Business Communicators of Second Life®

Cultures of Virtual Worlds

Over the last two days I’ve had the real pleasure of being back in the classroom, straining at times to hear over the noise of the construction of the engineering building next door.  But it was worth it being able to hear 30 ethnographic researchers gathered at UC Irvine to present their studies of just what we avatars are doing inside virtual worlds.  The theme for the gathering was Cultures of Virtual Worlds, organized by the Center for Ethnography in the Department of Anthropology and sponsored by Intel’s People and Practices Research Group.

Ethnographic research is a first person study of the observed behaviors of others.  These were indeed the tales from the road, observations organized and structured into what we already understand about human behavior.  But, mostly the tales raised questions and many mysteries yet to be understood about virtuality.

Dr. Celia Pearce of Georgia Tech, traversed worlds for us as she reported on the forced migration of Uru (Myst Online) players, as they became refugees in the “new” worlds of There.com and Second Life due to the closing of their game.  She showed us how the artifacts from one world ported over to another through recreation of the old world in the new, transforming both the place and the narrative of the new, joined community.  Her experiences highlight how a true community, once created, does not die easily – indeed another world often becomes the beneficiary.

My thoughts:  This phenomenon is as true in the actual world as in the virtual.   I’ve been watching a similar migration in process at this very moment with the closing of Virtual Magic Kingdom as that community is creating a new Virtual Family Kingdom and preparing its [heartbreaking] move from VMK.   Both these instances raise a fascinating question of just what is a community.  Do we use the word too loosely today in social networking since we move and migrate so easily among networks?  When does “affiliation” or “networked communication” become community – or does it?  Do commercial entities have responsibilities to the communities they create?

Graduate student Lilly Irani coined a phrase in the title of her presentation I suspect I will be using in the future, as it captures our modern communication habits so well:  Assemblages of Communication.  She documented her travels inside Second Life focusing on the fluid communications habits of activist avatars who seamlessly weave IRC, blogs, web forums, Facebook, Café Press, SLProfiles, and photo sharing to communicate.  Her conclusion: the immersive nature of communication inside virtual worlds is just one type of communication and that “collectives” keep in touch through assemblages of communications that are unique to them and that serve their individual community.

My thoughts: Lilly’s focused observations of a small group of activists operating inside a virtual world validate my own theories of the fluidity of what we still call “media.”  We tend to think of media as a “thing.” But media in practice is in fact very ephemeral.   We describe it as “distributed,” but it goes way fuzzier than that. Media  “in practice” isn’t a channel, but an activity.

Dr. Rebecca Black plunged us into the virtual literary world at FanFiction.net where she chronicled the shifting online identity of a young Chinese girl as she published her fiction while learning English.  Through her observations Dr. Black concludes that over time our identities shift and evolve – are never static - because we construct them in diverse ways, influenced by the media, pop culture, our ethnicity and our own “actual” identity.  In a focused study of the language used within the space, she also contrasted the support and encouragement given to her subject by this virtual community versus that she might receive within our traditional educational environment.

My thoughts:  Every virtual space has its own reason for being along with its own rules, norms, culture, and communication methods – often its own language.  The richness of the connections in virtual worlds does often trump the interactions we receive in the actual world.  There is a realness to them that transcends the physical.  Reciprocity is central to the growth of a true community.  What troubles me is that we have constructed our “real” institutions, organizations, and expectations in ways that often dehumanizes and that removes reciprocity – possibly encouraging (forcing?) us to escape into the virtual to find the real.

Deborah Fields' projects lead us through a study of race and gender via Whyville, where 68% of the participants are girls. Deborah is studying how children develop connections and identities in social worlds and how it might inform “real life” learning. She shared a fascinating case study of “Zoë” who grapples with her ethnicity through an evolutionary process of trading “face parts.”  (In Whyville you have very limited abilities in avatar creation.)  Zoë in real life is black.  However while she could approximate a “black” face – it was difficult to find black “bodies” (“bodies” are actually part of Whyville clothing).  She began looking to trade for Latina representations and she even went through a period of scamming other Whyville avatars. Through this case study Deborah  illustrated that children (all of us, actually) go through phases of participation, developing multiple identities and that we continually evolve them.

My thoughts:  Wow, many thoughts hit me on this one:  children’s game designers have enormous responsibilities and need to consider children's identity formation in their products- let’s start by making it possible to represent more than “white.” Teachers and parents need to keep tabs on the identity formation/experimentation that their children and students are doing – create safety, freedom and encouragement to do so, while gathering insight as children go about it. The shifting “demographic” implications of the transitory nature of online identity and how we will adapt to two very different “states” of identity – one where we are the “same” person all the time due to the melding of our work, social and personal lives online (you are your Google results); and two, the liquidness with which we morph and evolve our identities.

This is by no means even a close approximation of all the stimulating and insightful presentations – just a few of the many highlights.

Dr. Dean Terry of University of Texas, Dallas provided a fun and thought provoking talk on the work his Virtual Worlds Lab and Mobile Lab is doing.  He wrapped up with a demonstration of an augmented reality via a mobile phone project that his students will be unveiling soon.

Post-graduate students, Paolo Ruffino introduced some fascinating concepts of our collective evolving worldview (virtual and actual) through mapping; Bianca Ahmadi presented machinima as an art and education form; and Lindsay Todres explored “self spectatorship” online and how it relates to/changes our use of media, especially cinema.

All in all, there is much to be understood about we avatars.  But it is clear our ideas of reality, community, intimacy, identity and space must evolve in step with virtuality.  This research is just a beginning, and from all the encouragement and collaboration I saw going on we have some interesting research to look forward to.

Kudos to Tom Boellstorff and Maria Bezaitis of UCI’s Anthropology Department for organizing the event.  Tom’s book, Coming of Age in Second Life is due to be released in a couple of days.

April 27, 2008

Cisco Pulls Out All the [Human] Network Stops in Router Launch

Cisco walked the walk yesterday by putting the brand squarely into the virtual spaces its next-generation router will power.

Cisco went all out launching the ASR 1000, a new router technology that combines the new Cisco “Quantum Flow Processor” with a secure, scalable, compact, router.  In essence, this is the network router that was built to power the Internet of Web 2.0+, virtual reality and our emerging visual, instant and media-rich applications (read high bandwidth applications).  The Internet of today already pretty much runs on Cisco routers, and a team of 100+ engineers spent 5 years and a quarter of a billion dollars to keep Cisco at the core of our daily digital lives – and to allow us to live those increasingly digital lives comfortably.

Here they have a new technology link in the chain that keeps us all connected, and Cisco actually launched it using all the very “stuff” that is driving the need for this technology – visual, rich, social, sharable media.

Yes, there was the big event in Second Life sporting everything SL has to offer:  a music festival, streaming video, streaming audio, a cool “Quantum Shift experience” build, a launch announcement/presentation in SL, including the unveiling tour of the virtual Quantum Shift information space, and in-world “social press” interviews with Cisco executives.

And then there were the:

• Flash-based micro web site with sound effects and video vignettes of network “uber users”
• Video clips of uber users posted to YouTube
• Creation of the tag “uberusers”
• Flickr pool
• EdgeQuest Flash game
• Facebook Support Group for Uber Users Internet Addicts (546 members), with embedded videos, photos, EdgeQuest game link, discussion board invitation to submit Top Signs You are an Internet Addict
• Online video broadcast launch events with Q&A in 19 languages (I believe there were three)
• Three “follow the sun” Telepresence sessions for international customers
• A web widget (although I have not been able to view it in my browser)
• A social media press release
• Customer videos in the Cisco newsroom
• Podcast in the Cisco newsroom

So, the Quantum Shift collaborative “narrative” begins. From a “virtual marketing” perspective, the narrative is a key "best princples" element.  Cisco planted the seeds and integrated the methods for a collaborative narrative to emerge – not around the product, but around an idea.

Clearly Cisco is marketing a product – how successful the product will be is a function of many market factors.  But the “idea” transcends the ASR 1000 – and that is where Cisco has it all right – understanding the importance of narrative for its customers, and for its success of its product marketing.

The ASR 1000  “idea” is: we’re all happier when our networks work better.

In a conversation with Cisco’s Doug Webster, director, Service Provider Marketing and Christian Renaud, Chief Architect of Networked Virtual Environments just after the SL launch event, the idea dominated – not the product.

Cisco is clearly committed to the value of direct connections for itself and for network users at all levels.  Cisco fosters community and deep listening relationships with their customers – and their customer’s customers. Webster suggested it is the consumer who is leading the charge forcing new technologies and behaviors into the enterprise rather than the other way around. While this presents new challenges for the enterprise, it also means the influence of the customer goes well beyond “the conversation” and reaches deep into the enterprise.  Cisco embraces that influence strategically.

Renaud believes “talking to customers has been priceless” for Cisco in finding new markets for the company.

Second Life alone has proved to be a learning ground for innovation for the company, according to Renaud, but it is only one channel Cisco uses to build its various communities. Webster says that SL is simply another way to engage its customers and “if it is important to our customers, it is important to Cisco.”

Over 1000 of Cisco’s employees are in Second Life presently, across their 53 functional units. Renaud said one of the biggest surprises for him since they have been using SL is how often customers and employees suggest SL as a meeting place.   Apparently in June Cisco CEO John Chambers will officially launch his SL avatar.

Cisco will be participating as the narrative plays out in the connected marketplace. They are using the human network to empower the human network, so that we each can use it in our own personal ways. Yes.  We’re all happier when our networks work better.

March 4, 2008

A Marketer’s Blindness: Avatars Don’t Lie

Having myself been quoted out of context and wishing I could die over it, I’m working very hard to give Mark Hughes (author of Buzz Marketing?) the benefit of the doubt. But I’m having a hard time coming up with a scenario in which a smart, savvy marketer would legitimately say this today:

"The people in Second Life, they aren't worth reaching. It's just a weird place. It's never gonna catch on. It's a fad, not a fashion at all."

I’ll give him that Second Life may be fleeting in its fame, and it is kind of a weird place.  But did he just tell me I was a consumer not worth reaching?

The context was a story on the economy of Second Life by Janet Babin that aired today on America Public Media’s radio show, Marketplace.  By public radio’s, and Marketplace’s standards it was a pretty poorly framed story.

You might expect me to be indignant and riff on the legitimacy of the people in SL.  But like anyone who is the least bit involved in SL I’m dismissing Mr. Hughes’ comment as uninformed about the place and the people.  I’ll also bypass the opportunity to wax poetic about the power of word-of-mouth. 

What amazes me on a broader scale is a marketer, any marketer, who dismisses the opportunity to look straight into the heart – the very soul – of its customer and deem that as not worth the effort.

The avatar is art – created from the mind, heart, subconscious, conscious, yearning, aspirations, personality, context, experience of its owner.  All that is on display as a virtual person, a created object or an entire simulation.   The avatar portrays various aspects of our identity, our self-image.  Over time, the avatar takes shape in ways the owner could not predict, sometimes for reasons the owner cannot articulate. 

The avatar is shaping the language we use, and therefore the way we think of our “self.”  We breathe “life” into something that is clearly not alive, and we endow it with characteristics that are in some part the “real” us – it could be nothing but.

We move – in our minds and in our language – effortlessly between the real and the animated self:   “I’m in Second Life.”   “I’m editing my appearance.”  “Be right back, have to take a call.”

Sherry Turkle, director of MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, renowned author and researcher, published an article 9 years ago in Wired title “Who Am We?” in which she discusses this concept at length in relation to MUDs (Multi-User Dimensions).

“A 26-year-old clerical worker says, ‘I'm not one thing, I'm many things. Each part gets to be more fully expressed in MUDs than in the real world. So even though I play more than one self on MUDs, I feel more like 'myself' when I'm MUDding.’ In real life, this woman sees her world as too narrow to allow her to manifest certain aspects of the person she feels herself to be. Creating screen personae is thus an opportunity for self-expression, leading to her feeling more like her true self when decked out in an array of virtual masks.”

Marketers have spent billions researching our psyche for “real” motivations and our deepest longings in order to create products – or shape messages – that promise to enable the “real me.”  Now here we are in SL creating, shaping and discovering the “real us” for any one to see.

A smart, savvy marketer ought to be watching and listening.

Photo Credit:  Andromega and Gita Rau

January 22, 2008

Colgate Smile Power Un-Fixed

Colgate launched the Second Life version of their Smile Power campaign last Friday.  For seven days and encompassing 500 avatar-hours, brightly Colgate T-attired BuzzAgents will be roaming Second Life handing out smile animations and a list of ten places in SL that will make you smile. Should they not encounter a Colgate gifter-agent, avatars can snare these items at the Smile Center vending machines on This Second Island.  This Second Marketing, the agency behind the promotion, has hired people to interact with island visitors.

The theme behind the campaign:  sharing a Colgate smile.

The SL promotion is an element of Colgate's Smile Sweepstakes in which they are giving away $100 American Express gift cards each week for sharing smile photos on their campaign web page.  They've enabled photo sharing, slideshow sharing and photo tagging there.

Aleister Kronos who writes an excellent SL travelogue and critique was frothing a bit over his recent visit to the SL Colgate smile vending area and suggested Colgate damaged their brand and should rethink their SL presence.  I couldn’t disagree more.

Colgate takes the absolutely correct approach – they went un-fixed.

A couple of relevant notes:

• Second Life is a social network
• Social media is sharable
• Social media is un-fixed (distributed)
• The “avatar” within social media is the channel

Kronos’ comments points to an interesting social media conundrum:  “network” versus “place.”

In subsequent posts Aleister published his email exchange with Joni West, President of This Second Marketing as to the intention of the campaign.  She points out the tendency to focus on “place.”

"No matter how much we say it is about a live promotion, people tend to focus on the build because to date, that has been what marketing efforts in SL have consisted of."   

If we looked at this campaign through the Facebook lens, it would not look “out of place” -  it would look like this:  Colgate creates Smile Power widget.  Widget is added to the Applications list (a tiny “place” in FB).  People who find it fun/useful spread widget by distributing it via Facebook friends. Everyone is smiling. (BTW, Colgate Smile does have a Facebook group.)

Yet, as Aleister’s post illustrates, Colgate was judged on the “place” in SL – because SL has a unique “presence” characteristic that in our minds mirrors RL while Facebook doesn’t have that legacy. In some ways, FB is more virtual than SL.

Colgate's is definitely not the only "un-fixed" campaign in SL. Many more companies are using limited time or shared presence strategies.  Much has changed this year in the way brands are thinking about marketing efforts in SL.  They increasingly are beginning to see it functioning like the distributed social network it is – thanks to the frequent and vocal critiques of its residents.   

Colgate could have significantly improved the way it communicated its SL initiative, - and it could have easily oriented SL visitors by visibly tying in its web site - but its distributed approach is on target.

The avatar is the most valuable terrain online – 3D or 2D. But networks are also a “place,” and brands need to balance both channel and place in their strategies.

Colgate's SL smile vending machines are here.

December 26, 2007

Communitelligence Executing Social Media Conference

I'm heading out to Atlanta today to speak at the Fall Executing Social Media conference.  Paull Young of Converseon and I will be taking attendees of our session on a bit of a Second Life corporate expedition.  I'm looking forward to getting new insights on Converseon's Second Chance Trees initiative which tied planting of RL trees with the purchase of virtual trees.  The initiative was recognized as one of the 50 finalists in the American Express Members Project.

While I get the opportunity to speak quite often, I don't get to focus solely on Second Life strategies in presentations as often as I'd like, so this will be a fun one for me.  I hope to be meeting some of you there and hear your perspectives face-to-face.

As the environment - and the conversations - surrounding SL have been changing this year, I've been thinking and re-thinking why Second Life galvanizes such heated debate for marketers, business communicators and business innovators.  It is because Second Life matters - regardless of which side of the debate you are on - it matters in some systemic and mysterious ways.  It signifies or embodies something important, something fundamental.  If it didn't there wouldn't be so much passion surrounding it from either side.  I'll be writing more about this.

In the meantime, Gwyneth Llewelyn  eloquently  (as usual!)  writes about why Second Life stands apart, and provides some salient signals.  But her most important point - one that speaks to that mysterious, systemic magic (and one that is most troublesome for branders) - is made as she contrasts other virtual worlds/spaces with SL:

"...their vision is closed — their ideal metaverse is one that has been thought out in advance and rolled out for their users, providing them the kind of experience that they think is best for you.

"LL’s still clueless about what makes Second Life special. They’re not writing things on stone. In fact, they’re mostly hacking away at things, and in spite of being very stubborn on several areas, it’s not less true that they’ve allowed people — their residents — to change completely the way Second Life is used for.

"...In fact, while the technology of several other competitors might look awesome to us poor stressed-out SL residents with our insane lag and low frame rates, the difference is really that we’re not talking about technology at all. We’re talking about what a “metaverse” is for us — beyond technology."

This may be way too subtle if you are focused on looking for the tactic-magic - but this is the essence of why all social media is changing the way we do business.  I boil it down in the title of different presentation I've been invited to give many times this year:  "It's Sociology, Not Technology."

Gwen's post is long but well worth the read if you are the least bit interested in SL. Print it out and take it with you on the commute.  Put it on your blogosphere "to read" list.  It is a link I'll be recommending in my upcoming presentation.

November 13, 2007

   

World Bank Presents Global Doing Business Report in Second Life

The World Bank presented their fifth annual global Doing Business report in Second Life yesterday.  It was a notable effort to expand knowledge and understanding about the work of the World Bank to end poverty across the globe. Case in point as to the need for that very effort:  Nobody Fugazi and Canuckflack (two very tuned-in people) wonder how the clients of the World Bank "many of them living in remote corners of the internet" were supposed to sign on to hear the presentation. The World Bank customers were not the intended audience - in fact, it was the exact opposite.  It was intended to inform those who know little about the role of the World Bank. The role of the World Bank is to finance states (countries), not individuals or companies - but to my point, it is a widespread misconception that developing countries are "unconnected."  Connectivity is in fact a driving force toward their overall economic development. 

The event was extremely well attended (gratifying to see!) and the presentation summarizing the 2008 report by Dahlia Khalifa, senior communications officer for the Doing Business project of the World Bank, was chocked full of the high-caliber information you would expect to come from such an institution.  Most unfortunately the session was also full of audio technical snafus and avoidable SL event-planning mistakes - but I for one found the session thoroughly engrossing and it upped my global economic market perspective quotient several notches. I am delighted to see the World Bank living up to their goal of innovation.  And Second Life can indeed be a most suitable communication platform - if sometimes tricky.

To learn more about Doing Business 2008, to review market data or to view a variety of videos on regional economies and reforms visit the Doing Business website:  http://www.doingbusiness.org/  For more information on market approaches to development and toward ending world poverty, check out the World Bank blogs:  http://psdblog.worldbank.org/.

On a related note, The World Bank is not only employing social media to distribute information on global ecomonies, but it is watching the space for its implications toward ending poverty, growing businesses, and providing peer-to-peer support structures.  They note in a recent blog post for example, a favorite site I reference in my social media "It's Sociology, Not Technlogy"© presentations, the peer-to-peer lending site Prosper.

Social media - and you thought it was just a new-fangled marketing or PR tactic.  Go figure.

October 27, 2007

Science Friday: Ahhh…An Intelligent Second Life Media Discussion

Maybe it is the flow of Ira Flatow’s voice, or maybe I’m conditioned to expect the exceptional from his radio show, Science Friday.   Either way, it was just refreshing to sit back and listen to the calm and intelligent conversation about Second Life and virtual worlds that Ira gave us yesterday on NPR’s Science Friday show. 

Flatow, in the avatar persona of Ira Flately was taking questions in Second Life live yesterday afternoon during the taping of the show.  I was listening on delayed radio broadcast last night, but the Science School sim where the action was taking place in world was reportedly maxed out during the taping,

Ira, with his characteristic curiosity, focused on the sociology and psychology of human behavior in virtual worlds as well as the very real research potential of Second Life.  He brought on Dmitri Williams (USC), Sherry Turkle (MIT), Eric Lofgren (University North Carolina), and Cory Ondrejka (Linden Lab) to weigh in on various aspects of human behavior in virtual spaces. 

Dmitri, Assistant professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, honed in on an oft-overlooked aspect about extrapolating (or predicting) real life behaviors from virtual world behaviors.  Incentives and risks in virtual spaces are often quite different than they are in real life.  Rules, morality, laws, cultural imperatives may have no connection in a particular virtual space to the person’s real world constraints.   Mapping incentives to those in real world environments – as well as environmental control – are key to making any kind of viable rl/vl behavioral research connection.

Turkle, Director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self Program and well known for her research on virtual identity, is particularly focused in this discussion on the bridges between real world and virtual world personas and behaviors.  I have to say I found a good deal of dissonance in her continual distinction between the virtual and the real.  Although she said she prefers to refer to rl as  “rest of life,” and said she doesn’t like to make a distinction – she went on throughout the discussion to underscore “real” versus “virtual.”  She mentioned she is particularly concerned about the impact of virtuosity on the political realm: that people put in real work to create virtual communities and yet don’t vote because they feel their virtual politicking is more potent.  Turkle would like to see them move these organizational skills into the “real” political realm.

The dissonance for me is that she is surprisingly missing a key point in her remarks - we are increasingly melding our real presence into the virtual (okay the other way around too). 

Virtual (in all its forms) facilitates our expanding global knowledge and presences and the imperative to do so is only broadening. 

It seems to me we have virtual “presences” that we consider part of our “real” life – telephone, email, video conferencing, ecommerce, PayPal, eBay, WebEx, IM, text messaging, logins to our various networks.  I’m sure your list goes on.   The march is on toward taking our “virtuosity” as much for granted as we do the telephone.  Yes, eventually, even the rl politicking Turkle is particularly concerned about will be played out in virtual spaces as seamless adjuncts to the real.  Candidates are certainly using the virtual to expand their campaign organizations!

Dmitri pointed to a tangentially related thought – that scope and scale are quite different in virtuosity.  What may be small(er) group dynamics of community and society in real space suddenly becomes the potential coordination of large(r), more diverse groups.  Real skills come into play – and are learned - "there."

Perhaps we need to consider that those who feel politically (or otherwise) potent in virtual spaces just possibly, partially may be a function that they may be more rl/vl “melded” than others.  I call it “sociology, not technology” in many of my presentations.  (Yes, virtuosity can also be an escape.  Okay, that is a huge topic for another post…. just consider my point for now.)

We won’t meld our virtual and real presences linearly or predictably. History takes jumps.  Rudimentary case in point – mobile phones suddenly brought many parts of the world voice connectivity.  They didn’t move through a “linear” progression of wired lines. 

Back to Science Friday – and a final important point.  There is a wide range of interpretation about the effects and/or benefits of virtuosity.  Dmitri (again) pointed out that virtual must displace some real (or what we accept as “real”). The individual isn’t scalable, after all. 

His research shows that “virtual” activities mean, for example, watching less television, but that certain news gathering behaviors are not displaced (radio, newspaper-reading….hmm would that be online (virtual) newspapers - isn't that real??).  Virtual spaces also tend to be existing-relationship maintenance tools, but that relationships with casual friends may change – rl casual friends may be displaced with friends met in virtual places.  The important question to ask: is what we displace better or worse?  Not a simple “good” or “bad” answer to that.

Listen to the show at NPR here. Lots of other topics were discussed besides those I focused on here.  Come back and tell us your thoughts!

Science Friday show notes here.

Science Friday– Making Science Radioactive.

Photo Credit:  Science Friday


September 1, 2007

Getting Involve: Name Change or Shape Shift?

The bit of a buzz around some mysterious “Involvium” last week proved to be the plot of a corporate name change story.  Interactive/metaverse agency Infinite Vision Media is now Involve, Inc.

I have to admit that I’ve known the back story for a while, so I’m coming at this from, well, a rather distant “sideliner’s” perspective.   Still, it is exciting when one catches a glimpse at a leader.

Drew Stein, founder and CEO of Infinite Vision Media-turned-Involve is a loyal reader of this blog (oh, bless you, Drew), and every once in a while we chat about something metaversial - exchanging thoughts on topics from virtual identity to social marketing.  He clued me into the name change earlier this summer.

I admit the new name sits well in my ears, since I’ve been emphasizing the concept of  “involvement” on this blog for a while as the means to successful virtual marketing initiatives (3d or otherwise). 

But from my perspective, within their name change Involve is articulating a fundamental mind-shift that marketers need to heed.

Involve’s corporate narrative is shifting the focus from “the sim” to “ the avatar.”  And that is where the virtual magic lies.

Involve’s campaign is nicely multi-layered, but more importantly, it is aimed straight at the heart of involvement.   They are walking the walk.

Let me backtrack a little to put this in context. 

Involve’s rollout campaign is centered around an augmented alternate realty game (ARG), in which a mysterious ‘company”(Involvium Energy Ventures) discovers somewhere in the metaverse the equally mysterious Involvium crystal. The crystal holds powerful energy properties – yet to be fully understood.  A freelance journalist (J.S. Tomorrow) is sent along on the latest Involvium Energy expedition to explore and report from the island within the Metaverse where Involvium was first discovered.  J.S. is filing expedition reports on her weblog.  The island and it’s various inhabitants seem to shape-shift, presumable due to the effects of the Involvium crystals.

Involvium Energy Ventures does not claim to know all the secrets of Involvium, but their early analysis of it has discovered three properties:

• Energy saturates the ether of the Metaverse
• Energy intensifies around people
• Energy currents are strongest between bonded or associated individuals

You can see the Involvium Energy Ventures website for more information and the promotional video contemplates the possibilities. Or see J. S. Tomorrow reportage.

So, here is my point.  The campaign itself is aimed at actually illustrating involvement –drawing one into a mixed reality fantasy that spans both the real world and the metaverse.  The messages underneath the fantasy are the corporate values (virtual strategies work best when focused on people/avatars).  An illustrative implementation is the story's island and blog – these are the places where the story will play out (with you, should you choose) – and where real and virtual mix.  The “shape shifting” island is both a story element as well as an outcome (with those who get involved and contribute to the evolving story).  More importantly, it is a metaphor for discovering the evolution of the metaverse and going beyond the known (or the predicatable).

The apparent message: this is what Involve is as well as where they hope to lead their clients’ initiatives. Toward involvement.

On the tactical side the initiative brought several “social media” into the mix to accomplish it’s goals: some Twittering; a little pre-announcement Pownce discussion; a micro web site; the expedition blog and the SL island where the ARG takes place; and the Involvium video. 

Personally, I think Involve has drawn an interesting line in the virtual world development sand.  I hope the ARG, and most especially the corporate narrative, play out.

August 26, 2007

Cisco's TechChats in Second Life Begin September 6

Dannette CiscoSystems stopped by to comment on my last post about Cisco's new Virtual World Blog.  Just in case you don't dig through comments on this site, Dannette let us know about Cisco's new series of virtual events they have dubbed TechChats.  Re-printing his invitation to Cisco's TechChats below - thanks, Dannette!:

Thanks Linda for posting about the new virtual worlds blog. Christian and team do a great job, truly a pleasure to work with!

So shameless plugging now ;-)

On Sept 6th at noon SLT, Christian will be speaking on 'Virtual Environments and Their Impact on the Network' at Cisco Systems 2 in Training Center Room 1. Slurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cisco%20Systems%202/62/46/24

This is a first in a series of TechChats to be held by Cisco in Second Life. Second Life TechChats are highly interactive virtual events for the technical professional focusing on networking solutions, and the best practices for deploying and managing the latest technologies.

By attending the Sept 6th TechChat one will:
-- Gain a better understanding of the network traffic impact of virtual worlds like Second Life and their network security implications.

-- Participate in a walk through on how virtual worlds, specifically Second Life, works on a network and what network administrators should do to prepare for virtual environments on their corporate network as far as bandwidth, QoS and security are concerned.

Much needed information - and extremely exciting (to a consultant like me, anyway) that Cisco is taking on educating enterprises on what it takes to integrate virtual worlds into the corporate "modern mediasphere"^TM. Of course, that helps Cisco Systems sell what they do, but it is yet one more signal how seriously big tech is taking our "second lives."

On a somewhat related topic, I've been buried in RL projects of late, but I will be resuming the ever-popular Brand Land Happenings this week.  If you want your event listed, just drop me a note.

August 16, 2007

Cisco Launches Virtual World Blog

Cisco has added a new blog to their growing list of corporate blogs - the Virtual World Blog.

Reason?  As Christian Renaud says in the inaugural post:

"We believe that these environments offer an excellent new tool in our collaboration toolbox, alongside established technologies like IP Telephony, Web Collaboration, and Telepresence. They also offer a number of new opportunities to collaborate in ways we haven't had before, which is intuitively obvious to those who use them regularly, but we'll work on enumerating in future blogposts."

Christian is Chief Architect of the Networked Virtual Environments team at Cisco, and he and members of his team will be contributing to the blog, according to Christian's post.  As a nice touch, they are also maintaining a del.icio.us page that will contain all the links they reference in their blog posts. 

Christian is an active SL avatar so we know he and his team will be speaking with great authority.  More importantly, Cisco has made both big and public commitments to virtual worlds, from their multiple-island SL campus to actively experimenting with internal 3D collaborative spaces - and then back again with in-world b2b meetings and mixed reality public events.  And, they aren't overlooking infrastructure, as they are also working on  technology to support 3D environments, and tools to facilitate our virtual work and entertainment lives.

Christian will also be keynoting at the upcoming Virtual Worlds 2007 conference in October.

Click on over to the Virtual World Blog, say hello and chat up a team that is contributing to the next generation of business and of virtual worlds.

August 15, 2007

MacArthur Foundation Announces $2 Million Digital Media Competition

The MacArthur Foundation announced today a public competition for $2 million in funding for "emerging leaders, communicators, and innovators shaping the field of digital media and learning."

The purpose of the competition is to stimulate and encourage innovation in all areas of digital media and learning, as well as to help determine how digital technologies are changing the way people live, play, work, learn, and socialize.

The awards will be given in two distinct areas:  Knowledge-Networking and Innovation. 

The Knowledge-Networking awards will be given to proven communicators who are already steeped in social media and dedicated to "digital learning" through blogs, social networking, social bookmarking, podcasting and virtual worlds.  There will be twelve $30,000 - $75,000 Knowledge-Networking awards.

Innovation awards will go to pioneers in exploring or developing new digital learning environments, especially targeted at youth.  They should be built upon social concepts, social media spaces, and informal collaborative models.   There will be eight $250,000 or $100,000 awards.

The rationale for the choice of these two areas is just too beautiful to paraphrase (from the competition FAQ) :

    Why single out “Innovation” and “Knowledge-Networking”?

In an age of rapidly expanding information and communication technologies, innovation and networking are complementary and mutually interdependent.  Innovation that isn’t communicated, shared, developed, customized, and implemented is irrelevant.  Networking without significant content and innovative ideas can be shallow.  In addition, knowledge-networking promotes the distribution of the best developments in digital media and learning in order that communities can participate in the growth, adoption, sharing, and conversation (and, ideally, the improvement) of those ideas.

The competition is open to a wide range. Bloggers, journalists, digital media practioners, communicators, gamers, social networkers, researchers, think tanks, educators, students and theorists are being encouraged to  submit - that means you!  The primary applicant must be a U.S. resident, but members of the team can reside in any other country.

The competition is part of the Foundation's $50 million Digital Media and Learning initiative. 

Get more information on the competition web site - there is lots of it.

Find the competition FAQs here

August 14, 2007

Sky News Gets Rolling with Its 'Be A News Reporter' Challenge

Sky News has been tinkering around in Second Life since the Spring, and launched their SL island early this summer.  In a welcome sign that they are moving forward with an in-world strategy, news comes from Armin Ruede at Sky News that they have launched a Second Life "Be A News Reporter" challenge. 

The UK news service is exending its RL commitment to citizen journalism into SL with this - "cit-j" is something Sky News has fostered since 2005.

Their promotional machinima gives you the low-down on submitting on-machinima news reports to Sky News for use on their web site - or if the reporter avatar has enough charimsa and news-worthy savvy - the virtual report may end up on UK TV.  Sky News is inviting uploads of the news machinima via their SkyCast social network and video sharing site.

Sky News has also assembled a reporters' kit that is available in their virtual offices.  It includes helpful notecards on how to frame a news report, some do's and don'ts, and some technical tips on audio and video.  Included is the "must have" Sky News microphone - "must have" because it is a requirement to have it in order for a news report submission to be considered.  And a nice, subtle, professional reporter-type animation that microphone enables for your avatar as well.

The Sky News reporter challenge runs through September 30th. 

There are some indications that News with a big "N" is starting to mature in-world - and that would be "News" as traditional public relations people know it.  There are of course many existing exceptionally good SL news outlets reporting on the day's events and analyzing the big issues - and they actually get it right. 

But the launch last month of SLPulse, a free press release service (web-based) by Cold Fusion Intertainment, in-world news HUDs like Reuters', and Sky News now encouraging in-world cit-j video news reports are just a few of the elements in the overall effort toward tackling the organization and distribution of News using methods businesses, media and communictors are comfortable with.  With luck these tools and services will take on SL news models that are less "gatekeeper" and more "News Infrastructure/Enabling." 

This is Znetlady Isbell signing off for SL Business Communicators.  See you next time!

August 13, 2007

Marketing Wisdom in the Stars

I've written before that virtual worlds are where art and communications collide.

Robbie Dingo's words about creating his beautiful machinima "Watch the World(s)" are words of wisdom for marketers.  Watch the video.  Read his words below.

 

Robbie said of the project:

"For me projects like this are all about the pre-planning (storyboarding and imagining the result, the bigger picture of the entire project, before I start building.)  All starting with the [Don Maclean] song as a framework, working towards the climatic moments in the words. I spent a lot of time listening to the song and looking at the original painting, considering the inner meanings."

Read Robbie's blog post.  He also provides higher quality versions for download.

New World Notes has the details on Robbie's process.

via New World Notes

July 19, 2007

Engagement Redemption

A couple of weeks ago I Twittered my Virtual Strategy Quip of the Day as:

Engagement is a means to an end - it is the touchpoint. Use Engagement but get to Involvement.

I’ve gotten several emails asking just what I meant by that.

Although  I publicly bashed “engagement” as the hottest, emptiest term in marketing communications today – engagement is actually a vital element in today’s marketing equation.  But (as I noted in a response to Joel Greenberg’s post on reach and frequency) engagement is a means to an end.  It is a tactic – not a strategy.  Engagement needs a third dimension that I described in that post as “Depth.”

My  working illustration here is far from perfect, but here is where I see engagement fitting into today’s marketing and communications.

As marketers, I think we’ve got Awareness down pretty well.  And unfortunatly, we still center most of our strategies there.

Engagement is how we move people from Awareness to Involvement. It is the method we use to open the door, invite people in, start a conversation, touch a nerve.

But, Involvement is personal relevance – and the more personal connections created, the more the involvement.  Involvement has varying levels (category, product, ego) and it encompasses key qualitative concepts like motivation, intensity, and attitude.  Getting to involvement means the customer has accepted the invitation, walked through the door, given the permission, taken up the conversation – but most importantly joined us in building that all-important third dimension:  Depth (of relationship).

Our strategies need to be aimed toward Depth.

July 15, 2007

Virtual World Strategy Quip of the Day

Speaking of Twitter, you may have noticed a new little area on the sidebar of this blog, VW Quip of the Day. It posts there from my Twitter page.  It is my daily virtual world thought in 140 characters or less.   

I use it as a bit of a challenge to myself to see if I can boil down salient concepts about marketing in virtual space that normally run around in my head within Twitter's limitation.  You know, get to the essence of virtual space strategies.   I also am including other voices that grab me, maybe a quote or a re-ordered thought I see along the way.

Join in!

 

July 6. 2007

Small Business Town Hall with Michael Dell

Via Twitter, Laura Thomas Dell Corporate Online Editor, sends word of the RL Small Business town hall Michael Dell will be holding at the Reuters Building in NYC on July 10 from 12:00 noon to 1:00 p.m. EDT (9  a.m. SLT). The Direct2Dell blog is also announcing it. 

Dell Second Life group members will have the privilege of being invited to watch the webcast in SL in the StudioDell Theater on Dell's island.

Mr. Dell will naturally be discussing some new Dell products, but will also be focusing on technology trends and their impact on small businesses, including Dell's efforts to make IT easier and more affordable for small businesses to manage.

The Q&A session will be with both the live audience and the SL audience.

If you want to attend in SL join the Dell group now.  You can IM your questions early to avatar Pyrrha Dell.

Register for the live event here. It is open to businesses with 25 employees or fewer.

Get more information at the Direct2Dell blog.

As a bit of commentary, this is just the type of activity that motivates people to join a brand group in SL.  That may seem obvious, but the silence in most brand sims is partially a reflection of the silence within their groups (if they have one).

July 6, 2007

Why What Works in Second Life Isn't Working for Corporations

[Warning:  Long post.]

Grace McDunnough has a great post titled “What Works in Second Life.”   I can hear the frustration shouting in her head.  A recent piece (registration required) in Forbes got her to thinking:

“that there *must* be a simple way to look at what works in a synchronous relationship space, virtual or otherwise, and to put that into the context of why some corporations are truly failing in this space.”

Grace boils down the secret sauce into three ingredients: dialogue, interaction and engagement and she summarizes it into this formula:

The new market is DIALOGUE, the new currency is INTERACTION and the exchange rate is variable, based on ENGAGEMENT.

What's so confounding is that the concepts she pitches  (and is oh, so right-on about) are all over the PR and marketing literature today.  Every industry trade mag has its clarion articles, every PR blogger and marketing or communications conference talks (and talks and talks) about engagement, interaction and dialogue.  It is all over agency websites and if I see another study on the need for “engagement” I think I might hurt myself.   I almost can’t stand these words anymore.  To a large degree they have simply lost their meaning and become nearly empty in marketing circles, they are so over-used.

Organizations are struggling and mostly failing in virtual spaces (I include all of social media here, in addition to virtual worlds).

At the core, the answer is organizations are not humans, even though they depend completely on humans. The concepts of dialogue, interaction and engagement are human activities.  Humans engage in them to learn, love, be accepted and to grow.  Organizations depend on these characteristics in us to survive in the marketplace, yet they don’t posses them.

With uber-connectivity, humans are self-organizing and re-self-organizing with intense speed and flexibility.  They look to each other for information, knowledge, goods and connection. Through this lens they are demanding that organizations, who provide large amounts of all four of these things, participate using the same social “capital” since they are engaged in the same social activities we humans are uber-doing.   Mainstream media has felt this first and most publicly.  They are adapting.

But the vast majority of organizations aren’t (yet) attuned.  Organizations do “tactic” but people do “human activity.”

Here is why I believe it is so hard for them to ‘get’ these concepts.

Dialogue:  People’s jobs depend on good news and smooth sailing.  Keeping the ship afloat and avoiding the waves.  Dialogue in the marketplace is challenging, disrupting and requires constant change and sometimes bad news.  A deep, deep systemic shift in defining what brings value to the organization has to happen in order for dialogue to be a corporate value.

Interaction:  Organizations are strictly hierarchical.  They are shaped like pyramids (inverted or otherwise).   The points where interaction can happen are extremely limited.  Not so with humans – our five senses make us interactive machines.  There is literally no mechanism for the organization to handle interaction – there is no “place” in the vast majority  of them for it.  It isn’t built into a modern corporate DNA structure.   

In addition, interaction requires resources (leading into the engagement problem, next).  The age of The Web (and automation in general) moved organizations to cutting human resources in favor of technology, self-service, and driving down the “cost per interaction/transaction.”  Indeed, these are the very appeal of the web! The great listening loop that Aloft accomplished in Second Life (and that Grace references) is most often a lonely initiative, by a small band of corporate outlaws.  Interaction is not a core corporate strategy for most. 

Interaction requires organizational – well, reorganization.

Engagement:  I’ve come to hate this word.  Funny how in the English language this means both a “bond” and a “conflict.” 

Either way, strong emotions, yes?  Yes. “Engagement” is qualitative, not quantitative.  But organizations live and breathe by numbers. Bonuses and promotions are based on the numbers, not on the quality of customer connections.  People in organizations get behind initiatives that will show numbers.  It is in their natural self-interest.

There is generally no mechanism – and not enough human resources – to be accountable for the quality of a connection point.  Thus building it into corporate strategies and operational value is difficult if not impossible.

In response, marketers who see the sociological shifts and demands of empowered, connected people, are now scrambling to quantify engagement.  There is a race on to define the “engagement model.”

For the “new paradigm of engagement,” agencies and organizations are redefining the meaning of “engagement” so that it really means “transaction” – just not in the monetary sense. So we’re left counting “engagements:  how many visits, how many virtual t-shirts, how many clicks on an object, how many mentions on a blog, how much time spent on a sim, how many links, how many positive versus negative comments in the “conversation.”

As I underscored during a recent luncheon keynote presentation about where all this “social media stuff is going,” we, collectively, are challenging even the most venerable institutions, in the most core industries of our society, with collective initiatives like Zopa and Prosper, OpenCourseware, Action Network and Ripple, World Community Grid, and Wikipedia. 

When these initiatives grow to nearing critical mass (like the web itself did) and "we" begin to challenge "the organization" in the markeplace then Grace's formula will yield a result.  Only when organizations deeply understand (grok) they are being held accountable vis a vis the emotional connection of “quality time” with the employee or the customer will human engagement be their goal – and one of their yardsticks for success.

Thanks to Giff Constable for the link to Grace’s post.

June 30, 2007

S.Pellegrino Celebrates Opening of its Cafe Society in Second Life

If you've ever wanted to be part of the high-brow Italian art and club scene, come join in on Sanpellegrino's launch pool party in Second Life Tuesday, June 26 at 1:00 p.m. SLT (9:00 p.m. GMT).  Residents "who really know how to 'live in Italian'" are invited.  I visited the island last evening, Virtual Italian Parks, and I must say there is definitely a vibe going on - Italian, high-class, and oh so chic. 

During the event Sanpellegrino will also launch the Second Life Map of Stars, a free in-world navigation device to the top bars in Second Life.

Sanpellegrino is opening the Cafe Society with a vernissage to promote their two new sparkling adult beverages, as well as their sponsorship of the RL annual Cafe Society photographic competition. The recent RL event captured 35 of Melbourne, Australia's most exclusive cafes, photographed by students of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.  The top 12 images appear in the Cafe Society's annual calendar - and they will be featured in SL during Tuesday's vernissage event.

I chatted with avatar, and the project's manager, Betta Munro of Accenture, Italy who brought Sanpellegrino into Second Life.  Betta told me that Second Life is part of Accenture's marketing services offerings. Accenture corporate officially moved into SL last month with a tradeshow on the island, and appropriately sits next to one of my favorite SL places, Parioli.

But back to Sanpellegrino... . The Cafe Society event is the first in a series for S.Pellegrino that aims to promote new talents in design.   In my opinion, the brand - and the purpose of their SL initiative - is impeccably represented in their sim.  Even without partying avatars, and with almost no signage, it captures the brand experience.

The Sanpellegrino presence accomplishes what Playboy's should and does not - "an exclusive club, a chosen few" experience. This is a brand that knows who it is.

What is particularly interesting, is that while this space clearly invites in SL residents, it is a space intended to be used by Sanpellegrino for Sanpellegrino purposes and unapologetically doesn't try to be an SL resident destination.  A strategy; well-executed.

The Cafe Society exhibition will be open throughout the summer.  Visitors will get swag too - SL Murano glasses and some "sparkling" gadgets.

Learn more about S.Pellegrino's Cafe Society and their Design Arts & Lifestyle programs here. 

Visit Sanpellegrino SL, (and work the bar) here:  Virtual Italian Parks 17, 198, 43

June 23, 2007

Two Education Events of Note Tuesday June 12

Two events that may interest you (the grid seems very busy this week!). 

Integrating Visual Thinking Strategies into Educational Web Resources
6:00 p.m. SLT

Three dimensional spaces like Second Life require us to incorporate visual thinking and how spaces communicate into our virtual world strategies.  This event promises to give some intriguing insights into anyone who must re-think communication for these spaces.  The description below and more information is available here:

The ISTE Media Specialists SIG is sponsoring a program, “Integrating Visual Thinking Strategies into Educational Web Resources” in the virtual reality environment Second Life (www.secondlife.com).  This online program will take place on Tuesday, June 12th at 9 pm ET, 8 pm CT, 6 pm PT.  Christie Thomas, an MS-SIG member from the University of Chicago, and Wendy Ennes , of the Oriental Institute Museum, will provide information about Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), a facilitation technique that uses art and artifacts to teach visual literacy using communication and critical thinking skills.  Learn about the technique and how it was used to develop the website “Ancient Mesopotamia: This History, Our History” (http://mesopotamia.lib.uchicago.edu). We will also see what is believed to be the first use of this technique to interpret objects in a virtual reality environment.  The program will be held in the ISTE Skypark at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduisland/51/204/549.   Instant message Elaine Tulip, moderator, for a teleport.

Digital Hollywood Conference Party
6:30 p.m. SLT

You are invited to attend an event on University Project Island in Second Life tomorrow night that will mirror a real life party at Digital Hollywood Conference at Le Merigot Hotel, Santa Monica, CA.  During the party, Keystone Bouchard (Clear Ink 3D Architect Jon Brouchoud) will build a gateway for the island, which is being donated by Sun Microsystems to a consortium of universities, for the purpose of facilitating collaboration in a 3D environment among students, teachers and partnering agencies.

June 11, 2007

1-800-Flowers Opens Pavilion in Second Life

This Second Island  is hosting 1-800-Flowers.com pavilion and greenhouse, featuring flower facts and seven free bouquets for residents to carry away.  They held a launch party on June 1st, according to their blog.

On Friday, June 15th, 1800Flowers.com founder and CEO, Jim McCann, will kick off a planned series of events with a roundtable discussion at 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. SLT.  A floral design contest is slated for July and a series of focus groups with residents will guide the future of Flowers in SL.

The promotional pavilion and greenhouse is dubbed “Summer Flower Show” and residents are being invited to consider it open for small group events and gatherings.