YES! This week’s stunning lottery rollover features a prize of not ONE but TWO senior Lindens: Philip Rosedale and Bob Komin (Interim CEO and soon-to-be-CEO, as some are speculating) are holding the promised in-world meeting.
I call it a lottery not just because it is being held an hour prior to the European ritual of the Euromillions lottery draw – but because personal attendance is down to the luck of the draw as well – and I’ve already submitted my application. Given I’ve won precisely diddly on both Euromillions and the UK’s National Lottery, I’ll also be lining-up to get “in” on things via the other means advertised in the official blog.
It’s good to see that Philip is keeping to his promise – squeezing the meeting in just before the end of the month, but what is more interesting is the inclusion of COO Bob Komin – who was appointed as such back in January of this year and who, to date, is the only member of the Linden management team not to have an avatar listed on the Management Team’s About page – leading some to call him “BK Linden” (with all the inevitable jokes about burgers that follow-on from that). Mostly importantly of all is that he is very much seen as the man responsible for the recent shake-up at Linden Research which resulted in a 30% reduction in staff.
Speculation has been rife since Rosedale’s “return” to LL to take up the mantle of “interim CEO”, with many either blissfully unaware of the full history of the company BK (“Before Kingdon” in this case) or demonstrating that they have remarkably short memories. Or perhaps it is the Rosedale-tinted specs people like to look through…
Certainly, since his “return” Rosedale has stuck a note of contriteness in his two direct messages to the user community (SL7B and the aforementioned “strategy update“) – but this is really not something new; contrition (to a degree) has been shown in the past – but the company has never really swayed from the viewpoint that it is always right, and that Second life is really far too complex for any of us mere mortals to ever truly understand.
Indeed, as Prok reports, this attitude is very much still at the forefront of attitudes within Linden Lab, as she quotes Nyx Linden’s pat answer that even “*effective* communication” with the masses is “difficult”. While I would agree that “*effective*” communication of complex technical issues with the larger community is perhaps difficult (not all of us are computer geeks) – effective communication in and of itself – keeping people appraised of what is happening, endeavouring to enable reliable customer feedback and involvement in matters, and so on – isn’t that hard – it is rather a basic fact and requirement of business life. And one LL routinely fail.
Which is why the upcoming meeting is going to be interesting – not because of the potential for anger, upset or general negativity from the audience, or the risk of flamewars (which again, some are hinting at) – but because of precisely what is said be Rosedale and Komin and – more importantly – how it is presented. As I’ve already alluded to – the meeting potentially stands as a litmus test as to whether LL are indeed “going back to basics” in the manner perhaps the majority of us view that phrase, or whether it is simply a matter of more “business as usual” – the presentation of a case, the decisions that have already been made, and an outline of what it will mean for us all, with little more than a veneer of considered concern for the feedback given during and after the meeting itself. This has been LL’s modus operandi since the earliest days, and thus the cynical might point out could be considered as much of a “back to basics” approach as anything else.
I do find Komin’s appearance at the meeting interesting; until now, he’s been pretty much Shadow Linden (or perhaps Mystery Linden) inasmuch as until the layoffs, he didn’t really surface that much and left the public speaking to others. Now, at the time of a “new beginning”, he’s very much front-and-centre on things; this to me suggest that – once again – Hamlet may have hit the nail on the head and the COO may well be the CEO-in-waiting. This may not necessarily be a bad thing: his resume certainly suggests something of a broad grounding in business practices that has – if we’re honest – been somewhat lacking at LL over the years. He’s certainly no dye-in-the-wool marketer or technogeek.
Certainly, it’s going to be interesting to hear what he has to say as much as Rosedale himself, and in precisely how he goes about saying things.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 