If you spend a lot of time working for new corporations, you've probably been exposed to what office-workers often call the 'trio of doom', the Vision Statement, the Values Statement and the Mission Statement. These sometimes come with slightly different names. The Values statements (or company principles) during the late 1990's started to acquire names like The Dharma of [company name] or The Tao of [company name].

Linden Lab has maintained a corporate values statement called (unsurprisingly) The Tao of Linden. Values statements are actually often quite a bit more interesting than they appear to be -- the process by which they are formed is itself quite curious -- and the more so when they are changed. Linden Lab has just changed their own, leading to an immediate curiosity about the changes are, and what they might convey.

Continue reading The new Tao of Linden

The new Tao of Linden originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 15 Dec 2008 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab is very proud of its transparency, both as a business and as a workplace. Openness and transparency are enshrined in the Tao of Linden.

Unfortunately much of that transparency only seems to pass internally. Sure, Linden Lab publishes lots of interesting and useful statistics and makes various kinds of data accessible -- but while that's very nice, that's not transparency.

In fact, when it comes to business transparency, Linden Lab tends to put the foot down and push back.

Continue reading Peering Inside: Transparency and opacity

Peering Inside: Transparency and opacity originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Should we, the residents, motivate the Second Life developers? How?

Should we, the residents, motivate the Second Life developers? How? originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 29 Nov 2007 09:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.