Here in California, you’re not officially a tech startup unless you’ve spent some time in a garage. Millions of Us is not different — we started out (when the company was really just me) sharing some office space from friends. Then Chris Lassonde came on board and Bill Wrentmore (out of Austin) and Rodica Buzescu (out of Boston). So that’s 4 full timers and over 10 contractors — whew!
Back in July, Chris and I decided to start out working out of his garage until we had enough breathing room to have time to look for office space. We never really got that breathing room, but we did finally find a space.
Friday was officially our last day in the garage. While I’ll miss hunkering over that desk and shouting at the Dobermans to leave me alone, we’re very excited about the new office. It’s on Liberty Ship Way in Sausalito, about 50 yards from the beach. I’ll post pics soon and invite everyone for our Office Warming/ Launch party. As soon as we have some breathing room. . . . .

This was an interesting interview this morning on the Brian Lehrer show. (If the first link doesn’t work, try the second one — bottom of the page). I woke up early and got ready, realizing that bizarrely my interview was scheduled to follow a long-ish piece about bicycle safety in Manhattan. I’m not going to say that it was an easy act to follow, but. . . . . .

Kind of fun that I got a chance to give props to Q-Dot Bunnyhug’s SL Bicycle. Also amusing that the host gave Millions of Us credit for creating Second Life (I did correct him ;-))

Last night a meeting was held at the Learning sim by the Kuurian Expedition. The overall project was created by Edward Castronova, author of Synthetic Worlds, through the Synthetic Worlds Initiative. The expedition are a research group rooted at Indiana University.

Guest speaker was Amazon Web Services Evangelist and Scion afficionado (or at least RL user) Jeff Barr, aka Jeffronius Batra in SL. He is a tad busy with all those tubes over at Amazon at the moment, but found time to hit me with a rough transcript from last night. Email me at bryan [at] millionsofus dot com for a copy. In the meantime, enjoy this:

Jeff in SL: Do I spy a racetrack in the background? The Scion does in fact handle incredibly well, and I have been meaning to do the same.

Jeff in RL

Rik Riel has already posted his first thoughts about the event.

The Kuurian expedition is focused on a synthetic worlds initiative: that is, ” to promote innovative thinking on synthetic worlds” while “blurring the line between work and play,” which of course we are all for. You can also find them at World of Warcraft, “on the Silver Hand server, Alliance side.” To join, you must give the secret password to the guild officer by contacting them here.

By building guilds in a number of virtual worlds, the expedition makes its way through cyberia (nice), connecting with a number of people in a host of worlds and contexts along the way.

And though I am not quite sure to what liege they pay their tribute, they do indeed have a charter and abiding fondness for Scions, as they were on display last night.

OK, this is a piece of news I’ve been dying to break. Tomorrow at 12:30 PST in the New Globe Theatre on the Millions of Us sim, Mark Warner, the Democratic Governor of Virginia, will be announcing his entry into. . . . Second Life.

Speculation has been going on for the last month or so about who would be the first politician to open shop in Second Life. I honestly didn’t expect this to happen for a while, but it’s just a testament to the ability of Second Life to astonish me. Hamlet covers the event and Governor Warner’s background really well here.

What I’d like to share are a few cool and surreal details form today as we scrambled to get ready for the event. In politics, image is everything, right? Well, there we were, constructing the avatar for a man we’d never met face to face, tweaking pixels and complaining about SL’s avatar creation tools. We’d send a screenshot over and hear back fro the folks at Forward Together, Warner’s PAC, things like, “His head looks too small” and the like. And then we realized, we’re sitting here tweaking the avatar of the man who could be our next president. . . . .

Other fun details included rehearsing the grand entrance with Warner’s team and debating whether it would be more appropriate to walk into the Globe or fly. You can guess which way I voted. Anyhow, totally exhausted, but looking forward to tomorrow and the months ahead — join us at the New Globe and in the new Forward Together group in Second Life. The town hall has gone digital!

Hot off the presses, thanks to the machinimistic stylings of AngryBeth Shortbread. (FYI, the original play featured typed dialogue — we elected to add voice in post-production because we weren’t going to show the whole play and its just easier to follow this way)

Click here for video.

Top 10 Coolest things about the first live performance play in Second Life.

From my point of view, three hours after the event

10. The audience was quiet!
9. Scene/Costume changes were done with a large curtain that came down over the entire stage.
8. The set design has this retro-murder look to it.
7. There is a mention of gopher killing.
6. This play was put together in less than one month.
5. The previous Shakespeare props weren’t off the stage for final rehearsal until two days before.
4. When we opened up the sim, Millions of Us, it filled over capacity within minutes.
3. The crowd insisted on TWO encores!
2. You could watch the play from anywhere! Watch it from the actors point of view!
1. This may be the first live play, but from today’s performance, it won’t be the last.
-Chris