Thinking

As my friend and fellow author here on Second Chaos Xavier Mohr posted yesterday, he is resigning as CEO of SL Reports. Xavier, I wish you the best and commend you for doing your best to find an honorable and smooth transition of power for the amazing website - a source of news of Second Life's business elite - that you have created.

Honestly, when Xavier posted that announcement I figured there would be the usual reactions: panic-selling, name calling, well-wishing, and day trading. However, one reaction that caught me off guard was found in this thread on the SLR portion of the SLCapEx forums. Bogart Beck wrote, "As to the future prospects of SLR, we both know that there are several great writers in and around our SL CapEx neighborhood - perhaps a candidate like Guardian Market would consider carrying the torch forward as the new SLR CEO. I'm confident you and Arbitrage will recruit an awesome replacement."

This was not something I was expecting. I suppose it's the closest thing you can get to being recommended for a company. The rest of this post will probably not be short, nor will it be the most organized (it's 7:30am here and for some reason this is on my mind), but it will be my thoughts, considerations, and hesitations of Bogart's comment.

Second Life has always been a fancy game to me. I know that many in-world have strong feelings about what Second Life is, but ultimately it's a world created by residents, supported by Linden Labs. It is not a second reality, although maybe Linden Labs would like it to be that way. In short, it's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

Back in the early days of 2007 I got involved in helping out with the World Stock Exchange (back when it was the only one) and it nearly consumed me. I had days where I stayed up until 2am (a rare thing for me, even in college as I was at that time - I've since graduated) and even once until 4:30am to help out. It began to affect my relationship with my friends, my girlfriend, and my coursework. Fortunately, I resigned from the task I had taken on before it caused serious harm.

I don't want that to happen again. SLR is a great company, and I've always thought that managing a web business would be a great thing to try to my hand at. I'm not the best coder or the best writer, but I have some experience in both and a nice collection of friends in-world. Plus I've seen how the best CEOs run their show, and I have some experience in financial matters as well. All of this I feel could combine very well to make an excellent leader for SLR.

However, I will not sacrifice my First Life for Second Life. Second Life < First Life. Note that I did not use less than or equal to (<=) but strictly less than. I have a degree in mathematics and am fully aware of the implications this can bring.

Another hesitation I have has to deal with SLCapEx's policy of RL CEO identity verification. Please read the SLCapEx disclosure. I don't care if you've read it before, please, just read it one more time. Now that you've read it, please explain to me why a "FICTITIOUS STOCK MARKET SIMULATION" that uses Linden Dollars which "IS NOT LEGAL TENDER IN OUR VIEW" would possibly need my real life identity? What possible need could something that is "operating SOLELY as an Element to an online GAME" and "is NOT a REAL WORLD SECURITIES ENTITY and does NOT offer ANY opportunity for REAL WORLD PROFITS or INVESTMENT" have for my identity? It makes no sense. (By the way, that was their capitalization, not mine...but you already knew that, because you already read the disclaimer ;-) - I told you this would be unorganized.)

Not only does this not make sense, but it's a danger to me. I don't know any experts in the field of identity theft, but I can't even imagine explaining how I had my identity stolen if something were to happen to SLCapEx's ID vault, wherever they keep it. I think that explanation would make me seem like a total moron for giving out the type of ID they request (a faxed copy of your driver's license, last I heard) to someone that didn't need it, who I met over the internet, and who openly disclosed that the were part of a game. I tend to reveal the least amount of information possible to do something (told you I was a math major...) and this is definitely overkill in my opinion. If any SLCapEx authorities are reading at this point, I'd love to know their comments on this matter. (I exempt ACE from this requirement because they take the position that SL businesses are basically RL businesses, and so they have a valid reason for wanting RL ID. However, SLCapEx does not, so as Ricky Ricardo would say, they got some 'splainin' to do.)

I think that's enough of a rant for now. I'm still very much considering the CEO position. My negative comments are simply the challenges I must overcome or come to terms with in order to fully enjoy the role I would take. I want to reemphasize that I think it would be a very rewarding experience, and I think I could do well at it. Also, I hope I have enough readers to this blog to give me some feedback. I'll be posting on the comments as well, so let's talk!