this blog, and others have elsewhere, High Fidelity is an entirely separate technology development being carried out by an entirely separate company (although the Lab were an early investor)
  • The platform may or may not have some compatibility with Second Life in terms of content, it is to early to definitively say which it will be. However, the direction which has been set is not to allow things to be constrained by ideas of backwards compatibility with SL or to become overly complicated as a result of thoughts about backward compatibility. Although there are some hopes for some levels of migration, given the new platform may well be revolutionary, rather than evolutionary, whether this will be possible , and at what level cannot at this time be determined
  • This does not necessarily mean there won’t be a means by which content can be exported from SL to the new platform, although the Lab is understandably concerned over the quality of content
  • It will initially be closed-sourced; whether this remains the case, hasn’t been decided
  • Resources at the Lab will be split going forward: Oz Linden will be leading a team of engineers focused on Second Life, and the Lab will use other resources / resources recruited into the company to build-up is liable to be run starting in late 2014 or early 2015, with people invited in to it under NDA.

The comments on the new platform grew out of a discussion about SL and the media, and the audio extraction picks-up from the end of the chat about PR.

Note that in the audio, questions are included from the 8:11 mark onwards, and Oz Linden adds a comment between 11:12-12:00. Following Ebbe’s comments on people accessing the new platform under NDA from the end of 2014 or in 2015, the conversation wound-down and he departed the meeting.


Speakers: Ebbe Linden, Oz Linden, Jessica Lyon, Latif Khalifa, Takoda (Lassie)

Related Links

Me and Flat Ebbe

Posted on by Inara Pey

Strawberry Singh’s Monday Memes are fun – not that I participate in all of them, but I do read them. A while back, she did a Flat Rodvik meme, which I actually missed out on, so when she decided to do a Flat Ebbe meme, I knew I had to give it a go.

The rules are simple, as Berry states:

Meme instructions: Pick up a copy of Flat Ebbe Linden from my marketplace store for free and take him to one of your favorite places on the grid. Also, share at least three things that you’d like to tell Ebbe. Please remember to leave a link to your post in the comments and share your Flat Ebbe picture in the Blog memes flickr group.

A week or so ago, I invited the real Ebbe to come see the sights of Blake Sea. While he did indeed do so, he passed on my offer to chaperone him to places of interest (I must not be popular, it was the second invite he’d turned down from me 😦 , even if he did come and sit with me for a while at the overspill auditorium ahead of Philip Rosedale’s VWBPE keynote before he managed to slip into the main presentation regions). So, deciding to make the most of the next best thing, I decided to take Flat Ebbe on a cruise around the Blake Sea estates.

Things started out well enough; he even brought some champers along and we had a quick slurp before setting out. Then, ever the gentleman, he offer to drive the boat.

A little pre-cruise champers. such a gentleman!
A little pre-cruise champers. such a gentleman! (click for full size)

Along the way, I thought about what I’d like to suggest to Ebbe, particularly as I’d already taken the liberty of saying a few words on the day he officially started at the Lab.  However, there are some things I’d probably say, had I the opportunity:

  • Don’t just consider the ToS issue to be about problems of ownership. The concerns are as much about the lack of limitations – duration, scope, purpose, all of which should be addressed if equilibrium is to be restored.
  • Encourage your marketing team to think of ways to engage with SL communities to help promote the platform. Leverage some of the incredible experiences people create here. Get marketing to think beyond just following IMVU’s banner ads, and to consider more engaging ways to broaden SL’s appeal.
  • Don’t fall back into just looking at the technical issues when it comes to getting new users engaged in SL. You may not be keen on talking to psychologists about matters, but do consider making use of an ethnographer It’s a diverse world we have here, and techniques used in the real world can have value here as well.
  • Keep those doors of communication open! It’s been great to see more informative communications through the blogs (not to mention your time in the forums and on Twitter).
  • Keep having fun 🙂 . And if you want to find out more on e-sports, always happy to take you skydiving or boat racing ;-). Or as you like skiing, why not take a look at the facilities Bay City and the East River Federation are bringing together for the SL Winter Games at the end of the year?

I could go on, but I always dread sounding like a cliché about grandmothers and eggs in matters like this. As it is, these are the things uppermost in my mind right now, so I’ll leave it there 🙂 .

Now, I just *know* this wouldn't have happened if the real Ebbe Linden had been driving...
Now, I just *know* this wouldn’t have happened if the real Ebbe Linden had been driving… (click for full size)

VWBPE 2014: Ebbe Altberg keynote – “The Door is Open” (full transcript)

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Friday April 11th, Ebbe Altberg, Linden Lab’s CEO, addressed a packed amphitheatre at the 2014 Virtual Worlds Best Practice in Education (VWBPE) conference in Second Life. Some 200 people were in attendance in SL, with around 100-150 on the live stream channel for what was almost a 90-minute session, entitled Reconnecting with the Education Market, and which comprised an opening statement from Ebbe, followed by an extended Q&A / discussion session.

The following is a transcript of the session, which includes all questions asked via the moderator, Phelan Corrimal (given in italics). The video is the VWBPE official video, recorded by Mal Burns, and my thanks to him for making it available. Timestamps within the transcript notes indicate the points in the video at which Ebbe’s comments can be heard.

The Summary

Click the timestamp to go the relevant section

  • 0:05:38: Terms of Service – “I am working with my Legal Counsel to try to try to figure out how we can make it more obvious – or very obvious – that the creators of the content own the content … we’re working on some simple tweaks to the language to make that more explicit.”
  • 0:07:26: Brand – “We have an incredible breadth of content creators for all kinds of purposes, and this is kind-of unique with Second Life, and I think it’s incredibly important to support everybody and what they want to do.”
  • 0:08:59: The Metaverse and LL – ” There might be some people who might be interested in my position on the metaverse and OpenSim and interoperability, and that whole category.”
  • 0:11:09: Integrating new capabilities – “Some of you might be interested in what kind of integration we can do to make it easier for you to use Second Life in the context that you want to use it.”
  • 0:12:04: Improving SL – “And then I think we still have a tremendous about of work still to be done – actually, a tremendous amount of work has already been done; Second Life today is so much better than it was two years ago.”
  • 0:16:16 Future technologies  – “A little talk about future tech. Many of you have hopefully seen that we are obviously actively developing for technologies that we believe will have substantial mass appeal; Oculus being one.”
  • Questions and Answers / Discussion:
    • 0:21:12 – Are the community liaisons with Linden Lab about to be re-introduced?
    • 0:23:39 – Tier Breaks for Support and Mentor Groups
    • 0:26:28 – Do you feel that communications between Linden Lab employees and content creators are important?
    • 0:31:09 – On users having a voice in the development process
    • 0:35:36 – On Marketing SL, Overcoming Perceptions and Getting People Engaged in SL
    • 0:41:24 – On Opening-up The L$ Beyond Second Life
    • 0:44:44 – Making the Viewer Easier to Use & the Relationship with TPVs
    • 0:48:19 – On a Distributable Version of Second Life
    • 0:50:08 – Is there any hope that shared media, MOAP [Media On A Prim] can be fixed for Mac users soon?
    • 0:50:42 – On Second Life and High Fidelity
    • 0:53:49 – On Network Issues affecting some APAC Countries, Latency & Geographic Distribution
    • 0:56:16 – On Exporting Content
    • 1:01:15 – On the Teen Grid, Student Security and Younger People Accessing SL
    • 1:04:12 – What are Linden Lab’s plans for mainland?
    • 1:05:42: – On Office Hours, Lindens In-world and Community Engagement
    • 1:13:54 – Is the Barrier to VW Mass Adoption Technical, Or Something More?
    • 1:17:26 – On Acquisitions in the Technology Market
    • 1:20:12 – On Encouraging Lindens to Join Groups and Communities
    • 1:22:03 – A Takeaway Message for Educators (and all of us)

0:01:59 Hello everybody. I can’t hear you, but I can sure see you! It’s an incredible sea of people here [approx. 180-200 across four regions]. I’m very excited to be here, very happy for all the work that people are doing to put this conference together. Not only this session but all the other sessions you’re doing through the week. I did pop-in just the other day and listened to Philip, which many of you here might have done as well, and I just wanted to say that I’m really excited to be here.

I’m not going to spend most of this hour just talking. I will be saying a few things up front … putting some topics on the table to discuss and then very much looking forward to it being an interactive conversation between us. I’m mostly here to learn, not necessarily to tell, although I will be speaking about some things that I think matter to you, and some of the things that are going on first.

0:03:06 First, I feel very strongly that the education sector, the education market, is a very important partner of Second Life, and that it’s important to us to make it a great product for all of you. I know many of you have tried and been successful and many of you have tried and maybe not been successful in doing the things you wish you could do, and I’m here to learn more about what we can do to make you successful in the future.

I think the education sector helps us a lot of ways, in that if we can provide a great service to you, you can become great evangelists for the platform, and also in many times I think you are pushing in research and thinking about how to use environments and technologies like this differently from your main consumers. So you’re a very important group of people for us to stay in touch with and learn from and collaborate with.

Continue reading “VWBPE 2014: Ebbe Altberg keynote – “The Door is Open” (full transcript)” →

Ebbe: the promise of better communications and a more open JIRA

Posted on by Inara Pey

Since his first official blog post introducing himself, Ebbe Altberg has not only been immersing himself in the activities required of a new CEO on joining a company, he’s been making the time to respond to a series of SL forum posts made in a thread started as a result of his blog post.

In doing so, he’s demonstrated the same candid feedback which has marked many of his Twitter exchanges with Second Life users, and also shown during his recent meet-and-greet with a number of us.

LL's new CEO, Ebbe Altberg, seen here on the right in his guise as Ebbe Linden at a recent meet-and-greet: laying the foundations for improved communications from the Lab?
LL’s new CEO, Ebbe Altberg, seen here on the right in his guise as Ebbe Linden at a recent meet-and-greet: laying the foundations for improved communications from the Lab?

On Communications

One of the major topics of early exchanges with him via Twitter and through various blogs has been on the subject of broader outward communications from the Lab.

Commenting on the forum thread, Amethyst Jetaime raises communications, saying in part:

However I hope you at least take our opinions to heart, take our suggestions when you can and honestly communicate frequently through the official SL channels. Not all of us use twitter and facebook or third-party forums …

His reply to her is encouraging:

Everybody I’ve spoken with here at LL want to improve communication with our customers as well…funny that…

He expands on this in a subsequent reply to  a similar comment from Venus Petrov, in which he says:

And they can’t wait to do that…most common question/issue on both sides of the “fence” has been the same thing! I’m getting love from both sides when I’m talking about fixing communication. I don’t know when/how it got strange but we’ll work hard to make us better at it…motivation is not an issue at all. We just need to figure out process for doing it effectively at scale…

How this will be achieved is open to debate; but the Lab has the means at their disposal to make broad-based communications far more effective, and I tried to point to some of them in my own “Dear Ebbe…” blog post on the matter. In that piece, I particularly look at both the official SL blog and the opportunities presented by e-mail, both of which would appear to meet the criteria of scalability, with an e-mail approach additionally having the potential to reach out to those no longer directly engaged in SL on a regular basis or at all and perhaps encourage them to take another look.

On the Public JIRA

Elsewhere in the thread, Pamela Galli takes the issue of communications to point to the closure of the public JIRA in September 2012:

… In the opinions of many, a good place to start is to make the JIRAs public again so we will know whether an issue is a bug that has arisen, or something on our end. Very often, residents working with Lindens have identified, reproduced, and even come up with workarounds if not solutions to problems. Closing the JIRA felt like a door being slammed, esp to those of us who are heavily invested in SL. (Just grateful for Maestro, who posts in the Server Forum.)

Again, there is an encouraging response:

Funny, both engineering and product heads here also didn’t like that jira was closed and want to open it up again. Proposal for how is in the works! I hope we can figure out how to do that in a way that works/scales soon.

Later in the thread, Innula Zenovka who provides one of the most lucid, clearly stated reasons why a complete closure of the public JIRA was perhaps more counter-productive from a technical standpoint than the Lab may have appreciated at the time. Ebbe’s response is again equally reassuring:

Yep, that’s why we will figure out how to open things up again…plan is in the works…

Whether we’ll see a complete re-opening of the public JIRA remains to be seen. I rather suspect the Lab will be looking at something more middle-ground, such as making the JIRA public, but restricting comments to those currently able to access it, together with those actually raising a report also gaining the ability to comment on it as a means of providing additional input / feedback.

While not absolutely perfect, it would mean that the Lab avoids any situation where comments within a JIRA become a free-for-all for complaints, accusations, and arguments (either directed at the Lab or between comment participants), while offering the majority of the advantages which used to be apparent with a more open JIRA mechanism.

Of course, optimism around this feedback – and particularly around the proposal for the JIRA – should be caveated with caution. Not only may it take time for changes to be implemented, it may also be that technical or other issues may impede something like a more open approach to the JIRA from being achieve to the extent that even the Lab would like. However, that there is a willingness to discuss the fact that matters are already under consideration at the Lab would hopefully suggest a reasonable level of confidence that things can be done without risking the disappointment following the decision that there would be no return of last names back in March 2012.

Whatever does happen, there’s enough in these replies to give rise to a cautious and reasonable optimism that things are likely to be changing for the better down the road. Most certainly, it is good to see an outward follow of communication from the Lab’s CEO that is open and candid.

Long may it continue once Ebbe has had to turn his attention more fully on running the company, and others have stepped in to fill the void, and to ensure the follow-through is both achieved and consistent.

 

Ebbe says “hello!” and sits down for a chat with SL users

Posted on by Inara Pey

LL logoOn Tuesday February 18th, 2014, Linden Lab’s new CEO said an informal “hello” to Second life users through the SL blog.

His message comes just over a week after he officially started working at Battery Street, and it’s something of a personal piece, explaining why he decided to take-up the challenge of helming the Lab (and doubtless much to the delight of LL board member and close personal friend, Jed Smith, who has apparently been trying to get Ebbe to work with him for quite a while…). The post drew immediate comments in the forums … to which Ebbe also replied.

At the same time the blog post came out, Ebbe sat down with a small group of us in an informal meet and greet arranged by the Lab’s Director of Communications, Peter Grey, to talk about his appointment, Second Life, Linden Lab and its products, and other things joining Ebbe and Peter  in a friendly session which lasted about an hour at the Lab’s PR island were myself, Saffia Widdershins, Jo Yardley, Mal Burns, Draxtor Despres and Daniel Voyager.

Some of the highlights of the chat were:

  • Ebbe has had a long-term awareness of both Linden Lab and Second Life. He is close friends with board member Jed Smith and also friends with Philip Rosedale. his knowledge is not in-depth, but it is certainly not an unknown to him
  • He is deeply passionate about user-generated content and about empowering people’s creativity
  • His son, Aleks, actually joined SL while still too young and got kicked from the platform – twice! – prior to becoming one of the founding members of the old SL Teen Grid
  • He is aware that the new user experience needs to be addressed, as does user retention levels and is already starting a preliminary look into the history of these issues
  • He’s already providing guidance on simplifying the Lab’s portfolio of products, and news is due on that later in the week
  • He’s conscious of the fact that the Lab no longer carries the message about Second Life where the media and the world at large are concerned
  • He is enthusiastic about Oculus Rift, Leap Motion an emerging VR and AR technologies and the potential for Linden Lab to help shape how they are used and gain acceptance.

While I had sound issues, I recorded proceedings, and have  permission to reproduce Ebbe’s comments in this article. For those who want to know more, please do also listen to this Friday’s (February 21st) The Drax Files Radio Hour, where there will be more analysis of the conversation. Please note that what follows is not presented in the order in which things were discussed. Instead, I’ve ordered things to try to give something of a progressive flow to the comments made in response to questions and observations.

Ebbe Linden (the robot, rear right) and Pete Linden (rear left) meet with a small group of SL users
Ebbe Linden (the robot, rear right) and Pete Linden (rear left) meet with a small group of SL users

A Little Introduction

“Hi, everybody! I’m Ebbe and I’m extremely excited to be here. I’ve already interacted with a few of you a little bit, or at least read or heard or watched your amazing videos or cities or whatever, and I’ve only been here for a week, and I’ve spent pretty much of the whole first week doing almost nothing but just talking and meeting with employees. and so that’s been pretty much wall-to-wall, so I’ve explicitly avoided diving into Second Life … but I’ve managed to get just the basics going; signed my paperwork and managed to log-in find parking and all these little things, just to get comfortable and getting my office up-and-running, my computers up-and-running.

“So it’s been just fundamentals, no extreme things. I’m obviously starting to have some meaningful conversations with team players and customers alike about top issues, top concerns, top opportunities; things to do more, things to do less and stuff like that. Just a few decisions have been made so far; most of it has been just conversations with team members and colleagues. So with that … I’m really excited to get to talk with you in person right here.”

On Deciding to Join the Lab

“I’ve known Linden since [its] early beginnings. Jed Smith, who is on the board, is a good friend of mine … I was an early beta user and as Drax said, my son was very involved early on, and I thought it was a fantastic experience for him, the ability to create, collaborate and also to earn. At a young age, he became sort-of a producer working with engineers and designers and clients and partners in creating solutions for people.

Ebbe Linden
Ebbe Linden

“So I’ve always known about it, then I’ve really been too busy in my work life to really participate on an ongoing basis. but when Jed came to me and said he wanted me to do this  – and he’s been trying to get me for a number of companies, but this was the first time he succeeded – it was not a difficult decision for me at all with regards to what Second Life is or what Linden Lab is or what we can do because those things are just instantly fascinating to me. I love products that empower people to do things that otherwise would not be possible. I prefer these kinds of products. Call them products that are enabled user-generated opportunities or platforms that can really scale and empower people to succeed as opposed to doing products that are just selling widgets to people.

“So I was instantly passionate about the subject matter, or the materials as they call …a product that enables this tremendous creativity but using technology to do it on a massive scale, and the communication and collaboration elements are also very near and dear to me. So the materials to work with, if you’re someone like me in software product development and digital product development, are just fantastic.

“The only thing that took a little while to overcome was Jed and I are close friends and we had to look each other in the eye for a few days and make sure we could this together, him being on the board and me being CEO, and not have that be damaging to our personal relationship. But after having talked to our wives and families, we completely agreed that we could do it and do it very successfully.

“So that’s kind-of a little bit about why I took this on … I’ve worked on similar things for quite some time at Ingenio, the start-up I joined having left Microsoft, where we basically worked on apps, or I worked on apps – although very successful apps, I think all of us have used those at some point – at Ingenio it was really a marketplace for people to sell what they know. We thought of it as the E-bay of what’s in the top of your mind as opposed to the top of your attic. And we empowered a lot of people to run some very successful businesses on top of the platform we created by just taking ‘phone calls and helping people. and the three days later we would direct deposit their earnings they’d made from helping their customers.

“And at Yahoo!, even, there were a lot of UGC [user-generated content] products I worked on; I was responsible for Yahoo! answers for a while and also at the end responsible for a platform … we bought a company that created the Yahoo! Contributor Network, where we could have hundreds of thousands of people contributing content which could make it into one or many of the Yahoo! verticals to broaden the amount of content we could create, and again empower people to do what they love and to make money doing it.

“So this is a context that’s very familiar to me and near and dear to things that I’m passionate about.”

Continue reading “Ebbe says “hello!” and sits down for a chat with SL users” →

Ebbe drops by …

Posted on by Inara Pey
surprise visitor

On February 6th, I published a short(ish) profile on Linden Lab’s new CEO, Ebbe Altberg. I’m the first to admit there were a few holes in it, as I was reliant totally on published sources.

However, on Friday February 14th, Mr. Altberg himself paid me a nice Valentines Day surprise by stopping by and filling-in the blanks.

Here’s what he had to say:

Hi! This is Ebbe…a few clarifications ;)

The high school in Sweden was a ski academy and I was a ski racer.

At Middlebury I got a degree in Fine Arts with a concentration in Computer Applications…hopped between art studios and coding in the computer lab…left brain right brain…

Ingenio created marketplaces for people to buy and sell information over the phone. We enabled a lot of people to sell what they know and make money doing it. Take a call, provide a service, three days later we would direct deposit your earnings. We also invented Pay per Call (which is part of the reason why at&t interactive bought the company). I racked up quite a few patents there, but I don’t really mention that anywhere as I’m not a huge fan of the patent system. Also, after my interim ceo stint there I was the Chief Product Officer.

I left Yahoo! because I did not believe in the CEO they had at that time. But I’m very proud of what was achieved while I was there (a lot of fixing org and technical plumbing).

After Yahoo! I spent six months hanging out with my family and played a lot of golf with my younger son and watched a lot of Aleks’ car races. Aleks was very engaged in SL many years ago.

I really enjoyed my time at BranchOut and we made some big changes and made some really good progress. Talk.co is a cool messaging and group chat product. And they are working on something else as well that will be quite interesting. Great team. I did not leave for any other reason than not being able to say no to this incredible opportunity.

Finally, I’m a big sports fan…motor sports, soccer (Arsenal!), golf, martial arts…

There you go!

APRMotorsport’s VW GTI 171, driven by Aleks Altberg in his first Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge win in 2012. Mr. Altberg also reveals that Aleks was once very engaged in SL … (image courtesy of RS Worx)

The reply did catch me by surprise (and I’ll also admit I checked the IP address from whence it originated, just in case someone was engaging in a little leg-pulling), but it sparked a little exchange on the subject of Formula 1 (an interest he and I both share) which was (temporarily?) halted by the arrival of the weekend. I hope we get some opportunities for a resumption, as I’m dying to know if he is, as I suspect (that’s spelt h-o-p-e), interested in space exploration (and astronomy?) …

Anyway, Thank you, Ebbe, for dropping by. I hope it’s not the last time 🙂 .