Welcome to Second Life Business Communicators!

We've seeded this blog for SL Business Communicators group meeting announcements and to hopefully start Real World (RL) discussion.

MarCom:Interactive invites you to join the Second Life Group, SL Business Communicators. Together we will explore the culture and potential of Second Life for business communications and information dissemination. Membership in Second Life and participation in the group is free.

The business, communications, sociological and economic, implications of Second Life and other virtual worlds crossing over into Real Life (SL into RL) are vast – and we are inviting other business communicators to explore the implications of virtual worlds on marketing, media, journalism, communications and information sharing by joining SL Business Communicators.

What is Second Life?  It’s a virtual world!  It’s just one of several virtual worlds where people live, work, play and socialize.  You adopt a persona (an avatar), visit places, join groups, earn in-world money, buy products and services, and attend meetings.  It’s not fringe, it’s not online gaming, and it’s not to be ignored.  Second Life is growing by the thousands each week, and as I write this, there are 334,628 residents.

Some fascinating work is going on in Second Life.  Museums are being built, real life businesses are offering virtual products there, and media in all its forms is being published.  Fascinating and impressive work is being done by fascinating, impressive, visionary people.

Our short SL Business Communicators charter is  “to explore the culture and potential of Second Life for business communications and information dissemination.”  We’d also like to act as a resource group for communicators new to Second Life.

We’ve set up this blog for group meeting announcements and to hopefully start Real World (RL) discussion.   Subscribe to this blog to keep informed and to add your insights to the discussion!

Please join SL Business Communicators if you are interested in leading the way on exploring and experimenting with media and information in virtual environments.  To join, once you are in world, go to Search/Groups (on your menu) and search on “Business.”  You’ll see SL Business Communicators in the list– that’s us.  Click on it, click Join Now and you’re in!  We don’t have a meeting center yet, but there are plenty of public in world meeting places where we can gather from time to time.  And just maybe the group will decide to build a meeting center of the virtual kind.

Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll announce the first meeting of SL Business Communicators in world and this blog will hopefully be a way to discuss SL in the RL - as time allows.  Yes, I know, we have RL jobs too!

I hope you join in and give us all the benefit of your thinking.

Instructions on joining SL Business Communicators:

• Go to http://secondlife.com/
• Click on the “Free Membership Join Now” button and follow the directions
• Once your membership has been set-up, download Second Life and install onto your computer
• Enter user information and password and "Connect"
• Select the “Search” button on the bottom of your screen
• Choose the “Groups” tab at the top of the search window
• Enter “SL Business Communicators” in the search field and click search
• Highlight “SL Business Communicators” from the list that appears
• Click the “Join Group” button on the dialog box