We are glad to have you aboard! It is encouraging to see that you have a little experience in our world. If you would allow me to presume to make some suggestions:
1- Take a long walk on the Mainland, a good place to start is in Emmelia. To your west is Route 2, the long way around the outside edge of Heterocera (lots of interesting seaside builds, but a long walk). To the north is Route 3, a shorter walk around the outer edge of the mountains. I suggest the Mainland because you will get a truer impression of SL from a resident perspective. Some of what you see will look crude, much will be assembled from purchased parts, but in all cases this is an expression of someone’s second life. Also worth noting, on the Mainland we are mostly tier-paying premium accounts, we typically do not pay rent to a middleman. Consider as you walk why we are here; one way of looking at it is wish fulfillment, the person in a cramped apartment owns a castle, the person who works in a cubicle farm fulfilling someone else’s wishes creates content with their own vision, the frustrated but talented businessperson operates a store, etc. At the end of your walk, no matter which route you choose you will find the SL Railroad, which is an adventure of another color 🙂
2- Consider please that the very name Ebbe Linden extends to you a huge privilege. Newbies today do not get the opportunity to have a last name. As a result we see the kind of strained names seen in gaming environments instead of the more community friendly first/last name those of us “of a certain age” consider normal. As anticipated when this policy first rolled out, there is still an us-and-them division that sometimes shows itself. SLers are very tolerant, we learn to be quickly, but who wants to be “tolerated” because of the accident of when they were born.
3- Communication — you are probably tired of hearing this by now, but it needs attention and only you can force the issue. In my previous post I suggested email be better used. This would best be accomplished if it was an attractive headline and a picture type thing that lead to a monthly LL magazine. If professionally done this would be just the thing to project a positive image both to those active now and to those who are inactive. Google would also direct the curious to current and well presented information.
3a- Social media — all well and good for discussion, chat and rumor but please keep the post at the official blog ahead of the gossip. Get that message out to the whole team too (although it has not been an issue lately).
4- Technology; the last round of improvements was quite ambitious, it will probably take 1 ½ to 2 years to fully complete so pace things a bit. There is no rush to start something new just for the sake of it. We, the customers, have always said we would rather have things working well than the confusion of too many new features at once.
We are on your side Ebbe, don’t forget to tap into our skills and experience, there are some things we are just better at than LL.
Illegitimi non carborundum
Rambling with Shug 