Oz Linden at the SL12B

By Bixyl Shuftan

On Monday at 1PM SL time, Oz Linden spoke to an audience at the SL12B Auditorium about his experiences in Second Life. He was interviewed by Saffia Widdershins of "Designing Worlds," and Jessica Lyon, the head of Team Firestorm, Saffia asking most of the questions.

When asked bout what he did before Second Life, Oz answered that he did a number of jobs related to communications and the Internet, hs last job doing "voice-overs" for IP Phone systems. which he called educational, but not as much fun as Second Life. When asked if it was less challenging, Oz remarked "that depends" as with the voice-over, he could just do things with a phone call while with Second Life, not always, "Here I get to do things, people get to create all kinds of crazy ... unpredictable things."

He described his coming to Second Life as he was interested in a fun set of challenges and a fun environment to work in. Asking someone at the Lab if there was anything interesting going on, as it turned out, Linden Lab's Vice President of Engineering was trying to get someone in a certain position at the Lab, and he was hired. He described his role as having "evolved" from there, eventually ending up where he is now, "Mostly I manage what's going on."

When his job was compared to "herding cats," Oz laughed, saying he'd probably have more control over cats, "actually, I have a terrific team." He explained the engineers were there because they wanted to work in Second Life and found the work challenging, "It's a great team to work with."

Jessica commented it must be a challenge balancing new features that work across all platforms. Oz responded, "That's definatley an issue." He commented people sometimes give him ideas that they feel would work well, but it turns out they would only for about five percent of the residents and degrade the expereince for everyone else. When commented that everything done has an impact, Oz answered, "That's certainly true. Anything we do, we can count on some people liking it, many people being indiferent, and some people disliking it." Oz commented the number of complements and complaints was a motivation, "their level of intensity means they care about the product we're working on ... it's no fun to build something no one cares about." Oz was happy to be working on Second Life, and couldn't imagine working on anything else.

Oz mentioned that "We'll be bringing out some terrific nre features and changes that the users are really going to like." Jessica commented from her experiences earlier as a Third Party viewer developer that it could sometimes be hit or miss in what features would be popular for users. She asked Oz if the Lindens get discouraged when they come out with a new feature and the response is flat? Oz answered, "No, I don't think so." He did acknowledge that it could be a challenge for the residents to understand why the Lindens do what they do, "I don't think there have been any ... early in my tenure at he Lab that have been very unpopular, except for those that cause a performance problem."

It was about this point that Oz crashed, getting a few chuckles from the audience about the seemingly all powerful Lindens crashing like everyone else. But he soon came back. Oz remarked that this was one thing that he found very challenging, having come from a field "where if you only have 99.999 reliability, your product is junk." Whereas in Second Life, while people complained about the crashes, they were more or less accepted as part of the Second Life experience, "I've always worked in worlds where crashing 1% of the time is disastrous, and here I am in a world where the best crash rates are much higher. It's very challenging." The Lindens themselves, Oz explained, were not taking this acceptance as a reason not to improve the crash rate, "none of us thinks it's okay just because the viewers ... " Someone suggested that the tolerance was because many Second Life residents had memories of the dial-up days of the Internet in which getting on and getting anywhere could sometimes take a while. Oz commented, "That's an interesting theory."

Of the projects he's worked on, Oz felt one of his favorites were the Windlight settings. He commented in the official viewer, the default was to use region settings, "I've got quite a list of things that ought to be part of ... settings." When asked if they could get the light differently at different levels in a sim, such as sunrise on the ground and Midnight in the skybox, Oz didn't think they would be doing that, at least not anytime soon. He stated there were several reasons for that. When asked if the day and night cycle could be made into a 24 hour one instead of about every four hours, Oz answered "Maybe," but he couldn't say when, saying the cycles were currernly "bakes in." He did say it would make things easier for him in some ways, bringing up inworld meetings, "I would like it whenever I hold it to be daytime."

"I run the development team," Oz stated, "beneath and around us is the operations team. They're the ones who really keep it going. We're the ones who change it every now and then." The operations team had to take care of "thousands and thousands" of simulators, "they do an amazing job." He talked about "just the other day" when they were rolling in new software on a rack of servers when there was a "catastrophic failure. ... a whole rack of stuff went down, and Second Life users did not notice." Jessica commented things had changed a lot since the old days when the Grid had to be taken offline when there was an update.

When asked if he used a non-Linden avatar, Oz stated almost all the time he spent inworld was as Oz Linden. He went on to say that employees of Linden Lab besides the Linden avatar also get a premium one, but he had forgotten the password to it. But he did have an ordinary one from "a few years" before he joined the company, "I use that one for testing when I need another avatar." He commented when he started, he seemed to get more anxious responses from the residents than he does now. He wasn't sure if that meant a change in the population, or if residents were more relaxed. He had been going around "as Brad Pitt with a flak jacket," and these days people are generally excited to see him.

When asked about any hobbies, Oz Linden did say that he had tried the Linden Realms game. He had also tried some one the games that the residents had come up with, though didn't say which ones. He did say he didn't have any building skills, adding when he was setting up his account, he handled the appearance part of the process to his son, "make this somewhat like me."

When asked about if there was anything upcoming he was looking forward to, he commented, "I'm going to leave most of the leaking to Ebbe, he seems to enjoy it." He stated there would be some experiences handed out that people should enjoy, though it would take some time. There were also other projects, "genuinely new stuff for Second Life. ... I'm not giving any hints though, we are working with some residents."

When asked if he had anything to do with the new grid in development, Oz commented he has a tendency "to ignore what foes on Project Sansar ... unless it's an all hands company meeting," saying they generally have some announcement about it then.

When asked if he intended to stay in his "current role," Oz commented, "I have no plans to change, I love my current role." He stated he wasn't much of a job hopper, but also, "this one's the most fun I've had in a long time."

Following that were some questions from the audience. These included the new Grid, "We'll see if in the end they manage to outdo everything we have in Second Life." Issues with Windows, such as support for XP discontinued after Microsoft no longer would, and testing Windows 10 for eventually support for that later, as the official viewer was "not officially supporting it just yet." When asked if the official viewer would soon have a 64 bit option,

Oz answered "at some point, I will try to carve out some resources. He did have one bit of advice for residents. He commented better memory for graphics would be better for the Second Life experience than a graphics card. It was at this point Oz crashed again, "You jinxed him Jess."

After Oz came back, he was asked if Linden Lab was working on it's own streaming version of Second Life with SL Go discontinued. Oz answered, "actually when SL go was shutting now, we had some discussions about whether we could pick up a streaming interface." But as one or two more companies seemed to be "making a go at it," they decided to wait and see. It was his observation that although this was intended for tablets, those who used SL Go to improve the performance on older computers, "that was the real loyal audience."

It was soon after that it was time for the discussion to end. "Thank you Oz for joining us," Saffia told him. Oz answered, "It was a lot of fun."

Chakat Northspring of Team Firestorm would later upload a video of the event. As of the writing of this article, no transcript was available.



(Click here if the video fails to play)

Bixyl Shuftan

"Keep Calm and Carry On," Jessica Lyon Talks to Oz Linden About Second Life's Future

By Grey Lupindo

Our community has been buzzing with questions, concerns, and near panic about future of SL after Ebbe Linden recently announced that Linden Labs was working on a new project.    The announcement was vague, but many of us feared that SL would be shut down when the new project came online. 

      Jessica Lyon, Project Manager of the Phoenix Firestorm Project, was understandably concerned since the news included a statement that 3^rd party viewers would not be allowed in the new product.   But instead of merely worrying, Lyon took a couple of positive steps to address the issue.  On the Firestorm website (www.firestormviewer.org) she asked users to send in suggestions for ways to improve SL and increase its usage.    She also set up a meeting with representatives from Linden Labs to discuss the future of SL.  The meeting was to be broadcast live at 7AM SL time on July 2 from the Firestorm Support Auditorium at The Phoenix Hour, Phoenix Firestorm Support (170, 127, 4001).   The announcement suggested that interested residents should show up early since space was limited.

          I logged on about 6:15 SL time and tried to teleport to the auditorium.    I rarely go to RL meetings 45 minutes in advance so I thought I had allowed more than sufficient time.   I was wrong.  The site was already filled to capacity.   I later found out that it had filled up at 5:30!  Quickly I logged out and went to watch a live broadcast of the meeting that was being aired at Virtual Worlds & Immersive Spaces.     

           Lyon had succeeded in getting Oz Linden, Technical Director of SL, and Peter Linden, Director of Communications at SL, to meet and answer questions from her and residents.    On the stage was a large sign that read: Keep Calm and Carry On.   Lyon had been urging residents to do that in the days before the meeting.  

        She began the meeting by asking Oz Linden if SL was going to be dropped.   Oz Linden firmly stated that Linden Labs has no plans to shut down Second Life.   Lyon asked him this question in a number of different ways, and he consistently answered that there are no plans to do away with SL.   Oz stated that they will continue to improve it, and he believes that the criticism and concern that residents are showing is an indication of how much people care about SL.   

           Oz told Lyon that he had lobbied for his current position as Technical Director.  He stated that he is doing exactly what he wants to do in SL.   He further stressed that he selected individuals for his team that are also committed to SL.   

            Lyon questioned him about the fact that fewer resources are being put toward SL, which is a concern to users.  Oz stated that Linden Labs is putting resources toward SL, although he acknowledged that his team is smaller than those in the past.  Oz would not get into actual numbers or percentages because he said that was against company policy and the numbers changed frequently.  He described it as a “fluid situation”.  

        However, Oz stressed that he had asked for this number of people, and Linden management had given him the team size that he had requested.   He said he likes working with a smaller team and mentioned some of the positive aspects of it. 

        When Lyon questioned Peter Linden about the future of SL, he also confirmed that it was going to remain.   It was pointed out that SL is the most successful virtual world ever created.    Because of that he says everyone can be confident that it will continue.   When asked about the new platform, Peter said the idea is to have them run in parallel.    He also stressed that the new platform is “quite far off”.   Because of that he said it was too early to talk about it in any detail.   But he again stressed that there were no plans to shut down SL.

        Lyon and Oz then discussed many of the projects his team is working on to improve SL.  The primary projects were technical ones involving scripting and group chat improvements.  Oz said an announcement would be made later in the day about one of the more prominent issues.

       The best indication to me that the Lindens are going to continue SL involved Oz’s discussion of working on a project involving Chrome imbedded framework issues.   He said they are devoting a lot of time and money to take advantage of advances involving Chrome.    He pointed out that if there were plans to end SL, they would not do this.   They would simply “limp along” with what they have, which makes sense to me.

         The questions from residents involved tier, child avatars, gaming, group size, the search engine, and last names.    Predictably, there are no plans to reduce tier or change the policies on child avatars or gambling.   Peter said Ebbe knows about the issue of last names, but he didn’t have any other information about it.      Oz explained that the issue of group size is more complicated than it seems and affects chat lag and other issues.    They are working to reduce chat lag.   The search engine also appears to be a complicated issue that is on the “to do” list.

         The meeting ended with Lyon asking them what residents can do to help SL continue.   Oz stated that they are working to reassure people that SL is going to continue.   Residents can help by doing what we’ve always done—log in, create content, shop, visit with our friends, and keep SL a “vibrant place”.  They also urged residents to tell their RL friends about SL and urge them to check it out.     

      The sign on the stage said it all:    "Keep Calm and Carry On."

Image of Oz Linden from Modem World

Greu Lupindo