Ebbe Linden talks about education, Second Life and next generation platform at VWBPE 2015

On Wednesday 18th March 2015 Ebbe Linden the CEO of Linden Lab gave his opening keynotes speech at the VWBPE Main Auditorium stage between 1pm SLT to 2:12pm SLT. Ebbe Linden talked about education in Second Life, the latest updates for Second Life and mentioned more about the upcoming next generation platform.

More than 200 avatars attended Ebbe keynotes speech with 100 – 110 people watching it via web stream with a lively debate. No major problems were reported during the session and everything went smoothly.

This year marks the 8th annual conference for VWBPE and it’s going be be another successful year. I really enjoyed the pre-concert show before the keynotes speech today and I can’t wait to listen to more speakers over the next few days or so.

Ebbe Linden in his new suit at VWBPE 2015

Ebbe Linden used voice during his opening keynotes speech at VWBPE 2015 and that was most interesting to listen to from start to end. There was a Q&A session with audience members then Ebbe Linden stayed on longer until 3.05pm SLT to answer more questions until he had to go to his next meeting.

Huge attendance this year at VWBPE 2015

These quotes below are ones that I found most interesting during Ebbe Linden opening keynotes speech covering education, Second Life and the next generation platform. Gentle Heron did an amazing job at transcribing the whole session making it easier to understand what’s being said.

Education Updates

• “We have over 300 orgs taking advantage of discounts for educators and nonprofits.”
• “The capabilities of 3D and simulation etc is a strong component of improving learning and teaching”
• “We hear great stories of successes from educators.”
• “We do not intend to increase prices or remove the discount”
• “We want to make it less costly.”

Second Life Updates

• “We want to improve the new user experience including entry points”
• “SL will not go anywhere”
• “It is sad to see SL content disappear because of cost”
• “We continue to improve SL”, “make chat more reliable”, “fix bugs” plus performance and stability
• “We continue to think about notions from the past, community portals, optimizing SLURLs to be more efficient to bring users to a particular place.”
• “There is more competition. We have to work hard to stay in the lead.”
• “We think about quality- ease of use, quality of physics and lighting, smoothness, naturalness of avatars”
• “We charge for land, but almost nothing for transactions”, “If we lower property taxes, we will need to increase sales taxes”
• “We are at the early stages — I didn’t know if educators were interested in getting paid –“
• “We don’t want money laundering”
• “Last year we paid out over 60 million dollars, that is over a million dollars a week”
• “Customers of longstanding, we should make this automatic, in the next few months.”
• Bringing back mentor programs? Ebbe Linden “We have had issues in the past”, “We don’t have a current plan like that”

Next Generation Platform Updates

• “We call it Next Generation Platform, not SL2.0”
• “It is progressing well, we are 8-9 months on this”
• “We have 30+ engineers and others working on this product”
• “We thought about why SL hit the ceiling”. “It peaked at 1.1 million monthly users.”
• “We want to support mobile from the beginning”
• “We want to do events for 10s of thousands”
• “At the beginning, the platform will be revealed to alpha users this summer who know Maya”
• “After summer we will invite more people as it gets easier to use”
• “It could be years before you decide to use this new thing instead of SL”
• “In the beginning, accessibility and multiple platforms, we are focused on virtual reality and PC.”
• “Any content in the new platform will be good on Oculus and PC”
• “No more Linden Programming Language, so you can use existing experts.”
• “We want to be open, so whatever we don’t supply 3rd parties can extend to provide additional solutions”
• “When the platform is more generally available it will support many tools including Blender”
• “We will lower the age to participate”
• “We realized there is no legal difference between 13 and 16”
• “We decided the other day to have the next gen platform to be 13+”
• “We will take external content and bring it into the world perhaps in a different format.”
• Are there plans to do data management of large inventories? Ebbe Linden “Yes in SL. In the Next Gen, inventory management is being redone”

Extra Time Updates

• “Yes we want land to be cheaper, and we don’t want a model where content disappears”
• “The cost of land will come down, but sales tax will go up”
• “I am a fan of strong communities.”
• “I love Jo Yardley’s Berlin. There is also great art.”
• “You should be able to go back and forth between platforms” – next gen platform
• “We are not ready to give out minimum system specs”, “specific specs will take longer to define” – next gen platform
• “We are over a year before general availability” – next gen platform
• “In terms of nonUS currencies- to buy in? we do support many currencies. We support probably 20 currencies”
• “Office in other countries? Only for a partnership or acquisition. we are US based now. We have many offices here already.”
• “No plans for international offices”
• No plans to add more office hours
• “We are thinking about in Next Gen your sim may not always run hot. If nobody is there, we will save it to disk.” & “We will never need to delete or archive.”
• “But we also want to make multiple identities possible under one account. Then the need for alts will diminish.” – next gen platform
• “Someone asked about how contiguous the next world would be. I don’t say “world” about the next gen platform. I find SL less a world, the map doesn’t do much for me, but more like a collection of interconnected experience, more like the web.”
• “We are thinking of the Next Gen platform without a unified geography.”
• “I think of SL as a portion of the next gen platform. SL could be created on top of the platform we are creating. Less world, more platform”
• “A meter which goes red if your creation creates lag or performance issues” – next gen platform
• “In the new platform, you can connect regions. we do not know how we will create sim crossing, maybe move through a gateway”
• “Land by default will be much larger, thousands of meters”
• API- “We are still open GL. As you think about multiple platforms, but Vulcan is not ready for prime time yet”
• “With instancing, we create an experience that is optimum with 150 users, but when it reaches that, spin up another one”
• “Imagine this as not 4 corners, but 50 that all feel like they are on center stage”
• “With the next gen platform we should allow people to create mainland.”
• “We will have voice. We spend a lot of time on audio. VR needs precise location and direction of audio.”
• “We will have voice and 3D audio”
• “We will use completely new avies, nothing borrowed from SL”
• “Physics for vehicles- this will be more sophisticated, we are working with a 3rd party who will supply a physics engine”

Ebbe Linden stayed on until 3.05pm SLT answering questions

Summary

There seems to be strong interest for discounts for educators and nonprofits. That’s a good news to hear. The future of Second Life sounds very promising with more work being done to make it better than ever before. Second Life is not going anywhere and improvements are being made on a regular basis.

This summer the next generation platform will be revealed to selected alpha users that know how to use Maya. After the summer more invites will be sent out according to the lab when the platform is easier to use. The next generation platform is set for 13+ year olds to be using it and the minimum system specs will be defined at a later date. I would imagine that either in 2016 or 2017 the next generation platform will be more available to the public to use. So far good progress is being made and hopefully we will hear more in the months to come about the next generation platform. 

Ebbe was very open this year I thought answering every single question via audience members It’s good to see Ebbe Linden inworld again with the Second Life community keeping us all updated on whats going on.

Great job Ebbe on an excellent opening keynotes speech. 🙂