Blogging the SLCC: Developers in Second Life

Glenn Fisher, who heads the Developer Program in Second Life, gathered Jeff Bar, Amazon's Web Services Evangelist, Sitearm Madonna, the man behind the very popular Dublin in SL and Diegoland, as well as two developers from Involve Medium to discuss the roles of developers in Second Life. Amazon's Web Service developers are "are innovative, creative, progressive, forward-looking, open-minded, and entrepreneurial," said Barr. "When I started talking to developers in Second Life, I found they had many of the same characteristics."

Moderator: Glenn Fisher (Linden Lab)
Jeff Barr (Amazon.com)
Creating a Developer Presence in Second Life
I’ve been at amazon for about 5 years. I was hired as a senior developer to work on the Web services program a little bit, and that quickly became my full-time job. I became the Web Services Evangelist. I logged into Second Life once and then forgot about it.

In 2006 someone from Linden kept begging me and begging me to try it out. The second time was a lot more successful. It made a whole lot of sense based on my job for us to be a part of it.

We rolled out Amazon Web Services in 2002. We have ten distinct services, and developers will take them and build fairly complex applications. We have an amazing developer community. My job is all about getting developers to know Web Services exist, think they’re cool, and then build on them.

The developers are innovative, creative, progressive, forward-looking, open-minded, and entrepreneurial. When I started talking to developers in Second Life, I found they had many of the same characteristics.

The interesting thing about evangelism is that the obvious purpose is as an outreach program. The less obvious but really valuable part is that the developers tell you all this amazing stuff. Getting this feedback is vital to what my team and I do. Anything we hear from developers is in the hands of our internal staff about 8 hours after we hear it.

I started thinking I could do a lot of the same things in Second Life. I think my colleagues scoffed and sneered and said crazy things about me behind my back. MY team does in-person presentations, and remote presentations with slide sharing, but they’re not really compelling. We do content creation and talk to the press. And we do developer chats. It was kind of a crummy chat system for a long time, it wasn’t very engaging and you didn’t have a good sense of who was on the other end.

I got into SL in early 2006, and I loved the people and the platform attributes. I made a big deal with my colleagues and on my blogs about being in SL, and all the developers I wanted with the attributes were in SL. My colleagues thought I’d gone off the deep end, and my family did too. I had to do a lot of internal evangelism. I brought my entire team to my house and made them all log onto my computers and we went through a tour in SL. I knew I had them when three of them got waylaid at a casino.

Barriers for internal use include locked-down PCs and the need for internal approval to install software. I had to do a lot of this on my own time.

In our first steps, I had a tiny bit of first land to build a developer outpost. MY next door neighbor was using some borrowed land, Joshua Culdesac, and he showed up as a wolf. He had these great aspirations to be a SL builder. I did my first presentation to the Kuurian Expedition. IT was so similar to real presentations. I drove up in my virtual Scion, did 45 minutes of power point, and then we did 45 minutes of Q&A. It was clear this was the right way to go.

We decided to make something that was a little different from the shiny, hard corporate builds you were seeing last year. We wrote a simple, 4-page requirements document. We built an Amazon jungle theme and contracted Joshua (Virtuool, LTD) as a builder. Then we got a special clause that this was a work of art we were creating and if it turned out a little different from spec, that was fine. We were surprised the lawyers agreed to ti.

We found the SLDA and got a little space there. At the last minute, my manager said we’d gone through this whole process, why don’t you get two islands instead of one. Josh was based in France and I’m based in Seattle. We never spoke on the phone. We wanted the island to look like it had been built by ancient residents and repurposed. So I laid out the island with terrain, and then told Joshua he was stuck with it.

He built a neat placement tool and we jointly discussed the review process. Then he had to put all his buildings into the layout. We eended up with a long list of features, a welcome center, conference center, tour boat, landing area for hover craft--I love my flying vehicles--movie kiosks to post our videos, an application gallery, a signup center, a bookstore, a newsroom, and a sandbox.

With that 4-page spec and the pre-laid-out island, it came out really well. [screens of island] We’ve done developer chats, I try to do one per week, we’re trying to do formal presentations and dynamic models of our services along with embedded video.

What have I learned from all this. All the cool builds just set the stage for what you want to do. Communication and connection is central. If you want to be a part of it, you need to be a native. You need to use SL as an extension of other forms of outreach. This is the time to experiment. IT’s too early, by three or four years, to say we know what works and what we need to do. Have fun with it.

Fisher: Next we have Sitearm Madonna who has been in SL since 2005. He’s been involved in city building and games. He’s done virtual Dublin, Diego Land, and he’s done some work for the USC Center for Public Policy.

Madonna: siterma.com, sitearm@gmail.com

I’ll discuss the role of efficiency and aesthetics in design in Second Life. Being interested in entreprenurship I’ve started some small organizations in education and team-building. My premise is that both aesthetics and efficiency are necessary for sustainable design in Second Life, and all three need to be taken into account for any project in SL.

I’ll present a project model and give examples with two projects I’ve been working on.
[slides are on website]

Sustainability means longevity. Simple examples include Jericho, considered to be the oldest, continuously inhabited city on Earth. Another example is the Greek Alphabet, the oldest script still in use.

Sustainability requires efficiency and aesthetics. Efficiency refers to working with constrained resources. Aesthetics refers to attraction.

[slide of interrelation]

Aesthetic design requires attraction. People are attracted to beauty. Once you’ve invested in a project, efficient use of resources ensures that your cash flow stays green, which leads to sustainability. To close the loop, designs that are self-sustaining add to aesthetic attraction.

Studies have shown that attractive people get better job offers independent of their qualifications. Studies have shown that hair is more attractive. Studies have shown htat certain waist ratios are more attractive. They’re all related to having more children, sustainability.

What are the condistion for sustainability?
•    There must be a net sustatined positive energy.
o    Investment includes time, attention, enthusiasm, and money.
o    Returns include growth, challenge, pleasure, fun, service, and income
•    Efficient use of resources
o    They include prims, square meters, and staff. Finding good designers ir priceless
•    Financiail Viability
•   

I’ll compare Dublin and Diegoland. They’re both themed entertainment locations. Dublin opened the April 29, 2006. Diego opened May 5. Dublin is a recreation of Dublin, Ireland. It’s an expansion of operations for the Blarney Stoned Irish bar. Dublin has become known for its photorealistic look and feel and its impromptu events. Every week you can come in and listen to live music simulcast from the Bedford Pub in London.

Diegoland is a recreation of San Diego inspired by and closely following the development of Dublin. I recommend it. It’s gloriously built in detail. People that have been to San Diego will attest to its verisimilitude.

The towns’ owners have declared them sister cities and they share certain resource and plans. Since Diegoland was built following instruction Dublin, it’s instructive to compare them.

Both have 15,000 prims available. Unused prims are needed for growth. The bottom line here is that Dublin has a negative prim growth buffer of 1,212. If you’ve been to the Blarney Stoned, you know what I mean.

Diegoland has the same number of prims and rentable structures. It covers the entire sim. It’s in the green by 2,691. The reason it’s in the green is that we learned from Dublin. Now we’re applying lessons from Diegoland back to Dublin.

Dublin shows a regular traffic of 17,000. The sustained traffic over the last few months have been enough to retain our renters and fully cover tier and part of our operating expenses. This took about nine months.

Diegoland sees an average of around 5000 users. The rent has been stabilized.

Starting about a year ago, Dublin in SL started its website, DublinSL.com. This cluster map shows that the site is visited heavily in the US, the UK, and the Far East.

In the 4th Quarter of ’06, Dublin hit the Irish media big time. There have been articles released at about the rate of once per month. Diego land hit the level much more quickly. Additional measures of awareness include live presentations with sponsors. Dublin has already achieved funding for three substantial projects, Warner Music UK, IBM UK, Dublin Tourist.

The next step for both sims are similar. Each are aimed at doubling current traffic and acquiring further or initial outside funding. Dublin is adding new types of venues. Dublin 2, Shamrogue Island, is in progress with real life funding.

To conclude, sustainability means longevity. A sustainable design is efficient and aesthetic. It attracts resources and uses them well. It is attractive, making a loop.

Lessons learned in Dublin in SL have been successful to “jump start” Diegoland.

Vote for Web-261, jira.secondlife.com. It says it on the slide. Hm, I’m not sure what that means.

Fisher: Our last presenters are from Involve media, formerly Infinite Vision Media.

Ron T. Blechner: We couldn’t do what we do in the company with just one person. Our company comes at it from science and engineering and then also art and creativity. We thought it would be appropriate to present today from both angles. And right before I start,

The first idea is making your build into an attraction. So you’ve made a building for a client, and you’ve put some kiosks in there. That’s a building. An attraction is something that visitors can come into and enjoy regardless of whether or not you’re there. Engaging people is just the first step. We’ve been using the word engage over the last few years to mean more than it does. It’s just a handshake. Involvement is when the community comes in. That’s part of an attraction.

With a lot of developers, we look at this as an extension of the Internet or a replacement or a game. The key is that it’s all of these things. If you’re looking at it from one perspective, you only get 50% of the picture. The platform is immersive, it’s game-like, it’s very social and like social networking sites, and it’s very DYI, sort of Web 2.0, sort of MySpacey, sort of definition-less.

So we could infer what our builds should be. The other thing is looking at what we’re doing for a corporate client in the build, whether they’re non-profit or strictly for profit. Are we just promoting the client, or are we adding content to the community?

If you take Microsoft, they might have said, “let’s throw the windows logo everywhere. Let’s talk about Vista all the time. Let’s have a big Windows logo.” No one would want to visit it. You don’t want to throw the brand in a person’s face.

The next thing is, as I’ve said, we’re looking to create content. People want to do it and consume. That’s often just entertainment. These are often activities.

For a hypothetical example, I’m going to turn to Ian Tepoot.

Tepoot: I’m the Chief Creative Officer. You have to actually provide creative content, whether it’s a club, attraction, or ride. You have to go beyond just making a 3D website. No one wants to a Microsoft world that’s just branding.

How many have ever heard the term destination? They’re places like Disney. They offer things to do creating a desire compelling enough that you might go through some effort to get there. We call our builds destinations. We call the internal aspects, attractions.

The other big principle is to have activities in the environment. A good example are RPG sims. But if someone is running an RPG, what’s there to do when the story isn’t running, when the person isn’t there? What’s there to do? You can hire player characters to always be around, but that’s it.

This goes for anything. What’s there to do when you’re not having a conference or a concert? If everything in your Hitchhiker’s Guide sim is static, what’s there to do? If you bump a robot and it does nothing, you’ve captured their attention for about a half second. If you bonk it and tries to get you, it becomes a game. Independent of the actual event, there are things to do. We can only do formalized events so often.

You have to staff the attraction. You can’t build Disneyland and then not add vendors, or a guy to run the parade.

You need a big idea, but you need something to make it compelling. What makes it compelling? One compelling, fairly simple way to do it is to create a narrative. It’s emotional involvement. Books and movies suck you in. They’ve built something in which you want to become involved and engaged. You also want Unity. Nothing in the Sim should be something that doesn’t support the Big Idea. If you’re doing the Old West and you have vendors coming in and they want the white background posters with Helvetica font, you need to help them develop the theme. You have to head the theme.

You also need a 360 experience. If you go to the Epcot Center, you can see it on all sides. It surrounds you. Whenever you go into the French showcase, that’s all you can see. They actually recruit from France to staff it. Everything builds to the story.

The big thing that happens with corporate builds is that the branding should be a reimagination, not a regurgitation. The Amazon thing is a great example. It’s playing off the name to support the branding, but it’s not identical to what’s on the website.

Q&A:
Q: I just wanted to say that I think everything you said is right on, but most people aren’t willing to team up to bridge the world of art and science. In Boston we have a group that came out of UT to mix that. I think if more corporate builds really understood that and embedded it in what they were building, you’d get the right results.

Q:I have a question about doing the recreations of spaces. If you’re putting in storefronts that represent what’s really there, do you have to get permission?
Madonna: The stores in Dublin are generic Dublinesque stores. They’re not branded. Inside the store you can do anything you want, and we texture it to suit. But the outside has to fit the Dublin theme. Some of our buildings are recreations, Trinity College, for example. In Diegoland we follow similar ideas. Some of the buildings are famous, but they’re all public landmarks.
A:from the audience: I did the London Eye, and we got permission from British Airways. It’s just the right thing to do, and you get to meet all these new people as well.
A: Dublin Owner: I made it known in real Dublin early on. And the photorealism attracted a lot of real-world owners to grab their own shop space.

Q:What measures do you use and what do your customers look for in terms of feedback in how the product is successful.
Blechner: A huge value we derive from our Second Life experience is that I go out and talk to the clients. I take a transcript from the chat, clean it up, and take it directly to Web services that they go for. Direct unvarnished feedback is one of the thigns we value.

There are certainly several levels of success. There’s the initial level of publicity, but that’s not really a long-tail kind of thing. We measure avatar minutes, how many people are visiting, how often. We’re going through the beta testing of our measurement system that we hope to make public as a product. That’s seomthing we should probably standardize.

Q: With corporate builds, what kind of commitment do you need from your customers to make it successful?
Tepoot: We need to make it not a hear today, gone tomorrow approach. You need a commitment to sustained maintenance of the sim. You need to constantly put some TLC into it. Second, you allow for some creative control and adaptation to the media you’re working with. You don’t just create your website in 3D form. It requires a little bit of flexibility from the brand.
A: Madonna: I do a yearlong cash flow analysis for the projects I work on. For the first year in Dublin, we predicted that we’d just lose less money than before. The next year we figured out a way to make more money. There’s a construction build, but there’s also a social build with creative events. That’s the only way to get that sustainability.

If you want customers to keep coming to a site, you have to build that in the cost. There had better be a clear goal and it has to be worth the cost to make it sustainable. It’s fair to just build it and enjoy it as a private playground. But if you want more, you have to work at it.

Barr: This was my own project, so I just kind of did it. We entertained proposals from other parts of the company, but we mostly flew low under the radar. We just went out to try an exciting project that we’d always wanted to try. AS long as we can show results and good feedback, I imagine we’d continue to do it.

Comments

[Glenn Fisher]

To give credit where it's due, Crucial Armitage was the one who organized the panel; I was just the moderator.