Tag: Lab Gab

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.

Lab Gab 14: SL in 2020 – don’t forget to submit your questions!

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

The 14th edition of Lab Gab will be live streamed on Friday, February 21st at 11:00 SLT (19:00 UK; 20:00 CET). For those who have not seen the official blog post about it, the segment will feature Ebbe Linden (aka Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg) and Grumpity Linden. They will be discussing the Second Life roadmap for 2020.

As Linden Lab’s high-profile CEO, Ebbe really needs no introduction; however, as Grumpity may not be familiar to everyone, here’s a thumbnail bio.

Grumpity originally came to Linden Lab as part of the team provided by consulting and software development company, The Product Engine, which supports viewer development at the Lab. She was initially involved in the development (but not the design) of viewer 2.0, and joined the Lab full time in 2014, rising to the position of Director of Product for Second Life, a role in which she became one-third of the “troika” (as she has called it) responsible for SL’s technical and operational directions, alongside Oz Linden and Patch Linden.

In October 2019, Grumpity, Oz and Patch joined the Linden Lab management team, all three being promoted to Vice President in their respective roles.

Ebbe and Grumpity Linden

As per the official blog post, Second Life users can submit questions for the show concerning Second Life’s development roadmap and future.

So if you are curious about Name Changes, the Environment Enhancement Project (EEP), future development of the viewer, the work in transitioning to the cloud, Second Life web services such as the Marketplace, back-end services such as Group chat, concerns about fees or land tier – or anything else that is specific to Second Life, why not submit them through the Lab Gab Episode 14 Questions form? Not all the questions may be asked / answered, but if you don’t try, there’s a greater chance your question may not be asked anyway!

The programmed will be streamed via YouTube, Facebook, Mixer, or Periscope, and if all goes according to plan, I’ll have a summary of the video (and the video itself) available soon after the the broadcast, for those unable to watch live.

Lab Gab episode 2 with Reed Linden – a summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Image courtesy of Linden Lab

The Second episode of Lab Gab streamed on Wednesday, September 11th, hosted by Xiola and Strawberry Linden, and featuring special guest Reed Linden.

Running to just under 44 minutes, this was an informative segment, although there were a number of questions asked that where outside of Reed’s specific remit and which he was only able to answer in general terms (Land, Linden Homes, pricing, etc.). Most of these are not summarised below, and I refer people to the embedded video for comments.

About Reed Linden

Reed Linden, aka (at present) Penguin Fabuloso, has been with the Lab for just over eight years, having joined in August 2011. He started in the support team, serving there for three years, then moving to the Engineering team for a time. While there, Grumpity Linden, Director of Product for Second Life, selected him to join the Product team.

As a Product Manager, Reed has particular responsibility for the Lab’s Second Life web infrastructure –  the Marketplace, Profiles, main domains like secondlife.com, and so on). He’s also been involved with Bakes on Mesh, and has knowledge of account management (including Premium), billing,  and – given his time there – support.

Reed Linden (c), flanked by Xiola (l) and Strawberry (r)

He views his progress through the Lab as uniquely reflective of the manner in which knowledge of the platform is distributed: those who potentially know the most about SL are the users who put it to work every day, coding, building, uploading, texturing, creating, and so on. The next level of knowledge below that is the support teams who handle hundreds of user requests on a daily basis, and get to use the broad spread of the platform’s tools and capabilities. Then, after support come the engineering and product teams, who have sharply defined focuses on Second Life.

From this is should come as no surprise that he sees the community as his favourite aspect of the platform, together with the manner in which it can bring people together from around the world, and help them find a voice or outlets or connections – and even to find love. In this latter regard, he reveals that not only have SL residents built their physical world relationships out of a Second Life meeting (a-la the Love Made in SL series), but also that some LL staff have met their physical world partners through SL!

Web Properties – Project and Updates

  • As a part of his web infrastructure responsibilities, he has been running the work to bring Profiles back into the viewer. This involves two key elements:
    • Moving user profiles back to their own floater in the viewer, rather than pulling in the web profile. This element of the work is currently available for testing in the Legacy Profiles Project Viewer, which can be found on the Alternate Viewer Page.
    • A further aspect of the work is to move Profile Feeds into a dedicated tab within the Profile floater.
Left: SL Profiles will be returning to a dedicated floater (rather than using a panel to display the web-base user profile). In the future, Profile feeds will also become a part of this floater with their own tab. Right: recently delivered to the Marketplace (among other updates) is the ability to list all the gifts you have received (MP → Account Name → My Account Page → Received Gifts)
  • Reed also highlighted three recent updates to the Marketplace:
    • Notification of purchase – when you visit a Marketplace listing for an item you have previously purchased with the account you are using, the date purchased is displayed at the top of the listing.
    • The gifts received listing (see above).
    • The ability for store owners to nominate store managers.
  • Some of the upcoming Marketplace features touched upon include:
    • Optimising the Marketplace for mobile use.
    • Purchase notifications: store owners will receive a viewer notification of purchases made through their Marketplace stores. This will be an opt-in capability, so as to avoid those with popular brands from being constantly spammed with purchase messages.
    • Refunds: the ability for Merchants to offer refunds through the MP is being looked at.
    • Continuing work on quality-of-life capabilities within the MP, together with bug fixes.
  • Search is being strengthened right across all of the Lab’s web properties.
    • For the Marketplace, this will include listing top-selling products first within search results
    • Better granularity on searches will potentially be supported, together with better filtering
  • There are also projects in progress or on the horizon related to improving the Destination Guide and for Events (this has been mentioned in one or two technical user group meetings, but again without specifics being given).

Bakes on Mesh

  • As a Product Manager, he is very pleased with the take-up of Bakes on Mesh (BoM) – as is the Lab.
  • LL have been tracking take-up among mesh head / body makers, etc., and the gradual adoption of the BoM viewer code by TPVs.
    • There is an unofficial list for BoM support (last updated at the end of August) which may help those interested.
  • The hope remains that BoM will encourage more lightweight content in terms of graphics resources (e.g. less complex Mesh heads and bodies, plus the ability to bake down multiple textures into a single composite).

General Q&A

  • As a hobby, Reed enjoys painting model miniatures (D&D being specifically mentioned) and building dioramas.
  • Work on an iOS client was re-iterated. No new updates, as this is not one of Reed’s areas of work, so those interested can refer to a summary of comments by Kiera and Oz Linden on the work (including a link to a transcript of the comments), and my July mini-update on this project.
  • Last Names: yes, still being worked on, but a complex project. Again, see my June update, which includes the most relevant comments from LL.

Feedback

An informative segment, with Reed providing a lot of hints  – he touched very loosely on possible new Premium account options, for example – as well as outright information for those who do not attend the various in-world user group meetings or follow summaries of said meetings as provided on this blog and others of a similar nature.

Some of the questions did hit on the issue of keeping people aware of a specific guest’s area of expertise; even when warned Reed is not directly involved in viewer development, land management, etc., a number of questions on those subjects came up (and were dutifully asked). However, these fortunately did not interrupt the overall flow of the session to a great degree.

Voice quality continues to be an issue; I assume the participants are using the SL voice binary rather than hooking Skype or an alternative service into the mix. Hopefully this is something that will be addressed once the upcoming voice update viewer goes into circulation and Lab staff can use it.

No details on what the next segment will be about – so it’s a case of watch the official blog posts.

Previewing Lab Gab 2 with Reed Linden

Posted on by Inara Pey
Image courtesy of Linden Lab

The second segment on Lab Gab has been announced as streaming live on Wednesday, September 11th, 2019 at 15:00 SLT, when it will feature special guest Reed Linden.

Lab Gab is the title given to the new fortnightly (thus far) chat show hosted by Xiola and Strawberry Linden. The first segment was streamed on Wednesday, August 28th, and those interested can read my summary here. It formed a general intro to the show, with Xiola and Strawberry chatting about a number of topics and taking questions from people watching the live stream on YouTube.

The second segment promises to be more formal, featuring  – as noted – Reed Linden. AKA (at present) Penguin Fabuloso, Reed has been with the Lab for just over eight years, having joined in August 2011. Most recently, he’s been in the hot seat for the monthly Web User Group meetings (which I “skilfully” keep missing on account of – well, let’s be honest here – not remembering to check the schedule). As a Product Manager at the Lab, Reed has his fingers in a number of areas including the Marketplace, Profiles and SL web properties, and also with Bakes on Mesh.

All things being equal, I’ll be watching the show and will hopefully have a summary available in these pages some time thereafter. Those wishing to tune-in to the stream can do so via the Lab’s official YouTube channel.

Lab Gab episode 1 – a summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Strawberry and Xiola Linden with “Gabby”the cat (name TBC) on the Lab Gab set

The first episode of Lab Gab streamed on Wednesday, August 28th, hosted by Xiola and Strawberry Linden, and drew a comfortable audience. I intentionally stayed out of the chat but saw a few familiar names there.

Running to 35 minutes, the programme was not deeply revelatory with regards to Second Life news – that will likely be for future segments of the show. However, it did offer a comfortable, if slightly frustrating start – I say frustrating because the broadcast gremlins raised their little heads to try to keep Strawberry from being heard over the stream.

The first few minutes  – up to around the 9 minute mark – of the show covered Xiola and Berry’s roles at the Lab, and folded in notes on the Lab’s various social media presences and also the Destination Guide for finding places to visit.

Bakes on Mesh (BoM) then got a plug, being the latest update from Linden Lab. Berry attempted to clear-up confusion as to what it is (simply put: a means to apply system avatar wearables to suitably prepared mesh bodies and heads in a manner somewhat akin to how they used to be used with the system avatar, albeit with the option of supporting high resolution textures than available for the system avatar).

The official blog post on the release is available here, and I attempted to cobble together a basic primer on the subject (although I suspect that in part might also veer a little too close to the technical).

In talking Bakes on Mesh, Berry underlined at that BoM will require mesh body and head creators to provide updates to their offerings that are correctly flagged to use Bakes on Mesh natively. She also noted to the experimental Omega Bakes on Mesh applier system that I also referenced in my primer article. This is available from the Omega in-world store. However, I was interested to note that it did not work for Berry  – and I actually found it less than satisfactory when testing. Overall, the results seem variable, with some having absolutely no issues with it, and others (like Berry and I) encountering problems – hence, again, why it is called “experimental”. For those who wish to try it out, step-by-step instructions, courtesy of Theresa Tennyson (who is not associated with Omega, so please don’t crowd her with questions if you do have issues!) are available here.

Additionally, Berry pointed to an alternative HUD (L$125) which apparently works just fine, although I’ve yet to try it myself.

One of the key points with Bakes on Mesh is that it should enable body / head creators to make their products less complex, simply because they do not need to include so many onion skin layers, hence why the release advantage with BoM really lies in updates to existing bodies and heads, as the various creators will hopefully make available in the coming weeks (Slink has already updated). Thus, even for those who don’t use applier systems for clothing that mush, Bakes on Mesh is important, as adoption of updated bodies / head can have the potential to help reduce general rendering load for everyone.

Around the 14:40 mark, Xiola indirectly replied to some speculation on my part (raised when writing about Lab Gab ahead of the show), when I wondered:

I also admit to being curious as to whether the show might at some point down the road – depending on its longevity – also occasionally “hop over the fence” into Sansar or even perhaps take some “behind the scenes” (desires for things like privacy allowing among staff) looks at the Lab itself. “Lab Gab” seems to be too broad a title to remain purely about Second Life (although there is a lot to explore on that subject alone), even allowing for it being intentioned as a “catchy” name for the show.

By way of “reply” (I’m not sure Xiola’s comment was driven as a result of my speculation or not) Xiola noted:

I know the name of our new show here is “Lab Gab” – we just really likes how that sounded … but currently, short-term, our plans are to definitely focus on Second Life, although obviously we work for Linden Lab and Linden Lab also has Sansar … but the focus of this show is, initially and short-term, Second Life and the Second Life Community.

After some general chit-chat around giveaways, the show turns to a mini Q&A session from around the 19:15 mark, some of which are summarised below:

  • Linden Lab is currently working on an communications / companion app for iOS
  • When are last names coming back?
    • Still being worked on, have a lot of variables involved in terms of back-end systems and complexity.
    • Again, those interested can catch the last formal update I have (including comments from Oz Linden) in the First and last names section of my coverage of Oz’s appearance at SL16B with April Linden in June 2019. This also addresses a number of questions on the topic.
  • Linden Homes:
    • There is now a weekly roll-out programme (Mondays, Wednesday, Fridays) when homes are made available through the Linden Homes web page.
    • New types and styles of Linden Homes are still in the works, but no release dates.
    • Best way to stay up-to-date is to keep an eye on the official blogs and on the Linden Homes update thread on the forums.
  • Will Lab Gab include interviews with Lab staff? – Yes.
  • Upcoming major updates:
    • Bakes on Mesh is now out, per above.
    • The Environment Enhancement project (EEP) is progressing towards release – but no definite time frame other than Soon™ as bugs are being stomped on.
    • Not directly mentioned in the show is the new Animesh enhancements work (Project Muscadine) and also back on the horizon is the restarting ARCTan (two name but two of the more user-facing projects – there is also a lot of under-the-hood work going on).
    • Details on projects like this can be found in my (generally) weekly Content Creation User Group meeting summaries and also my other SL tech summaries.

An interesting start to the series, nicely relaxed, and a segment where the voice issues didn’t spoil things too much. Some nice teasers were dropped on future shows and direction which suggest Lab Gab will be a good option for tuning into every couple of weeks. In the meantime, you can catch the entire first show below.

Lab Gab launches on August 28th via YouTube

Posted on by Inara Pey
Image courtesy of Linden Lab

Lab Gab is the title of a new live stream event being hosted by Xiola and Strawberry Linden, that commences on Wednesday, August 28th at 15:00 SLT. Initially announced in a blog post on August 23rd, Lab Gab is intended to be:

A variety show of sorts – we want to explore Second Life, answer your questions, talk to Residents from all over the world, and stream it through the internet and into your homes, phones, and wherever you get your quality entertainment.

With Xiola going on to note:

In our first show, we’ll be introducing ourselves, talking a little bit about what Lab Gab is, and interacting with you through YouTube live. In the future, we will invite special guests to come visit us on the set and talk about events and issues that impact the communities in Second Life.

For those interested, Lab Gab will initially be streamed via the official Second Life You Tube channel – although other platforms will be added in the future – with shows planned to go out every couple of weeks or so.

I confess, I’m not a great fan of live streamed events (outside of things like meetings, where there tends to be a more formalised approach to things), simply because at times things can get dragged out or take a sudden right turn away from something that might have otherwise been interesting. However, there is no denying the seat-of-the-pants sense of adventure those actively leading / participating in such events can feel, and the very unpredictable nature of where things might lead can add to the appeal for a watching audience.

At the same time, I also admit to being curious as to whether the show might at some point down the road – depending on its longevity – also occasionally “hop over the fence” into Sansar or even perhaps take some “behind the scenes” (desires for things like privacy allowing among staff) looks at the Lab itself. “Lab Gab” seems to be too broad a title to remain purely about Second Life (although there is a lot to explore on that subject alone), even allowing for it being intentioned as a “catchy” name for the show.

Certainly, dipping the occasional toe in Sansar’s waters might help dispel some of the many misconceptions that circulate among SL users concerning that platform, while taking a peek inside the Lab could also help both dispel certain myths and offer greater insight into what goes into keeping Second Life chugging along. Just a couple of ideas I’m throwing out there, LL, if you’ve not already considered them 😉 ).

In the meantime, if you are curious to see how Lab Gab sets itself up as a magazine show look at Second Life, be sure to watch tonight’s instalment via the You Tube link above, and keep an eye on the Lab’s social media and blog for updates about future shows.