Mark Kingdon - Come down, come down from your Ivory Tower and listen to your Residents: A dose of perspective

The first 100 days as the commander of a company should be a time for absorbing information, discovering the strengths and weaknesses of the team, and putting all those puzzle pieces together. You became Linden Lab's CEO and adult supervisor in mid-March of this year, which would put you at about the 225 days mark, or 8 1/2 months.

225 days later, Mark Kingdon (aka M Linden), I'm disappointed in you. I was so optimistic about your arrival, too.

To make matters worse, the way I see it, Linden Lab owes me $950US + a reimbursement for my time.

Shall I just email the bill over to you? Oh, you don't know what I'm talking about? Well, come on down from your Ivory Tower, dear man, and let me catch you up on things.

Just one week before your arrival, Linden Lab introduced a new product called Openspaces. The official description of the product reads as follows, and there was no mention of special rules:

What is an Openspace?

An Openspace is a type of private island intended for light use countryside or ocean. Unlike normal regions that effectively get a CPU to themselves on the server, there can be up to four Openspaces on a single CPU, sharing the resource (hence them being ‘light use’).

Back in those days, I was the care-free owner of a bit more than a quarter sim upon which Chakryn Forest (V2) sat. I had purchased that island land about 8 months before, and paid a creator several hundreds of dollars to make me the virtual forest of my dreams.

A few days after the Openspace announcement, my friend thomtrance Otoole offered me an Openspace to create a new, sim-wide forest. My only financial commitment was to pay tier... $75US a month. This was rather enticing, because at the time, I was paying $125 for about the same number of prims but not nearly as much land. I gratefully took him up on his very generous offer, and put Chakryn Forest up for auction.

Now then... by this time, the fever for Openspaces was gripping the Grid, and many people lost interest in buying regular island land or mainland. I don't mind telling you that it got so you couldn't give away regular island land, cause Openspace tier was just so much cheaper.

The forest and I got lucky. A dreamer and forest lover like me purchased my land and the forest for less than what I had paid for the land, but he promised to keep the forest intact and that, in my mind, made it a good deal.

By then, Openspace Chakryn was mine, and for two months I rolled up my sleeves and worked with Andrek Lowell and Eshi Otawara - two of the best creators in Second Life - to develop a rich and enchanting forest brimming with secrets and its own special lore. Because I value these creators and their time, I paid them for it and as generously as I could afford. Several hundreds of dollars later, and on July 15th, I proudly opened the new Chakryn Forest to the public for everyone's use and enjoyment.

Oh, I should mention that Andrek Lowell worked tirelessly for many extra hours to create the entire sim-wide forest with only 1,400 prims. Why? Because it was my plan to showcase great virtual art throughout the sim and I needed every last prim. He delivered, and just last month the art shows began with a great installation by Glyph Graves:


Music: Narayanam, performed by Suchita Parte
Video: Bettina Tizzy

It made me proud to see the daily traffic numbers, which average 5,000. Now, was this hurting anyone? I don't think so, because Chakryn shares the server with at least three other Openspaces that I know of that hardly get any traffic at all.

Did I act with evil intent? Certainly not. In fact, all along I thought I was being an upright and conscientious citizen and providing Second Life®'s Residents with a park.

Then, out of the blue... an announcement from our government, regarding a certain "policy change:"

"Beginning 1st January 2009

We will increase the monthly maintenance fee from USD$75 to USD$125 per month. This price increase will apply to all owners of Openspaces on January 1st as well as new purchases after that date. There will be no grandfathering of Openspace maintenance pricing."

That's $600US you want to bill ME extra, every year?! Why, not even George W. Bush is ... enough to pull a stunt like that: increasing our taxes by 67% for an 8 month old product!

Now over at GigaOM, Wagner James Au (aka Hamlet Au of New World Notes) has just published your statement in response to the outrage you are hearing after the stinging blow you have dealt us. Part of it reads...

“To be clear,” Kingdon continued, “this price adjustment affects only a portion of land in Second Life; it does not apply to private islands or regular mainland property. We made this change to ensure an optimal Second Life experience for all Residents.”

Um...

I can give you the actual breakdown for my bill in person, and at your convenience, but here is an overview:
- Cost of developing Chakryn Forest (V2), which I never got back
- Cost of tier for two months while Openspace Chakryn was in development
- Cost of developing Openspace Chakryn (many hundreds of dollars)
- My time (like Mastercard says... it is priceless)

Come down, come down from your Ivory Tower, dear man, and take stock of the situation.

Random stuff about Hamlet Au, and some questions for the man who asks questions

In as much as I routinely go against the advice of nearly every social media specialist and don't shrink from publishing long blogposts here, it is hard to condense what I have to say about Hamlet Au (aka Wagner James Au) in one article... so, to heck with that. Today a morsel... tomorrow the world!

Instead, let me give you some tidbits that have little or nothing to do with the recent publication of his book "The Making of Second Life," which has been praised to the hilt by everyone including me, or that he publishes New World Notes, the most widely read Second Life® blog (and it is believed that there are at least 1,000 of them), or the fact that Torley Linden credited Hamlet and his New World Notes for convincing him to dip his watermellony toes into Second Life, or that Hamlet's been covering the gaming industry for GigaOM.com since July 2006, or importantly, that he was hired by Linden Lab as the first embedded journalist in Second Life between April 2003 and February 2006, or that whenever he's blogged about me, or NPIRL, or the Garden of NPIRL Delights, readership of this blog has soared.

I don't know how he does it.

And that's not the half of it.

Whenever I get to feeling sorry for myself and my combined Real Life/Second Life workload, I think about Hamlet. In all my dealings with him, I have never once heard him complain, even when he was in the throes of launching his book and doing most everything else at the same time.


At home, Hamlet has the bestest wall clocks. If I knew how to file a JIRA, I'd ask for something similar: the current time in these six places in the world, on the top of my screen

But back to those tidbits:

* He didn't major in Journalism; rather, his BA is in Philosphy from the University of Hawaii
* In fact, he's originally from Kailua in Honolulu, on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, which also happens to be the location where episodes of the television series Hawaii Five-Oh were filmed and where Lost is shot today
* His first by-lined article was an interview with David Lynch
* His first published piece was erotica for a now defunct San Francisco magazine called Future Sex , and yes, I did look for it and didn't find it :D
* He has a lot more on his mind than virtual worlds and games. In his January 1, 2002 controversial piece "We were wrong" for Salon he asked "When will Nader, Moore, Steinem, Chomsky -- and the other leftists who were monumentally mistaken about the war in Afghanistan -- join me in admitting it?"
* Hamlet doesn't rightly know what his true rez day is, especially since his Hamlet Linden account has been deleted

I find it interesting that someone who was born in paradise - Hawaii - and lives in one of the most sophisticated and exciting and delicious and expensive cities of the world - San Francisco - spends most of his time in front of a computer.


In his virtual living room, Hamlet enjoys a photograph of the view outside the window of his Real Life home

Several weeks ago, just before my two lives went simultaneously crazy, Hamlet indulged me and let me ask him a lot of random questions - some which are now as old as a good bottle of Port (how time flies in Second Life!), but a few are perennials - like, what did he look like when he was a newbie? Did he wear wings? His answer: "I had giant weird 70s hair and white pajamas because I didn't know how to make a suit or adjust hair, and it took me forever to bother doing either. A bit like an afro meets, I dunno, Sean Cassidy."

What were some of your earlier epiphanies as a user... not as a journalist?
Hamlet Au: Any epiphany I've had, I've written about. That's how I did it. I didn't want to insert my epiphanies directly, but rather, describe what I saw and experienced and who I met.

The way I see it, you take yourself out of the equation as much as possible and look at it almost as if it were a film... except that you get to ask questions. (BTW, Hamlet had originially intended to work in film way back when).
Hamlet Au: Well, if it's a film, then I try to be more like Errol Morris. That is, I have a definite perspective, but I try to keep it underlying the narrative and not let it overwhelm what people are telling me and doing. So, (I try to be) "Someone like that." The book finally gave me a chance to put my perspective more to the fore. My editor had to push me on that, it's been so ingrained for me to shut up and let the story unfold.


Ha! I knew Hamlet had the NPIRL blood in him. Here's a couch in his living room

We wonder about the person behind the man who reports for us.
Hamlet Au: "Reporting," per se, I consider less my role. I don't write "news" so much as try to find emblematic stories and content. My blog has become more "newsy" ironically enough, as I started writing the book and had less time to go in-world and really root around for that perfect story. That's always been a tension. People will often ask "Why aren't you writing the news about Linden doing X?" or whatever, and the thing is, if it's just the usual downtime or whatever I don't necessarily jump on it.

What's your daily life like?
Hamlet Au: I usually get up late, say 10am ideally, and either blog something immediately or more usually I was up the night before and blogged a late night post. I'm usually in-world late night, which probably means I've come to know more EU Residents than I otherwise would.


On the terrace of his Second Life home, Hamlet has a humongous marijuana plant that must be watered every day or it begins to IM him, complaining

How is the book promotion going?
Hamlet Au: The book tour has been fun, but most of the radio interviews I've done were so basic, I end up giving tech support. Seriously. The radio guy is like "Where do I go to download this?" "Do I have to pay money?" Etc. etc. Most have been curious. Just one radio host (I won't say her name) really didn't like the idea of Second Life. She kept wondering if she went in-world if a serial killer would attack her, so we spent about five minutes talking about serial killers. I said "Well, if you're worried, you can always log off. But she wouldn't give it up. I (then) said, "Well, there's serial killers in real life", and she's all "But I'd know to run away," and I'm thinking "Yeah, Ted Bundy was really popular with his female co-workers," and then I'm like, "Why the fuck am I arguing with this lady about serial killers?"

What were some of the better interviews?
Moira Gunn of Tech Nation did a really great interview with me. She's a smart cookie. She asked me if I was an evangelist for Linden Lab, and that was a good point to raise. I said "No, I'm an evangelist for the community, and for the idea of Second Life." I don't think I was even when Linden Lab was actually paying me as a contractor. Residents I interviewed would often go "OMG I love LL! I love Philip!" I rarely quoted that stuff. What's important is not what they think of LL; what's important are the things they express in here, what it says about them, about the world, and the world outside.

Good answer!
Hamlet Au: Virtual Worlds 2008 was hugely fun. It's so great and humbling to meet such a diverse group of SLers. "Colonel Bob in the Morning" - that's the name of his show - Very nice guy. He kept talking about wanting to be Dean Martin in SL.

You did tell him he CAN be Dean Martin?
Hamlet Au: Well, of course! Dean Takahashi did some great interviews and reviews for Industry Standard and Wall Street Journal. Very gratifying.

In between our chatter, I learned that Hamlet hasn't read "The Painted Word," a book that I have easily given away 50 copies of, by Tom Wolfe, the man who originally inspired Hamlet's three-piece white suit.
Hamlet Au: I've been meaning to send him a copy of my book. He seems to keep up on the latest tech stuff.


Hamlet Au... from Tom Wolfe-ish to Hunter S. Thompson-ish, but really his very own person who just happens to like three-piece white suits, seen here at Parsec

Seems to me that back in the early days you had more direct access (to Linden Lab). Is this just because everyone's gotten so busy?
Hamlet Au: I used to be able to ask Lindens I know about this or that issue and now they want it all funnelled through their PR agency. Again, it sort of is understandable, but then, I don't know how it's helping them overall. They're trying stuff, they deserve credit for that, press conferences, etc.

How often do you deal with their agency versus with them? Do they have an account exec that takes your questions and then "gets back to you?"
Hamlet Au: Yeah. I used to be able to e-mail Philip and get a direct quote within 24 hours. Wow, up until mid-2007, I think. I've always tried to be an intermediary between the Lindens and the Residents, sort of an ombudsman, but that's become quite difficult.

I get the sense that it was almost a personal loss for you when Cory Linden (aka Cory Ondrejka) left.
Hamlet Au: Yes, I was really upset even without knowing what happened; I still don't. And I still am.

What would you like to have happen with New World Notes?
Hamlet Au: Well, I want to take NWN to the next level, and that could mean many things, including more Second Life content creation. I loved working with Lainy (Voom). I'd love to do more stuff like that. (Hamlet and Lainy created this vid to promote his book).

How ingrained is this life with you? And can you imagine another? Are you actively exploring other virtual worlds?
Hamlet Au: I report on lots of other VWs for my day job, so to speak, with GigaOM.com, and I am interested in an abstract level, and there are definitely a lot of good ideas going on out there and folks building competitors to SL that I admire. Still... People keep asking me, What are you doing now that the book is out, will you leave SL? And the thing is, there's really nothing else out there that has everything I could ever want. This is what I do.