After tumultuous weeks of summer, Second Lifers gather in Chicago
By Eric Reuters
SECOND LIFE, Aug. 25 (Reuters) - “Our pioneer days may be over,” Robin Linden said last week.
Linden Lab’s vice president for community was at Reuters Island discussing the Second Life gambling ban, part of an eventful and controversial summer in Second Life in the lead up to the Second Life Community Convention in Chicago beginning on Friday.
It’s been a chock-full year since SLCC 2006. Second Life’s “Total Residents” figure may be littered with dead and duplicate accounts, but 12 months ago there were just under 600,000 avatars. Now there are over nine million, a fifteen-fold population boom.
Lindens, pundits, and SLebrities will be converging in the Windy City at SLCC to discuss the future of a post-pioneer Second Life along four broad tracks: Business, Education, Machinima, and Social.
Along the Business track, Stroker Serpentine, currently embroiled in a copyright infringement lawsuit against an anonymous avatar, and FlipperPA Peregrine, who has a Second Life-based pay-per-view service in the works, will be talking about intellectual property law. With real-world identities expensive and difficult to track down, and a majority of Second Life users outside the United States, protecting virtual goods has become a hot-button issue and a newly emerging area of law.
Recent weeks have seen a series of articles in the business press dismissing Second Life’s potential as a platform for marketing real-world brands. Spokesmen from Metaverse development companies Electric Sheep Company and Rivers Run Red will talk about their work helping corporations build a presence in-world, and Coca-Cola will be on hand to discuss their own experience with the “Virtual Thirst” campaign.
But it wouldn’t be Second Life if it was all work and no play. Live bands will keep the convention-goers entertained at night, and blogs have been abuzz wondering who will come dressed as what at Saturday night’s “Leather & Lace Masquerade Ball.”
Stay tuned to Reuters for extensive coverage of SLCC, including an exclusive interview with Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale.
