I’ve been seeing some really great year end reviews of Second Life® and the Lab. I particularly like Tateru Nino’s analysis in her post, “A Good Year.” Again and again, Tateru seems to have the pulse of what’s going on at the Lab and her insights are a must read.

Looking Back at 2011
So, me being me, I want to say a few things and I promise not to blow my top about Viewer 2/3. I’m just focusing on three things that are especially significant to me.

1) Viewer 3 Is A Step In The Right Direction. Yes, I know, I went medieval on the product a couple weeks ago, but the turth is Viewer 3 is much better than Viewer 2. The problem is, it isn’t enough, the product hasn’t devolved enough.

2) LL Destinations Team Continues to Create Valuable Tools. I’ve been impressed with the work done by the Destinations team for several years now. And whether it belongs in this category or not, I’m also impressed with the new Realms destinations. Realms make so much sense to me as a tool for making new users familiar with our world and it’s capabilities.

3) CEO Rod Humble has The Right Stuff. When you look for hope for Second Life’s future, you have to look to the leadership. So far, I’m very impressed with Lab management changes. I beleive it really is time for someone to look beyond the era of Philip Linden-Rosedale. Philip will always be a heartbeat, but he’s the guy you broke up with who never looks back. And btw, Will Wright is major homerun for the Lab’s Board. I believe he’s a true technology visionary. Don’t know who he is? Check him out, yo.

Looking Forward to 2012
I’m not a visionary and don’t do predictions. However, there’s a few things things I hope the Lab will do in the coming year.

1) I Hope The Lab Will Create Facebook Gateway To SL. Personally, I have no use for this, but I’ve seen that it can be done; check SpotON3D has done created a FB interface to it’s grid. And I hope the Lab will acquire that technology to provide a logical hook from FB into our world. If a deal like that can be orchestrated, even if only marginally successful, it could bring a lot of new peeps to SL. And, oh, if something like this were to happen, I think it might be all it takes for SL & the Lab to be acquired by a bigger fish — well, hopefully not a fish. (Yes, I’m sliding this prediction in here where no one will notice.)

2) I Hope The Lab Will Look For Portents & Signs. I don’t care who you are, oldtimer, newbie, educator, business exec, whatever — you are not SL. Second Life is a moveable feast made of precisely the number of people who are online at any given point in time. Allowing any authoritative, noisey, group of know-it-alls to have too much voice in deciding the future is a really bad idea. SL is a vast numbers of communities who’ve created their own realities, and they are the secret sauce. I’m hoping the Lab will find a way to listen for the portens and signs of those who aren’t so vocal, those who are investing their time and money into making SL the amazing virtual world it is.

3) And I Hope The Lab Will Resolve The Viewer 1 vs Viewer 2/3 Dilema. I’ve said way too much about this recently, but if you didn’t catch my flow, here it is.

Now, do I think the Lab will make the right choices in 2012? That is, choices I approve of. hehe. Yes, I think they will. Every instinct I have is telling me this is a group with a wholely new point of view, from the Board level on down.

But as Leanna would say, time will tell.

p.s. 01-07, fixed some grammatical errors