Cory Ondrejka was the Chief Technology Officer of Linden Lab, makers of Second Life. With Philip Rosedale, Ondrejka co-founded Second Life and played a significant role in the architecture of the product. After leaving Linden Lab, Ondrejka became Senior Vice President of Digital Strategy for the EMI Group [1] until he left EMI in September 2009. [2] He also was vice president of engineering at Facebook.
Ondrejka is a former US Navy officer and 1992 graduate of the US Naval Academy. He earned a joint undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Weapons and Systems Engineering, and has the distinction of being the first Annapolis graduate to do so. [3] In 1995 he graduated with a master's degree in computer science from Boston University.
Before joining Linden Lab, Ondrejka served as Project Leader and Lead Programmer for Pacific Coast Power and Light, where he helped to develop Road Rash 64 and built a core technology team to deliver titles to the Nintendo 64 and Sony PlayStation consoles. [4] Prior to 2000, Ondrejka also worked for the Department of Defense and the National Security Agency.
Ondrejka joined San Francisco-based Linden Lab in 2000 and was the fourth employee retained by the company. [5] During his tenure at Linden Lab (2000–2007), Ondrejka was chiefly responsible for the development of the Linden Scripting Language, and reportedly spearheaded Linden Lab's initiatives in favor of user intellectual property rights and open source code. [6]
Ondrejka departed Linden Lab in 2007, a move initially rumoured in the virtual world blog Massively [7] and subsequently confirmed in CNET [8] and by numerous other sources following an official statement. Ondrejka's departure, which former Linden Lab Chief Executive Officer Philip Rosedale characterized in a BBC interview as amicable "differences... about how to run the company and how best we organise ourselves as a company going forward", [9] was a source of controversy and speculation in the media and blogosphere. [10]
In 2008, Ondrejka was recruited to join EMI with the title of senior vice-president of digital strategy. Digital business president Douglas Merrill commented on Ondrejka's appointment that, Ondrejka's experience in building virtual environments will be valuable to EMI in creating "new digital communities for fans and artists", specifically with a view to enabling people to find and engage with musical content.
In November 2010 Ondrejka was hired by Facebook, which also acquired the assets of a startup he cofounded in April 2010, Walletin. He got the title of engineering director. In 2011 he became the director of mobile engineering.
Ondrejka was known in Second Life as "Cory Linden," and created an avatar to appear in the 3D world as the Flying Spaghetti Monster. His activities in the world were characterized by Wagner James Au as "puckish" and playfully anarchic, often to the benefit of newbies. [11]
Second Life is an online multimedia platform that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user-created content within a multi-user online virtual world. Developed and owned by the San Francisco–based firm Linden Lab and launched on June 23, 2003, it saw rapid growth for some years and in 2013 it had approximately one million regular users. Growth eventually stabilized, and by the end of 2017 the active user count had declined to "between 800,000 and 900,000". In many ways, Second Life is similar to massively multiplayer online role-playing games; nevertheless, Linden Lab is emphatic that their creation is not a game: "There is no manufactured conflict, no set objective".
Anthony Michael Fadell is an American engineer, designer, entrepreneur, and investor. He was senior vice president of the iPod division at Apple Inc. and founder and former CEO of Nest Labs.
Philip Rosedale is an American entrepreneur who founded Linden Lab, which develops and hosts the virtual world Second Life.
Linden Research, Inc., doing business as Linden Lab, is an American technology company that is best known as the developer of Second Life.
Anshe Chung is an avatar of Ailin Graef in the online world Second Life. Referred to as the "Rockefeller of Second Life" by CNN, Graef has built an online business that engages in development, brokerage, and arbitrage of virtual land, items, and currencies. Her work has been discussed in Business Week, Fortune and Red Herring.
Philip W. Schiller is an Apple Fellow at Apple Inc. He is a prominent figure in Apple's keynotes and has been a member of the company's executive team since Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997. In 2020 he became the first person in over 20 years to be appointed as an Apple Fellow, one of the company's highest-ranking positions and an honor previously bestowed on co-founder Steve Wozniak among a handful of other people.
The virtual world Second Life has its own economy and a virtual token referred to as Linden Dollars (L$). In the SL economy, users buy from and sell to one another directly, using the Linden, which is a closed-loop virtual token for use only within the Second Life platform. Linden Dollars have no monetary value and are not redeemable for monetary value from Linden Lab. However, the presence of a currency exchange has led to the Linden Dollar being recognised as a centralized virtual currency, a fiat currency, or property. A resident with a surplus of Linden Dollars earned via a Second Life business or experiential play can offer to exchange with other users via the LindeX exchange provided by Linden Lab. This economy is independent of the price of the game, which users pay to Linden Lab, not to each other. Linden Lab reports that the Second Life economy generated US$3,596,674 in economic activity during the month of September 2005, and in September 2006 Second Life was reported to have a GDP of US$64,000,000.
Rodvik Humble is the former Chief Executive Officer of Second Life developer Linden Lab, Chief Creative Officer at ToyTalk and former Executive Vice President for the EA Play label of the video game company Electronic Arts. He is the general manager for the Berkeley studio of Paradox Interactive. He has been contributing to the development of games since 1990, and is recently best known for his work on the Electronic Arts titles, The Sims 2 and The Sims 3. Previously he worked at Sony Online where he worked on EverQuest and before that Virgin Interactive's SubSpace.
The Patriotic Nigras were a group of griefers in the online world of Second Life.
Jeffrey Ventrella is a digital artist, programmer, and researcher. Ventrella was principal inventor and, with Will Harvey, co-founder of the virtual world There.
Bragg v. Linden Research, Inc., 487 F. Supp. 2d 593, was a ruling at the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The case resulted in an important early ruling on the enforceability of an online End User License Agreement (EULA) under American contract law, though it did not ultimately gain influence as a precedent. The ruling also clarified the matter of personal jurisdiction for a dispute involving a user of a website that originates in a different region.
Richard P. Minsky is an American scholar of bookbinding and a book artist. He is the founder of the Center for Book Arts in New York City.
Jay Samit is the former Independent Vice Chairman of Deloitte Digital. An American digital media innovator, he has pioneered advancements in music and video distribution, social media, and ecommerce. He is the author of the bestselling book Disrupt You! Master Personal Transformation, Seize Opportunity, and Thrive in the Era of Endless Innovation and Future Proofing You - Twelve Truths for Creating Opportunity, Maximizing Wealth, and Controlling Your Destiny in an Uncertain World.
High Fidelity is an American company headquartered in San Francisco, which formerly focused on social virtual reality. As of 2020, they appear to have pivoted to 3D audio software.
The 59th Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards was held on January 8, 2008 at the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Jeff Williams is Apple's chief operating officer under CEO Tim Cook, a position he has held since December 2015.
Dan Riccio is Apple's former senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, reporting to CEO Tim Cook. Riccio led the Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple TV, HomePod, AirPods, and Apple Watch engineering teams, which have produced numerous products. He was succeeded by John Ternus on January 25, 2021. He is now in an unnamed role focusing on a new project at Apple.
Tara Hernandez is a professional software developer, and veteran open source contributor, who developed procedures and tools at several Silicon Valley companies. She was an early promoter of what came to be known as the Continuous Integration revolution. As shown in the documentary Code Rush, she was the manager of Netscape Navigator development at Netscape Communications Corporations, and worked on the preparation of the original Mozilla code for public release, which led to the development of the Firefox browser. She has also worked as a Release Team Manager at Blue Martini software, Senior Infrastructure Engineer and Team Lead at Pixar Animation Studios, Senior Engineering Manager at Lithium Technologies, Senior Director of Systems and Build Engineering at Linden Lab, and worked as a Senior Engineering Manager at Google. Tara is currently employed by MongoDB as Vice President of R&D Productivity, where her role is to lead the development of engineering CI/CD systems, builds of various MongoDB software on 40+ platforms, and the performance tooling team.
Sansar is a social virtual reality platform, for Microsoft Windows only, developed by the San Francisco-based firm Linden Lab, and now owned by Sansar Inc. It launched in "creator beta" to the general public on July 31, 2017. The platform enables user-created 3D spaces where people can create and share interactive social experiences, such as playing games, watching videos, and having conversations in VR. Each participant is represented by a detailed avatar that is the graphical representation of the user, including speech-driven facial animations and motion-driven body animations.
John E. Kelly III is an American executive at IBM. He has been described as the "father" of Watson, a computer system most known for competing against humans on Jeopardy! He joined IBM in 1980 and has served as the director of IBM Research.
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