A Bird in the hand is worth two in the bush

Yesterday evening I attended the Zindra office hour, which turned into the Zindra office half hour because Blondin was busy after his holiday. That's fine, but the half an hour was such a waste of time that it's easy to see why both Linden's and residents question the value of office hours. I can't see myself going to a Zindra office hour again because after several weeks of attending, nothing appears to be happening. There's no point in wasting one's time in the fashion, I've tried here with Zindra but it's clear that Linden Lab don't give a flying fig about the place and are apparently happy to leave their customers to hang out to dry.

This isn't a sleight against Blondin, he simply doesn't have the power or the answers. Those who do have the power and the answers aren't interested, the VP of customer relations won't even meet the customers to hear their concerns.

This isn't unique to Zindra office hours, other office hours are simply a waste of time because of what appears to be Linden Lab's unofficial policy of not listening to their customers. Jack's office hour is only useful for getting some stats from Jack these days, any questions regarding policy are brushed under the carpet. However now that jack has announced that servers will no longer be tied to a class in a blog post here, this week's meeting at the new time of 3pm on Thursday could be interesting, I'll write more about this later. There are office hours that can be productive, but customer service office hours don't appear to be in that arena.

There is something odd going on at Linden Lab, there seems to be a distinct lack of cohesion with the staff. Rumours are abound that some staff have been told to relocate to an office by December 31st rather than work remotely, as far as I'm aware this remains a rumour. There's the strange case of an email apparently from Alexa Linden with scathing criticism of the new viewer, as reported here by The Herald. Incidentally that email made me feel old because I used IRC before ICQ, I also used something called PowWow before I'd ever heard of ICQ.

A recent article over at New World Notes covered the art of M Linden, this can be read here. In the article M mentioned his doodles were produced before he joined Second Life, but the interlinked doodles are the basis of why he finds Second Life fascinating and he is quoted as saying:

"But they might explain why I am so fascinated and inspired by Second Life. It's a complex, interconnected system -- whether you are talking about the in-world community, the economy, the software or the Lab itself. I am a systems-thinker. I like to understand the components individually, on their own, how they inter-relate and influence each other, how they fit together holistically. I guess my drawings do the same thing."

I wish Linden Lab as a whole gave that impression, but they simply do not. There is no hint whatsoever that Linden Lab think systemically, there seem to be branches with their eyes only on their own goals, with no regard to how this will impact other areas. This has been one of my biggest criticisms of Linden Lab, their lack of thinking systemically and it remains a valid criticism. The most glaring current example being the adult content policy which remains to this day an example of how not to implement a policy, but others have been introduced too such as the fashion lookbook and the message of the day adveritisng for large estates, both done without appearing to stop for a minute to think how other cogs in the wheel would react. They do secret handshake deals that other residents hear talk of and then shrug their shoulders as if it's perfectly fine to act in such a questionably ethical fashion.

Retaining customers does not appear to be high on Linden Lab's list of things to do, whereas open hostility and alienating their customers, whether on purpose or not, seems to be at the forefront of their operations. Could this really be described as how things fit together holistically?

Then we have SL Enterprise, this has potential and as a second blog post, which can be read here, points out, has generated some good publicity with articles by CNN, Information Week and Second Life resident Dusan Writer, who is always worth a read. Yet even this second blog is somewhat sloppy, this one has more details on pricing, which should have been in the initial blog post. I could well be accused of nitpicking here but pricing and how it works was always going to be one of the most important aspects of Second Life Enterprise. This is, I'm told, intended for individual standalone projects behind a firewall rather than joining up with others away from the main grid. The latter is what I envisage as a growth area for Second Life, but that will have to wait for another time if Linden Lab ever see the potential for linked alternate grids with their own security systems.

Last night at Blondin's office hour someone suggested they were on the verge of quitting but wanted to give it a bit more time, just in case something positive was around the corner. There was no good news for this person, but they're still here for now but do Linden Lab really care? They appear to have their eyes on other prizes but they have a good hand at the moment, twisting and trying to get a five card trick when you have a score of nineteen is always going to be risky.

Yet the world still spins, despite the poor customer relations it still spins because residents make the world and have more mettle about them than the Linden's who seem hell bent on destruction. There's a very good blog post, which can be read here, about The Open University experimenting in allowing their community to run their land. The Open Univeristy will of course be keeping an eye on it but there's talk of elections, community decision making and Second Life is a perfect platform for this type of experiment, testing the waters and seeing how a community evolves. This is in stark contrast to how Linden Lab are treating their customers where they are trying social engineering on us, it could be argued that Second Life is ideal for an experiment in social engineering too but I'd rather Linden Lab weren't the people doing it!

Retaining customers is easier than attracting new customers. There's fun in attracting new customers, it's challenging, but when you have customers you should aim to keep them. I won't try and pretend that's easy, nor would I expect Linden Lab to be able to please all of their customers, but they could try and meet us halfway and understand who their core customers are, whether they like it or not, their core customers have built the world and laid the foudations.