Second Life’s 16th Birthday celebrations continue this week with more fun and events, including an opportunity to meet the people behind Second Life. Here’s your chance to learn more about future plans for Second Life and other behind-the-scenes information via a series of special Town Hall Q&A events at SL16B.

It all begins today at 2 p.m. with an opportunity to meet Senior Director of Product Operations Patch Linden.

ABOUT PATCH LINDEN

Senior Director, Product Operations

A Resident since 2004, Patch was born into Second Life in September of 2007. In his current duties, Patch works to bring the best of product and support based decisions on a daily operational basis to the virtual world platform for Second Life, while maintaining oversight on how all of the various teams within Linden Lab can best work together for the highest good of the Residents and the business.

On Tuesday, don’t miss a Q&A with Senior Director of SL Engineering Oz Linden and System Engineering Manager April Linden.

ABOUT OZ LINDEN

Senior Director, Second Life Engineering

Prior to joining Second Life, Oz spent many years developing all sorts of networking code -- eventually including contributions to the development of HTTP and from there to open source SIP (voice over IP). Internet Telephony turned into something of a corporate nightmare, so he looked around for something more fun. A friend who was working at the Lab recruited Oz to help with the open source program. Since he had already played a little with Second Life, he thought that it certainly met the "fun" criteria but he had no idea just how much fun. Nine years later, Oz is responsible for Second Life Engineering and having the time of his life. He is proud to be working on a product that means so much to so many people.

ABOUT APRIL LINDEN

Systems Engineering Manager, Operations

Before joining the dark side and going into management, April was an operations engineer herself for over 20 years. It’s the operations team that handles the care and feeding of the computers that power Second Life.

April has been a Resident of Second Life since 2006, and a Linden since 2013. She adores Second Life and the power that it has to change lives by providing people a safe place to explore themselves, and giving them the courage to change their lives in positive ways.

On Wednesday, you won’t want to miss your chance to hear directly from Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Linden about progress on improvements to Second Life and other developments in the works.

ABOUT EBBE LINDEN

CEO, Linden Lab

Ebbe Altberg came to Linden Lab with more than 25 years of experience leading teams and creating software used by hundreds of millions of users. After graduating from Middlebury College he went on to work at Microsoft, where he spent most of his 12 years leading teams that created the world’s most popular productivity products such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Office.

It’s all about the community on Thursday as Lead Community Manager Xiola Linden and Marketing Content Specialist Strawberry Linden take the stage.

ABOUT XIOLA LINDEN

Lead Community Manager

Xiola Linden currently handles all things social media and community related for Second Life. A Resident since 2006, and a Linden since 2011, Xiola has seen how both the communities and the product have grown over the years. She truly believes in the unique talent and creativity of the Second Life community. Prior to coming to work at Linden Lab, she worked at a social gaming company heading up community and customer support teams. Working on Second Life has been a dream job come true.

ABOUT STRAWBERRY LINDEN

Marketing Specialist

Bringing her experience as a Second Life Resident and blogger for over a decade, Strawberry Linden joined Linden Lab as a Marketing Content Specialist in April of 2019. Her role solely focuses on Second Life, and she strives to create tutorials and imagery that will resonate with not only new Residents, but also the current community.

A playlist is available of these talks shortly after they happen, on our YouTube channel.

On Friday, you can meet the Moles who build, script and create content for the Linden Department of Public Works.

These events are among the many happenings this week on the SL16B regions. Check out the Destination Guide and our full events calendar on our SL16B landing page to see what else is happening!