Rod Humble comes to LL: we got a new guy to break in

~~~

Linden Lab announced today that they have a new CEO coming on board in January: Rod Humble, who will be leaving a vice president post at Electronic Arts, where he oversaw the Sims brand.

So what does this mean for us, the surviving residents of SL, the unpaid part of the equation that creates the content that makes the platform an attractive and viable product?

Well boils and gurls, I ain't sure. My inclination is to say that it's a good sign, suggesting that LL isn't getting ready to pull the plug on SL anytime soon. And I like the idea that the guy comes from a background that actually involves games and online communal activity (he had a role in Sony's Everquest before going to EA). But I've been wrong before. You're welcome to ask any of my former spouses--I'm sure they'll be happy to tell you in detail exactly how much I have been wrong before. So here's some random evidence I have collected, which I invite you to review and consider, and then we can try to arrive at some conclusions together:

First off, here is a picture of Mr. Humble in his work space:

photo from Kotaku.com

You will note that not only is Mr. Humble not a terribly pretentious looking dude, he's got toys on his desk--there's a little tank and some ships, and other crap, not unlike the crap I have in my office. So he's human--that kind of bodes well...maybe.

I also found a blurb from when he was made a VP at EA back in October 2008:

"Humble will be responsible for The Sims Label, which develops and markets life-simulation games and online communities with an emphasis on creativity, community and humor."

I like the fact that when he was moving up the food chain at EA, among the things they mentioned about the brand he would be managing was the emphasis on community and humor. Those are things I value highly, and hopefully he actually has s commitment to both of those ideals.

That said, I must admit I find it mildly disturbing that he worked for EA. I haven't had anything to do with that particular company since the days of The Sims Online, but when I did have some dealings with them, the people I was interacting with were a mixed bag--some were decent, straight-shooting types; others were consistently condescending, manipulative pukes. So it could go either way.

I will admit to having been a bit confused about when Mr. Humble actually joined EA--it turns out he went there in 2004, but it is unclear to me as to how much he was involved with TSO before it was killed off in August '08. He seems to have been more directly associated with the various offline manifestations of "The Sims" franchise, so hopefully he isn't burdened with any of the responsibility for the incandescent three-ring cluster-fuck that was EA's mismanagement of TSO. That is, however, only my impression of the circumstances. I'd love to get to ask him if he had any hand in what happened to TSO, and what kinds of lessons he thinks might have been learned from that particular adventure.

For that matter, it would be fun to talk with him about what kinds of things he discovered overseeing "The Sims" lable from late 2008 until the present. If you read the comments made by "community members" on Sims forums, many of them don't seem to have thought very highly of Mr. Humble. Again that could bode either ill or good--the things that they seemed to have issues with were an alleged interest on the part of Mr. Humble to introduce "rpg" elements into The Sims, and downplay some of the more supernatural aspects of that game brand.

To be honest, I have no idea what the frenchfriedfuck those people are talking about, but hey, maybe it's important. Myself, I could see some real benefit coming the addition of "rpg elements" into "The Sims," even though back when I played it, mostly I just liked to build shit.

The key thing here is that as far as I can tell, Mr. Humble isn't a bean counter like M was supposed to be. That could be a bad thing if he's into the whole hippy-dippy, do what feels good, oh "we don't need things like deadlines" philosophy that made Phil Rosedale such a a mixed blessing. The last thing we need is another CEO who doesn't establish clear goals and standards for his staff and insist that they be responsible and productive.

On the other hand, as a person who apparently comes from the creative side rather than the bean counter clan, maybe...just maybe, there is a chance that Mr. Humble could be the sort of CEO who will listen to and appreciate the customer base that pays the bills. Maybe he won't be afraid of us and embarrassed by us like Philip and his minions seemed to be...maybe he will actually come down from the Linden ivory tower and walk forth among the residents and find out how we could all work together to keep SL healthy and profitable and fun...

...and maybe Santa will finally bring me that fucking pony for Christmas.

Christmas traditions: the morphing of my holiday

~~~

It's been a lot of years since I had to travel at Christmastime, other than taking a train down into the City for various reasons, some related to fun and some to profit. And that experience had a curious charm, even with the necessity of riding on the crowded, dirty cars of Metro North's aging collection of rolling stock: sharing the proximity and the holiday spirit of the lumpy mass of my fellow passengers, all piled into the shabby seats; bundled up layers of wool and goose down jackets that made them look like a population of bourgeois Michelin men; and the snowy Connecticut countryside and towns rushing past the windows, holiday lights sprinkled over the passing suburbs like colored sprinkles on some kind of complex confection.

Yeah, I don't get to do that anymore. But that was different from the grim reality of what holiday travel means for most folks: the dreadful Bataan death march that is going by plane anywhere in late December, knowing, just knowing that sooner or later you will be shat upon by the transportation gods, sitting on the floor of some dreary air terminal, listening to harried gate agents making yet another announcement of yet another delay...

And that was precisely the joyous festival of frustration I got to experience this Christmas season for the first time in...oh hell, I don't even know how long...

Yep, this year, I'm on the road from yesterday though Christmas day. I writing this on a borrowed machine accessing a borrowed network, and now, things are ok. Yesterday? well that was another matter. The place in which the transportation gods decided to shit in my chapeau was in my second airport of the day, where I had to change planes for the last leg of my trip.

Things were delayed, people were piling up in the waiting areas, my flight got shifted to a different gate, which, OH JOY OF JOYS, REQUIRED THAT I GO THROUGH SECURITY AGAIN IN ORDER TO GET THERE...

...and as I went through the process of once again partially undressing and disassembling my kit, and lining up the trays with all my personal crap in them to be swallowed into the maw of the magic "personal crap inspection" machine, I observed ahead of me a couple with a toddler who was struggling and looking even more unhappy than all the rest of us combined...and the TSA gal running the new "hold up your hands and show me your goodies" machine looked at them and said,

"Miss, he's too young to have to go through this"

Without any major fuss or unnecessary theatrics, she pulled the barrier tape to close off access to the backscatter rig, politely opened a side gate, and took the mother and the child through the walk-through metal detector. Then she called over the woman's husband to follow through the same machine so he could keep up with his family and help them collect their gear from the baggage x-ray.

He looked pretty surprised.

Anyhow. after I got through security and reassembled myself, I went to wait with about 400 new friends who were packed into a space about the equivalent of modest-sized horse barn, and I noticed something.

Mind you, it had been a long time since I had traveled at the holidays,, but this trip I saw what seemed like a lot more young men and women in uniform than I was used to seeing in the past. In the first airport I had been in earlier that day, there had been dozens of army personnel in their washed-out looking desert pattern BDUs, lugging the old traditional duffel bag and wearing packs. And in the second airport de jour I saw marines in their blues and tans, and numerous sailors in their dress blue crackerjacks, peacoats and dixie cup hats.

It made me think of pictures of train stations in WWII...and it made me happy that these young men and women could be traveling in the uniform of their profession, and unlike a time I remember back when our society was more outwardly and unabashedly anti-military, no one gave them a ration of shit or gave them hostile looks. Instead, they were just fellow travelers, and if they got a look or a comment from anyone, it was a look of admiration and a word of thanks.

But then it struck me...oh, like into the third hour of my sitting there...that there were other uniformed people present who weren't getting the same kind reaction from the general public. I went back over towards the security area, and when the TSA crew supervisor came out to look at the nearby arrival/departure screens to see how the evening's total goat screw was progressing, I went up to her and said, "excuse me, Miss?"

I know what was going through her mind. Here was some crazy old bat in a G-1 jacket and mangy old FDNY ball cap, coming up dragging a dirty old duffel bag...and I think the gal showed great restraint in not instinctively reaching for her pepper spray. But seriously, I know she was expecting some new round of lambasting and idiocy. Nonetheless, she looked me up and down and politely replied, "yes ma'am, can I help you?"

...and I said, "Miss, I just wanted to say thank you. Your people are acting in a very professional and efficient manner, and being very thoughtful of the folks coming through...and well...I imagine you probably get yelled at a lot more than you get thanked...so I wanted to say, good job, and it is appreciated."

She looked startled for a moment and then smiled.

"Thank you ma'm, I will be sure to tell the rest of my crew that. That is nice to hear."

I did eventually get where I was going, and you know what? I got there in part because the TSA folks are trying their best to do a thankless job.

You might feel like you want to piss and moan about the quality of TSA personnel, you may want to say that the system is not efficient and doesn't deal with the real problems and blah blah blah, and "invasion of privacy" and all that...and as far as I am concerned, you can just shut the fuck up.

Remember, I have personal knowledge of what happened when there wasn't the level of security we have now. I'll take inconvenience and frustration any day, over the alternative. Yes, the people and the system are not perfect, but they sure as hell improve the odds for us. You want a perfect security system that doesn't take up a lot of your time, and doesn't cost a shitload of money? I have a news flash for you, assholes: it ain't happening.

You want a guarantee? Wait for the next life, motherfucker, cuz it sure ain't coming in this one.

So I have decided, now I have a new holiday tradition.

In all honesty, at this point in my life's journey, I don't have a lot of Christmas traditions like some people do: I hate shopping; I haven't put up a tree in a number of years; I left the outdoor lights behind when husband number three's house got foreclosed on; my faith has evolved to the point where mass collective worship with a bunch of so-called Christians just ain't compatible with my personal way of trying to connect to the divine...and I am a fucking diabetic so baking crap made of over-refined flour and sugar is a source of unnecessary temptation...so what I have to work with is limited.

Well, here's the new tradition: I will make sure that when things are at their shittiest, I will say something kind and positive to someone who is not having a good day, someone whose hard work is not appreciated, or who is getting nothing but one ration of shit after another from six different directions.

And I don't mean the obvious candidates--active military personnel, WWII veterans, firefighters...yeah, of course you should say "thank you" to folks like that, be decent to them. I mean that you should be decent to someone who is really getting excoriated on a regular basis: snow plow drivers, customer service people at Linden lab, taxi drivers, subway conductors, fast food workers...but especially TSA personnel.

In thinking on it, you should be like that all the time. There's no meed to be a mewling, pizzle-sucking douchebag with people who are just trying to do their job. But we should particularly try to do it this time of year when the stress and nonsense is particularly intense. If you want to be crass about it, think what life would be like without these people. If you have to whine and be an asshole to somebody, hey, that's what we have relatives for, right?

~~~

RP lives on in SL

~~~

Hey y'all,

Yeah, I know I've been an irresponsible old doxie and haven't written or posted much lately except for the silly little bit about the "Chanuka Cham" at Wally World. And I'm pretty sure that don't really count.

To some extent the lack of productivity on this ridiculous blog has been the result of work and other demands of rl eating my brain, like a Zombie Andrew Zimmern (who, by the way, I have enjoyed the times I have seen his show--not only will he freakin' eat goddam near anything, he does it with considerable gusto and cheerful elan, and what seems to be a genuine respect for the cultures that produce the various bug-and-slug-based cuisines he seems to so thoroughly relish). I just haven't had much mental energy for writing lately.

The other thing is that--believe it or not--I have been really busy in Second Life, because there are exciting things going on in the world of historical rp. Let me give you a little update.

First of all, as you will know from a previous post I recently made, the core team in Deadwood has embarked on a mission to revitalize the sim. The good news is that we are making progress. There are new people showing up, there are nights when there are a substantial number of folks in the sim at once, and things like gunplay, death and dismemberment are flourishing like they did in the old days of the sim. Just the other night I had to patch up Rod Eun's leg, and pull a bullet from C.T. Kungler's shoulder. There are others kinds of fun stuff going on as well: among the folks who have become regulars there is a player whose character is a mute orphan girl whom we have dubbed "Silence" (as we don't know her real name). In order to help Silence communicate better, Dio is teaching indian sign language to the child. I'm doing this by drawing on a wonderful web site that offers a "vocabulary" of native American sign language elements that were commonly used in the latter half of the 19th century. Although "in character" Dio of course knows sign language from the times she has spent among various indian peoples, for her typist this is one of those wonderful self-directed learning opportunities. I was delighted to discover that the standard northern/central plains sign for "friend" is constructed from elements that literally mean "like two brothers who have grown up together."

Is that fuckin' poetic, or what?

Among other projects we have going on, Addison Leigh is building like a maniac, adding some wonderful new structures to the Deadwood streetscape, and sim Owner Caed Aldwych has constructed a new and simplified OOC orientation/Vendor area that will save prims and be easier for new folks to navigate once it goes live. And my friend Serenek, a relatively new member of the Deadwood community, has worked with Addi to create a dandy boarding house, where respectable gals can find decent accommodations and a nice little island of civilization in primitive hogwallow that is our town.

So we are seeing some progress there. The team feels like we probably have a pretty good shot at keeping the sim going for some time, and more importantly that people feel like they are getting something out of the experience provided by the sim. It's not just another dead and empty interesting build.

Speaking of interesting builds, in other news, 1920s Berlin is continuing to make progress. The build recently relocated to a full sim, with more variety (including a super Brandenberg Gate) and more activity. There are more stores, more dwellings, more public spaces, and more businesses in general--there is even an active taxi cab service that will pick you up at the trains station and deliver you to wherever you want to go in the city.

IC, I am still bartending regularly at the Keller, a more-or-less run-down dance hall and bar in a moderately shabby neighborhood...the job augments my income from my day job as an organizer and office worker for the anarcho-syndicalist labor union, the Freie Arbeiters Union-Deutschland (which frankly doesn't pay that well).

Once again, Jo Yardley has done a splendid job of recreating the look and feel of Weimar era Berlin, but on an even grander scale and with more complexity and depth than before. The community is growing, and there is more interest in doing roleplaying in the sim: I have been asked to lead a couple of "intro to RP " discussion and they were well attended.

Finally, I wanted to update you on what is going on in Alsium, the roman sim that that I have been involved with since it opened earlier this year. It has undergone a change in ownership, and is being rebuilt. It was beautiful before, but was clearly more"inspired by" roman culture and architecture, rather than standing as a "recreation" of a roman community from the time of Marcus Aurelius. Now, a new builder, Lexusz Mornington, has been engaged, and the future of the sim looks extremely promising. The new owners are working with that new builder and the community at large to collectively plan and develop a new kind of Roman sim that SL has not seen before--one that represents iconic elements of historical roman life and culture, featuring historically plausible composite buildings, organized into a coherent--and still visually appealing--roman coastal resort city.

I am really getting excited about this project, especially as I have had the chance to see mock-ups of some of the proposed architectural elements, which the designer has based on actual ancient buildings, but adapted to be functional within the context of SL. In my humble opinion, the new build is gonna knock your socks off.

So, you may ask, what's the point here, besides the fact that Dio has kept her saggy ol' ass busy running from one time period to another in her off hours?

The point is, to my delight (and a certain degree of surprise) historical roleplaying and creative sim building continues in SL, and, in fact, is attracting some new adherents (bit by bit). After a long dry spell this fall when activity seemed to be dropping off, I am seeing it come back.

That is, of course, a purely subjective conclusion and based on my limited experience in the fairly restricted sphere of places I wander around in. And I don't have a good explanation for it--are people finding they have more time on their hands to fill now that it gets dark earlier (and let's face it, what television has to offer blows beyond belief)? Is the economy actually getting a little better and people have the confidence and spare cash to buy some clothing and build or buy some new structures in a virtual world?

Yes there are a lot of sims that remain empty and lifeless--some of them wonderful builds, and others that deserve to go the way of the dodo--but in places where people are refusing to give up and keep trying to make the sims evolve and activity happen, people are showing up and having fun.

Maybe the sky still isn't ready to fall, just yet.

~~~

I fear for the future of the republic...

The above was seen in the food section of certain big box retailer...

Saving a sim

~~~

Part of my effort to help save a sim: Kuhr's Wholesale Liquor and Fine Tobacco

I don't know, maybe it's the phase of the moon or something like that, but lately I've found myself wandering from one sim to another that needs some help.

Things do tend to go in cycles, and everything has a life span, but that doesn't mean we have to just roll over and just say, "oh well, natural selection is inevitable--the herd must be thinned!" I admire the people who try to do what they can to revitalize a project that they care about.

One place where this process is underway is in Deadwood. Traffic dropped off and people found themselves struggling to maintain the sense of shared narrative that makes a place like Deadwood so special. I will confess that I was part of the problem: between the demands of real life and getting caught up in splitting my time between Deadwood and other sims such as Alsium and 1920s Berlin, I wasn't contributing much to life in the 1870s. We can only stretch ourselves so far, and we have to make choices.

So when the folks in Deadwood decided to not give up and to look at how they could work collectively to breathe some life back into the project, I became determined to do what I could. I have made my choice, and I will just have to spend less time with my Roman and Weimar era friends.

At present a significant effort is being made: sim owner Caed Aldwych has given a carefully selected group of die-hards and oldtimers permission to add new structures to the build and to provide "set dressing" to various environments within the rp area. The roleplay timeframe is moving into 1877, when the town had more complexity and socio-economic depth, and that should help make things more interesting. Rents have been reduced (at least temporarily) to encourage more activity. This enabled me to make my first contribution to the revitalization process: a wholesale liquor and tobacco store on Main Street.

My next production will be a blacksmith and farrier's shop located back off one of the secondary alleys, and I am looking forward to playing around with that (my friend Clay and I built a dandy smith's forge back during our time in Deadwood 1.0, and I intend to dig that out). Other people are working on projects such as the Gem and Bella Union saloons, a jail, a bank, and other diverse businesses providing goods and services that fit within the context of 1877-78.

To bump up interest--and traffic-some of us have been doing what folks in many rp sims do these days: setting certain times where people will concentrate on coming into the sim, so there will be more likelihood of having someone to interact with. Likewise, people like Clay (now known as C.T. Kungler) and the Leitners are hosting regularly reoccurring events each week, such as boxing matches and talent shows, which give people a reminder that the sim exists, and provide an opportunity to come together and see what can happen.

So far we have seen improvement in traffic, the sim looks good, and we've been having some fun. A few of us have been trying to encourage folks we know from other sims (and time periods) to stop by and try it out.

Is it going to work?

I've got no goddam idea.

But the important things is that we are having a good time trying. It kinda brings us back to an idea that gets trotted out periodically: that ultimately the quality of the experience we have in SL is shaped by our own actions and choices. If you sort of slouch around, expecting other people to entertain you or to keep things fixed and running smoothly, you're probably going to be disappointed.

So if any of y'all have other thoughts of how a community might try to keep their sim lively and interesting, I would appreciate hearing your thoughts.

~~~

Jack of the Lantern -- a story for the season

~~~

A retelling of a traditional Irish story....

Long ago in the old country

in days when the Gael were just startin' to follow in the path of Good Patrick

there lived the meanest man in Christendom...

well...truth be told, the meanest man of any land

and his name was Jack

he was so mean his neighbors all feared him

he kicked wee dogs, he yelled at the young'uns

he played dreadful jokes on everyone

once he even snuck up on the divil himself and tied a knot in his tail

he was so wicked it seemed he would live forever

... as pricks tend to do

but sure enough along came the day when even he died

so there he was

"well this is bloody lovely, here I am dead and all"

"I guess I'll be takin' me self off to hell then...I know they won't want me upstairs"

so he trudges off to the gates of Hades

But the divil bars the door an waves a pitchfork at him

says he

"where do ye think yer goin?"

Jack replies

"in there, Scratch, tis where I belong ain't it?"

but the divil shakes his head no

"you're too mean for even in here!...and don't ye go thinkin I don't know who put that kink in me tail!"

says Jack in reply,

"well, where shall I go?"

The divil sneered and waved his hand,

"pah, ye can go to heaven for all I care!"

so Jack sets off fer the pearly gates and is still a half mile off, when up comes a runnin' ol Peter himself, his sandals flappin', his long beard trialin behind him in the wind and his holy bathrobe floppin'


says the blessed Saint,

"where do ye think yer a goin', Bucko?"

Jack looked perplexed,

"The divil wouldna let me in downstairs so I came here and..."

But Good Peter holds up his hand and scowls

"OH NO yer NOT, laddie! If they wouldna let ye in down below, yer certainly not a-passin' though these gates!""

and Jack, he looked about...he couldna go to Hell ...an he couldna go to heaven

so he set down to ...


...well... he took to weepin'

...for the first time, in his sorry existence, live or dead, he wept

an' the ol Saint's heart softened, and says he,

"Arright, laddie me buck...chin up... I tell ye what...I'll send ye back to earth as a spirit"

"and ye can wander an think upon yer wicked deeds and maybe in a few thousand years, I'll look at the tick sheet and see if we can let you in, eh?"

So off Jack goes... and he wanders the earth, and he was so lonely as the centuries went by...

thus, he took a turnip and hollowed it out...and carved a wee face on it


and put a candle inside, to make a little lantern, to carry and to keep him company

and people would see his light comin' o'er the hills at night, especially on the nights when the spirits come forth, like all hallows eve...

and the livin' folk still feared him. so beastly was his reputation

and they would say

"look out! for here comes Jack of the lantern"

So they took to making their own hollowed out turnip lanterns, with wee grimacing faces on them to scare Jack away from their doors

And when the folk came to amerikay...

they found the Indian squash..the big round poompkins


those were far easier to hollow out and cut a face into it

and they began the makin' o' their lanterns for the nights when the spirits all walk about in the land

an' they call em jack o' lanterns

for among the spirits that wander abroad on those nights like all hallows eve..they know that Jack is among the shades that walk

and they fear his evil tricks still

~~~

Evolve or die

~~~

Just the other day, I received a message from my friend Betty Doyle who runs an in-world business called Ingenue. She is a merchant/content creator, specializing in hair, clothing and shoes that are inspired by (but not necessarily direct copies of) vintage fashion from the 1930s-60s. She wanted to inform me that she had a clearance sale going on.

That's no big newsflash these days: lots of merchant/content creators seem to be looking to blow stuff out to get attention, to make some quick jack to pay the rent, that sort of thing. On a purely apocryphal level, I think we are all aware that many merchants are not doing well. It has even become a sad reality that every one of has a friend or knows someone that given up and pulled the plug on their business, or is pretty much ready to.

Getting the news about a clearance sale, I would have thought this was the case with Betty as well, except that her message also informed me that she had just re-done her main store, and had taken on a space in an additional space in a major shopping mall. that many of them are even at the point of pulling the plug and giving up.

You don't do stuff like that when you're on the verge of going tits up.

In fact, it turned out that the clearance sale was of older items--including some of Betty's great retro hair--for crazy low prices, because she is making room for newer items that she considers better made and better looking than her earlier efforts. Betty is one of those people who keeps continually extending her own reach, learning and working with the content creation tools as they evolve, getting new software, always trying to improve her products. So she is giving people a chance to get some of her older items at a deep discount before she retires them.

Having an epiphany while shopping back in Ingenue's clearance shed

And she also tries very hard to keep introducing new items--despite having to deal with the challenge of having a rl toddler in her house, who I understand has mastered the art of rearranging her furniture and playing Edmund Hillary on the dining room table.

So she keeps adopting improved technology, she invests in regularly fixing up and remodeling her retail spaces to keep them fresh, she tries new ideas on how to sell and where to sell, and she works very hard to keep developing new and better content, which continually amazes me because her earlier stuff was nothing to sneeze at. I think her work has always been exquisite and fun (and so I highly recommend you go check out her clearance sale stuff--it's in a little shed behind her main store building at http://slurl.com/secondlife/LoLo/193/97/21/ ). Nonetheless, she keeps trying to evolve as a content creator and look to the future.

And it has results. When I talked to Betty about it, she says yes, things aren't as wild-ass profitable as they were back in the wacky-hypey days of 2006-7, but she is doing alright--pretty darn good in fact.

Of course there are other factors that enter into the reasons that she is doing better than many other merchant/content creators. One is that she has found a niche product that is not being cranked out by everyone and his brother. Making a line like hers requires knowledge of vintage fashion, hard work and a good bit of skill to produce. I know Betty also fights the temptation to participate in every hunt, freebie deal, discount day, and special fashion event that comes down the pike. A lot of people seem to be catching on to this reality--that it pays to choose carefully which give-aways and dog-and-pony shows you'll take part in, which is evidenced in a blog post by Grazia Horwitz and the ensuing discussion. As folks point out in that discussion, there is so much of that kind of stuff going on that it becomes a huge distraction for the content creators, as well as diluting the perceived value of their work.

But I digress.

My point is that there are certainly a number of factors that enable a merchant/content creator like Betty to keep on going, but that ultimately it comes down to churning out good new stuff, adopting the new technology as it comes along, and trying to keep thing fresh.

And that has me wondering if there is a valuable lesson in this for the rest of us who have tried to contribute to life on the platform. For those of us who don't create content like buildings and clothing and hair and machine guns--but who try to foster a sense of community, to encourage social and intellectual interaction, to promote the participatory improv theater that is role playing in SL, to facilitate the sharing of stories and ideas--how can we move forward and not end up getting thinned from the herd?

Obviously we have to evolve in the same ways that the successful merchant /content creators are: we need to keep trying new things; we need to find new ways of using the platform, and we need to find a field that isn't is over-grazed. Just because something didn't work in the past, doesn't mean a different approach wouldn't work now. But this is also true with regards to things that DID work...just because they used to work doesn't mean we can keep the old machine running. We need to be willing to look at the experiments that succeeded as a foundation to build on--or sometimes even as something that we need to throw out completely and move on.

Now what does that mean in practical terms for educators, musicians, storytellers, roleplayers, non-profit message makers, etc. etc?

I'm not really sure, as the answer is different for each category of social and intellectual content creation...

....but as long as LL isn't yet ready to pull the plug on the platform, I think it behooves us to keep seeing how our uses of it can evolve.

~~~