SLCC 2007 post-thoughts

"I'm on top of the world" I thought, Sunday afternoon, grabbing my luggage from storage at the Hilton Chicago, site of SLCC 2007, right before heading to O'Hare to catch my flight.

SLCC is very personal to me. In July 2005, Jerry Paffendorf and myself thought it'd be fun to get 12 or 15 people together at a bar in NYC with all SL'rs. After putting the idea past FlipperPA and his wife, JennyFur, and ultimately, Valadeza Anubis, we 5 decided to be a bit more ambitious, maybe get 40 or 50 people together for a "convention". We happened to have already planned a trip to San Fran the following week, to visit Linden Lab, and so I had the opportunity to ask the big man, Philip Rosedale, himself, if it was cool to have an "official" SL convention. He happily agreed, and after getting an overwhelming response in the forums, we moved forward. Thanks to some good timing, some very helpful people, and a lot of hard work, SLCC was born.

I haven't been actively working on SLCC for a year and a half now, and it thrills me so much how fast it's grown. This year's was overbooked, had major media show up, and was fully split into 4 different tracks. Amazing. I wound up having known about 2/3 of the people there, and had met about 1/2 of that number already. It's great to see the same community of people, and also to see it grow. There really are a lot of talented, smart, good-natured people.

I also noted that the ESPN Chicago fantasy football finals were held next to our convention. It was funny because:

1. SL is probably considered nerdier, except that the difference is that SLCC is about people who love a virtual world come together to socialize, whereas the fantasy football people are people who love their virtual world of football and come together to ... not socialize, but instead to continue what they do online.
2. There were way more many women at the SLCC, and of nice personality and looks. So, which is nerdier? Eh?

The masquerade ball was risque, but nothing overtly adult. Men were handed porn as door gifts, and most people showed up at least in all black, many in leather, many in costumes. I fudged mine with various elements given to me, and wound up on a picture in CNet. Awesome, hahaha!

Philip's speech was good. He showed up wearing a "image missing" shirt, and spoke about how dedicated Linden Lab is to fixing SL. I would tell him later that developers are his best friends and biggest critics. Then, randomly later, I would bump into him again, and he said he *might* have a way to fix missing images textures on avatars.

There were lots of musicians, which is great. There was a handicapped individual who thanked Philip for how Second Life enables him to relate with other people and not feel judged. I thought it was terrific that it also enabled him to come to the convention and speak. (Not even non-handicapped people are all courageous enough to speak in front of a room!) There were lots and lots of people who truly love what the platform enables the world to do and become.

Our company found a good deal of success. Our name change and ARG made the front of the real-life Metaverse Messenger, and we had a lot of people asking and interested about it. Our Chief Creative Officer, Ian, and myself spoke at a business panel about how we go about making builds into attractions, and disclosed much of our design philosophy.

Other developers were also very open. Glenn Linden and Phish Frye hosted a developer round-table on Friday afternoon, and we spoke about how to better communicate and share ideas and obstacles in the industry. I rubbed shoulders not just with clients and fans, but with my competition. And it was both encouraging and fun.

I was energized all weekend. I had the chance to meet and relax with so many people I've known online, met previously or didn't. There was an overarching positive vibe over the whole convention, and if this is any sign of the people leading the metaverse, it will be a bright future. I'm happy, thrilled, excited, jazzed ... what other words can I use?

Special thanks -

CC Chapman, for making it clear to SL critics that their Coca Cola campaign was a huge hit.

Linden Lab for being a strong part, listening to our needs, and loving the platform as much as us.

Phish for spearheading some developer communication.

SLCC organizers for the ton of hard work.

My company colleagues for their involvement in our personal success, and covering the booth when I was elsewhere.

Loki Clifton who has a lot of guts and is a good guy.

All the friends I had time to hang out with between all the meetings and speeches. You made the convention fun!

Everyone who listened to me speak at my panel. I'm really, really flattered considering the talent present at the room.

A certain renoun griefer for being a gentleman.

And I endorse the following products and/or services:

• First bling (great necklaces!)
• Fabjectory - the fabs look better in person than they appear on images online
• Metaverse Messenger
• The various SL musicians and DJs who played music for us
• Tuna Oddfellow the magician, who impressed me with his sleight of hand right before my eyes.

Now, I'm off to sleep. I can't wait to hear more about others' SLCC experiences and check out all the pictures!

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Cat's Out of the Bag with Involve

Metaverse Messenger came out yesterday and let the cat out of the bag. My company, Infinite Vision Media, is now named "Involve". I'll be blogging more about this, and I'm looking how I can post here and post on our company blog. We've been running an alternate reality campaign to promote our new portfolio attraction, "Involve Adventure". There's plenty to find, including a blog, a website, a twitter feed, faux advertising, and more. There will be more to come as we play out this storyline as if this were a genuine client.

For now, here's a cool video to get you started!

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Moving Soon ...

Heads up, going to be moving to a new blog soon. I have this nice template and Blogger won't let me keep it to upgrade to their new feature set. I don't feel like hacking through all the code to fit it to their template, so the easiest thing to do is start from scratch.

This coincides with my company revamping its web site and adding new blogs.

So... yeah.

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Mid-Year Review of 2007 Predictions

Last December, I posted my predictions about the state of the Second Life and the Metaverse for the next year.

It's about time for a mid-year progress check. I'll rate these as True, Soon, Maybe, False or T.B.D.

1. Second Life will surpass World of Warcraft for total users. At least, on paper.
Soon

Well, not quite yet. WoW has somewhere near 10 million subscribers, while Second Life is only at 8.7 million registered accounts. I still think we're on track for the prediction.

2. Terra Nova will double their SL / WoW post ratio, bringing it up to 1:5. *grin* Additionally, there *still* will not be a legal court case involving virtual land ownership rights, further bolstering Terra Novans' casual indifference to Second Life.
1/2 True, 1/2 T.B.D.

Part 1 seems correct so far, part 2 ... well, Bragg vs. Linden Lab could go either way, depending how the lawyers handle it.

3. Someone in the mainstream media, at least state-level, will quote the SL Herald in a story, and not realizing the Herald's self-proclaimed tabloid status, write something totally bogus.
T.B.D.

Maybe the press is wising up? Nah.

4. Linden Lab will open up servers in other continents to reduce load, and *not* license their software until 2008.
1/2 T.B.D., 1/2 True

They've talked about other continent servers, but not implemented. However, they recently have said that open source servers are 1-2 years off.


5. Havok 2. ................ NOT!
True.

But maybe Havok 4.


6. Metaverse Development Companies explode in numbers, with lots of them lacking the talent to do it properly. Widespread outsourcing and subcontracting will occur. If we're *lucky*, we'll get compatibility with other 3-D formats and be able to hire people trained in Maya, 3DStudio, Bryce, etc.
Mostly True.

Well, we have orders of magnitude higher number of development companies, numbering in the 3-digits instead of low double-digits. We have sculpties, which can be created in Maya, but it's limited use, and we're still lacking a decent importable format.


7. At least one major MDC will fold or leave SL for unrelated projects.
Maybe.

MDCs are still working in SL, though I still would not be surprised if one packed and left.


8. Avatar will become the big tech buzzword of 2007, thanks in part to WoW's established popularity, Second Life's growing popularity with businesses, and the Nintendo Wii's "Mii" system.
False.

I'm going to declare this one false already. Miis didn't have the impact I might have expected, since they haven't really done anything to collaborate with them outside of the Mii parades. Sony Home is still being tested, and WoW calls them "characters" or players.

A colleague suggest this will wait til 2009 when James Cameron comes out with his virtual world movie.


9. Improvements in search features in SL will lead to a widespread price plummet of non-scripted items due to massive competition from all the new users. Residents will begin to realize that CopyBot isn't at all a threat to their sales, but each other. The successful brands will either have brand name recognition and/or complex scripted functionality.
T.B.D.

Rumors are spreading, but no one from Linden Lab is talking about any new search changes ... yet.


10. At least one major attempt to compete with SL will arise. At best, it will be playing a game of 4-year catch-up with Second Life's feature set.
True.

When I first made this list both Kaneva and HiPiHi were both barely being announced. Since then they've opened, at least Beta, with mixed reviews. Still, both seem legitimately serious about competing with Second Life.


11. IMVU and Skype will both be bought by another company, most likely Google or AOL or Yahoo to be integrated with their messenger services.
T.B.D.

It's anyone's guess.


12. A Second Life business (not necessarily an MDC) will be purchased by a major corporation.
True.

Bingo. Stroker Serpentine's sex-toy empire was purchased. And it's a big business, comparable with some of the smaller MDCs.


13. A Second Life business (also not necessarily an MDC) will have an IPO on a legit stock market, not necessarily American.
T.B.D.

At this point it's doubtful.


14. Ed Castronova will speak before Congress about taxation in virtual worlds.
Kinda True.

I should have said, "A Metaverse expert" instead of naming Ted specifically. According to 3pointD blog mentions that Entropia creator MindArk will be speaking before Congress on the issue of virtual world taxation. Though there's still time for Ted!


15. Neal Stephenson will finally utter the words "Second Life" publicly. Philip Rosedale and thousands of other fan-boys (your truly, included) will swoon.
Technicality.

Turns out he did last November. To paraphrase, loosely, "Who cares? Go outside, n00b."
His Snow Crash book was sold in Second Life by his publisher, earlier this year. So, I guess he technically cares a little bit.

I'm not surprised, really. I've heard other stories where folks have said they've mentioned SL to him, and he had an ambivalent response. I mean, he did write Snow Crash 15 years ago, and started it 20 years ago. Maybe he's thinking, "Gee, took you long enough!"?

The Mid-term results:

So, halfway through the year, I'm about half right. Not a bad score. Only 1 complete "false". When Christmas rolls around, we'll re-tally and see the final results.

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Letters for Nothin' and your Books for Free

I wanted to point out a neat project that my pal Andy is doing over on Joi Ito's land with a few of his friends: The Literature Factory.



(disclaimer: Andy is an associate at my company, and I have, from time to time, given some feedback on the factory itself.)

What's neat about the literature factory is that it's a project done for pure art and joke value. Large letter-crunching cylinders spell out words in real-time, verify them on a real dictionary look-up, sort them by grammatical use, and then form sentences into books. The whole process is overseen by autonomous robots (cute prim-bots with movement pathing AI, and no real other scripting).

Yeah, it's a farce. But why not? It beats 1000 monkeys banging away on typewriters. Maybe this is the modern day equivalent?

The opening is Saturday night, if you're interested in a gathering, but you can visit anytime at the Literature Factory at Kula 2 (189,9,25).

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Scam Artists Under The Guise of Businessmen

And by "men", I mean males. Why do the overwhelming majority of white-collar and business scams that I hear about committed by males?

Three notable scams in Second Life are all put in the spotlight in the past week:
1. Gambling in Second Life, banned. (My commentary here. The Herald covers people whining about it here. A more legal perspective here.)
2. The "World Stock Exchange" gets hacked for about $20,000 US.
3. Ginko Financial, SL's biggest ponzi scheme, fails to pull a fast one on the AVIX SL Stock Exchange and goes completely belly up. (Full history, at Virtually Blind, who has rocketed to the top as *the* authority for Second Life legal stories.)

It's like ... after years of avoiding Nigerian email scams, people have forgotten that, "Oh, gee, there are scams online." I don't know if it's that L$ seem more innocent, but, Ginko supposedly has 3/4 of a million US$ in debt. Where the hell did this all come from?

I've talked about gambling already, and the WSE proves that people will invest in companies when owners prove completely incompetent. Here's a short list of reasons why WSE's chairman and primary owner, LukeConnell is completely unsuited to run a lemonade stand, let alone a stock exchange:

1. He gave away modify permissions to purportedly upwards of 20+ other people on the WSE ATMs. HELLO! Security!?

2. Conversations with Shaun Altman reveal that WSE's early database was an enormous joke. Shaun had a stock exchange which he had advertised as a social / virtual money experiment (wisely so) and was featured in Business Week a year ago alongside Anshe Chung and others.

3. After having millions of L$ taken from the WSE, LukeConnell tried to cover it up until a whistleblower let out the story.

4. Remember earlier this year when LukeConnell commissioned a crony-job to his buddy to build a shoddy replica of the World Trade Center, and without consulting any other WSE shareholders, printed something like $20,000 US worth of new shares to pay for it? I do.
The buildings were to be "One of the most popular places in Second Life" within a couple months, and were not only a complete flop as rentals, but stand as a testament to LukeConnell's ego, with his helicopter parked on top and no regard for the thousands who lost their lives on 9/11 who would be ashamed at such an obvious scam being done in their name?

5. Oh, yeah, and it's a virtual stock exchange! Let's not forget the whole principle is based on some sense that somehow a whole bunch of people with little investing knowledge could come to Second Life and have some sort of realistic stock exchange.
6. To make (5) worse, it's completely unregulated.

So ... when gambling was banned (with five gambling companies listed on the WSE), and Ginko couldn't pay off its debts, what happens? The whole thing crashes, and crashes hard, back to companies' IPOs. Duh.

As much as a scam that is, LukeConnell, from my examination, is not an intentional scammer. He's just a complete, reckless buffoon. I don't think he even understands what he does is wrong. He's just clueless.

Ginko, however, is another story.

Pyramid Scheme, ahoy!

Here's a short summary of what Ginko does:
1. You pay Ginko money, since they promise 60% interest rates. (Well, if you're reading my blog, probably *you personally* don't.)
2. Ginko clearly states that it will never clearly state what it invests money in. It's "various real life" investments along with, supposedly, some in-world investments. (In the WSE, do you smell the inbreeding yet?) In any publicly stated investment, Ginko has lost money.
3. Ginko's owner takes out over $100,000 US in L$ in a year.
4. Withdraws, to date, have been low enough where deposits have supported it. Of course, with no real plan to make money, this is a typical Ponzi scheme, were you skim money off income, and it all comes crashing when people wait long enough and expect their investment returned.

So, when Ginko tried to raise money from an IPO to pay for buying the very stock exchange it was having the IPO on (AVIX), and the sale was blocked, everything came crashing down.

D'oh!


The Herald had fun interviewing Nicholas Portocarrero, the avatar who is a purported Brazilian resident trying to desperately deny that he's a scam artist.

I love this exchange that The Herald's writer Pixeleen Mistral has with Ginko's owner. It's so sad, but so funny.

"Pixeleen Mistral: you know what a ponzi scheme is, right?
Nicholas Portocarrero: Yes, I do.
Pixeleen Mistral: cool

Pixeleen Mistral: anything you want to tell the Herald readers? have I missed anything important?
Nicholas Portocarrero: Yes, you have missed the fact that I have not ran away from this debt.

Pixeleen Mistral: I've been trying to see if you have a credible plan to repay the debit, and its not adding up for me
Nicholas Portocarrero: According to the standards used by some people, millions of people and major institutions would be engaged in ponzi schemes. Any person with a credit card debt would have to go to jail

Pixeleen Mistral: thanks for talking and good luck. I hope it all works out."

This is such a ridiculous issue, I figure I ought to loosen up my normally business-y tone of this blog; let's have some more fun with this!
I present to you the same conversation, reading between the lines [what they're really saying in brackets].

"Pixeleen Mistral: you know what [you are doing is] a ponzi scheme is, right?
Nicholas Portocarrero: Yes, I do.
Pixeleen Mistral: cool [damn, I was hoping to explain it to him in a way where he would reply, 'Hey, that sounds like Ginko'!]

Pixeleen Mistral: anything you want to tell [or confess to] the Herald readers? have I missed anything important [like a discussion about ethics]?
Nicholas Portocarrero: Yes, you have missed the fact that I [so far] have not [appeared to have] ran away from this debt. [But I'm in Brazil. I don't need to run, you sniveling fools. You won't be able to litigate here. Bitches.]

Pixeleen Mistral: I've been trying to see if you have a credible plan to repay the debit, and its not adding up for me
Nicholas Portocarrero: According to the standards used by some [unscrupulous scammer-type Nigerian email fraud] people, millions of people and major institutions would be engaged in ponzi schemes [like the American Social Security System]. Any person with a credit card debt would have to go to jail [and I personally have paid off mine with your money. bitches.]

Pixeleen Mistral: thanks for [not] talking and good luck [avoiding being stabbed. Didn't you read about the kid in South Korea who got knifed just for stealing a rare virtual sword on a MMORPG? You think someone won't go vigilante on you? You're nuts.]*. I hope it all works out. [for all the people you scammed]

Nicholas Portocarrero: [Bitches.]"

So, by "have not run away from this debt", Nicholas refers to the $1 million L$ daily limit on withdraws, from a $200 million L$ debt. And each depositor has about a $19 daily limit, so that $1 million L$/day is assuming 200 depositors withdraw their max *every single day*.

So I'd say it's safe to say that he expects the interest on his $700,000 US is enough to cover withdraws and a decent Brazillian standard of living.


* I do not advocate violence at all. However, it is relevant to think about the fact that people have been murdered for much less virtual scamming. Scary, ain't it?

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