Terrence Linden Talks to Educators

Location: VWER

Photo of AJ Brooks (L) and Terrence Linden by Olivia Hotshot

Last week Terrence Linden, Manager of Customer Strategy and Development at Linden Lab, joined nearly 70 of us for an in-depth talk about education in Second Life. Given the interim CEO's kind words to educators, we expected a respectful visitor. Terrence was just that, and he shared some quite interesting facts with us:

• 800 educational institutions, 550-600 of them colleges or universities, currently in SL.
• of all land owned by organizations and not individuals, 50% is owned by education, a figure that does not include museums or libraries. No one comes close to education, with non profits coming next.
• Edu growth more than 10% since last year.
• Education sector is about 5% of SL and about 10% of avatars in-world are associated with education.
• An education hub is "parked" at the moment, with the islands in Terrance's name.
• Off-grid backup "not on roadmap" but has been discussed by Linden Lab. Terrence advises us to "keep pushing me" on the issue (I will). AJ notes that some with grants must produce copies of all materials, so backup is essential.
• A Linden education product has been under discussion; there are no concrete plans for this. Terrance notes, "we ask for patience," as LL discusses this idea.
• Interoperability with other grids is important to LL, "but before we look at that we want to make sure we have operability, so lets make sure it works well here first."
• In response to a question about Linden Lab's view of OpenSim, Terrence concedes that OpenSim grids have an advantage of being more focused.

Well, Linden Lab is paying attention to educators again. I do intend to push the Lab on issues of back-up ability and interoperability. I'm pushy that way and like many colleagues, I'm used to being an academic "alpha" so I don't like to sit quietly.

You can read all of AJ Brooks' chat with Mr. Linden at this link.