Looking Back...Thank you Blue Szondi...

I lay awake for a long time last evening thinking about the struggles that Linden Lab goes through in an effort to grow this world of ours. While those struggles are difficult for many of us... I believe the decisions are a lot easier when made from the point of view of a corporation... I begin to see why so few Lindens actually spend anytime in world...it would hurt too badly to be that close and have to actually feel what we feel. I originally took this screen shot from one of the old Help Islands the second week of December 2009. I will include the link to the original post below... but the body of this post is going to be what the Secondlife Mentor (retired) commented. I will always believe that this is how you keep people in Secondlife.

Blue Szondi said... What a lovely post brinda and thank you for the picture, it does sum up how I felt at the time. Lonely and abandoned by a company and philosophy I had worked years for. But in the end its not about you or I or the Mentors or even Linden Lab, but the newbies who are curious enough to download Second Life and log on. We have grown to love this world and want to share all the good that is and can be. So many log in for the first time and don’t see what we see and will quickly log off, uninstall SL and never give it a second look. I once heard there is a 87% attrition rate for SL. That’s barely 1 in 10 who try SL and stick around. In this world I have seen the lame dance, the mute wax poetic and the lowly thrive. SL can change peoples lives. Some for better some for worse but still if they cant understand the basics, how to open a box or pan their camera so they can see the face of their avatar, things we see as simple but so important. If they cant do those things then they will likely leave and never have a chance to know what SL can be. I was helped by a Mentor early on and was thankful. And like so many who became Mentors I wanted to share the exciting things I learned with others. Often the phrase “pay it forward” was used to describe why we mentor, and each day there is someone new who has the desire to share what they have learned as well. Becoming a Mentor wasn’t hard but did require enough enter prospective to string 500 characters together in an application describing why you wanted to be a Second Life Mentor. Now there is no standard to uphold. True anyone can mentor. But a tradition has been abandoned and a trust lost and no matter what new and innovative and “scalable” solutions LL has in mind, I can’t imagine it replacing the SL Mentors and the people who made it great. Blue S. December 12, 2009 1:00 PM http://brinda-benares.blogspot.com/2009/12/sadness-personified.html

****Thank you, Blue for all you did and continue to do****

And so it goes

I love you all, brinda

Namaste

नमस्ते