Archive - Apr 22, 2008

Mark Kingdon to become new Linden Lab CEO

At the Metanomics session Monday the 21st, Mitch Wagner of Information Week and Gartner Fellow Steve Prentice expressed concerns about the future of Second Life. As a business collaboration tool, it is loosing ground to competitors like QWAQ.

Yet the back channel seemed more concerned with whether or not Mitch at Steve were analyzing Linden Lab properly. Is Second Life an application that needs to be constrained? Is it a platform that can serve many applications? Is it a community based upon a platform? Much of this will be questions that need to be answered by the new CEO.

Today, the new CEO was announced. His name is Mark Kingdon. He has been CEO at Organic, a leading online marketing firm, since 2001. During his time there Organic doubled in size.

Everyone is pouring over comments Mark has made, blog posts, interviews, etc., to get a sense about what he will bring to Second Life. Yet the view of what Linden Lab was looking for can be found in an interview Philip Rosedale did with Reuters in March where he said they were “someone who has experience with and a passion for growing this type of company — a software platform company.”

Presently, residents of Second Life expressed cautious optimism, waiting to see what sort of changes Kingdon will bring. Some of this reflects the different views about what Second Life is all about that different residents have.

A good summary of Mark’s background, and some of his articles can be found at ClickZ

The blog post from Linden Lab about Mark can be found here.

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Doc Wiley

I originally set up Orient Lodge to be ‘A literary outpost on the Internet’; a place where I would post not only commentary and news, but also fiction and poetry. Over the years, I haven’t written as much fiction or poetry as I would like. Yet last night, a story came to me, which I’ve written down this morning. All the standard disclaimers apply. This is a first draft. It is loosely based on real experiences I’ve had, but it is a work of fiction and any resemblance to real people is coincidental.

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Upcoming Events in Connecticut

Tomorrow night, West Hartford Democracy for America and Connecticut Common Cause will show the movie “Democracy in America” with a discussion to follow at the West Hartford Senior Center, 15 Starkel Road starting at 7 PM.

Saturday, starting at 1 PM, the Human Rights Torch Relay will come to the New Haven Green.

On May 15th, the Woodbridge CT Clean Energy Initiative will host the seventh event of its year long lecture series. The lecture will be about how simple conservation efforts, costing less than $100 can save people up to $10,000 over the next five years. It will take place at the Center School Building at 7 PM.

On May 28th, David Sirota will be discussing his new book, The Uprising, at R.J. Julia Booksellers at 768 Boston Post Road in Madison. The event will take place at 7 PM. David will be joined by Ned Lamont, and they will talk about “Connecticut's 2006 senate race and how it contributed to the populist movement in America”.

Protests in Second Life

(Originally published at SLNN.COM.)
Last week, residents of Second Life grappled with their views of the Second Life value proposition and how they felt that Linden Lab was doing to defend the value proposition.

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