Rosedale's Vision

Over the last year, Metanomics has featured much of the upper management of Linden Lab® on Metanomics: Gene Yoon, Robin Harper, John Zdanowski, Cory Ondrejka, Zero Linden, Pathfinder Linden…even Mitch Kapor, Linden Lab’s first Chairman and a key fount of Linden’s capital. But try as I might, I couldn’t get founder and current Chairman Philip Rosedale to appear live on the show.

After a number of different approaches, I finally got a reasonable approximation of what I was looking for: a face-to-face interview with Rosedale, conducted in a small office behind the registration desk of the Second Life® Community Convention. (It was also the office with the passes for the Linden employees—sorry for keeping you from them, but thanks for being so patient while the interview went about 20 minutes longer than expected.)

We covered a lot of ground: Philip's transition from CEO to Chairman of the Board; balancing the interests of enterprise and personal users; managing the press; what it will take for virtual worlds to become mainstream; bringing Second Life to developing nations; and Linden Lab's competitive position in the industry, with specific focus a possible competitor of it's own making--Open Sim.

Since we can't bring you Philip's voice (I have permission only to publish the text of the interview, not the audio), we've had to be creative on how to make this more than just dumping a transcript into a blog post.

You would think a face-to-face interview with Philip Rosedale would be far better than one mediated by a virtual world (as we do for the weekly Metanomics series). Certainly it was nice to make the personal connection, especially someone justifiably renowned for his charisma and good looks. But a virtual world interview would have let me and my guest exploit one of the signature advantages of virtual worlds, which I call constructive cacophony. Had this interview taken place during a live Metanomics show, a simple voice interview would have been supplemented with no end of text chat: people reacting to my questions and Philip’s answers, suggesting follow-up topics, pasting links to past news stories and quotes, debating among themselves.

It’s not a free-for-all, of course. After all, the goal is constructive cacophony. We have made a lot of progress harnessing the wisdom of our crowds, while still allowing a thoughtful discussion that stays on track, and as Metanomics progresses over its second year, I hope we can create even more cacophony, while making it more constructive.

Well, now that the interview is over, and I have subjected myself to Benjamin Duranske's questions and the unpredictability of the virtual worlds chat during this first show of our new year, I still have a chance to harness the wisdom of crowds. Well, a small crowd. I have segmented the 75-minute interview into various themes, and found someone who is expert on each theme to explore Philip’s remarks more thoroughly (and point out, hopefully gently, what questions I might have asked).

For each theme, I provide the complete transcript on our site, along with a few comments of my own and a link to the expert analysis. Here’s what we have:

• Excerpts from the Original Interview, Roland Legrand's thoughts at MixedRealities.com, as well as Wagner James Au at New World Notes on Philip’s transition from CEO to Chairman. (Posts active!)
  
  

• Excerpts from the Original Interview, Roland Legrand's thoughts at MixedRealities.com, as well as Wagner James Au at New World Notes on the management style at Linden Lab. (Posts active!)
  
  

• Excerpts from the Original Interview and Bettina Tizzy at Not Possible in Real Life (NPIRL) on Linden Lab’s strategy of dealing with the press. (Post active!)
  
  

• Excerpts from the Original Interview and Nic Mitham's take at KZero on mainstreaming virtual worlds and positioning Linden Lab. (Post active!)
  
  

• Excerpts from the Original Interview on broadening the use cases of virtual worlds and original excerpts regarding capital investment with Christian Renaud's comments at Christian Renaud's Weblog. (Post active!)
  
  

• As well as Nic Mitham's take at KZero on the the same original interview topic of investor strategies and profitability that Christian covered. (Post active!)
  
  

• Excerpts from the Original Interview and Dusan Writer's Metaverse on the Second Life viewer and interface, and features blocking mainstream adoption of virtual worlds. (Post active!)
  
  

• Excerpts from the Original Interview and Tish Shute at ugotrade.com on the implications of the open grid. (Post active!)
  
  

• Excerpts from the Original Interview and Tish Shute on bringing Second Life to developing nations. (Post coming soon)
  
  

• Excerpts from the Original Interview and Ben Duranske, author of Virtual Law and blogger at his own virtuallyblind.com, on Linden Lab’s philosophy for regulating behavior in Second Life®. (Post active!)
  
  

Thanks to this panel of experts for bringing insights I couldn’t have on my own!