Philip Rosedale Keynote Speaker

Creator of Second Life, the online virtual reality world and metaverse
Metaverse pioneer and commentator on its future potential
Founder of Linden Lab

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Philip Rosedale's Biography

Philip Rosedale is an entrepreneur, best known as the founder of Linden Lab, which develops and hosts the virtual world Second Life.

Philip was interested in computers, technology, and virtual reality from a young age. He started his own company selling database systems to small businesses at 17, using the proceeds to fund his college education at the University of California, San Diego. After leaving university, he created an internet video conferencing product (“Freevue”). Freevue was later acquired by RealNetworks, and he went onto become Vice President and CTO of the company.

After leaving RealNetworks, Philip Rosedale founded Linden Lab, through which he created Second Life. The online multimedia platform allows people to create an avatar for themselves and have a second life in an online virtual world. Users, or “residents”, can interact with places, objects, and other avatars. They can also shop and trade services and property with each other. Speaking about his creation in 2006, Philip said, “We don’t see this as a game. We see it as a platform that is, in many ways, better than the real world.”

Excited by innovations in these areas and the proliferation of new VR-enabling devices, he re-entered the virtual worlds space in 2013, co-founding High Fidelity, a company devoted to exploring the future of next-generation shared virtual reality. Philip rejoined Second Life in 2022, as Strategic Advisor, focused on helping to shape and build a better metaverse.

Mark Zuckerberg’s rebranding of Facebook as Meta to reflect its own focus on building a metaverse has reignited a lot of interest in Second Life. Philip’s virtual world remains popular with over 70 million registered accounts and 200,000 daily users from 200 countries. He is very much the pioneer of the much-discussed concept and has expressed some scepticism about the potential of its new competitor. Philip Rosedale doubts whether the average adult is comfortable inhabiting an animated avatar where 3D worlds only complicate tasks that do not require them.