Business Communicators of Second Life®

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

Virtual World 2007 Conference: Learnings

The theme of the recent Virtual Worlds 2007 Conference in NYC was “The Future of Media and Marketing.” 

I’ve been musing and then musing some more about the conference, wondering what jaw-dropping insights I could share.  I see that others did the same.

I purposely did not blog the conference, hoping to absorb it all and then distill it into some kind of virtual world Wisdom Soup.  Well, that and the fact the wireless connection there couldn’t sustain all the connected people a conference like this tends to draw.  I resorted to Twittering instead which proved to be a fun, humorous and an often more insightful back channel to the conference.

What became apparent though, ten minutes into the affair, was that there were two quite distinct groups there – 1) the virtual world platform owners / developers;  and 2) the content owners (marketers / educators).

Urizenus Sklar at the Second Life Herald calls them 1) "the philosophers;” and 2) "the marketing guys wringing their hands about ROI and looking for quick answers.”   Unfortunately in his estimation one group “gets it” and the other doesn’t. 

Actually, VW2007 was a classic paring of two populations who simply do not speak the same language.  At times, the frustration was quite palatable – and even visuals and sign language didn’t help any. 

That said, here are my personal take-aways and commentary about VW 2007:

VW developers and owners currently dominate the public conversation surrounding virtual worlds. 
I have huge respect and liking for these talented and visionary people.  However, more voices need to be brought into the conversation to broaden the perspective for every stakeholder, current and future.   Translators will emerge and both groups will learn what is needed from the other. VW developers have a vital view, but it isn’t the only vantage point on the landscape.   Audience members, in fact, provided some of the most insightful questions and challenging perspectives.

Marketers are hungry for metrics and demo/psychographics.
A concrete manifestation of that was the nearly 150 requests I received for a copy of the Real Life Brands in Second Life research study and the First Opinions Panel demographic survey I presented in my five-minute (well, maybe 8 minute) panel talk.  Contrary to popular wisdom, it is possible to apply success measurements to a vw initiative.  It doesn’t have to be just about “marketing R&D.”  While it is true that we do not yet have sophisticated metric tools specific to virtual worlds, we do have very sophisticated metrics for our other marketing initiatives.  By integrating VW initiatives with some more mature metric systems marketers can at least partially satisfy this real business need until vw metrics mature.

There is some real marketing, sociological and psychographic research being done in virtual worlds – and it is not well known or publicized.  Market Truths and Reperes are just two companies that can provide marketers with the intelligence and credible research marketers need pre- or post-vw initiative. 

Marketers expectations of their VW developers are too high.
Marketers expect their VW developers to have all the marketing answers.  They don’t.  They can’t.  Marketers need a team approach and a real commitment (not necessarily monetary) for a truly successful vw initiative.  Integration is key. Social media marketing concepts are key.  My suggestion for a success team:

• Marketing and PR staff / agency
• Social Media specialist / consultant
• Virtual World Developer
• Virtual World and Real World market researchers (maybe)
• Platform Owner (perhaps)
• IT Group (if appropriate)
• RW & VW Customer

Intellectual Property Rights Conflict Lost in Translation
This was an area in which the two populations at VW 2007 were particularly linguistically mismatched. I’m the first one to agree that marketers have spent millions and millions so that consumers will make a brand part of their identity, and therefore it is not surprising that when avatars are re-creating themselves in virtual spaces they naturally want to integrate the brands they identify with.  It is an absolute fantasy for any marketer.

The prevailing advice from several panel members was to allow or even encourage customers to “play with” the brand, be the brand, mashup the brand or take some kind of personal virtual ownership of the brand. 

The problem for the marketer is current trademark and copyright laws aren’t in line with this.  If a brand allows unlicensed, unstructured and free use, it will in practice be putting the brand/marks into the public domain and the brand owner may lose its right to claim it as a valuable IP.  A real big, real world issue for business.  Not a simple conundrum.

Trademark and copyright laws will need to be revised to address the collaborative digital mind.  In the meantime, marketers need to employ smart strategies that protect both the identity with the brand - and the brand identity.

Virtual worlds have a future.
Even as they are evolving, the enthusiasm for and potential of virtual worlds are driving factors.  A path has been set for their growth and eventual entry into mainstream use. Some panelists predicted five years; some said ten. How far that is away and how we define “mainstream” is to be seen.  We still have millions unconnected to The Network, much less the Metaverse.

But if they follow the evolution of everything else - and there is no indication they are any different - virtual worlds will not progress linearly.  The momentum behind them is undeniable, however, for the Future of Media and Marketing - and a whole lot of other things.

April 8, 2007

Photo credit:  Dedric Mauriac, Snapzilla

Second Life Transformational Moments

Wayne MacPhail produces a wonderful podcast, Who's On Second (now in episode 15).  He normally focuses on conversing with people working in non-profit and education endeavors in Second Life.  His questions are sharp and balanced.  His podcast guests are doing some far-reaching work - and just plain interesting things - in Second Life.  Some of this work is far more interesting - and take communication in the "medium" to far more interesting places than all but a very few of the "brand" presences.  Go take a podcast or two.  You will be fascinated by the things his guests bring to light that get very little SL buzz.

In his latest podcast, Wayne diverges from his usual format to throw out some less -than-enthusiastic musings about Second Life.  It is worth a listen - a bit of reality, a touch of worry about an environment that is "broken" (says Wayne), and a wish for more "doing good" with this medium - i.e. introducing transformational moments for people.

Wayne also invited comments from within a discussion list he and I happen to share.  I'm taking the liberty of sharing a few of these comments anonomously.  Their comments are words an SL communicator should live by.

"I do not think that the SL environment should be discounted as a mere variation of a chat room. SL brings the element of shared experience to interactions which would be anonymous in an email/chat room environment. I may appear as a cartoon character in SL but I make choices over clothing and can invite colleagues to a ‘home’ which reflect my real personality. We can go exploring together and work in the same environment, discuss the same issues affecting us weekly and translate that into RL. All this forms similar ties to that of a conference over several days, where colleagues have a chance to form stronger ties that those from the occasional exchanged note, and these interactions are reinforced over days and weeks of SL association."

_________________

"I may get a few bits of good information from the  actual meeting chat sessions but what I am really getting (and this is  what SL DOES offer that differs from real life meetings) is the opportunity to scan profiles of the avatars; their time in SL, their
personal group associations and other  information, including optional real life information. In and of itself, this is a new type of communication that SL offers. Add to this the fact that avatar appearances are self selected with a certain amount of decision, creativity and possibility not allowed in RL and you have, in meeting each avatar, the ability to experience one on one or multiple layered communication experiences that are very different from RL."

_________________

"I have had a few (not all mentioned here) transformational encounters:

• I have met CEOs of large, important corporations who interacted with me no differently then they would another equal corporate executive. They may have even taken a suggestion or two that I had back to a RL situation.

• I have met people from all over the world that are all ages and have all interests.  Our conversations encompass wide ranges of topics and had I met these individuals in RL  may not have even acknowledged one another because of various bias -- let alone been aware of similar interests of shared travels, etc (via profiles).

• I have "touched" an object to find its owner or designer and then searched their profile - ya can't do that in RL, and it has, a couple of times transformed my view of the world and its possibilities.

• The social networking tools that I access outside SL have very much expanded my in world experience. I am guessing that I am on at least 6 group e-mail lists, participate in several blogs and wikis, listen to Wayne's podcasts, etc. This is as much the experience of immersion into "virtual" learning as being in-world.

_________________

"I don’t think that voice features will necessarily make our experience better, but it will attract more users, so I think it is inevitable LL follows that route rather than fix what is breaking down.

March 2, 2007

United States Congress Enters Second Life. 100:00 Hours and Counting.

As an American, watching the opening of the 110th Congress, the election of Nancy Pelosi to Speaker of the House, and joining in on a chat with Representative George Miller (D – 7th District, CA) while sitting in a replica of the House Chamber in Second Life earlier today was a remarkably moving experience. 

Virtual Capitol Hill was opened today, coinciding with the start of the 110th Congressional session and the "first 100 hours campaign” toward achieving the agenda of six major Democratic political initiatives.  Streaming video of the real world event was available to the invitational audience in the sim throughout the morning, and an in-world discussion with Rep. Miller after the swearing-in ceremonies wrapped up the virtual event.  Rocketboom’s Joanne Colan in the guise of avatar Joanne Canto conducted the interview with Representative Miller in his distinguished-looking avatar. 

The genesis of the Second Life Congressional presence was the idea of Rep. Miller and some members of the SL community to broaden the public’s access to policy makers, according to avatar, Justin Cannonball, spokesperson at the event.

Sun Microsystems' Chief Researcher in the persona of John Gage explained that Rep. Miller also sits with him on the George Lucas Educational Foundation Board.  At a recent board meeting the two Georges (Miller and Lucas) and Gage “flew around a number of sites” that merged classrooms and Second Life.  Gage said, “I'm here as an SL member, interested in building continuous discussion areas.....the Berkeley cafe version of democracy and because of the power of the visual metaphor, this environment can be used by anyone, in any language, from any culture so we can link schools in Kenya or Rwanda with schools and teachers and students in Palo Alto or Lucas Valley.”  Sun Microsystems is underwriting the Virtual Capitol Hill project.

The project came about very recently, says Cannonball.  “It's amazing not only how much we can do with this technology but so quickly. I think that as people become more familiar with this space, the enthusiasm for what it can accomplish grows.”

Rep. Miller said the six individual pavilions, located on the sims behind the main Chamber building, will become information and discussion hubs, each around one of the six items on the Democratic Party agenda for the 110th Congress.  He also indicated his hope is to bring other members of Congress into Second Life to engage in conversation with resident voters and constituents, likening SL to real world town halls representatives routinely hold in their real life districts.

In my opinion, the six pavilions are the real heart of the sim – and encompass the Democratic campaign strategy here.  They are the more simple structures, but they communicate the promise of this session of Congress and underscore the determined unity of message for the Democratic party (not traditionally known for their unity).

Marketing firm, Clear Ink brought the project to life with support from Blue Practice.  It was quite a feat of coordination among numerous entities, including Linden Lab. Rep. Miller joked about the interesting challenge of presenting the idea to Pelosi to approve this rather unorthodox way to open a Congressional session.

This virtual event was well-managed - as the traditional decorum of the House would suggest.  /clap and kudos to Clear Ink on that account.  Communicators take note:  A greeter was watching as people dropped in all throughout the several hours of the event and Clear Ink folks were stationed around the sim, clearly identified by their avatar names.  The main chat was used to greet arrivals without worrying about disrupting the on-going conversation.  Each person was directed to a notecard as they arrived that held all the particulars about the event with clear directions on how to ask questions of Rep. Miller.  Attendees were kept appraised of timing and happenings, and it was obvious someone from Clear Ink was watching the chat for any confusion, questions or issues.  When it seemed some SL newcomers were having trouble using the IM feature for submitting questions, Clear Ink was able to go with the flow quite seamlessly and pick up questions from the main chat for relay to interviewer Canto.  Clear Ink avatar power was present and efficient - and it made for one well-run event.

There are two mirrored sims, Capitol Hill 1 & 2. They were originally scheduled to open tomorrow, but they are now open to the public as of this afternoon.  Stop by.  The design communicates a theme of “openness” and accessibility: no roof on the House Chamber and a line of trees branching out on an angle away from the main building creating an ever-broadening pathway fronting the six initiative discussion pavilions.  I’d like to think that is a metaphor for the things that will happen there.

Virtual Capitol Hill is located here.

[update 1-5-07:  Avatar and in-world spokesperson at this event, Justin Cannonball, is Danny Weiss, Rep. Miller's Chief of Staff.

Rocketboom's coverage of the event has been posted here.]

January 4, 2007

Second Life: Tips for Business

An article I wrote a month ago or so for Optimize Magazine will be hitting the newstands on January 1.  Some of the verbiage that went under the editor's knife was a side piece with a few tips for businesses who are moving into Second Life, or are considering some of the other "outside world" opportunities the interest in virtual worlds is fueling.

So, here are those tips:

Invest time before money.  Appoint a 3D liaison to inhabit and learn about virtual worlds for your potential applications. 

Purchase your name.  Not all worlds offer them, but Second Life is offering custom last names which can serve to identify your team or employee avatars.

Create avatar guidelines.  You have a blogging policy, right?   Okay, well get one of those too.  Create guidelines for your group or employees while operating in world under your organization’s name.  The breadth of activities available within Second Life is rather robust.  Some may not be consistent with your brand image.

Find and leverage the social and information structures.  Social virtual worlds are social – incorporate social activities and the existing social structures into your strategies – and  go ahead and create new ones.

Don’t replicate 2D experiences in a 3D world.  Three-dimensional spaces offer expanded opportunities for engagement with all types of content, but not everything is better in 3D.  PowerPoint bullets are just as boring to an avatar – how about walking your audience through the issue as a 3D model?

Embrace the “Game Babies.”  Develop for them and win. Hire them – and listen.  There are real generational differences that can both challenge and enlighten your teams.  Remember that the true “gaming generation” is just beginning to enter the work force and their interactive and social expectations are high, and are a rich source of innovation for your organization.

December 22, 2006

NBC’s Very Virtual Christmas In Second Life. Communicators Prepare for a New Year

NBC held a virtual holiday tree-lighting ceremony last Wendesday for the opening of its new NBC Universal simulation in Second Life.  The event was timed to coincide with the televised real world Rockefeller Center tree-lighting celebration.  The SL “Very Virtual Christmas” event was produced by The Electric Sheep Company and according to a report over at 3pointD (sponsored by the ESC), the event was attended by about 1000 avatars.

To accomplish such a mass gathering – since most simulations can normally hold around 50 avatars at a time -  NBC and ESC used 19 mirrored simulations.  Linden Lab has recently acknowledged that they cannot fill the demand fast enough for new land (servers) within Second Life.  NBC turned to Anshe Chung to rent the space required for their event.  Coincidently, Chung announced this past week that the value of her holdings in Second Life have surpassed $1 million USD real world dollars. The combination of growth challenges for Linden Lab and Chung’s current holdings of 550 simulations will undoubted increase her value in other ways by companies who wish to be among the first to enter Second Life.

I cannot speak to NBC's virtual event because I wasn’t in the space at the time, but ESC had some event production challenges due to a Linden Lab upgrade that day.  The plan was to make SL a little more friendly for those not current residents by having a special Second Life registration at NBC’s event web site.  New NBC visitors would then have a special orientation to SL before going to an NBC sim for the event.  Unfortunately Linden Lab's third-party registration feature wasn’t ready in time for the event.  Electric Sheep did, however, staff the standard Orientation Island instead with assistance-avatars to help new comers get acclimated. This was a good move regardless of where the orientation happened and I hope more companies will take note of it.

Having visited the simulation several times post-event, I can say that the NBC build is one of the more beautifully executed simulations currently in Second Life.  For those of you that live near or have visited Rockerfeller Center in real life, you will likely have an immediate emotional connection with the virtual space.  The Peacock Room restaurant at the top of the NBC building is stunning and worth the virtual trip – fly up if you can’t locate the elevator - there doesn't seem to be a way to call it. NBC did well to hire Aimee Weber to design the space. It is brilliant work.  The attention to detail communicates volumes, both spacially and emotionally.  You can get free ice skates, hats, scarves and mittens by clicking the various gift boxes under the trees in the sim.

It strikes me that the NBC event and SL launch is following a pattern set by other RL companies coming into SL:  hire virtual world developer to create a sim; hold launch event with some minor PR; step back, take stock and wonder what SL means and where to go from here.

This isn’t a bad pattern, nor is that a criticism.  It is, in fact, the exact same adoption pattern I saw with launching web sites in the 1990’s.  Companies need to get in to learn how to adapt their media strategies – and/or business strategies – to virtual environments.  And, the only way to do that is to start, spend time and watch and listen.  Companies are feeling the pressure to understand the influence and impact of social networks from web-based media as well.  And Second Life is up there as one of the important social worlds to understand.  Residents, on the other hand, are anxious to see if brands can engage them beyond the launch event.

What is unfortunate, however, is that right now companies are relying on their developers to lead their charge into Second Life – much like they did when entering the Web.  It was what deeded their web presence to the IT department for many companies.   

Second Life, like a web site, is a communications tool – albeit technology enabled and dependant.  But it is a communications tool: communicating the brand/brand experience, or the product, the event, or the mission, and in a way far beyond the capabilities of a flat 2D web site.   

My fervent hope is that as companies enter their “where do we go from here” phase that they (or their developers) involve the communications function (and knowledable communicators)  – because simulations are the most immersive of communications tools available yet.

Developers are doing amazing things with the simulations they are building for brands.  But virtual world developers are suddenly being pressed (probably quite unexpectedly) into being event planners, production crews, marketing communicators, and media relations staff.  Now, these are extremely talented people.  But brands shouldn’t expect so much from their developers – let them focus on their core talents.  That means communicators, you need to get ready to take on virtual spaces strategies and implementation.  It will be a magical partnership.

December 2, 2006

A Second Life Cautionary Tale via Text 100

Second Life Insider blogger, Caliadris Pendragon, calls out Text 100 but in the process teaches a couple of really important lessons for PR and business people entering Second Life.  The big one – take time to learn the culture.

September 30,2009

Learnings from the Second Life Community Convention

Time.  If there was a universal theme at last weekend’s Second Life Community Convention, it was time.

From Mitch Kapor’s keynote and Cory Ondrejka’s SL history lesson, through the panels on business, media, sex, social views and education and training; time was the common thread.

Time, past and present: Second Life is something extraordinarily influential.  Today it is the village green of a tiny percentage of the population – but these are early adopters who see that something very formative is happening.

Virtual worlds like Second Life are at least as powerful and disruptive as the personal computer and the World Wide Web. We can look back now and see that the skepticism surrounding these in their early adoption days was intense and shortsighted, but today we could not even consider doing business without these tools and spaces.   Many of us dismissed the signs then of the huge disruptions about to take place, but perhaps we should take a cue from recent history and look more deeply at this developing force.

Mitch Kapor’s keynote illustrated these themes and he has indeed proven himself soothsayer extraordinaire.  In case you don’t know of him, Kapor is developer and founder of Lotus 1-2-3, the Open Source Applications Foundation, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation; founding investor of Real Networks (web video streaming) and UUNET (oldest and largest ISP), and founding chair of the Mozilla Foundation (of Firefox browser fame) to name just a few credentials.  Albeit, he is chairman and major investor in Linden Lab, developers of Second Life, but you have to admit his track record in identifying the disruptive innovations of our time is awfully good.

Heads-up time?

Short-term versus long-term: Macromyopia is the state of over-estimating the short term affects and underestimating the long-term impact.  I’d say this describes us early business adopters of Second Life quite succinctly. 

In the Hype Cycle we’re in the “peak of inflated expectations”  right now.  Lots of pie, lots of sky.  There’s lots of interest and lots of media coverage.  Every new business application of it gets coverage (remember when every new web site that went online did as well?) It’s exciting, it’s visual, it’s seductive.  It’s clumsy.  It’s daunting.  It’s confusing.

But, like it or not, it is going to have a transformative effect on how we do business. Virtual environments will become [nearly] indistinguishable from “real” environments and our definition of what is “real” will expand. The 2D world of the web will morph into the 3D experiences afforded by Second Life – it’s inevitable as computing power is rapidly increasing and connectivity is becoming ubiquitous.

Is Second Life a platform?  Is it the interface of the future?  Is it to be a natural extension of the spaces in which we do business today? We’re only just beginning to learn how we need to build information structures, commerce and knowledge exchange in a 3D environments. 

Just don’t underestimate where it could go.  Now’s the time to start exploring.

Investing Time:  Rezzing into Second Life takes just a few seconds.  Learning to walk, talk and fly takes practice.  Recognizing you’ve dropped into a global existence with cultures even more diverse than our own real world – priceless. 

Time is perhaps the biggest investment to plan on making in Second Life. It is different from the web because on the web there is no proximity.  In Second Life you have neighbors, passersby and griefers.  There are residents and social structures and existing business practices.  On the one hand setting up shop in Second Life is fast and easy.  On the other hand, it’s not the web and your impact will be determined by the time you take to prepare.   If you do business in other real world countries you surely invest in learning cultural norms.  Plan to do the same in Second Life.

The New Media Consortium expected staff to spend 2 hours per week in world to find things that would inform their project. They spent $30,000 and 6 weeks to build their in-world island campus, but the importance of the existing community was something they greatly underestimated.   The Linden Labs community arbitrators urge that getting to know the community is the most important first step to success.  It will also open your eyes to the substantial opportunities to developing your business or branding goals.

Creating content that is interesting to residents is vital – but your definition of interesting content is likely not the same as the residents’.  Taking time to figure out what residents find interesting is key, but consider that you will also need the internal resources to be creating that interesting content.

Time to Reputation: Reputation systems are a “must have" but there are are no reputation systems in SL.  Linden Labs tells us there is one to come, but like the blogosphere (and RL), reputations are built, managed and discovered with time.

But, how do you deal with the reputation when avatars are representations and not “real?” This is perhaps the biggest concern/question business people expressed at the SLCC and represents the single biggest issue to face business people in SL– both how to manage our own reputation and the discovery of others.  While “time” and “experience” were most often cited as answers, these are only partial answers. It was clear no one has a good answer to this one just yet. 

The maturing and 100% participatory culture of Second Life gives us the opportunity to help shape what those reputations systems will be, however.

Chili Carson is organizing a Chamber of Commerce, which may help serve both the businesses and the residents with certain aspects of reputation.

I will be posting here more specific thoughts about reputation mangement in SL for our discussion – and it is a theme we will revisit in our monthly meetings.  If you’d like to post here on the topic (or any other SL topic), send me an email and I’ll add you as an author.

Do remember that in a small world reputations are built and discovered quickly. 

Further Reading
An excellent report by 3pointD on Mitch Kapor’s keynote speech is here and worth the read.

The transcript of the Chamber of Commerce organizing meeting is here.