SLCC: The Next Step

Adri, Slim, and Prok. More photos here.

Just back from the Second Life Community Convention, which was about one day too long, or one day not long enough, haven't figured it out. I think that's the last time I'll be taking the train for 18 hours anywhere but Arkhangelsk -- I did find Amtrak Coach Sleep Position No. 187 however, and that made it better coming back.

The fact is, SLCC has outlived itself for some, is not developed as what it should be for others, and has long since ceased to be a cool factor or business engine for still others, and so they have moved on, or will be moved on by next year. It shouldn't likely be attempted in quite this form again, or it will fail.

SLCC is known for who was there -- 860 people, perhaps half or more of whom never heard of anybody else -- but it's also known for who wasn't there. The SL Herald didn't cover it, Urizenus Sklar and Walker Spaight didn't come or even get Tenshe Vielle at least to cover the Masquerade Ball; there were no suite parties with tequila shots and gold-fish swallowing -- nothing. For both those two gonzo journos, SLCC is just simply not cool anymore. Even the SL Blingsider didn't cover SLCC live, or have stringers, or really say much of anything tangentially -- merely because I guess Tateru herself didn't come, and Aimee didn't come (always odd, that) -- and they, too, have evidently decided SLCC is just not cool enough.

Reuben Steiger, who was the star of the show last year, running around in a jumpsuit and pushing cool cars, was absent -- and evidently there were no MOUs either. Oh, and Hamlet Au of New World Notes didn't come, though arguably the SL community still makes up his bread and butter, and he should come. He didn't even have a stringer cover it. I didn't see any of the more prominent Metaversed.com authors like Nick Wilson or Onder Skall -- but then, Chicago is a long and expensive way to come, and quite frankly, I imagine, like others, they are saying to themselves that spending on Virtual Worlds 07 Fall is probably just the better buy. I can't disagree.

How is it that something that has been among the central tech stories of 2007, deluged with print and broadcast coverage positive and negative (and as your grandfather in vaudeville might have told you, the main thing is to keep your name in the paper and keep them talking about you, good or bad) -- could fall behind the coolness factor?

Well, for one, Third Life, as I call it, came out, and displaced Second Life -- Third Life being your iPhone, Twitter, Kyte-TV whatever applications you put on it -- walk down any street these days in a big city and see hundreds of people riveted to their phones. The Amtrak is absolutely awash in laptops and iPhones and iPods, and you wonder how the train even manages to drive in a straight line and not crash with all that signal inteference. Oh...

But following the habits of the early-adapter media, it's clear SLCC isn't cool enough for anybody but old dinosaur media ABC to cover now, and only with the wierdness angle about how 300-pound IT guys dress up as fashionista girls on the weekends or somebody enjoys getting into a furry outfit. That is, SLCC is now so mainstream and recognizable, that ABC can get away with putting it on television and its website without the inevitable tech rag cliche of somebody having "no lives" and "needing to get away from their computer". You know, it's funny to think of ESPN Fantasy Football in the next conference over from us in Chicago. Here, these losers opened the bar up at 9:00 a.m., and yet nobody ever asks them why they "have no lives" and why they "don't get out more and do real things" -- it never comes up as an issue.)

SLCC is still cool enough for Fizik Baskerville of RRR or the Sheep's Forseti Svarog or Johnny Ming, but that's because they can actually afford to be generous -- their actual clients are for the most part not at SLCC, and they don't need something like SLCC to network and get those clients, so they can sponsor the conference and show up as part of reiterating their roots in the community. But New World Notes and SL Herald didn't sponsor SLCC -- they took their ad dollars to VW 07 San Antonio San Jose -- because they probably don't have the budgets or the patience to do both.

Of course, State of Play IV, happening as it did right before SLCC, drew some people away like Jerry Paffendorf who'd have trouble justifying two of those right back-to-back. By far, SOP was always the cooler and more intellectual conference. I would have been glad to go to it if they invited me to be on a panel or it wasn't in Singapore.

Many people would like me to say "SLCC is still cool because it's the people who make it!" or "SLCC was fun, after all" or something to somehow take away the sting of my criticism of past years -- and the sting of what I'm saying now (which is merely the obvious). I suppose any event is a success if I remove someone from my enemy list or at least talk to the hated people of the inner FIC list, no?

The problem with Second Life is that because it was so new and so few people crossed the hurdles to use it or bothered with it, the pioneering spirit alone 2-3 years ago could sustain people, plus the thrill of being in proximity to the Lindens who made it and seem to rule our online lines. But increasingly, the Lindens are moving into the background, changing from world-making to platform-coding, and they don't want the visibility.

There are too many strange bedfellows even for an online world supposedly removing communication barriers, and business people just don't want to be sharing a conference with somebody named Strokerz peddling porn DVD who is suing somebody over his sex bed. That image is just what they are trying to get away from in their own corporate endeavours and they don't want to reinforce it for clients, especially with mass media.

The education people also, it strikes me, were especially susceptible to an enormous hustle from business types and all kinds of entrepreneurs that spring up to hawk stuff at times like this, claiming that you can't categorize or experience or use SL without their software, HUD, gimmicky database or whatever. The business part of it bled everywhere, possibly because each panel was sponsored by a business showing its logo, and sometimes organizers then felt compelled to put them on a platform. Nowadays, everyone from Ravenglass Rentals to Coca Cola is using SL for business, and so you have an enormous range of budgets and scope and reach. A large corporation like Coca Cola can't just limit itself to one world, so VW07 makes more sense for them; if SLCC didn't convene again, they wouldn't care. It struck me while I was at SLCC that the missing day was other worlds and how they can interact with SL -- but then if we have that, we might as well have VW07, where Chris Sherman says he'll be featuring 22 worlds at the show in San Jose in October.

Think about who doesn't need the SLCC venue itself to do what they're doing -- whether a Coca-Cola or Harvard University -- and who does need the SLCC -- Siggy Romulus and his little SC friends holding up the bar -- and you realize you need to stop convening it.

So what has to happen? SL has to divide and grow, I suppose. For example, somebody will make a Live Music convention or SLoodstock or something, and do the Live Music thing right. It was terribly messed up, and we were reduced to trying to catch Frogg and Jaycatt playing on the house piano in the Hilton lobby or upstairs in a cramped room or hearing only their covers over lunch. Many prominent musicians didn't finally agree to the draconian contract wishing to take away their own original stuff for perpetuity just to stream it. It was an awful lost opportunity, especially given that ABC covered it, and next time, the Live Musicians have to find one of their own trusted managers to put on the right event for 2-3 days somewhere more resort- or recreation-oriented than Chicago, so that people can more rationally combine the trip with a summer vacation time off.

The hotel venue just didn't work. If yet another spinoff happens of inworld and outworld business using SL were to happen, finding a convention center that just does bandwidth, coherent display and workshop space, and people-wrangling better (normally?! -- the wifi didn't work a lot of the time), would be in order. I felt like I was playing the old Cyberflix Titanic game, going up and down back stairs and hunting for clues in corridors, trying to find various tracks in SL. If this large a booking happens far enough in advance, then the organizers shouldn't have to suffer a situation of putting events on 2 floors -- especially when 3 visibly empty rooms were available, and when stupidly, another conference's booking was put right in the middle of the SL booking so that they were forced to put up a sign not to bother them.

In might be that a corporation or law firm will have the meeting space capacity, but of course there's always scaling down from 1,000, too. SLCC really can't grow anymore and be coherent -- and it need not be trying to show everybody how many people it can fit on a sim, anymore.

The education track should simply be hosted by a university or consortium of universities, and made a week-long summer workshop type of format with book authors and professors able to give more substantive seminars -- it could be like a combination writers' retreat and teachers' vacation seminar, but stick to the topic more instead of being so hustled by business and having to trip over drunken revellers in the hallways.
Artists, too, should just make something like a Burning Man, or Ren Fair or whatever they need to do, to make a less expensive and more flexible happening out of doors, like taking over part of a state park or something.

There's unlikely enough pull by region to sustain conferences called by region only -- I think that's why the European conferences keep failing, and why some meet-ups never sustain themselves regionally. The cohesion of Second Life comes not from the platform itself, but what people do together on it. Sadly, or not, they don't do that thing "all together" now; they don't even attend town halls with Philip Linden being the unifying factor.

Socializing alone, even in a cool 3-d world, by itself, is not enough reason to keep coming, especially in a platform which, for many, is the instrument they prefer to do that socializing with -- and they just don't want to meet in real life, for whatever reason. We are reaching the critical mass, and the escape velocity, where what people do with Second Life is more interesting and more compelling to them then that they do it on Second Life. I mean, nobody holds a community convention of Con-Ed customers or ATT customers -- although of course I realize our common carrier of choice for all our communication and media needs is very special and extraordinary.

So the tracks of business, art, education, developers are probably going to have to calve off and form other conferences, which will likely fill up with hundreds more people if SL keeps its growth rate.

I was hoping that the FIC fanboyz who started the SLCC and who tend toward the more hardcore partying and rowdy use of SL would have the wisdom to turn over the organizing to other more mainstream businesses. They didn't. After struggling with them for 3 years, and after the awful fuck-up of the live music contracts, if they can't step aside (and they don't show any sign of doing that), then live music organizers simply have to step around them, and get the venue, acts, contracts and experience they want.

Comments

[Troy McLuhan]

I wasn't there in person, but did catch the closing "ceremonies" via streaming audio. I was surprised when they said that they'll be organizing the SLCC for the next five years.

One reason for my surprise is that the Second Life Insider podcast recently interviewed Flipper and Jennyfur (in Episode 14), and in that interview they basically said they're tired of organizing the SLCC. It's a lot of work, for no pay, and for a lot of criticism. In the interview, Flipper suggested maybe having something less formal, like "Hey everyone, we'll be meeting in city X at Y hotel on date Z. Feel free to join us."

Maybe some Linden offered them the license to the "Second Life Community Convention" name, and they couldn't refuse. They were probably overtired or over-enthused at the time.

Breaking apart into multiple thematic conventions would make a lot of sense. I'm certain the educators would go for that. In fact, the educators already held an inworld conference on May 25 and it drew over 1000 participants.

If Philip is right, and SL becomes "bigger than the Web", then does it really make sense for us all to get together for an annual "community convention". If someone were to propose a "World Wide Web Community Convention", they'd be laughed out of the house.

[Jane2 McMahon]

-- "We are reaching the critical mass, and the escape velocity, where what people do with Second Life is more interesting and more compelling to them then that they do it on Second Life."

That's pretty much it in a nutshell...the proliferation of general conventions this season will be more venues for those who attend to socialize or sell, i.e., the convention itself, more than for those who are doing things with the medium and would benefit from events such as you suggest.

Thanks for your reports from SLCC...very insightful.

[Prokofy Neva]

Troy, it isn't that someone "gave them the license," it's that Jeska Linden and her long-time friends FlipperPAY and Jennyfur just glommed on it, and got their friends at Phreak Radio to organize it. Yes, Flipper and Jennyfur stepped down, but they left it still to their core group of pals at Phreak and SC. And they might lumber on with it, but it's breaking up.

An example is even this photo above, that shows three people who aren't even friends in SL, let alone RL. That is, obviously I know who these people are, and I've been acquainted with them in SL. Adri I know better having sat and talked with her at VW07 and found we shared some viewpoints, but still, it's not like a friend I IM every time she logs on; she's more like a colleague in the joint enterprise of SL writ large. Slim Warrior is someone I never knew until the dust-up over SLCC and the musicians, and then I chatted with her a view times. So our appearing in a buddy photo like this as if we just won the bowling tournament at Fairlanes' in Buffalo, NY sponsored by Wasakowski's Family Restaurant, is all sort of a great illusion. We barely know each other; we don't even have a terrible amount in common within SL; we are just drawn together by that sort of grand shared enterprise called "Second Life".

However, that isn't a glue that would by itself make us convene again in Chicago; it would have to be either a) live music organized well for Slim (and fans of Live Music) b) business seminars with really interesting and compelling speakers for Adri; c) a focus on how inworld business can succeed, too (for me). And all those things are unlikely to come together again, and probably shouldn't.

[Richie Waves]

Glad you had fun Prokofy :)

[Onder Skall]

I'm genuinely surprised you went Prok, all things considered.

[Economic Mip]

Has anyone anywhere commented on the absolutely horrific quality of the educational stream in-world? It was really bad all weekend, and some even transfered to other feeds at the "official listening stations".

[Prokofy Neva]

I felt once I was unbanned, I had to go and stake my claim. And I succeeded in doing so : )

[Erbo Evans]

I was in no position to do any traveling this year (due to RL issues), otherwise I might very well have gone...if only because a couple of SL folks I know are in that area, and it would have been good to see them F2F.

[Marc Woebegone]

Profky

Truly, I love the pic w/you and "God".... so telling and objective.

Marc

[Marc Woebegone]

ooops... I meant

Profky

Truly, I love the pic w/you and (your) "God".... so telling and objective.

Marc

[Prokofy Neva]

I have no idea what a picture of "my God" is. It's not the picture on this blog obviously. Huh?

[Adri]

Prok, I'm not your god? I'm so upset. :D

Great to see you. Minor correction: while it would be /awfully/ convenient for me if VWFall was in San Antonio, it's actually in San Jose, CA.

See you soon!

[Prokofy Neva]

Taco Rubio, the Phreak Radio manager who completely alienated the Live Music community and basically all of the SLCC community with this ridiculous waiver to sign away rights -- and bar people from taping even their own sessions, is arguing and arguing with me in email -- he's banned from this blog for doing shit like putting the key word "Ravenglass" in his ad like this to annoy me: "We're not Ravenglass. We're Phreak Radio".

He's taking exception to this comment: "Many prominent musicians didn't finally agree to the draconian contract wishing to take away their own original stuff for perpetuity just to stream it"

He's saying that he's only aware of two who declined in the end: Slim Warrior, musician, and Doubledown Tandino, DJ. But...that's totally missing the point, and being literalist to the point of insanity. I guess they'll do anything to justify themselves.

Kaklick ended up signing the waiver, but only after working with Phreak to change it substantively, and I don't know if that included original tunes, if he had them. So...he didn't sign the draconian contract: correct.

Frogg Marlow and Jaycatt Nino said repeatedly before SLCC and during that they wouldn't play their original songs except to small informal groups, and that their performance was of covers, precisely because of the problematic contract. Taco is insisting he has them on tape playing their original music. I dunno, I just go by what they say, and if he somehow was able to play gotcha and getting them to do something they hadn't intended given the contract, well, he's just more of an asshole than I thought.

Komuso said that he hadn't applied, and wasn't coming, but he'd not sign the contract. The contract didn't help persuade him to come, then.

There may be others; Taco can't get away with claiming that just because in the end, after he changed it, he only had two who opted out after having originally been chosen, that he "hasn't alienated the music community" -- which he has done.

I have no idea why certain other acts weren't even chosen in the first place.

In any event, once again I'm convinced that you cannot deal with the SC regs/Phreak Radio/SLCC management. They are assholes, and they need to get out of the way. I'm not "posting lies" to "be like a tabloid," I'm reporting what I see and hear on blogs and in RL. End of story.

[Lordfly Digeridoo]

Actually, aside from one guy playing Mozart on the Hilton Piano, I don't remmeber seeing any music whatsoever, and didn't realize it until the train ride home.

At the very least, SLCC is going to have to split off into two types: social and business. Talking business with a company while furries are spanking each other 10 feet away, while comical and in the spirit of SL, is quite difficult to do.

[Prokofy Neva]

I only got glimpses and snatches of the music, and to be honest, a major reason I came was due to the music, and it seemed to be constantly a question of a) something not working so it didn't go off as scheduled b) being lame and not original and not having a set-up for dancing, and having $7.00 hotel beers and c) not really featured.

I just got some information about the story with Frogg, Jaycatt and Grace.

Frogg & Jaycatt played "Charlie," which you could argue is "original" but it's more of a mashed-up set of covers and a YouTube video. They may have played one another original tune. They were not planning too; I don't know if they fixed the waiver to accommodate those exceptions or what.

Grace also reportedly played one original tune, again, don't know the circumstances of the waiver.

A number jammed in hallways and such who didn't apply, didn't like the waiver, and wouldn't come if there were such a waiver they had to sign.

Live Music was messed up at SLCC, no question about it. Taco is arguing and arguing with me about this and trying to put himself in the right. You can go discuss this with him on SC if you are interested. I'm not. I think the point obtains: they unnecessarily and unreasonably messed up the live musicians at SLCC this year, to the detriment of the entire thing.

[John Hurliman]

Interesting waiver that had to be signed to talk on a panel eh? Maybe I jabbed too hard with an underhanded comment in the e-mail as I returned the signed form as the open source panel didn't get an audio or video feed at all after we signed an agreement that Ph*** Ra*** would be covering the event exclusively. Not really allowed to talk about it though as the agreement also banned us from "publishing electronic or written media" that talks about the unmentionable company without it meeting their approval.

[RoflDux Albanese]

We just missed you at SLCC, Prokky! D:

http://poolsclosed.nexisonline.net/news/index.php/2007/08/26/griefers-in-my-slcc/

Also, listening to the DJ raffling off sex products only made ABC's story stronger, imo.

[Jorus Xi]

"Has anyone anywhere commented on the absolutely horrific quality of the educational stream in-world? It was really bad all weekend, and some even transfered to other feeds at the "official listening stations"."

I can comment on that, we found out late on Day 2 that the Hilton wasn't providing us the bandwidth that they were contractually obligated to do... apparently they did the same thing to the guys at ESPN, capped us both at 1mb and made us share that pipe. This was due to an idiot union network administrator, fortunately they brought in a new guy who was able to unfuck all the mess he made. And it was a complete and utter mess. The streams by day 3 should have been cleaned up considerably.

I'll post more on this in a bit, but my Bioshock download just completed :)

[Randy]

Prock I'd actually like to pick your brains a bit more. This post you wrote was moderately helpful and I think you are holding back. We are doing it again next year in a similar format but man have we figured out some big lessons the hard way. I'd be willing to talk and share if you are up for it. Critical constructive insights are always welcome - lets get a skype call and chat if you have the time.

[moo Money]

I was the only SL Insider blogger at SLCC and I couldn't cover it live because I was also on the planning committee for SLCC.

[Gigs]

Aw Prok, there was a pretty big party of us tekki-wikkis in my room, replete with tequila shots!

If I had known you were looking for such a thing I'd have invited you. I'm glad you came, even though we didn't get to talk really at the convention.

[Kaklick Martin]

I signed the final one that releases the music under a CC license. It explicitly states that rights to the underlying works remain that of the author. My set was entirely original tunes, 3/5ths of which are SL specific.

I do think you have some points about needing to possibly break up and re-focus parts, though I really liked being around as many different types of SL folk as possible. I like the idea I saw floated elsewhere of using a university as a host. During the right time of year you could even get dorms for people. Would be much better meeting/lecture/net facilities.

Maybe you could volunteer, and help actually steer this thing in a useful direction.

[Prokofy Neva]

Kaklick, you prove my point: people did not sign the waiver as it was. They lobbied to change it. When the terms were such that they could live with, then they signed it.

Meanwhile, a lot of people were alienated along the way -- needlessly.

I think a summer workshop of SL at a university campus would be wonderful, it wouldn't have to be strictly educational, it could also feature non-profits and businesses and live music, but the setting might be a little more serious.

[Khamon]

SLCC is a party, always has been, always will be. It's been cute to have panels and formal presentations; but one could hardly ever have called it a real life business seminar. It's not rocket science for Heaven's sake; it's not even reportable really; it's a freaking party hosted by club kids.

Rather than slam the hell out of it, why not just report it for what it is?

[Tenshi Vielle]

Well, in the end I didn't make it to the SLCC because my little rugrat got the flu - and then saw fit to pass it on to me and the rest of the household!

Next year maybe.