These are the questions submitted for the State of  There Address.

What follows are your State of There questions, and the answers supplied by Michael Wilson, CEO of Makena (parent company of There):

Q: Has There.com brought any in-world job prospects any closer into our Therian vision of the future?

No, and Yes.

No, we haven't gotten any closer to reintroducing "jobs" in There. But this reminds me I need to assign the Community Group to propose other sources of in-world income in Q1.

Yes, we're building the "Tip Jar" that people have wanted for so long, so to some extent you will be able to "build your own job" by doing things which convince people to tip you.

Q: Will we be seeing any of the incredible features displayed in VLB in There in the soon to be future? i.e water, working tv and better detailed faces of the avatars.

Yes, but only the ones we want.

Some, for example, are no brainers. You've already seen us put video in world (where our biggest issue, since we're not a TV channel, is where we can get content which is appealing to everyone).

Others will require some more thought. Water is a good example of this. Before we put water into There, we'd first need to make sure it will not impact performance (we don't expect it will), and plan for all the folks who have built on the "blue concrete" and lower lying areas of the world. Another good example is roads and flat terrain. While we certainly don't want to create the Trans-Caldera highway, there may be a place or two where a road might be fun or appropriate.

Some features may look beautiful in VLB, but would represent a significant performance hit in There, such as textured faces. Each textured face adds to the texture budget of the world, so it could impact client performance. Also, due to the way it works, it also disables certain features, like 'blush.

There is also a whole class of features which you won't see which we will bring into There. These mainly address performance and may or may not benefit There. For example, VLB has a large number of "baked in" buildings, and we created a special new class of object (an "ObLite") to make these buildings take fewer resources. Since There doesn't have a ton of baked in buildings, this may be of less benefit to us, but we'll probably put it in anyway for what benefits it may bring.

Finally, there are features you may never see in There, like "sharding" which lets us replicate any area over and over. Somehow we can't see 43 copies of Karuna.

Q: It is very hard for a new or even average designers to get their name out There because designers who have been here since beta days have the spotlight in-which other designers are left in the shadows. Will there be any actions taken in the future to give newer designers a better shot at success?

Yes! We have a project called "Better Shopping" which includes showing "the most recently approved listed items" (which is different from "most recently listed"). I think this will help highlight new things, including new things from new designers.

But your question is a good one, and maybe we should also think about ways to promote "recently signed up designers" also.

Q: With VLB and There Phillipines on the go, are we likely to see There.com hire the staff needed, now...for hair models, additional vehicles, cats etc that the community has been asking for for a long time?

Well, I'm not sure where they are going :-), but there are two answers to your question. First, if you look at our hiring page, we're trying desperately to hire people in all parts of the organization, including 4 engineers. Second, as a result of building Virtual Laguna Beach, we now have external art houses which can produce models for our platform -- in fact you've already seen some of them as new clothing styles in There.

So, does this mean we will see cats next week? Probably not, but we will see things we'd never thought we'd see before, and our ability to do other things will speed up as we hire more people.

Q: The new streaming video in VLB is excellent, but poses a content challenge in the "There" environment since we do not have a controlled content source like MTV. What options are being considered to allow streaming video in "There" and has a decision been made on which content? (wish list, An in-world camera that can be streamed onto those new screens).

That's a good question. First, we're hoping MTV or Viacom will allow it to bring some it's content into There, but we're only not sure it will happen, we're not sure it will be of any appeal to our members. Second, we're looking at accepting other content formats (like Flash Movies) which may make it possible to legally bring in video from any number of sites. Of course, we'd also need to find a way to deal with the content of these sites not being, uh, tasteful ("tasteful" meaning PG-13 tasteful, not "It's better than cats!" tasteful).

Q: The funzone concept (i.e. simple, anyone can do it, zone layout capability for thousands of different layouts) has been a key retention feature for "There", yet in going on 4 years, there has been no discussion about adding new capabilities that fit the original idea, such as mini golf, downhill skiing, shooting ranges, etc. Are there any plans to start expanding this great feature?

Yes. As you will see in a moment, we're still focused on ways to improve the developer program and improve interactivity. One of the things we've developed is something called "ActionKit", which allows areas in the world to be more easily scripted using ThereScript (which is a derivative of Lua). We'd very much like to make it possible for developers, or advanced developers, to begin using ActionKit to script areas in the world.

Q: While the "There" world is going to reap many of the cool features of the other ventures (i.e. VLB), two questions come to mind. a) Is the "There" population going to get any say in which of those features get added since some are probably not desirable? b) How do you plan to balance feature development between the wants of say MTV and the different wants/needs of existing Therians? For example, you stated you are working on interactive features for VLB which we all want, but if asked, I suspect Therians would want a different set of interactive things.

(a) See my answer to the similar question above. Unless I'm mistaken, I think we've gotten the input on what people want (I think it's safe to say "Water: Yes, Sharding: No", for example), but if we've gotten any guesses incorrect, then let us know.

(b) We almost never do anything for MTV that we believe would not be of some use in There, someday. I actually used to say "with the glaring exception of sharding", but I think we may have a very interesting use for sharding that I think everyone will like.

In fact, since we often get money for developing these features, they happen faster than they would otherwise since it means additional income for us.

Q: Christmas 2006 is approaching and this is probably the brightest looking coming year ever in the history of the service (not counting 2002 since it was a closed beta). Should we expect something special this year to reflect the positive outlook for the service, like falling snow, decorated present boxes we can attach gifts to that actually give the object when opened, twinkling lights, etc? Ok, it's a request posed as a question, shoot me :)

Ok, well, your letter to Santa got lost in the mail, and Santa didn't get it in time for this year. However, we might see something along these lines in the near future (wink, wink).

Q:  There is a movement out there to give regular boring looking shoes the capabilities of super bunnies. Can Michael state his support that it's the bunnies that make them super in the first place and anything made similar would be nothing but a cheap discount store, sweat-shop produced, inferior clone :)

Of course I can't comment on underground movements to produce cheap knock-offs, but as for bunnies and super-ness, I'm sorry to say it's not the "bunnies" that make them super.

It's because they're rodents.

Q: At a recent MAB meeting There mentioned their next big project would be focusing around Interactivity. I find this announcement to be very exciting! I was wondering if There will be gathering any member input as to what the members might want to see in terms of this exciting aspect of this world called There. I think many long term event hosts would be able to give some wonderful suggestions as to what sorts of features they would find the most useful in terms of interactivity.

The short answer is "of course we will be asking".

The long answer is more interesting. For some time now, we've been thinking about this from, for the lack of a better word, an engineer's perspective: "What events should be scriptable?", "Should there even be a scripting language?", "Oh! They want this!".

But the problem is that we (or I, at least) felt like this wasn't getting to the right place. On the other hand, we are also worried that if we just put the question out there, the answer will be "make it just like (that other place)", which is equally unsatisfactory.

I spoke to some friends of mine who are Game Developers, and they gave me the idea of "ten minutes in (game name here)". This is a brief that many game developers use as an "elevator pitch" for to quickly describe a new game. To me, this is very appealing because it's "asking what people want to do", as opposed to "what do engineers think people want to do".

So, to this end, soon (as in maybe next week even), I'll start a thread in the forums asking for your "10 minutes in There", and we'll see where that goes.

Q: How long do you suppose Moku Lani will be ready and open? I'm excited, I fly over it just about every week. It's just one of my favorite places to relax and clear my head.

We hope to open Moku Lani next year.

Q: Hey, was wondering if there could be some sort of implementation where we get Therebucks easier in-world, like if we have a membership that doesn't pay them. I'm currently, and have been, stuck with 20 TB for about 2 years now.

See my answer to the first question.

Q: In the My-Things menu bar, people can create their own folders so they can organize their stuff as they need. Why can't the This-Place/Gear Menu also be organized by the user???

Just the ability to group items as we please could eliminate the countless minutes it takes to sift through a huge inventory every time you want to place a single item. Also, because of Builders trying to fit objects into different templates, the names of the folders in Gear are often completely pointless. You might find a Wooden Desk under the Outdoor Plants menu. Or a single Carrot under the Knickknacks menu. Why have these folders at all??

It seems both pointless and counter productive to allow My-Things to be user organized, and not allow the This-Place/Gear menu to also be organized by the user. Give us the freedom to control our own inventory of Paz and House objects. It'll make our inventories manageable and are game play A LOT smoother.

In Closing, I propose:
1. Remove pre-existing menu structure in This-PlaceGear. (Group Seating, Plants, Ornaments, Structures, etc - All Useless!)
2. Allow users to create their own menu structure , ala the My-Things menu.
3. Possibly remove the Gear menu entirely -and- shift all Gear functions to the My-Things menu!

The Gear Menu, as it is, is a hindrance to larger Paz Builders. Bare in mind that large Paz Builders are VERY financially important to the future of There. Anything that keeps them happy and building is GOOD for There!

Yah, I hear you. I think all your ideas are great, we'll take a look at it, and talk to some other users (because, well, there may be folks that love the gear menu).

Q: There's three VERY important gestures we don't have in There:

Pointing: How can you point out something, without pointing? The best I can do now is just stand in front of something and hope people can guess what I'm referring to.

The Shrug: It's *SO* hard to have a conversation without the ability to Shrug. It's a Generation X tradition! And a shrug isn't the same as a "what" either. A shrug just means you have nothing to say on a subject, not that you don't know anything. It should be more subtle and not include the question marks.

Fart: We can belch, why can't we fart? Sure it's silly and crude, but is a belch really any better? Also, farting is *WAY* funnier! And yes, it should make other avies nearby automatically fan the air away from their noses.

Ok, I'll look into shrug, that makes sense.

As for "point", it's not so hard to do a "point" gesture, where the arm comes up at a fixed location, and then you'd move your avatar to point to the "right" thing. Taking it to the next level (clicking on something, and "pointing" at it) is much more difficult, because we don't even have a selection model in There (there's the engineer talking again). That will take some more thought.

As for your last suggestion, well, it stinks. :-)

Q: I was wondering if there will be any other games besides spades introduced into game, such as hearts, in regards to card games?

We would like to introduce new games, in fact, someone started Hearts long ago. The problem is (as you know) that infrastructure underneath Cards is not always sound, and we've been debating whether we should fix it, or just ditch it and start again. As we bring on new engineers (see the notes about hiring) we should have the resources to finally tackle this.

Q: Vulgar NameTags: Can we see a change in the way avatars are getting into There with the most disgusting NameTags imaginable?

We've recently improved the "vulgarity filter" to make it a little more difficult to create vulgar avatar names, and will always be looking for opportunities to make it better. As you can imagine, it's something of an arms race, since every time we close up one hole, those inventive little uh... urchins, yes that's it!...come up with a new workaround, so it's a never ending battle.

But, whether or not the do get a bad name through, if you see one, please report it immediately, and we'll moderate it and make it invisible. There's not really much they can do about that.

Q: Community: As a ClubHouse/Paz Community does There recognize Us/Them as a neighborhood? If not can we expect There to give us a neighborhood where we would like (In Our selected areas) them?

I'm not sure what "recognize Us/Them as a neighborhood" means, but we believe that PAZ communities are as important as neighborhoods. We hope you see this in things like the PAZ placement rules and the time Operations spends re-sectoring to make PAZ communities perform better.

Q: Will customer service ever be available on the weekends? Server performance sometimes seems worse on the weekends and there is no one to help with technical issues.

The important thing to know here is that we don't just go home on Friday evenings and ignore the servers until Monday morning rolls around. We do have staff on call 24x7 in the form of Technical Operations, and the servers are always being monitored.

We have tried providing customer support on the weekends. However, it costs a lot of money to do this and we hardly received any calls. We couldn't justify the expense given the very low number of contacts. One of the major things we've heard from the community is that when technical issues happen, you want to make sure we know. As an intermediate step, what we do have in place is support staff monitoring the email queue for anomalies. So, while email isn't answered over the weekend, someone *is* on the lookout for trends and problems. For example, if a bunch of emails came in all reporting technical issues and glitches, the person watching the queue would alert Operations. This makes it important for you to continue to report your issues to help@there.com as they happen, even if you think no one is on duty.