It’s been a week or so since Ebbe Altberg was announced as the new CEO of Second Life, and I’ve seen quite a few suggestions for him.
First, there’s Inara Pey’s very useful short profile – and Altberg himself shows up in the comments.
Ciaran Laval notes that Altberg starts off well enough, with an informal official blog post and stopping by to comment on SL resident blogs, but wonders if Ebbe needs moar orc.
Jo Yardley of 1920’s Berlin even had a chance to talk with him, so she solicited questions in “What you want to ask Ebbe Altberg, new CEO of Linden Lab?”
Daniel Voyager summarized the recent meeting with SL journalists, and notes that a transcript is available, and that Draxtor Despres recorded it also.
From reading up on Ebbe Altberg’s bio (now that he’s Ebbe Linden) it’s clear that he was actually around during the early beta test, and his son was very active.
Daniel Voyager summarized the meet-and-greet with SL journalists, and also noted that Draxtor Despres recorded the session, and that a transcript is available.
He’s even posted to the official community forum, though how long that will last is doubtful:
I don’t really consider myself a ‘gamer,’ but I also don’t think that ‘game’ would describe Second Life either, and I’ve found Second Life intriguing for a long time. In addition to having personally explored the virtual world a bit back when it first started (of course I’m diving in more now), my son was a very active Resident as a teenager, and I’ve been consistently impressed by the incredible things the Second Life community creates. I’m proud to be joining the team that enables this level of creativity, and as I said in our press release, I’m committed to supporting our customers to help you become even more successful.
My suggestion: he should ask his friends and family members who DON’T have any previous SL experience to sign up for new accounts, and report their “brand new user experiences” back to him. He needs to know how difficult it is to sign up on your own, and how freshly minted new residents often get dumped into random hub areas where they’re easily targeted by griefers and people of bad intent (ie., people waiting to “befriend” new people into doing things they maybe shouldn’t, like working in a strip club or accepting virtual enslavement).
Many have cited the need for a Mentors program again, and I’ll continue to bang the drum for the Community Gateways concept that was so successful, yet was abandoned by SL. I still say that hands down, Caledon Oxbridge University is one of the best places a new person can start, because it’s designed to teach you as you learn to walk, and there are helpful people hanging about (and classes are actually in session along the path a newly rezzed person follows). If you follow this SLUrl link and sign up as a new person, you will still rez at their orientation point, just as you would when the Community Gateway program was in full swing.
Besides my suggestion, my question, should I ever encounter Ebbe, is “if you had stayed inworld after the beta test, would you still be a landowner, or would you have given up in disgust over tier, the homestead debacle, or something else?”
