Good business advice to builders in SL (and RL)

A frustrating business encounter prompted Jacek Antonelli to write a great post with good lessons for any builder to keep in mind. In RL I spend a lot of time advising and preparing contracts for builders of physical, RL buildings, but I’ve done no building in SL, so the window Jacek offered into the world of building in SL intrigued me. As I read her post, I realized that the lessons she described apply equally in SL and RL:

The lessons I have learned (or had reinforced) are:

1. Make sure the client knows what he/she wants before you begin, and can communicate it to you. Otherwise, you are trying to hit an unknown and possibly moving target, which is quite frustrating! It also increases the likelihood that the client will pull something new out of their hat halfway through the process.
2. If you are designing a build in addition to constructing it, treat them as separate processes, and charge separately. Planning the design before you build is good on general principle, of course, and treating them as separate processes helps enforce that. On top of that, it ensures that you will be paid for the design work, even if the client changes his/her mind about hiring you for the building. I also recommend charging as-you-go for each revision of the design if possible, for the same reason.
3. If the client is full of drama before you are working for them, they will probably be even more full of it while you are. If drama, headaches, and frustration are what you are searching for, this is good news. On the other hand, if you value your sanity, pass up that client.
4. Contracts protect both sides. Write up contracts for every step of the way, outlining the expectations of both parties, and what should happen if those expectations are not met. Have the client sign/agree to each contract, then stick to it.

I would just add this, as a corollary to point no. 1: Get an idea of the client’s budget early on and try to communicate to the client a general idea of what kind of compensation you will need to do the job. If you need US $15 per hour to make the job worthwhile to you, finding a gentle way to let the client know this early on may save you a lot of hours spent scoping and bidding the job just to have the client reject any bid you come up with. If you can tell about how much time a certain design feature will add to the work, it may help to communicate that to the client, too.

What about Jacek’s item no. 4? How should a contract work in SL? A RL contract has a bunch of benefits, but if it’s written well there are two main ones: (1) the parties to the contract can refer to the contract to get a clear understanding of their agreement and obligations, and (2) if one of them believes the other has not performed the responsibilities established by the contract, legal recourse may be available.

In SL, a written contract and the process of creating one can still provide a clearer understanding between the parties of their obligations. But what happens if one party decides not to perform the contract without an excuse? Does the other party have any kind of recourse?

SL has no courts, and Linden Lab doesn’t want to be in the position of trying to resolve the disputes or enforce the agreements of SL residents. So far as I know, there is no in-world analogue to the judicial processes that let a RL person sue for damages and then (if he or she wins) collect from the assets of the losing party. Even if we set up a third-party neutral dispute resolution system with binding arbitration, Linden Lab probably wouldn’t want to enforce its arbitration awards. What contract law applies in SL anyway? The state law of California governs the Linden Lab Terms of Service, but I’m not sure that means it applies to all facets of relationships between members in SL.

A contract for work in SL could be designed to be enforced under RL laws, but there are few SL economic circumstances that would justify the cost of enforcing a SL contract using the RL courts.

The lack of meaningful judicial recourse doesn’t necessarily mean that the contract would be worthless after a breach. The non-breaching party would at least have some moral high ground, and the party in breach would risk the harm to reputation that can come from breaking one’s promises. But there isn’t the same recourse to law that might be available to a RL contract, which means there’s probably less to deter breach of contract in SL than there is in RL.

Stumbling through Second Life

… That ought to be the title of this blog until I can get better computer equipment again. My Mac can barely run the client, which locks up anywhere from once every few minutes to once every half an hour. It just doesn’t have the power to handle even a moderately full sim.

Last night I figured out that the problem with the PC wasn’t in the power supply — either the CPU or something on the mainboard is blown. I can’t afford to do a major upgrade just yet, so I’m going to have to make do with what I’ve got.

Technical difficulties

I’ve been visiting Second Life by way of my old desktop PC. I’ve built three or so computers in that case since 1999, and I don’t think I’ve overhauled it since spring of 2004. It was a pretty slick computer for that time, but it doesn’t handle Second Life very well.

Today, while I was watching a round of Building Shelter (in Exile), the computer abruptly shut off. I checked the cords and power strip and cycled the master switch on the power supply, but to no avail — it won’t start up. The Apple PowerBook I’m using to type this struggles with Second Life, and after about 5 minutes in-world, SL locks up and I get nothing but the spinning rainbow pinwheel.

It’s about time for me to overhaul that PC anyway, but I had been hoping to put it off for a few more months. I might do it in stages, updating the case and power supply first and taking care of the rest later on. But in any event, until I can get that taken care of, I think my visits to SL will be very brief. I’m not happy that this happened just when I was starting to feel a bit more at home in SL.

Starting out, and looking for Shelter

A month ago, I stepped into Second Life for the first time. I didn’t know what to expect, and for my first few visits, over the course of several days, I wandered around more or less bewildered, just trying basic interactions with objects and occasionally chatting with people. I’m apparently just as quiet in SL as I am in my First Life. Just like in my first life, I don’t mean to be withdrawn; it just takes me a while to come out of my shell when I’m in new surroundings.

As I tend to do in my First Life (or “Real Life,” “RL,” as most seem to refer to it), without thinking, I started looking for a place to return to, somewhere to anchor myself, somewhere I could hope and reasonably expect to find friendly people. I found that at The Shelter. There, more than anywhere else I’ve visited yet, I could hope and expect to find friendly, interesting, and intelligent people when I dropped by.

Last week, though, I dropped by The Shelter several times and didn’t find the people I hoped to find there. Practically none of them, in fact. And Travis, the fellow who (so far as I could tell) runs the place and is pretty much a beacon of hospitality, was nowhere to be found. The Shelter was still well-populated, but mostly by people in their first or second day of their Second Lives, and without Travis or the others I’d come to think of as the “regulars” or “hosts” there to guide the new folks and set the tone, well, let’s just say that the quality of the conversation and overall pleasantness of the Sheltered experience were considerably diminished.

I was dismayed. I overheard that Travis was preoccupied by events in RL, but that was all anyone there mentioned. Obviously something else was going on because all the people I hoped to see had disappeared, but as someone new to SL I didn’t feel comfortable asking anyone about it out of the blue in IM, and I had no idea where they were in person. I could only guess that some kind of drama had come to pass of which I was completely unaware.

I spent most of the week wandering around SL, getting some more skydiving in, doing a bit of shopping (I’ve been slow to figure out how my avatar is going to dress), and visiting the Ivory Tower Library of Primitives to start to learn to build. But I was still disappointed, because there seemed to be no point to starting out and ending my time in SL at The Shelter.

Then, on Friday night, I went to a Frogg & Jaycatt show and saw several of the people I’d missed seeing all week. I was still too shy to ask where they’d disappeared to, but I noticed they shared a new group title. Searching that, I found my way to The Shelter in Exile, in Swinside.

Apparently there has indeed been some sort of falling out among Sheltered folks. At first, I was curious to know what happened, but people at The Shelter in Exile were obviously still hurt and avoided direct discussion about it. I learned just that there was a falling out and everyone hopes to be back in The Shelter in Isabel soon.

After witnessing a few awkward conversations it occurred to me that it doesn’t really matter to me what happened. What matters to me is that I’ve again found the people whose company I enjoy, people I hope to get to know better as time goes on. I’ve spent enough time at The Shelter in the last month that when I think of “The Shelter,” I think of these people, not the place. So, as long as they’ll have me, I’ll go where they go.

Like everyone else, I hope good times will come again for The Shelter in Isabel. Until then, you’ll find me in Swinside with the word “Exile” over my head.