life2.0

Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, just spoke to a packed out crowd at the Life 2.0 convention inworld (Metaversed coverage here). He spoke passionately about the future of the 3D platform, saying that it needed to become "as ubiquitous a platform as the web is to us today", "something everbody has to use in their daily lives". To acheive the kind of ubiquity Rosedale envisions, the company know that they must open up every piece of software, every line of code, "right down to the filesystem formats".

When asked to expand upon his vision of how the open sourcing of the server and other code, and decentralizing of Linden as government would play out, he said he saw clusters of servers and "agent services" being owned by companies or individuals and adding ot the grid as regular web servers do today. When asked where Linden as a for profit company would stand in this grand scheme, he said he saw them playing a central role with possibly a few other companies in inventory management and other roles necessary for the grid to function. Without some trusted organizatins lookng after some pieces of the puzzle, it just wouldn't work.

So when are Google going to buy Linden? I asked this rather jokingly, but Rosedale was claerly sick of hearing it, reiterating the argument that they are a profitable company, and simply dont need a large companies finance to survive, and the likely direction for them was simply growth, massive growth.

Though he acknowledged that rapid progress, expansion and changes to the system often caused problems for the developers of Second Life, Rosedale made no apology for the companies "mission to get this thing as big as we can, as fast as we can" saying that every active member of Second Life, brought the platform closer to where it needed to be in order to grow in the long term.

I can see a whole bunch of people being mighty pissed off at that statement, but personally I thought it showed balls, and demonstrated a real passion worthy worthy of a little respect alongside a healthy pinch of salt...

A hot topic during the questions and answers section of Chairman of linden Lab Mitch Kapor's keynote address "Second Life and Disruptive Innovation" at the Life 2.0 convention being held inworld all this week, was the future of the 3D web, and Linden Lab's role in that future. It's long been Linden's stated plan to release their server code as well as the already open sourced viewer code for the SL platform, but where will that leave Linden?

Though Kapor was playing Linden's long term game plan close to his chest, he did say that the ultimate goal was to play a much less central role in the 3D web. I can't imagine people being happy with one company controlling any one part of a commons, as the 3D internet needs to be if it's to gain anything even resembling "universal adoption" (Mitch's words, not mine!) so hopefully that's an indication that Linden will work on finding other ways to be profitable as their code makes its way to the masses via the open source community and Linden are no longer needed in order to operate within the Metaverse.

Kapor was, as you'd imagine, extremely confident in his address, though he did, like others before him, aknowlege stability and scaling issues for the platform. It was generally agreed between grumpy cynics (that would be Mike and I) in private IM during Mitch's speech though, that the phrase "universal adoption" was very poorly chosen, and that much Kool-Aid was being virtually quaffed at the event.

You can read more of Metaversed coverage of Life 2.0 all this week as it happens.

In a panel entitled "Second Life as a Platform" held during the Life 2.0 convention this week (see Metaversed coverage here), a panel that included folks from Linden Lab, Amazon Web Services and the Lib Second Life project agreed that scale and reliability were the virtual worlds greatest challenges.

Amidst loose talk of Second Life expanding web services, and the coming opening up of the Linden server code to the open source community, the overriding issues of scale and reliability were forefront. Amazon's Jeff Barr said that he (they) were actively engaging with the SL community because developers inworld were at the absolute cutting edge. They're prepared to accept a certain amount of instability as price for being at the leading edge of the 3D frontier. Amen to that, there's no shortage of awesome talent in Second Life, that's for sure.

Amazon's Jeff Barr, aka Jeffronius Batra at the Second Life as a Platform Panel (more images here)

When asked what the greatest challenge for Second Life this year was though, every one of the panelists agreed that scale and reliability were of greatest issue. With resident complaints becoming very public, it would seem that some upcoming features such as voice integration may be overshadowed by stability issues.

Only time will tell.

I spent a good portion of my weekend listening to presentations from some of Second Life's elite developers at the Life 2.0 convention (Metaversed coverage here) that runs through all this week put on by Dr. Dobb's. The highlights of the week long convention are yet to come, with a massive array of must see panels and sessions, but the weekend was for the developers, the builders, the folks that make our Second Live's more interesting, more beautiful and more productive. I saw almost all of the sessions and came away with a much better overview of the development potential within the virtual world and the feeling that try as I might, I'm not going to be able to resist delving deep into the code of the Metaverse - I'm a hacker at heart, and the weekends presentations by such notable developers and builders as Hiro Pendragon, Vymox Ming and Skidz Tweak and a chap from LibSecondlife.org who's name I forget, got me longing for the round the clock caffeine and code binges of years gone by...

Hiro Pendragon presenting at Life 2.0 More images here.

As we move out of the weekend, the lineup of events, sessions and panels looks hot.. and Metaversed will be there to cover individual panels that fit with the business oriented news we cover here. One such panel is entitled "Second Life as a Platform" and Im hoping it will give us some insight into where this is all heading. Stay tuned..

For those not at the Dr. Dobb's Life 2.0 convention in Second Life, do follow the live comments via my Twitter page. I'll be following up with posts on Sunday and through the week, but if you want to get some thoughts as I have them, then, after seeking professional help, do add me on Twitter, or just follow the RSS from there.

Last weekend we spent considerable time covering the ITE expo. This weekend, it's Dr. Dobb's Life 2.0 Convention which starts at 10am SLT (PDT) on Saturday 20th and runs through to the 4th May. Metaversed will of course be covering the entire event which focuses on building and scripting in the virtual world so stay tuned this weekend.

One of the things that differentiates this convention from the recent ITE expo is that there is a limit on attendance. You can register on the website, but as I understand it there will be a draw to decide who will be able to participate inworld. If you don't make it though, or are not comfortable in Second Life yet still interested in the convention, you can see, hear and read about it on the Life 2.0 site live. I don't have all of the technical details as of yet, due ot technical issues with the grid yesterday i missed an opportunity to interview John Zhaoying, the Dr. Dobb's head honcho, but hopefully we'll be able to do that today and give you all the necessaries on Friday well ahead of conference time.

For now, to whet your appetite, join me on a short photo walk from the Metaversed Life 2.0 Gallery

The Life 2.0 Amphitheatre

Main Exhibition Area

The Bazaar

Not sure what the deal is with the Bazaar but I love this sign...

Sun Microsystem's stand

Terra Aeronautics

Over the next couple of days i'll be trying to line up as many interviews as possible and speak to John Zhaoying and others involved in organizing the event. In the meantime, if you're going to be there, don't wait for me to find you, IM 57 Miles inworld!

More images here