SL Blogger Initiative Meeting
Hey everyone! Earlier this week, a group of bloggers were invited to a Zoom meeting with Linden Lab executives to discuss the future of some recent Second Life products. Afterward, several blog posts were published by those in attendance, and rumors quickly spread that the meeting was “exclusive and secret.” As you can imagine, this led to a situation where many bloggers and content creators who weren't invited felt excluded when they heard about it later.
To clear up any confusion, I reached out to Linden Lab for clarification on how the bloggers were selected and whether the meeting was indeed a “secret meeting”. Both Oberwolf Linden (Executive Chairman at Linden Lab) & Brett Linden (VP of Marketing at Linden Lab) responded to my questions, so instead of summarizing their answers, I’m sharing Bret Linden’s email directly below:
Hi Feorie,
I hope this email finds you well! Brad suggested I reach out to you to let you know more information about our recent and future efforts to do some blogger outreach. I can share a bit more context about it - and how it is part of a larger initiative to do more community outreach both at a large scale to all and in smaller groups and communities.
For the first one held last week, we sent out a wide email to several hundred active bloggers in our database from the previous Blogger Network. This was a fairly low-key meeting - just to test out the idea before going broader. Interestingly, we sent out over 500 invites and had only a fraction of that number in attendance so we are looking forward to having more people at future meetings. Nothing "secret" or proprietary was shared in the meeting - but it was a good chance to engage and listen to some members of this particular community before we go broader.
In some future meetings, we plan to give bloggers a peek at some potential new Second Life features that are in development or close to launching - and also provide direct opportunities for feedback and engagement on how we can better support our blogging communities. This isn't just something we'll do with bloggers, though - in the past, we've had similar targeted outreach and meetups with other groups (e.g. educators, skill gaming operators) - and frankly we need to do more of this with even more communities (e.g. creators, etc.). We're still a relatively small company so we are going to do the best we can with our limited time and resources given the large number of diverse communities that we'd ultimately like to meet with. In addition to targeted meetups, we also plan to do more broad-reaching meetups for everyone such as the large Community Roundtable held two weeks ago with Philip (also streamed on our socials) and the recurring User Group meetings held weekly inworld.
As a former journalist, I am particularly vigilant about protecting and amplifying independent reporting. That's why I also want to clarify how important it is to us that we not interfere with nor silence the diverse voices of those who participate - we have no requirement nor expectation that bloggers speak in a unified voice or only write fluff pieces about Second Life. No such requirement was made nor suggested and if that was relayed to you then I can assure it was not a reflection of our intent nor the reality of what was said in that meeting. We don't always get things right and some of the biggest bloggers in attendance have been known not to hold back on their blogs when they disagree with us. With that said, trolling and toxicity will not be tolerated at our meetups (but we certainly do expect to have constructive criticism). I think it is also fair to say that our meetups are not going to be a place that tolerates or supports mean-spiritedness or inflammatory and/or immature interactions.
We also want to expand the invitee list to include Second Life YouTubers/streamers - there wasn't an intentional effort to exclude them from the first meeting but they may not have been on our radar if they weren't in the original Blogger Network. If you have some suggestions as to who we should add to a future meeting, I'd love to hear them! We are just starting the planning for the next one, so I hope to see you there! Invitations usually go out one or two days prior.
Brett Linden
So that’s the tea - straight from the source! I also want to remind everyone that you can also reach out and ask questions too; I don’t have any special access here.
As a content creator myself, I can’t promise I’ll attend every meeting or vlog everything I learn, but sometimes I do, and sometimes people watch. You never know what will catch attention. For example, a random video I made about “how to make a mirror” in Second Life’s pre-PBR days got tons of views - and I was actually sick when I filmed it!
So, here are some suggestions I’ve been thinking about to improve future meetings:
Create a Sign-Up sheet
Invite all content creators (sounds like they are already in the works)
Give more notice (like two weeks) so people can plan time off if needed
Send out an agenda in advance - this could help boost attendance by giving people an idea of what to expect
Consider hosting it in Second Life (even though it might limit the number of attendees) It’s a great way to generate content: we can film, take photos, grab quotes. Plus, it makes it easier to connect with non-English speaking residents who rely on translators.
Alright readers - if you received an invite, would you go? Would you sign-up if there was a sign-up sheet?
There is a forum post going about this now on the Second Life forums - check it out here.
Let me know your thoughts!
