Working Inworld General

[#1]

A few weeks ago, there was a lively discussion on the Government Use of Second Life email list on the benefits and challenges around maintaining separate personal and professional avatars and everyone who chimed in was in agreement—the time for work avatars has arrived.  IBM announced their virtual world guidelines for their employees back in 2007. And, last week Jim Lundy at Gartner published a report on this topic, advocating the same position and recommending that organizations create rules around corporate avatar behavior and appearance. According to the WSJ blog on the topic, “He predicts that by 2013, most of them will have such guidelines in place.” When I twittered about the report last week, I received a slew of responses—mostly all in agreement with the basic “work avatar” premise.

Speaking as the person leading Enterprise Marketing, and the Second Life Work brand at Linden Lab, I believe that the professional avatar is an imperative on the road to enterprise-wide adoption of immersive environments as a powerful collaboration and work tool.  If virtual work is to be taken seriously, then our avatars need to look--and act--as professional as we do in a physical workplace. Of course, there are times when I want to have fun in Second Life--go to a jazz concert or shopping. When doing those activities, I have an "alt" or personal avatar--completely separate from my work avatar (SL: Amanda Linden). This concept should sound familiar. For example, most of us already maintain personal and professional email accounts and separate IM traffic streams.

Two weeks ago, Sam Driver, Principal at ThinkBalm, an independent IT industry analysis and consulting services focused exclusively on the work-related use of the Immersive Internet, and I chatted about this very topic. I’ve shared our conversation below and look forward to lively commentary on this hot button topic.

Amanda: Do you believe that people should have personal and professional avatars/personas? If so, why?
Sam: Wow, tough question. I’ll answer these questions in the context of public virtual worlds like Second Life. For immersive environments that are behind the firewall or designed from the ground up for work-related use, issues of avatar and identity are pretty much a non-issue.

Should I have multiple avatars, one for work and one for play? It depends on what makes the most sense for an individual’s career. The answer is generally yes if you: 1) use Second Life or other public virtual worlds (e.g., Activeworlds or an OpenSim grid) for both professional and personal activities, and 2) feel the need to keep your professional and personal activities separate. Otherwise, the answer is generally no. I, for example, have only one Second Life avatar. I use the same avatar no matter what I’m doing in Second Life. The same is true for the other virtual worlds I use; I have just one avatar in each.

Another issue to consider is whether avatars have to look corporate and do they need to be connected to a real professional identity. Transparency of identity is the norm in the workplace (in most situations; I recognize there are exceptions). Most organizations require employees and contractors to identify themselves by their real names for legal and financial reasons. Still, people go by nicknames or middle names at work. People customize their email signatures and outgoing voice mail messages. They upload photos of themselves to the enterprise directory and portal. These are little flourishes to add personal expression to the mix in a digital world where otherwise we come across as black text on a white background.

It’s the same in the virtual world. An avatar is, among other things, the 3D visual corollary to an email signature or recorded outgoing voice mail message. It’s a way of customizing our professional communications. As long as the way our avatars look is in compliance with organizational policy (or, if no policy in place, the avatar’s appearance doesn’t offend others with whom we’re meeting in a professional context), and our avatar is connected with our real professional identity, there’s quite a bit of room for personal expression.

Keep in mind that personalizing the way we represent ourselves in these professional communication contexts doesn’t change our professional identity. Employees’ real professional names are in the enterprise directory, and enterprise directories are tied in with the applications people use every day to get their jobs done. In the workplace, peoples’ real names appear everywhere. As more organizations deploy immersive technologies in the workplace, it will become common for people to use their real names in immersive environments, just as real names are used with other kinds of applications. It will become automatic as immersive environments become integrated with enterprise directories.

The challenge right now in Second Life is that Second Life was originally built on the premise that people shouldn’t use their real names in the environment. Second Life was not designed as a work tool. The workaround we recommend, until we can use our real professional names for our avatars in Second Life, is to list your real professional name on the “First Life” tab of your Second Life profile and wear a name tag that displays your real name and affiliation. Again: this advice is targeted at people who are using Second Life for professional, work-related reasons.

Amanda: Great suggestion. I have another question regarding corporate policies around avatar identity, appearance, and behavior—should businesses create them, like IBM did?
Sam: Yes. It’s common for employers to have employee handbooks and acceptable use guidelines, which dictate the behavior that is expected of them (or lays out the behavior that is verboten). By now, many of these documents have been updated to include employees’ online behavior. These documents will eventually be updated again to take into account peoples’ behavior in virtual worlds, when employees are representing the organization, or are on company time, or using a company computer.

Amanda: Assuming that Second Life will eventually offer the option to use real names, how will avatar identities shift?
Sam: Offering people the option to use their real names for their avatars is one of the best strategic moves Linden Lab can make to bring Second Life into the professional limelight. Second Life is already being used for collaboration, learning and training, and many among things. Second Life and other immersive platforms are attractive to business people because this technology can solve real business problems. (For more insight, see the May 26, 2009 ThinkBalm report, “ThinkBalm Immersive Internet Business Value Study, Q2 2009”). But, as I highlighted above, transparency of identity is the norm in the workplace and this will not change. As a result of Linden Lab enabling the use of real names, I expect to see people create “alts,” or additional alternative avatars, to help keep their personal and professional lives comfortably separate — the same way some people separate their professional networking into LinkedIn and their personal social networking into Facebook.

Sam, thanks so much for taking the time to share your thoughts.  This blog post is meant to catalyze conversation—so share your thoughts and let’s continue the dialogue in comments.

[#2]

How long before the zoning rules embrace categories: "PG", "Mature", "Adult", "Commercial" and "Educational"? You won't have any trouble remebering which one is your work avatar, it'll be the only one allowed into the commercial continent...and you'll need a sign-off from your boss to create it.

[#3]

It's time already??  OMG, I'll rush right out and create one...

No, wait.  I don't need one.  When I need one, I'll get one.  That will be the right time, not "now".  And for people who needed one last year, that was the right time, not "now."

And if my "work avatar" happens to meet some hottie it cannot resist, they'll get it on in the office supply closet.

lee

[#4]

When you review what the word "Buy" means in the U.S. Commercial Code and understand the rights we have to OUR property (or it isn't buying, it's leasing), then I'll consider a Business Avatar for Business needs.  Until you either admit that we don't really buy our land, or accept that a purchase entails legal commitments both to and from your customer, then you have NO future in the business world as far as I and my people are concerned.

[#5]

There are two aspects to "work avatars".

First, a truly work-friendly virtual environment will allow customers to use their own names for their accounts. And yes, this means figuring out how to deal with duplicates. Corporations using a virtual environment shouldn't have to expect their staff to change their names to accommodate the software. I strongly concur with Sam's opinion that this is one of the best strategic moves Linden Research could make. The permissions system, profiles, and communications would have to be switched to UUIDs or some unique identifier other than the avatar name (yet retaining the human-readable avatar name), but if Facebook can deal with it, so can you.

Second, if by "work avatars" you only mean the use for work of a different avatar appearance on a pre-existing account (much like our daily life, actually), then the only real difficulty I see is the amount of personal information that is revealed in our profiles, largely in the form of groups. We may want our groups visible to people in social situations but not in professional ones. In a way, however, this is no different that taking care about what can be found about us using web searches. Inconvenient, but not impossible. I can't imagine that people in this situation wouldn't prefer to just have an alt account.

[#6]

The best solution for names is to have real first_real last followed by the company name.  IE  George_Lucas Lucasfilms.  This makes finding anyone in the company easy with Search, though some duplication is inevitable.

But no "work avatar" solution addresses what happens to anything you buy or build if you are laid off from the company, though.  You think Bob_Murphy IBM should keep his avatar after IBM lays him off?  Does he turn into Bob_Murphy Unemployed then?  Or does he and everything in inventory simply get deleted?  Yeah, just watch how much I'll spend or make using a work avatar, knowing that it's a pink slip away from vanishing forever...

[#7]

Great comments so far. On topic: I'm signed in as Samm Larkham, but to keep in the spirit of the conversation, I'm Sam Driver of ThinkBalm.

@Maggie: You've captured one very possible path forward. As more groups with competing agendas emerge in public virtual worlds, we'll likely see more regulation. It's a matter of opinion whether this is a good thing for everyone, but from the tool-for-work perspective, it would simplify things.

@Shockwave: Your first post gets at the heart of one of the major questions at the heart of work use of immersive tools. In one sense, the vibrant economy in Second Life is quintessentially business. What we study at ThinkBalm is actually something quite different: how are these immersive tools like virtual worlds being used to get work done?

The very complex issues associated with ownership and legal status aren't as much of a problem for people using Second Life as a collaboration tool. This isn't their business, just a way to work more effectively. This is an issue of working in a public virtual world. Many businesses don't use public environments.

@Otenth and Shockwave: You both bring up good points. If, in the physical world, we can get by with redundant names, we should be able to create a system to handle it in an immersive tool.

The groups issue is a commonly mentioned problem for mixing work and personal activities with a single avatar. I'd argue that if your groups list might be an issue, then you probably should consider yourself in the "yes, I need two avatars" group. In the end, this is a software design issue, so innovative solutions may appear if there is enough of a demand.

The last issue about ownership of stuff when you leave jobs is a gray area you'd want to look into. Most (if not all!) employment contracts don't specify ownership of materials created in a virtual world. I'd rely on existing corporate policies as guidance, and ask the question of your HR or legal team if you feel you are at risk. Forewarned is forearmed.

-Sam Driver

[#8]

@Maggie: You've captured one very possible path forward. As more groups with competing agendas emerge in public virtual worlds, we'll likely see more regulation. It's a matter of opinion whether this is a good thing for everyone, but from the tool-for-work perspective, it would simplify things.

I'd say it's beyond dispute: It's clearly not "a good thing for everyone", or it wouldn't need to be be "more regulation". "More regulation" is beneficial only to those who wish to seize control of the agenda.

And if Linden Research's agenda contininues to be "Clean this place up so we can sell it to corps and edus", then they will have totally failed to identify who their market really is.The fact is that there are already other VW platforms that do a much better job of meeting those corp+edu needs. Chasing that market while neglecting and insulting the actual customers is major phail.

I do hope we don't see LL burn down the village in order to save it. But blog entries like this one don't do much to convince me that LL has managed to find--or buy, which seems their post-Philip M style--a clue.

Speaking of buying clues...

" Second Life Blogs powered by Jive Software's Clearspace ® 2.5.7"

Now we know who to blame for this site. "We wrote the book on Social Business Software"...oh mercy. If one buzzword is good two must be better. At least they didn't say "enterprise"....

"Forwarned is forarmed", as Sam says...

Those of us who are working with the benefit of employment contracts (most people aren't) will find that the ownership of all their work product is pretty explicitly spelled out...and if like most folks you're producing "work for hire", the ownership of that work product is firmly in your employer's hands. There's nothing special about "materials" created in a virtual world; it's software.

.

[#9]

So at some point in the future you are going to allow us to create accounts using our real life names or are you intending to force our real life identies out so people like the guy over by Orlando that keeps sending me death threats can come and murder me?

[#10]

"Chasing that market while neglecting and insulting the actual customers is major phail."......very very well said Maggie..

[#11]

I agree with and applaud Sam's idea that people should be given the opportunity to use their real names for their SL avatars. Some of the other "workaround" ideas already mentioned have some merit too. But what of us who have been in SL long enough now to have an avatar identity that is connected with our use of SL as a work platform? In-world, as many people don't know my real name as do, but my avatar name is easily recognized, and connected with my RL work by all with whom I would do RL work there.

Here's my audacious idea. Allow users to have two avatar names for the same account if they wished to do so, and to swap those names as easily as one swaps group tags. For those of us who have a distinct avatar identity, we could continue to use that when appropriate, while slowly introducing ourselves to new in-world contacts and situations as our real selves. Perhaps someday a complete transition would be made and we would give up our original pseudonyms, but that could be an option, not a requirement.

Until then, just call me Coughran!

Dick Dillon

[#12]

An avatar is, among other things, the 3D visual corollary to an email signature or recorded outgoing voice mail message. It’s a way of customizing our professional communications.

An avatar can be a whole lot more than that. For many of us, it's an identity, not anything remotely similar to a signature and not remotely augmentationist. Heck, I don't even exist in the real world. My typist uses a different avatar for both her professional concerns and her "her" time; that doesn't make me any less real. And I seriously doubt that anyone who could dismiss my existence so casually -- and the existences of all those other avs who've built identities for themselves here because they wanted to be here and not because they were looking for professional tools -- could possibly understand the diversity of the Second Life ecology.

We seem to be heading rapidly down the virtual version of the Industrial Revolution. The people with all the power and money are busily concentrating only on their immediate economic benefits and ignoring the fact that they're destroying the world's ecology in the process. Because guess what? Worlds are systems -- virtual worlds too -- and when you let one group of people become the only ones who matter, you throw the system out of whack. And that's not going to help anyone -- including the augmentationist businesses. They'll only survive here if we have a healthy and diverse ecology to support them. And I don't think virtual worlds will have centuries to recover from the first few decades of industrial pollution.

 It will become automatic as immersive environments become integrated with enterprise directories.

Second Life needs much more granular communication controls before this could possibly be a good thing. As Sam said himself, not everyone is going to want separate alts for business and personal time. In the physical world, you can at least turn your cell phone off during personal time. In Second Life, you have the choice between leaving yourself open to all communication from everyone or setting Busy and turning off all communication from everyone and everything. Not good.

Okay, I've yammered enough now. :-)

[#13]

When I twittered about the report last week, I received a slew of responses—mostly all in agreement with the basic “work avatar” premise.

Well, duh. :-) The people who pay attention to SL on Twitter are going to be heavily loaded in favor of augmentationism, so of course you're going to get responses that heavily favor augmentationism. People who want to keep their physical lives and their Second lives apart except in whatever limited ways they can choose without social or technological coercion -- the people who would likely be less in favor of this -- aren't going to be responding to you on Twitter because they don't follow you on Twitter and never will no matter how much you try to turn into an official communication form. In fact, even plenty of the augmentationists probably won't follow you on Twitter because they use it for actual family and friends and unless they're full-time metaverse professionals (as opposed to professionals who sometimes use the metaverse), they won't want marketing messages from you guys invading their personal time.

I  suspect most of us, yes, even the immersionists who hate the augmentationist road you're threatening to go down these days, have no problem with the idea of dressing appropriately for the setting. You shouldn't be wearing the same outfit to a business meeting and a nightclub in Second Life anymore than you would in real life. But there's a long way between dressing and behaving professionally when called for and having your avatar linked to your real, publicly visible identity.

One of the great things about Second Life is that it allows people opportunities they wouldn't have in the physical world. When potential clients and customers can just click a tab and find out things about your physical life that aren't relevant to your ability to do a job, then you remove those opportunities by opening the gates to all the racism, ablism, sexism, agism, and every other illogical and cruel barrier that already exists in the physical world. Including the advantages given to socially normative neurotypicals regardless of whether a job's required skills involve more than a bare minimum of social behavior.

If companies want to judge people based on their willingness and ability to act professionally in a professional setting, go for it -- as long as they accept that "professional" is defined a little differently here, just as business behavior in Japan and Saudia Arabia and South Carolina are all a little different. Good businesspeople trying to do business in a new setting learn and adapt to the local customs without trying to force the locals to recreate themselves according to the foreigners' customs. But as soon as your customers are forced -- either by technology or by social expectation -- to expose themselves to the same discrimination here that they do elsewhere, you're going to lose a huge part of what makes SL special.

[#14]

Can we assume all the Lindens will start showing up in-world in business suits now? Since they presumably are there to see customers (that would be us, remember?). No dragons, no tiny robots...

O tempora, O mores...

"Second Life wasn't designed as a work tool..." indeed. It built its success by *not* being "a work tool"'.

So do us a favor and don't be a tool., OK?

[#15]

well my sl avatar is an extension of me, the rl me, with the addition of pink hair and pink wings - so it is my work avatar cuz it's just me.  of course, "work" avatar could also be open to discrimination lawsuits in the US if an employer decided that they should "own" apsects of my avatar

IBM did awesome with their guidelines and they don't care if you are a furry, a robot, or even another gender.  they see that it's the quality of the work and not your appearance that matters.  once you get into dictating what an avatar should look look like, you are not far off from the discrimination we have all worked hard to reduce

what does it matter if my avatar is a furry? what does it matter if i am a jew?  or a female?

bravo IBM for showing that you value the human spirit and not its outward appearance!

[#16]

well put Pocket *thinks about Jokay's treatment*

[#17]

I guess I'm a little surprised that this is coming up so late.  We started using "corporate" avatars nearly three years ago when we brought Dr. Dobb's Journal/CMP into Second Life.  It was apparent to us back then that the corporate avatar and the personal avatar had to be separate for all the reasons stated here.  Since that time we've created numerous avatars for clients as well as recommending the naming convention of FirstNameLastName with the Linden Lab provided last name of choice.  This was simplified through the use of RegAPI and the ability for corporate customers to pay for a last name that could be automatically assigned to employees. It had become standard practice at some organizations (Cisco and Sun Microsystems for example--though this was in place at those organizations before we began working for them) for their employees to follow this protocol.

In regard to HR Policy--some organizations aside from IBM have made additions to their HR policies to accommodate the working "avatar" in virtual world environments. This includes Sun Microsystems and, I believe, Cisco.  I suspect there are a number of other businesses that have already adopted policy--they simply may not be in Second Life but one of the other VW environments.

[#18]

The idea that we all have to conform to bland looking business avatars is absolutely wrong headed, I can't believe I'm reading that from you Amanda! :-)  Note that IBM's guidelines for virtual worlds specifically does not stipulate avatar appearance other than some vaguely worded statement that the avatar appearance shouldn't be offensive to anyone. Chuck Hamilton who is leading their virtual worlds learning programs at IBM likes to say that "at IBM you can come to a meeting as a fish." Chuck likes to sport a kilt at business meetings as a proud expression of his Scottish heritage, other IBM's switch gender or appear as robots. Sun Microsystems Chariman Scot McNealy has been known to sport a Shark hockey jersey in Second Life at all hands employee meetings. Today, at I gave a pitch to a very traditional company and one of the company leaders told the group that she is really into fish, she has five salt water aquariums at home is in fact a fish in Second Life, no one in the meeting had any problem with that. My good friend and virtual worlds industry leader Eilif Trondsen appears as a Viking in Second Life. The avatar is a wonderful means of self expression. The idea that your avatar has to look as "professional" as you would look in a business meeting is absurd. The standards for office appearance is rooted in early industrialism, and the fact that virtual worlds users are questioning these ideas of conformity in the workplace is something we should embrace and leverage. The self expression through the avatar is a great ice breaker that accelerate bonding and creativity in business meetings. The fact that I can wear a parrot on my shoulder and shorts and T shirt is liberating to  me and adds to the fun factor of virtual worlds, which is after all how we want to sell Second Life, it makes learning, meeting and work fun! If we try to please the bureaucrats and convince them that SL is as boring as a live meting we've lost. We have to stop selling SL as the next best thing to a live meeting. We have to sell SLas something different and  better than a live meeting.

[#19]

Amanda--agree totally.  If people stepped outside the tech industry and into other market sectors, they'd find that traditional almost always has to come first if you're going to sell it to those that hold the budgets.  Engineering and architectural firms, banking/financial, industrial and manufacturing, for example, are still quite traditional in their thinking and most have not yet adopted instant messaging, blogging, have no idea what a wiki is, let alone what immersion or immersive means in the context of virtual worlds.

[#20]

Great comments--thanks all.

Just want to add one point of clarification. Apologies that I wasn't clear before. I LOVE the variety of avatars in SL and I am always on the side of personal expression--human or non-human avatars.  Parrots on shoulders and pink wings are the spice of Second Life. Some of my best meetings have been with Lindens as dragons, potted plants, flying coffee cups, robots, piles of rolling rocks, and jello molds.

Anders, you and I once had a great talk about how when enterprises get into vw's they are more comfortable with traditional meeting rooms and conference spaces. Then, once employees become acclimated to the virtual world, then they explore more fancifal and creative environments. Why sit down at a meeting table when you can stand on the beach? Remember? Same thing holds true with avatars. Most organizations want to begin with tradtional business avatars and then they naturally explore more creative and innovative avatar expressions of individuality. If a large, traditional organization begins their Second Life journey as cupcakes or scantily clad warriors (no offense to either avatar types), then they will dismiss Second Life as a game--not the powerful work environment that Second Life, and all virtual worlds, are.

Agree? Disagree? Let's keep going. This is an incredibly important dialogue.

[#21]

I know you embrace fanciful avatars, which is why I reacted so strongly against your statement that we have  to "look--and act--as professional as we do in a physical workplace." We have to stop using early industrial age conventions of the office as a metaphor for Second Life. Nothing productive happens in an office setting and business leaders know it. They are desperately trying to shake things up to get creative: work from home, Googleplexes, what ever it will take to get people to innovate. If we start sounding like HR drones we will lose all respect with corporate leaders who know better. We're not going to make any friends in the bureacracy ranks anyway, they hate us because we don't represent status quo. So let's stop pretending that we're creating a "virtual office" and instead focus on reinventing the work place! The idea that every company has to start with a traditional conference space and "business appropriate avatar" is absolutely wrong headed. This "Monkey see money build approach" as Chuck Hamilton puts it, is something we as an industry has left behind us. We've created offices and banquet halls and they failed. We are now moving on and focusing on building learning, collaboration and innovation spaces and avatars that do not use pre-industrial metaphors. Let's stop being so darn insecure about what we're doing that we nuter the Second Life experience with mirror worlds of offices and business avatars, and instead focus on break through innovation with radically new and different learning and innovation environments.

[#22]

Anders, your miles and miles ahead and I love it! Now, we have to work on getting everyone else there.

[#23]

Anders, honestly...the ROI goals for any type of virtual world applicaton for any corporate entity are different and depending on what they want to accomplish, determines the build.  Yes, almost all want to innovate, but you have to realize that innovation to many is participating in a virtual world environment in the first place.  Does this mean they're ready to recreate their workplace? or does it simply mean that they're ready to experiment with some (to them) very new business tools? with recreation of a workplace coming later after they've gotten their feet wet? In regard to educators, tech and the entertainment industry--they've all embraced fanciful in one form or another and its incorporated in their business models -- Innovate! Create! My point is, outside of these sectors--life is very different in the corporate office and until those age 35+ have retired and the next gen is in the positions of power, those industries will continue to require education and traditionalism in their initial entrees to virtual worlds.

[#24]

Anne, I think that Prokofy Neva and Tenshi are much higher on that list that you. I am sorry that you are. Guess someone really disagrees with you.

Rissa & Anders, I agree. Paradiem shifts always leave people behind. But there is something familiar about early industrial age conventions of the office than allows people to make the leap. Once they do then the trur change begins.

[#25]

So that's why my sex desks are so popular right now....Slackers ;-)

If business was really embracing the virtual world the appearance of the avatar wouldn't be an issue, rather their behaviour inside the virtual world. To a point the Lindens embrace that one, nice unusual avatars reflecting personality, diversity. If a corporation wants the tiny community to come and wander their environment they should have a 'tiny av' on staff or invite one in to see just how different the camera view is. Behaviour? Hmmm not always as professional as I'd hope. Maybe those corporate uniforms will get text like you see on the back of a truck 'well behaved avi? call xxx xxxx' hah!

But with transaction histories only going back 30 days there won't be many real-life businesses using this as a commercial platform...Marketing maybe. Now how does a business entering SL get the word out? Freebies? (aren't they going to be taxed soon!!!??!! All those 'expensive' transactions) Events? (When the sim can hold more than 50 people and not crash) or press....Well real life press seems to work, you get all the non-players thinking woooo how exciting and unusual but garnering the Secondlife press can be tricky, there's no 'mainstream' media here and you find beloved gossip blogs (Shopping Cart Disco) getting way more views than say Treet.TV the only real attempt at a Secondlife TV station.

Your idea for seperate grids for the corporates is probably the best one, at least that way their specially created work avatars won't be copybotted the second they step off Help Island...

Heh imagine that, your work uniform copied and distributed before you get to use it... :-D

I have to say wandering the ThinkBalm sim myself I wasn't overly impressed...A virtual world and the thing they seem to embrace most iin the sim is text on a prim....Woo there's hot use of immersive technology! Funnily enough when I first wanted to bring business into SL i checked out many of those 'consultant' type sims as well as wandered a lot of Linden sims in hope to find some biz-friendly advice....In the end I went it alone with a few businesses, put the others on hold until Secondlife is more biz friendly.

Secondlife - immersive, exciting, unusual, futuristic! Let's keep it that way

[#26]

Actually, Freebies aren't going to be taxed. They are going to be viewed as loss leaders and ads. Thats a good thing. Will the creators have to pay for them? Yes. SCD is a to sl what TMZ, National enquirer and Stat magazine are to RL. Of course people want gossip more than real news.

As for the copybotting, that is so way overblown. Do you actually expect the PN to give a cow about thinkbalm when they can grief Prokofy or some other person who constantly attacks them?

[#27]

This is always an interesting topic, though it recurs (and must recur) with each wave of new user entering virtual worlds, as people discover and gradually master the power these environments afford for representing the self.

But these environments also impose constraints - using them for business imposes further constraints. And yet ... the play of affordance vs. constraint is more complex and nuanced than the dialectic between conservative/familiar and new/wild/innovative that Anders and others have portrayed.

In World2Worlds' work with corporates, we're obliged to consider a continuum of ways in which aspects of avatar appearance, ownership and usage are bound to people, policy, law, culture, organization, and inevitably, to the technology of the SL platform. I wish desperately that I could have _more_ free-ranging conversations with clients about whether an Armani Suit, jeans, or, conversely, pink hair or a Grendel's Children Sea Siren avatar is right for them - but I more frequently find myself engaged in somewhat more (on the one hand) pragmatic and (on the other) nuanced dialogue.

Executives who come into this environment to engage with colleagues and customers bring with them the entire notional apparatus of the real world, and are (by and large) keenly concerned with appearance -- in my experience, their concern is amplified in direct proportion to the degree in which they expect to function as producers, leaders, and public figures in the space. Moreover, their concerns are typically of a sophisticated (I might even say 'immersed') kind, that acknowledges the whole semantic breadth of aspect and costume to communicate position in hierarchy, age, class, sexuality, etc. At toplevel, they generally have intuitive understsanding of the power of the conventionally-arrayed human form to compel attention and courtesy, induce emotional harmony in the interlocutor and project gravitas and credibility. They are very quickly ready to accept the (fundamentally immersionist) premise that (for purposes of interaction in Second Life) their avatar IS their 'self,' as well as the (augmentationist) principle that the avatar is an extension of their real-world personal brand (and to make the reasonable assumption that relationships begun in 3D space may - ideally _will_ - continue in the physical world).

So they often make what appear to be conventional choices, but they make them for very carefully-considered, and usually sensible reasons. They want to maximize bandwidth of communication, eschew attention-getting, minimize pointless distraction and prevent cognitive dissonance when they meet people in person. Further, it's worth noting that refined conventionally-professional appearance is more easily and reliably achieved and managed in SL than edgy/playful/wild-and-crazy. The latter is very hard to do without looking like a noob.

Beyond questions of appearance, there are numerous - fundamentally technical - reasons why avatars associated with a long-term business presence must bow to constraint -- and why this may rationalize separate maintenance of 'working' and 'personal' selves. At the most trivial level, use of Second Life leaves visible (and increasingly web-searchable) traces - data-trails, photos, chat-transcripts, visible group memberships in the Profile, group-associated head-tags, etc. - which clients and colleagues may, in some cases, find discomfiting; and which may, as a result, expose the company to liability. An inverse (but equally important) concern is to protect the individual's privacy.

Most critically, because the Second Life architecture ties region management, object perms, group management, access to concierge services, registration API and other permissions to the avatar, it's often most efficient if avatars buying, building, decorating and managing a Second Life corporate presence and its numerous assets (regions, parcels, build elements, scripts, groups, etc.) are owned by the organization. This enables non-disruptive transfer and retention of intellectual property and maintenance of basic security when personnel changes occur.

[#28]

Anne, I think that Prokofy Neva and Tenshi are much higher on that list that you. I am sorry that you are. Guess someone really disagrees with you. 
Rissa & Anders, I agree. Paradiem shifts always leave people behind. But there is something familiar about early industrial age conventions of the office than allows people to make the leap. Once they do then the trur change begins.

Yes but notice how Linden Lab has chosen not to respond to my direct question? I must therefore assume Linden Lab has plans to force everyone's RL identities public.

Also Amanda, if LL is going to post our real life identities then LL will also have to post all the Linden Lab and outsourcing identities as well right? And since you have declared the time has come for this then why do I still see Lindens in world not in professional human avatars and walking about as furries, dragons, warriors, etc.?

Personally I agree people should have the option to have an account for professional work. In my profession no changes are needed since my name is my brand and I generally go around as a walking advertisement. You see some people happen to be in the entertainment business. They are not in the corporate suit business at all. Creativity is not nurtured by suffocating dress codes and rules. Even Disney understands this and the Imagineering Department is not subject to the military dress code the rest of Disney must abide by.

Hopefully Linden Lab will suppress anyone trying to force authoritarian doctrine upon Second Life because that behavior has always been a failure. I remember the last time I went to the Chinese copy of Second Life. I was ordered to wear a Chinese uniform and one of their people followed me around. I was unable to comply since I do not understand Mandarin Chinese and therefore was unable to figure out how to weear the official Chinese Government issued uniform. So I logged off and never returned. We can see how successful the communists are with their copy of Second Life with all their rules applied.

[#29]

Hi -- Erica Driver here, with ThinkBalm. Great conversation happening here. Thanks to Amanda for starting the discussion. Remember: the context of this entire conversation is *work-related use* of a public virtual world. I think Sam put it well in his original interview with Amanda above: "As long as the way our avatars look is in compliance with organizational policy (or, if no policy in place, the avatar’s appearance doesn’t offend others with whom we’re meeting in a professional context), and our avatar is connected with our real professional identity, there’s quite a bit of room for personal expression." This pretty much summarizes it, for me.

[#30]

And we all know how successful Dr. Dobbs is...

In fact, Sun has their own VW collaboration platform now:

https://wonderland.dev.java.net/index2.html

http://research.sun.com/projects/mc/mpk20.html

http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/Javadesktop/ProjectWonderlandResources

http://blogs.sun.com/wonderland/

It's written in Java, and open-source. While the code is still at the beta stage, out-of-the-box it already has impressive capabilities for collaboration exceeding those we labor mightily to try to create in Second Life, and is one of the platforms I was referring to upthread.

Project Wonderland has relatively primitive avatar customization capabilities right now, but it's on thier roadmap for enhancement before full release.

[#31]

The basic thinking about having a professional avatar is right in my opinion, but for this to happen on a bigger scale a couple of prerequisites must be filled:

• Full support for international characters so that people can use real real-names and not just English real-names.
• Updates to profiles to empower the user to take full control of what content is disclosed and to whom. As an example, groups you may want to be seen in a private setting may be totally inappropriate in a business setting.
• Maybe a dual login should be the standard, where everyone can log in, with virtually two different profiles, yet retain full access to a shared  inventory and in-world assets. It could even be that when logged in with the professional profile you could only see the professional profiles of others and vice versa, with some basic information being shared.

To prototype the notion of a professional user, Linden Lab employees should only appear in-world using the Linden name as such a user and avatar. This includes full disclosure of real identity.

I'd also like to see a developer program for content developers specializing in content to the professional market. This includes active development of interfaces between SecondLife and corporate systems like content stores, calendaring, e-mail and IM, in addition to authentication and syndication of directory information. It could also include telephony integration to in-world voice (incoming at least.)

This program would be accompanied by a marketing program.

Now, the interesting question is of course where does adult businesses, land and content fit onto this picture? If you think of it from a strict corporate viewpoint, they probably don't mix into the equation.

[#32]

Why have you put this in the context of work avatars? I study with the Open University, I haven't had to use Second Life for my studies so far but the OU have a presence here, it's somewhat silly that I would need to use an account name and then tie it to my RL name with the OU to go to an inworld class. Just let people use their real names for one account, not just employees, everyone who wants to should have that option free of charge.

There's an uncomfortable social engineering angle to all of this, Linden Lab are playing too much with social engineering and they should stop it. Let the world evolve, stop sticking your fingers into areas where they aren't welcome.

[#33]

As an HR executive, I can tell you there is no way in virutal hell I would allow my company's employees to mix an avatar for Company use with their personal use of SL.  Simply put, you are opening such a can of worms for harassment, discrimination, confidentiality issues, etc. that the company may as well find a buyer now before they are bankrupt and need a new "partner".

Someone above mentioned that one of the great things about SL is that you can do things here that you cannot do in the virtual world.  One of the drawbacks for business use is that normal work inhibitions come down when the SL screen comes up.  Think about how often you send or receive emails that you KNOW there is no way would have been worded as they were had it been a face to face, or even a phone conversation. Now imagine how much further that will go if you add the spontaneity of real time communication via text or voice, eliminating the thoughtful review that hopefully goes on before you hit the "send" button, and take away the nonverbal cues and contextual restraint you have in an RL conversation.

Add in what the employee may be doing with their avatar in their "personal" time and how easy it would be for coworkers to then learn about that and make their own judgements (or use it later in a lawsuit) and you have a real mess.  If you think all your employees would think through their groups, picks, etc. on a work avatar, you are simply naive.  Throw in consideration of how a work avatar can poorly represent your company through what they do in personal use of SL, and you can see even more potential for problems.  Someone who is obviously your company's employee acts like a total ass and insults someone at a nightclub, and that avatar turns out to have a buyer for a major customer behind the keyboard, and suddenly you've lost business, and likely you would never know why.

I would recommend that a company using a platform like SL for business expressly "own" the avatar account, lock, stock, and barrel.  The avatar is for company use only, just as a company car or PC can be limited.  Any and all RL workplace rules apply the same to your SL workplace.  Provide a small budget for the employee to customize the avatar (I mean, seriously, you don't need to wash your clothes, so how much do you really need?  You can buy a decent skin and a few outfits for $20 USD) but make it clear normal dress codes, etc. apply.  If they want to transfer Lindens from a personal account and buy more, fine, but the account and everything on it is now company property.  You decide to flash, harrass, discriminate, jokingly tp a coworker to a strip club, whatever, with your company provided avatar, you are subject to the same corrective action as if you did it in RL.  Because I assure you, the other party, their attorney, the judge, and the jury will NOT care that you did it in a "virtual" world, and even if you can convince the judge and jury the RL laws on harassment, etc. should not apply, your own attorneys will charge a pretty penny for the trouble.

[#34]

Sorry, this is my first time posting here.  I did not mean to be replying to Ciaran specifically!  Just contributing to the discussion in general.

[#35]

Tolya

Your response seems to assume that everyone who uses SL for personal reasons (with or without a business connection) is a boorish, abusive, whacked-out fetishist. In fact, the majority of people I have met, and with whom I work in SL behave in-world about the way they behave in RL (and I have met several dozen in RL!). Some are more "busted out" than others, some are more reserved, but in general they all behave in acceptable ways - from a business management perspective - in both worlds.

In our real life, our organization - which happens to be a nonprofit provider of mental health and substance abuse counseling services - is sensitive to the potential harm that could be done to us if, say, a key employee was arrested for DWI or public drunkenness. We know that a person who has a problem with anger and controlling their temper should not be our PR director! In truth, though, there is not too much we can do to control behavior off-premises and outside work hours other than offer guidelines.

Should the virtual world be different? This is probably a two level question. For those who come into SL because it is part of their job to do so, it may be possible for the company to restrict the use of the avatar created for that purpose to business activities only and thus to control extraneous behavior. However, I don't see how you could restrict that same individual from creating a free account on their own, and once that is done, it is entirely possible that Avatar A (the business presence) will be connected in the minds of others with Avatar B (the social presence). What do you do then?

I think the real pro-action comes not at the level of trying to control "post-work" behavior, in RL or in a virtual world, but in recruiting and hiring stable, intelligent, mature individuals for positions which could involved sensitive interactions with others at any time of the day or night. Of course, most major corporations, government agencies, and others who should have the tools to do so, are rife with examples of failed hiring practices.

[#36]

@Everybody: I'm fascinated that this topic works as a lightning-rod for anticomment, and that this acerbic dialogue between pro-business folks and inworld creatives/the arts/social experiment/transhumanism/Burning Life/whatever folks goes on any more.

I mean, I don't want to be a peacemaker or anything, but when I coax corporates to consider VW projects, I tend to push Second Life instead of walled-garden and small-grid solutions. I do this not because of native inworld traffic (microscopic by comparison with the web-ocean in which all solutions float) or even native inworld demographics (which are, and have always been superior), but because there's a culture and a community here that kicks out fabulous couture and houseplants and works as the Athens where the dialogue about the future of VWs is happening. And because, frankly, availability of "the wonder of Second Life 24/7" provides intrigue that helps me to help newcomers rationalize the relative difficulty of coming inworld for the first time and helps them stay involved. It's the same logic that induces tradeshow producers to put their shows in major cities -- they're happenin' places.

Getting people to stay involved is absolutely critical for business, because increased immersion (which I define, somewhat circularly, as 'fluency, mastery, confidence, insight, and evolved appreciation for the medium's charms and affordances' is what opens the door to the kind of thought-shift that can make VWs begin to feel like, for example, a viable collaboration environment or workplace. To the non-immersed, these propositions are extremely dubious -- the 3D environment feels like 'noise and complexity' rather than 'an additional high-bandwidth source of information.'

I would be shocked if the majority of Lindens didn't understand all of this deep in their bones, and weren't happy to openly acknowledge the vital importance of SL native culture to the future of business applications. To paraphrase Maggie: without the culture, you might as well use WL or Quak or increasingly glitzy and functional OpenSim.

Now ... over on the other side, what do the erotic furries and performance artists get from the corporate drones? (grin) Business needs the same things from SL as it needs from other technologies: stability, scale, security, protection of IP, lower friction-of-access, robust voice, granular communication controls (and group-chat that works), APIs, open interfaces, tools, extensibility, manageability and a declining cost-curve for implementation. And - just like on the web - these things will benefit native culture and economy as they improve, which will happen more quickly if business commits to the paradigm. Note that I don't believe that "getting business to commit to the paradigm" is the ONLY way SL can see explosive growth, any more than business is really, truly, fundamentally involved (yet) in the growth of social networks and Twitter. With $150+ million per quarter churn in virtual goods and land, SL's 'native economy' looks like a good place to be and stay. But if the credence of business translates to a higher valuation for the company, happy investors, and eventually a successful IPO, and if all THAT translates (quickly, please) to no crashes, no lag, 1000 people on a sim, SL Voice that sounds as good as Skype and (optional) real-name avatars, I'm okay with that.

As to questions about excessive regulation and forcing people to use their real names on their avatars (as opposed to _allowing_ same) ... Why would LL do this, and who would recommend it? Private regions, which is what all (serious) corporates use, can be access-controlled based on whatever criteria the owning organization feels is beneficial -- from 'public' to 'we only admit locked-to-region avatars created through our regAPI upon submission of DNA samples.' And LL is barred from sharing user personal information with corporate customers and partners unless they start using a radically more explicit opt-in on account creation. Given the culture of the web, I don't see this happening on the grid-at-large, though I guess it could happen on a segregated 'business ghetto' grid if someone wanted to create one.

So ... we really are, sorta, "all in this together," no? What's left to fight over is priorities and details of implementation (always fun) and the nitty-gritty of core issues like "DRM vs. convenience" (Prok thinks being able to set perms on a complex object via a recursive function is equivalent to socialism; I think struggling for half an hour before I can safely hand off a powerpoint display to a client and know that it'll work is ... well, I was gonna say 'fascism,' but it's just stupidity). Where Prok and I would doubtless agree, however, is in pushing back against the commoditization of artisanship by ripoff-artists and "digital stuff wants to be free" kooks, particularly those who want to make digital stuff free to corporations who should be paying for it.

[#37]

Coughran:

"Your response seems to assume that everyone who uses SL for personal reasons (with or without a business connection) is a boorish, abusive, whacked-out fetishist."

Not at all, no more than I assume that all my employees discriminate, sexually harrass, or steal from the company.  However, it is not "everyone" that counts.  It is the small but significant number who are the exception that you have to worry about.  If I could assume everyone would behave, my profession would not exist, and neither would lawyers.

The sad reality is that a small but significant percentage of employees, say as little as 5%, will behave boorishly and abusively.  They are even MORE likely to do so when you remove the restraints on behavior that you have in RL interactions that are absent in SL.  5% is a small number.  On a workforce of 1,000 (our US total), which is still a small workforce, that is 50 people.  Legal costs alone (let alone staff time, etc,) to get 50 such lawsuits thrown out would be, conservatively, $500,000, money coming straight from my bottom line.  The cost of just one of those proceeding to trial and the company still winning, add another $100,000 minimum.  And if you lose, or settle...

If you think 5% is too high, it is about the percentage of our workforce we terminate annually for policy violations (including boorish and abusive whacked out behavior), and our overall turnover is low compared to other companies.  Remember a lot of the types of suits I am talking about do not result from a termination, but from an employee who claims, rightly or wrongly, that they were subjected boorish, abusive, whacked-out behavior in the workplace.

Note, I am not talking about restricting people's personal behavior on their own time.  I am suggesting that companies who decide to use SL and similar platforms for business really take ownership as an employer and as a provider of the workplace.  You want to use SL for personal fun - great!  But unlike in RL, you actually CAN have 2 separate identities, live 2 separate lives, and if we as an employer are going to have you work in a virtual world, we should insist that the work/personal separation be there.  So, issue your employee an avatar right along with a laptop and employee handbook, and make sure they understand the rules when using that (company)avatar.  When work is done, they can log out as Jane Workerbee and log in as Sexilicious Dominatrix and be as kinky, boorish, and perverted, or as "normal" and reserved, as they want to be.

[#38]

@Tolya: <applause>Totally agree.</applause> Further, there are ways to deal intelligently with the 'company avatar' strategy and general business policy for avatarics that are in-line with the notion of technology populism (users own their tools) and avoid the (arguably creepy) 'custom-last-name' dodge. As in physical-world HR, the most important thing is to articulate the risk, explain how the policy mitigates the risk, and try to make compliance as simple as possible.

I also thought it was extremely insightful of you to note that remote-, asynchronous-, and/or semi-anonymized media can induce a certain kind of sociopathy, and that - just as with email policies, wiki policies, blogging policies, etc. - you need to clarify what's "not okay."

In a spirit of inquiry (and okay, troublemaking), I would ask the assembly how they feel about the notion that _some_ unconventional avatar choices and use-modes emerge from a similar strain of sociopathy. Two examples from virtual life may clarify - our events at SmarterTechnology are frequently attended by a fellow who insists on puffing on a big cigar that releases persistent clouds of particle smoke - behavior that interrupts sight-lines and is distracting to speakers. I would call this (mildly) sociopathic. By contrast, when we did the Kelley Executive Partners launch event last year, several Lindens were in attendance, including one who was wearing an enormous (and magnificent) Egyptian-themed avatar representing an (as I recall) enamelwork manifestation of the winged Anubis. But this person (as one might expect) was graceful and masterful enough to seat him/her-self in a completely unobtrusive position, so they became a charming and majestic part of the scenery and a unique value-add to the event (at least from my perspective).

[#39]

I could actually be quite offended at this. I will have you know I am very professional in what I do and I also happen to be a giraffe as you can see...What on earth makes you think that because I am a giraffe I cannot go about my business in a professional manor?

Do you not think this is called second life for a reason?

If you want big corporate business why on earth didn't you create an other platform for it insted of loosing all the wonderful content creators and business that were here? Why insist on mixing the 2 or just getting rid of what you had achieved?

[#40]

There are several pre made professional avatars in the library that all new residents and old residents have at their disposal.

[#41]

One question I have is: where would business people get their business-like avatars?

I'm pretty good at putting an avatar together, but I would be at a loss if my bosses wanted to come into SL and get up and running with a professional-looking self.

Also, this subject was done to death in the SL Forums:

http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=344084

[#42]

I love this discussion.

I'm a guy who goes around SL as an 8-foot copper robot, and I haven't had any problem with that in a business context. As a matter of fact, these days I'm more likely to pull out the human avi when I'm not working.

It never occurred to me that the avatar would get in the way of line-of-sight; I tend to assume, possibly wrongly, that everybody cams around all the time, as I do.

Also, I'd like to point out that some of the fetishists and furries are also corporate users, and they're very good about keeping the boundaries separate. Which is not surprising--they've been doing it their whole professional lives, long before they got into SL.

I think SL activities can be broken down into three categories, for the purposes of this discussion:

- Business

- Personal activities that are nonetheless not objectionable in a business context, such as music and art.

- Personal activities that are objectionable in a business context, such as sex and politics.

Use your business avatar for #1, use an alt for #3, and, for #2, using your business avatar or alt is a matter of personal preference. However, you should bear in mind what someone earlier in this thread said--if your business avatar belongs to your employer, and you leave that job, you'll lose all the inventory, friends list, groups, and customization you've put into that avatar.

[#43]

I am not really sure I understand the need for this Amanda.

Most enterprise endeavors in secondlife that are "serious business" are going to be working behind a firewall as does big blue now. Maybe schools teachers would utilize this as I imagine schools wish to be on this side of the firewall (I could be wrong on this-- A school offering online courses would not want a noobie wooden cawk trolling outside their classroom). I also think that, like you lindens, they would be required to follow strict rules as per their work agreement or they would find the unemployment lines to be long...

So I am wondering what the real angle on this is?

Be well.

[#44]

I think a great example of the sociopathy John is talking about, and one most of us will realize is obvious, is the fact that you really don't see a lot of short men, or women with "A" or "B" cups on SL.  On the contrary, it's mostly men seven feet tall who are built like brick s**thouses, to use my Dad's term, and women stacked bigger than Dolly Parton.  The greater the disconnect between "reality" and "virtual" (or fantasy) the more people relax and fall into juvenile behavior.  Certainly most people using SL for business will behave appropriately, but I am sure we all know one or two in our companies (or departments!) who would quickly start acting like an adolescent in a locker room.  These are the same people who are griefers throughout SL, and I think we can all agree there are too many of those AND they ruin it for the rest of us.  It will only take a few "employer sued for sexual harassment on SL" news stories to turn a lot of companies off using public platforms like SL, and using their own instead, or none at all.

And sorry, Fee, most people outside,serious hardcore SL folks (ie. the RL employees we would want using this for work) would have a hard time taking a giraffe seriously.  That's the same reason I wear a suit and not leathers for in-world business, and leave the whips and fetish gear in inventory for meetings.  Yeah, I can be VERY professional with them on, but I cannot control the reactions of others when they see me, and in business it is the perception others have of you that you need to manage, not the perception you have of yourself.  If I came to SL with the board of my company and asked to launch a major push to use SL for soft skills training and I showed up with my normal SL attire and a giraffe were representing LL, the meeting would be over as soon as the Chariman could find the "Quit" button.

[#45]

This is why we hire metaverse developers!

Creating avatars tends to be time-consuming work, and special requirements add to cost. It's generally assumed that a professional avatar will have a top-quality skin, shape, hair, clothing and accessories, and an appropriately-configured animation overrider (a device that supplants the default stand, fly, sit and other animations with better-wrought, more lifelike and compelling variants). There's also frequently a desire to achieve some level of physical resemblance (as well as harmony of style) between the avatar and its intended driver, though mileage varies here.

We think it's important to offer businesspeople the option of being more or less who they 'really are' -- so we strive (as required) to assemble avatars out of high-quality component parts that do justice to a person's ethnicity/race, physical mein and scale, age and other parameters. Finding such parts is not always easy. Second Life has historically been very strong in supplying skins, shapes and hair for a wide range of extravagantly-beautiful, perfectly-fit, 20-year-old Caucasian types, but has spottier support for other racial types, non-white skin tones, older skins and frames, African and Asian hair, etc. This is improving, however - and one hopes the trend will continue. As a backstop, World2Worlds (for example) has plans to partner with a range of artists to underwrite production of a library of globally-diverse human forms.

Photoreal resemblance is an occasional requirement, more challenging to fulfill. Good-quality orthogonal photography must be obtained, and the best artists (whose dance-cards are typically quite full) may spend days iterating a skin and shape -- typical timescale to delivery is a couple weeks. The results, of course, are uncanny -- which cuts both ways. Some find that as avatar resemblance to a known person (or simply 'avatar realism') increases, the paradoxical result is to call attention to the ways in which the avatar is NOT a person, which can be a little creepy. The phenomenon is referred to as 'the uncanny valley,' and is well documented in bioengineering and robotics. If you examine closely the work of the best Second Life skin and shape makers, you'll see that they artfully avoid crossing over into the uncanny valley by using various deliberate techniques for abstracting and suggesting, rather than depicting different kinds of detail. The result, far more often than not, is avatars of enormous charm and magnetism, and zero creepiness.

Finding business (and business-casual, and urban-business-casual, etc.) clothing is getting much easier - many of SL's top designers make a line or two, and some specialize. The quality of the very best stuff is positively luminous, and it's always fun to window-shop and note the latest styles.

[#46]

I"m a small biz person in RL and SL. I don't see for me a need to have separate work and personal avatars, as I try at all times to conduct myself professionally in my personal life -- they're my own businesses in both worlds, and I believe that through good personal conduct I can enhance my business.

However, were someone in SL on company time as just an employee, I can see that company wanting to control their behaviour, as not everyone feels obliged to act professionally 24 hours a day for what is just a job to them.

[#47]

"... it's always fun to window-shop and note the latest styles."

... says the guy who's been wearing the same T-shirt and jeans for three years.

[#48]

I've been in my work avatar for five years, Amanda. I just happen to have more than one job.

As for Thunderclap's usual trolling here, it's not about "attacking" someone, which is a misrepresentation of the *documentation* I do; rather it's important to publicize the recurring bad acts of the griefing groups, far from the "received wisdom" of those who think you should remain silent about their assaults, because they need to be named and shamed so as to avoid gathering new recruits and succeeding in their effort to pretend they are "educational" or "artistic" instead of thuggish. This is especially true of the third party viewer groups.

For example as part of his "business" in Second Life, Thunderclap indulged in an infantile prank on Xstreetsl.com selling two objects, one called "Pro Coffee" (get it, Pro -- Coffee har har yuk yuk) and the other Ban Prok something something -- like a fake Vietnamese product which is just meant to incite hatred and derision of me. These items appear to have been removed after abuse reporting.

And here, shockingly, without any Linden intervention, Thunderclap is implying that I "ought" to be higher up on a hit list of someone making death threats in SL. Er, what's up with that? Why should that stand? That's outrageous. There is no one in Second Life who deserves to have a death threat -- ever.

I think this kind of bullying incitement of hatred has to be called out; otherwise, Thunderclap gets away with his harassment of me again and again, for which there is no justification. He made this kind of outrageous, violent attack on me on the Dell blogs once and it took a year to get it removed.

It's clear that no matter how much the Lindens clean up Second Life and try to clean up some of the most egregious of its infestations of griefers on the grid, it's never enough. However, we do rely on them to set the tone.

[#49]

Re: If a large, traditional organization begins their Second Life journey as cupcakes or scantily clad warriors (no offense to either avatar types), then they will dismiss Second Life as a game--not the powerful work environment that Second Life, and all virtual worlds, are.

You Lindens spent so many years flogging the weirdness, and showing up yourselves in world as all kinds of odd things like a, rocker in jeans with a scripted bejewelled sparkling crotch, or a replica of Van Gogh's selfportrait or an octopus or a miniature guy in a fez, while we were all appearing as norms for the most part, although of course there have always been furries and elves and such.

So your lecturing on us "needing" to get ready for work is something you ought to turn on your own staff first and foremost. I'd be happy if all Lindens appeared inworld in polo shirts and chinos, with their names stitched on the pockets, quite frankly, because I think it would help them to caper less and attract sycophancy less in office meetings. Yes, it sounds bland, but it's a cultural norm that helps inject notions of "service with a smile" that might otherwise be missing.

I don't believe in forcing people who don't feel comfortable with furries, elves, puddles of jello etc to be "creative" and "free". It's horribly politically correct. You Lindens really did a favour to everybody when you finally put "normal" business attire into the library and as choices on the sign-up instead of forcing people to be "Goth Girl" or "Rocker Dude" or "Emo Kid" like everybody joining is 15.

More than all this talk and this hope that the RL major media will pick all this up as you wish, here's something you really, really need to do, Amanda: make it easy for people to go on the web site and recommend SL to a friend, and have whatever arrives in their mailbox not be an embarassment.

Some years ago I tried that and alienated someone for good because into their mailbox came some dancing scantily clad woman shopping or something. There ought to be something I can chose in a customized way for what will wind up in someone's box recommending SL, i.e. if it's "norm" I want to select, that's the images that will arrive, if it's 'biker dude," that will arrive, etc.

[#50]

,

[#51]

I've only read about half the comments here so far, and am delighted at the conversations.  I wonder why we can't have this level of interest and debate realtime in the Enterprise Office Hours?