On the Electric Sheep blog, Joel Greenberg describes a recent talk he gave at Stanford, part of the MediaX program. The audience was full of people of varying experience, and as Joel puts it, " ... the more experienced people in the audience understood that this was a young medium that held great potential and were comfortable with the early chaotic stages; the young ones were the critics. It's usually the opposite."The young critics then threw at him the standard goh sen we usually hear from those who have never deigned to give SL a try for themselves. It's an invalid marketing tool, the numbers on ROI aren't good enough for RL companies to consider investing, etc. However, when someone said that SL's empty all the time, and for that reason alone it's not worth pursuing, Joel said something that resonates with me.
"Go to GooglePlex at 9am on a Wednesday, you'll say the same thing. Does that make municipal stadiums failures because 80% of the time they're empty? You need to go to events." This was something I'd been wrestling with myself. Most places I tp into to check out are indeed empty, most of the time. Regardless of the fact that I'm typically only able to go in-world in the evening hours, when many are asleep, I was beginning to find this disenheartening. Then I read what Joel said, and realized I'd fallen into the same trap as that young critic: I'd begun entering SL expecting it to immediately entertain me, rather than doing the research to find out what's out there for me to pursue.
It's like going to any where on vacation; you have to plan your visit. Find out what sounds interesting to you, and if possible, ask someone who lives there. In fact, this also explains why so many focus on the seedier aspects of SL: they come in looking for such activities. No wonder they find it.
I was glad to read the article, and even more glad that there were others, wiser than I am, who have the capacity and ability to educate the naysayers with conviction and aplomb. Thank you, Mr. Greenberg!
(Via the Electric Sheep blog)
1. Well said.
SL is like a bouquet of Events blossoming in unlikely places, so it behooves anyone to use Search (and to use it often). That's the gateway.
I wish there was more conversation in SL, frankly To me that's the most stimulating . And more robots.
Posted at 7:08PM on Oct 17th 2007 by Patric Styrian