Community Gateway Saga

What is a Community Gateway?

A Community Gateway is on the Virtual World Second Life a portal where new avatars get in an area where they get easy instructions about the use of this virtual world. At these portals Mentors where provided for any questions.

The Programme

Linden Lab the maker of the Virtual World Second Life guided this programme with the Community and set out rules and regulations.
One of them was that you must have three private regions to be a gateway and the gateway must be PG.
When approved the Community Gateway will go into the registration path so that new registrators could choice in which community they like to land on and get help.

This was really a great solution for people that does not know the English lanquage well as many Gateways where developed by lanquage and culture.

This was a great solution for huge Universities that could bring in their people straight to their Virtual Campus.

This was great for businesses. If they have a time saving/cost saving Virtual Conference so that people in intrest did not have to be lost in the help islands and might be showned different directions.

Progress

The Community worked very hard on these gateways with great Linden co workers. Admitting its never easy but the programme became very close with eachother and helped eachother on issues. Solutions where found if one accidently would come to a gateway which a person did not understand. The Gateways warned eachother if their might be a griever or what was much greater to hear the possitive news which was shown on tv or other media channels in each country. This warning could help to give the idea why suddenly gateways where busy.
Some English Gateways where open also in time difference zones so help would be there 24/7

Together with the Linden Co Workers we were planning positive pr campaignes and also cross media events.

This whole programme gave some Gateways uppertunities for bringing in more business and sponsering. Specially when you are investing a sim for this gateway in benefit for both parties.

The Gateway had regular meetings to improve and a wiki to communicate.

The ending

Unfortunate one of the great co worker of Linden got a different assignement and the Programme was given to three others.
From day one of the meetings we noticed that there was no intrest in who the Gateways are and what really the programme achieved,what it was all about and who were behind them.
As excuses they gave us theoratical numbers while practise was showing so differently.
No one listens deeply and unfortunate conclusions where made.

Gateways were told that they will be taken out of the registration paths. Meaning no one will be able to find you in your own lanquage, timezone, business or education intrest or intrest in roleplay.
They gave the Gateway uppertunity to go in a destination guide where so many are on and so hard to find.

At this point personal VH decided to step out as the investment was to hard to maintain as it had no value anymore as in the uppertunities first given by LindenLab in this programme.

And more where amazed by this as many invested so much and even as said before got companies sponsoring posibilities.

The Announcement

On 19th of august an announcement was made A New Approach to Welcoming Residents

In other words As community with the guidance of LindenLab we invested a lot of money and time for this great programme and with the new direction of Lindenlab we can just go....

The Opinion

I responded with an opinion on the blog as follows unfortunate I can not give a link anymore as suddenly they toke the Opinion away for no reasons.

"LindenLab must understand that not all residents understand the English lanquage. Even as we do we still feel comfertible to have a quick word in own lanquage and with cultural view. Specially if you talk about technic... As CG we toke people by the hand, as CG among eachother we communicated about major events happening in own country or roleplay community.

About the figures is such a bullshit statement we had to hear after that the programme was taken over when unfortunate the creator of this programme moved away to other assignment.

I remembered one time on summer holiday when normally people are outside all dutch speaking CG was busy. We warned eachother that many new residents were finding their ways into SecondLife and we toke them by the hand.

And why did that happen is because in the Netherlands three weeks in a row a documantry about SL and Virtual Worlds was showed on tv and people got curios.

Same as it happend when discovery showed items. Meaning it was mainly about how you present yourself in press and I can tell as many countries if that was bit more supported by LL more would have joined.

There was a power between the CG warning about issues or warning about that there has been a great event so many resident mind follow up on that.

We learned from eachother, met eachother in rl and kept improving everything but because of the changes we did not got a change ever to develope more.

This is a huge mistake!!! Better is to find a solution to co operate with the CG then to get rid of them!!

As I say the power was lying the own lanquage culture and also knowing the view about Virtual Worlds in their areas as secondlife and work on that.

That is something that never can be centralized!!! CG toke a lot of hard work away in that case.

What LindenLab now is doing is breaking up a great group of people!! and all of them serious people that had only one goal is to help people to find their way in Second Life.

Really come with a better solution and work with this great Community!!

The experience came from them and because of the diversity the CG programme made sure that residents will find their way where they felt comfertible....."

Conclusion

No doubt everyone agrees on improvement and therefore a community can help in many ways. Like this Community Gateway programme and the Solution providers Programme.

In my honesty LindenLab is not a great partner to work with at this moment.
To handle decisions like this. It is bad costumer service and community treatment.

At this point they are unstable in this in many ways. As we notice besides this programme in technical service. In handeling problems even as community managers from these Gateways and other programmes we understand how things difficult can be. Therefore co operations is better then kicking them out.

I hope this will be realized and taken in consideration as company. Improvement is good, looking great is good but it is the community that makes it. Sometimes it does not matter how you look. (see habbo hotel) Before people will leave. As we noticed great users are looking for other Virtual World Solutions.

Nevertheless the programme itself will find its on solution to continue.
One positive point of all this. The netwerk among eachother is great.

Inworld Meeting 30-7-2010 Philip and BK Linden hosted on VirtualHolland/MetaMeets

That was a great event and as community manager I was so worried if the sim will hold. More then 60 people were watching the update from Philip Linden and BK Linden moderated by Wallage Linden.

But as the message was given this evening: improvement will come. Lagg will be reduced!
I wanna thank everybody for joining us and Ze Moo for helping me out with this event.
Also great work of TreetTV!

Honest a few things I heard but as CM I was watching over the public if all went ok. Thanks to Frans Charming he quickly puts some notes on his blog to review You can read the text down here.

Personally I hope that the reorganization will have more co operations with the community.
It is great that in Europe we have now an office in Amsterdam from LindenLab that brings the company closer to their European users.
They were mentioning more communication for their needs. We are ready for that! ;-)

Hopefully soon more meetings to cover and all can help make the product better and grow.

"Friday, July 30, 2010
Rough Notes on Philip and BK's Inworld Meeting and Q&A
Posted by Frans Charming
These are my Rough Notes on Philip and BK for an Inworld Meeting and Q&A. I missed some stuff and might have summarized oddly. I will add a full transcript and video when they become available. A common thread in the talk was making things Fast Easy and Fun.

Notes:
Bob 6 months at LL, first change to meet the community

Philip, why back, and feel.
Why is SL not gone,
VW are going to profoundly change the world

Nothing that philip has seen has changed his belief in vws.

Philip think he can help with growing Sl and vws.

Philip profoundly believe in this thing.


Improving the basic user experience, is about tearing down the walls. It is more apt now then 30 days ago. It is so important that we pull back and fix the basic experience.

Internal plan
250 at LL
What is a single slide, set of statements, and organize our work around it.

To make a statement that is so clear that we can all remember it.


3 words at the top for our strategy
Fast easy fun, these words capture what SL can and should be.

In so many areas we are not living up to Fast easy and fun.

Beneath those 3 words we have 3 big bullets,
Back to basics
Winning back the lead
Very important to grow the virtual content economy


Back to basics:
what it means in the next 2/3 quarters, is a intense focus on crashes and lag.

regarding crashing hardest is the viewer, there is also the server.

We are going to work, to have the 2.1 code base to have fewer crashes then 1.23

We are going to work to drop it well below 1.23

Set a target goal, if the crash rate rises above the goal we are going to work in right away again. we are monitoring this week by week.

Lag
We are going to turn on http texture next week, make loading texture a lot faster.

Focusing on restructuring chat and group chat, to have it not/less depended on the sims. So they won't impact the chat.

regaining the lead
Greatly increase the interaction of new releases. Very short release cycles. Iterating, doing it in small steps, week by week. We are going to change all our systems to allows us to iterate in that way.

And completely opening the code, so the code will always be visible by you while we are developing out product.

The second big area of our focus is the viewer 2.
We clearly have a big challenge there. There are lot of people who are frustrated with and we do apologize.

The things with v2 is that it does have technology features that we don't want to loose. And we are going to work hard on making the viewer better for both builder and explorers.

Help us rapidly develop the viewer, to develop everything we need.

We are going to bring in the open source community in a short loop to help us develop the viewer and regain the tech lead.


The virtual economy, It does not mean SL is only about making Money. Fundamentally SL is a system where we create and experience content. That means the success the content creators is the key driver.

How we measure that is hard.

If we add a new capability like Mesh, the question about that, is that useful to everybody. Not every body will use t

Optimizing the process, find try buy. Is a place where we can and need to make positive change.

Search, we greatly increased the size


One problem is having to go to a sandbox and rez a box to try on a pair of shoes. We are directly going to address that issue.


SL has more amazing content, then a new user can get to.

We are going to switch the new user process. A link in the destination guide should be a first step for a new user.

We are going to change registration and welcome islands in the coming weeks.

Second Life Enterprise:
We don't know exactly who is using SL, it is used by business, education, etc.

Crashes, lag impacts business education too, improvements there will also improve the experience of those uses on the main grid. We are stopping work on the behind the firewall solution.

Q&A:

Economy, is the entire economy.

We do need to create a really great 2D shopping experience. The existence of the web metaphore will have some impact for sure. But like Offline and online shopping can compliment each other. so can here.


Search, gotten a bunch of smart people with domain expertise we are focussing on it day by day, week by week.

Region crossing, and scripted objects. We have a entire scrum team working on this.

Mesh, we are very exited about mesh impact on the economy. We are careful to implement Mesh so it has a huge impact, but so that its impact on lag is either zero or less.

Im profoundly committed to get some kind of make over of my avatar. I am aware that it negatively impacts all the work that you do if my avatar appears like it is in the media. It is my alter ego, so I will be careful about it.

Bob
The other aspect that we need to do.
There are a lot things going on in the day to day, what we focus on, what we deploy.

philip
SL is fundamentally a immersive experience, our focus is going to shift is to completely improve that experience.

So we are going to look into how we can

User growth is critical, because that is part of the feedback loop in finding out if we are doing good work.

We are fundamentally change how communicate about changes. More messages will come in the coming weeks and months.
Bob and I won't talk about any more specific technology because we can't micro manage all the things in development.

Doesn't Fast, easy and Fun miss the sense of meaningfulness, which set SL apart from other products.

We don't want to change the depth of system, we want to make the capabilities fast easy and fun. Add simplicity, speed and elegance.

Are there any plans to make sl a multi platform experience? Like a browser.
Let's start with a browser, fundamentally full 3D in the browser is coming, but not for a few year.
We have a few people looking at it.

We are going to focus on the browser for the next 2 or 3 quarters.


Fast easy and fun, is that directed at any community?
We are not focussing on community. But take teachers as a example, it is very hard for teachers to come in take content from a friend and do a class. These are the basic features, fast easy fun will help them.

Everyone together on the maingrid, business education, if we need to create a feature set to accomplish that we are going to do that.

How does observation handle complexity

On the open source side, we are going to change the open source direction to focus on specific work on the production viewer. We will increase the impact of the open source viewer.

When we talk about making v2 work for new and existing users. That might means different UIs for the 2. When you are in build mode you are in a completely different mindset then when you are newby learning to put clothes on and explore a amazing castle.

Can Philip confirm if he is back for the long term? My activities are completely focuses on the user experiences, we have not began on selecting a new ceo. I'm here full time and tremendously enjoying the work I'm doing.


Closing comments,
We are going to look at every way we can effectively communicate to help us do our work better. We are going to try different things. You can email us about that. This format is great but is not effective for all uses."

more pictures on http://www.flickr.com/groups/slnl/pool/with/4843802179/

Virtual Life Rule: Real Life goes first

So many stories to write about. Specially after MetaMeets,R U There premiere and the changes in the virtual world Second life but then unfortunate things can happen in Real Life.

Now there is one rule in a virtual life is to let Real Life go first. Something that is so important as we know you can easily be caught up in a Virtual Life.

Virtual Lives is a tool to communicate, to explore the world you might not be able to reach in Real life.
To connect with people you never ever thought of and meet them also in Reallife.

Virtual lives is a tool to develop yourself, to express, be able to find a way in life that you could not do in Reallife.

Virtual lives is a tool not a life itself.

That is why I love so much cross over like cross media events. Like soon Admire 2010 and hopefully much bigger MetaMeets.

Last time I was at a party of some friends and isn't it wonderfull that not only the reallife persons where there but also virtual friends who are not be able just to come over.
Yes they invited some great artists to play their music at their party and they streamed it for their Virtual Friends.

But to go back to the first rule in Virtual living.
At this moment Reallife will take a lot of time of me which is more important ever and I am busy to ease up my virtual life and unfortunate decisions has to be made.
In the virtual World Second Life I have to let go of one of my sims. We all moved to the remaining one that has a wonderful community that I am so grateful for their understanding.

This decision will make it more possible to be at ease and also to give more time to this community.

I always say a virtual year is from September till June. In the months of July and August we go on holiday but we also can look back on the new developments of the year before and what we can develop better for the next coming year.

We are now as community preparing for the next year.
As community manager of this Community I am really looking forward.
My mind can go back to MetaMeets 2011 and more events that is in the planning.

To all in reallife and virtuallife I want to wish you all a great holiday!!!

Second Life Afterparty na premiere R U There

Second Life-afterparty in Kriterion, Amsterdam,
na première R U There

Première nieuwe film David Verbeek in Kriterion gevolgd door live afterparty in Second Life, waarbij de regisseur, acteurs, bezoekers en hun avatars elkaar ontmoeten.

R U There was in mei van dit jaar dit te zien in het prestigieuze Un Certain Regard-programma van het Cannes-filmfestival, waar hij met staande ovatie werd ontvangen. David Verbeeks nieuwe speelfilm beleeft donderdag 17 juni zijn Nederlandse première, onder andere in het Amsterdamse Kriterion en in EYE. Primeur: de première in Kriterion wordt gevolgd door een live afterparty in Second Life, waarbij de regisseur, acteurs, bezoekers en hun avatars elkaar kunnen ontmoeten.

Première R U There, donderdag 17 juni, 20.30 in Kriterion, Roetersstraat 170, Amsterdam. Voorstellingen in EYE (Vondelpark 3, Amsterdam) en landelijke release vanaf 17 juni. Première in Kriterion in aanwezigheid van regisseur David Verbeek en hoofdrolspeler Stijn Koomen (reserveren: 020 6231708).
Adres Second Life afterparty: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Holland/119/121/1763
Ter gelegenheid van de première in Kriterion organiseren distributeur EYE en theater Kriterion in samenwerking met Ystreams.tv een cross media event. Na de Q & A met David Verbeek en Stijn Koomen – live te volgen in Second Life – volgt een live afterparty op groot doek in Second Life, begeleid door een game night en borrel in de foyer van Kriterion. Regisseur, acteurs, bezoekers en hun avatars kunnen elkaar ontmoeten in Second Life en in gesprek raken rond het virtuele kampvuur. Contacten tussen Real Life- en Second Life-bezoekers worden verzorgd door community managers. Ervaren Second Life-bewoners zullen bezoekers in Kriterion helpen hun eigen avatar aan te maken om in contact te treden met de avatars uit R U There. DJ Messalina Lavendel verzorgt live muziek (swingende cool jazz) vanuit Florida. Het is de eerste keer dat een Nederlandse film op deze manier zijn première beleeft.

Cross Media Afterparty, Kriterion, zaal K1, 22.00 – 00.30. Het event is te volgen via Twitter: @ystreams en op Facebook via Ystreams.tv.

De kinderen van Google, You Tube en Second Life

In R U There reist de jonge professionele gamer Jitze (Stijn Koomen) de wereld over om mee te doen aan videogamewedstrijden. Jitze leeft zijn leven vrijwel volledig in de virtuele werkelijkheid, waar hij alles onder controle heeft. Wanneer hij ooggetuige is van een ernstig verkeersongeluk raakt de jongeman van slag: de ruwe kennismaking met de werkelijkheid van real life doet hem zijn sterfelijkheid beseffen. Kort daarna ontmoet Jitze in de lobby van zijn hotel een intrigerende jonge Taiwanese vrouw (Huan-Ru Ke), die hij echter alleen durft te benaderen via zijn avatar in Second Life.

In zijn nieuwe speelfilm, opgenomen in Taiwan, buigt regisseur David Verbeek zich over de eerste generatie jongeren wier levens zich grotendeels voltrekken in de virtuele werkelijkheid. Zijn portret van gamer Jitze schildert het leven van de talloze twintigers die uren per dag aan het beeldscherm gekluisterd zitten. Net als zijn vorige speelfilm Shanghai Trance is R U There een laconieke verkenning van een nieuwe wereld waarin de vormen van menselijk contact sterk veranderen. Een film over de kinderen van Google, You Tube en Second Life.

Over de regisseur

David Verbeek (Amsterdam 1980) studeerde aan de New School University in New York en voltooide in 2005 de regieopleiding van de Nederlandse Film en Televisie Academie. Als student trok hij de aandacht met het buitenschools geproduceerde Beat (2003), dat op het International Film Festival Rotterdam in première ging. Verbeeks speelfilmdebuut (budget 500 euro) werd vergeleken met het werk van Aziatische filmers als Tsai Ming-liang en Hou Hsiao-hsien. Naast een aantal korte films maakte Verbeek voor de VPRO-Lolamoviola-reeks de tv-productie Yu-lan (2004), waarin zijn fascinatie voor het opkomende China gestalte kreeg. Voor zijn tweede speelfilm Shanghai Trance (2008, met Tygo Gernandt), een portret van met het leven en de liefde worstelende twintigers in een razendsnel veranderende metropool, ging Verbeek naar China. Hij werkte daar met een voornamelijk Chinese cast en crew. Beat, Shanghai Trance en R U There zijn aangekocht voor de collectie van EYE. R U There wordt later dit jaar in Frankrijk uitgebracht door Jour2Fete.

RU There (Nederland/Taiwan/Frankrijk 2010)

35mm – kleur – 90’

Nederlands, Engels en Mandarijn gesproken, Nederlands ondertiteld

Regie David Verbeek

Scenario Rogier de Blok

Producent IDTV Film,
Co-producent VPRO, Petites Lumières

Camera Lennert Hillege

Art-direction Lin Ing Chyang, Wang Shih Hui

Kostuums Rita Lee

Geluid Peter Warnier, Paul Bijpost e.a.

Muziek Giong Lim

Montage Sander Vos

Met Stijn Koomen, Huan-Ru Ke, Tom de Hoog, Phi Nguyen e.a.



Virtual afterparty rond 22.00 CET 1pm SLT op Virtual Holland: Ben je daar?
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Holland/113/132/1763

WCIT2010

As someone exploring the Virtual Worlds I got myself invited for this great congres.
A congres were policy makers, companies and It managers would come together.
To explore to meet, network about the future of internet. My expectations are high ofcourse as I am walking in the future. Using all the social media that are developed to communicate to exchange and explore the unless posibilities.
Got my tweeddeck ready and the hashtack by hand with the thought to cover it as much as we can.
There was a great entrance and most tastefull stroopwafels. Programme was well displayed on screens, announcements to keep us on track and we got attacked by the matchmaking team.
One screen showed us the livestream posibilty the twitterfall and moby pictures.
With my minilaptop I settled with my coffee and stroopwafel and then the first suprising thing happend: No WIFI connection.
Through my dongel I finaly conected and asked the organisation if there is a wifi connection and what pasword was. I got a reply with the pasword and the message that the wifi is not that strong and they are working on that.

An hour later speeches from Nelie Smit Kroes is saying everyone must get connected by strong broadband. The thought is to start around 2013 for better and faster internet and by 2020 most households will be connected.

This would be the Challange of Change as the theme of the conference says.
The challange I am allready having to be at a WICT conference and we are disconnected ;-)

During the day Nelie had a word with Dom Sogalla and through twitter she wanted to meet 5 million people and the question was how to do that?

My suggestion through the twitter hashtag wcit2010 was to give a workshop twittering. More then 2000 people where at this conference and only a handfull of people were using twitter to cover the tracks.

But my suprises and questions where answered on the second day by our crown prince.
He mentioned that according to researches only 12% of Dutch population are using the internet in a proper usefull way. I am proud to be one of the 12% but what about the 88% that has acces to strong broadband but are still lost in the digital way?

On the third day we had a closing statement that there should be women in IT.

Indeed only around 700 women where at this conference. But the ones that spoke infront of these men in grey suites where powerfull and fiberent. Women are the communication sourses and they know how to combine and co operate all systems, different area's , with great values without any competition.

It was the most interesting days for me and I met great men and women. Most encounters I had where people that belong to the 12% but also people I might could have thouched to explain about a different kind of internet.
The Internet of Virtual Worlds.

One big message there is. A lot needs to be done and I am totally curious with all budget costs by our goverments because of the crisis how we are going to connect people together. How we are reaching these 88% of the population to use the internet as a valuebile tool.
To make it part of their lives to make lives easier. To bring back the economy by using these tools.
As people can get now homebased education and enriches there life. As people can work from home specially the ones that are now excluded from the society.

A big challange to change and yeh always start first by youself with better connections ;-)

I am back in to my virtual life and explain the community we have a lot to do.

Lets help the people to connect and take them by the hand.

Lets get connected!

JoJa Dhara

What have they been up to????

Today I got this secret notecard with a kind request to spread this word around...





"Dear Friends,

On the 23rd of April, Friday's, at 11 am slt, we will celebrate the opening of the secret science project. For months we (Kalilah, MeBo, Wim, Liza and Yolanda) have been working on this project inspired upon area 51.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/ama%20gi/193/101/21

Besides live music, dances, drinks and all the things that belongs to a great party, you can also enjoy and experience this new place.

You can feel for yourself what it means when there is no gravity, ask yourself questions about an abandoned lab (something happened there but what?), find out what the scientist Tesla meant to the world and sit on one of the moons. And, oh, what is it they try to hide in the vault underground?

To stimulate your curiosity even more, we include a few snapshots







we hope to see you on the 23rd of April at 11.00 am slt

Kalilah, MeBo, Wim, Liza and Yolanda"

HMMM I am curious!! Keep you posted!

kind regards
JoJa

LindenLab office in Amsterdam!!

The word is out. LindenLab opened its office in Amsterdam!!
It was a great meeting with the finest Residents of the Dutch Community and Mr M and Catherine Smith

For a short impression Mr.M speech from Chantal Harvey

There is also a great article on this on Nu.nl

Looking forward what the future will bring for the European market.