It's Captain Jack

One of my daily routine jobs as a blogger is checking Technorati to see if there are new links to my blog. When following one of these links I noticed a familiar face...

Yes it's captain Jack Sparrow. It's not Johnny Depp though, but Tay Runo. The beautiful lady at his side is Jojamela Soon. The picture is taken by Paisley Beebe at Sailor's Cove.

Do have a look at Paisley's Flickr Photostream as there is a ton of really great pictures of Second Life, utilising almost every option provided by the WindLight client.

1st Metaverse Meetup - Amsterdam

At exactly 0.00 I returned from Amsterdam where I attended the first Metaverse Meetup (Amsterdam Edition) in "De Balie" which was initiated by Joja Dhara and Ze Moo.

As this was a first meetup, apropriately themed "Meet the Avatar", the most timeconsuming event was the introduction round, but on the other hand it was nice to know who was who. We saw representatives from several MDC's such as Jeroen Frans, Executive Director of the Vesuvius Group (the guys that brought us Google in SL), Damian Simmons of Lost in the Magic Forest (Content, Essent, Aegon) and Up the Vortex (blog), and on the corporate present there was 'moi' for Sogeti, and people from ING (Our Virtual Holland), KPN and Philips Design, researchers from EPN, bloggers like Roy Cassini from Digado and excellent freelancers such as Ollie Kubrick from Unreal Design.

And off course, Bart DutchX, Founder of the Dutch Echange was present. I seem to run into him at about every metaverse related event these days. The Linden Lab banking ban doesn't seem to affect his business, as it is still expanding and they're hiring new people and adding new payment methods continuously.

As it was the first meetup I won't do an assesment of the contents of the meetup, as it was primarily a networking event tonight. I hope we'll get to discuss hot metaversal topics in the future.

Imagine Life Sweeter

I'm a regular citizen of Second Life; I'm handsome and smart ;) No really, I am. In real life I'm in my 30's and I work in the IT industry. The massive arms and broad shoulders of my virtual alter ego have gone in real life, its mass dropped a feet or two, just over the waist. Like many geeks and gamers I spend too much time sitting behind my computer, being immersed and drinking coffee or cola to stay awake. Eating too much pizza and working out too little. I'm probably the ideal person to talk to when you work at Splenda which deals in artificial sweeteners. And so they do. They have immersed in Second Life.

Their virtual setup is oh so sweet to look at, it's candy colored and cartoonesk like Ben and Jerry's, just a tad softer. Splenda hired Millions of Us to work up this virtual presentation and there are a few nice details.

I like the details on the cafe best, which is an overturned coffee-cup. It took a few second before I realized the terras in front of it resembled a pool of coffee flowing out of the cup. It's these little details that makes MoU one of the big names around - when it comes to building.

By themselves, each part of the island is carefully shaped. There are a number of things that go for entertainment, such as the milkshake-slide and the Lemon Ferris Wheel.

Finally, there's the current Second Life meme-thingP: a contest [sorry closed as of november 30] to draw in the crowds. The good thing about it is that it does work about it, and Spleda set up a splendid site to support it.

The bad thing about it is that it's Dozens of Them. As far as corporate sites go, there still isn't much variation in the set up. There's the cafe, the auditorium, the infostand and a fun gimmick, a slide through a milkshake straw, but no interactive display of its core business.

This setup would have had an impact when it had a storyline, interaction with the visitors, not about Splenda branding, but about its business: Keep your avvy healthy and fit.

For instance: Create a virtual game in which your avatar can replay his daily routine, log it, calculate the calories consumed and burned and extrapolate that to adjust the avatar size (aging, weight, disease).

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Splenda/128/128/0

Greenies out, purrsnickety in

A few months back we saw the alien arrival of the Greenies in Second Life, which was a very cool experience by Rezzable. One of the strong points about the Greenies is the avatar marketing bit. Avatar Marketing is mobile marketing as the avatars spread around the grid bringing your brand to the community instead of you having to organize event that will bring the community to your sim. Another cool MDC (Metaverse Development Company) which understands the value of this is the V3 group which brought us the hovering Orb and the Transformer avatars.

Avatar marketing is one, lifestyle is another. We've got some pretty weird people walking the face of the grid. Many subcultures like Goths and punks are present in Second Life and then there's the furries. Furries are animalish avatars, often furry skinned with long tails. These might be rather funny and adorable to the general public, but gets a little twist if you know there's quite a bunch of people out there in the Real World that have a furry fetishism too.

The Second Life Herald reports a new race has entered Second Life; the Purrsnickety's. Here's the SLH report:

"Yesterday Second Life witnessed the birth of a new race of virtual critters – Purrsnicketys. Their basic design is due to Phoenixxx Dragonash, who in RL is Ashley Speranzella-Evans, a free-lance fantasy artist.

They are built and scripted by our good friend and uber-elf Wayfinder Wishbringer. Below the fold are some screenshots and the purrsnickety propaganda."

(Pictures also from SLH)

From the purrsnickety note card...

WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF PURRSNICKETYS!

(To give a Purrsnickety as a gift, please read at the bottom of this notecard)

In a world that has forgotten magic and rushes time, they live above the clouds. Dragon-kitties once chosen to be Guardians of the Earth and magic, they failed to protect it from man. They have become jaded and skeptical, and definitely have attitude. But they have not given up! They have returned to the earth to try one last time to bring back what has lost. Are they the scourge of the skies... or destined to become heroes? Purrsnicketys... adorably wicked.

Purrsnicketys are some of the most complex, heavily-scripted (but very low-lag), fun, tiny avatars ever!

INCLUDED:

• Purrsnickety Avatar (copy/nomod/notrans... copyable so you can pull a new one out of the box in case of inventory loss!)(To give a Purrsnickety
  as a gift, please read at the bottom of this notecard)



• A special Purrsnickety toy (an extra item specific to your Purrsnickety)



• Scripted wings open when flying



• Swishing tail* 72-function HUD, including...



• 68 custom sounds (no freebie sounds here!)



• 14 all-original animations (even the "tiny" animations themselves are new and tweeked), including:* Scripted tongue for cleaning



• Cat-like "run"* Fun "jump"



• Improved "sit" and "groundsit"



• Dance synchronizer (dance in time with your Purrsnickety friends!)* Cute. Real cute. (never underestimate the power of cute. Fells strong dragons and ogres and melts the hearts of warriors).

PURRSNICKETY CHARACTER INFORMATION:

PURRSNICKITY STORIES:

1. Baby Ree: Calico, curious, and pudgy.
   Don’t be fooled by the cuteness of this little baby she will sneeze fire on you
   if you aren’t careful. Likes buttercups and fireflies and her stuffed toy “Remmy”.



2. Bitters: Black, skinny and Melancholy. Always seems to have a rain cloud over his head. Loves,well he dosent’t love anything.. except for a rainy
   day and only because it spoils everyone else’s fun, maybe mud puddles. Older
   brother of Chitters.



3. Chitters: Pink, happy and talks a lot, though only the other purrsnicketys can tell what she is saying. Loves lollypops and unicorns and baking pies for the gang. Kid sister of Bitters and has a crush on Jeepers (but don’t tell him).



4. Creepers: Large, green and agitated. Loves dark damp places and mushrooms. Oldest and Leader of the Purrsnicketys, big brother to
   Jeepers. Arch nemesis: Mr. Wiggles the very elusive and clever mouse dragon whom Creepers can never catch.



5. Critters: Brown, sweet and earthy. He loves all kinds of creatures and can often be seen playing with the mice in the castle (in a friendly way) Likes walking in the clouds and strawberries.



6. Flitters: Yellow, scattered and artistic. He creates beautiful rainbows in the sky and paintings for the castle. Constantly looses everything because he is so focused on his art. He can be seen covered in paint muttering to himself in his room. Likes new paint brushes and dragon flies.

CSI (2) Down the Rabbit Hole

Wednesday, October 24, 10pm et/pt

In this episode CSI New York is all about finding Venus Game:

On October 24, Detective Mac Taylor chased a murderer, Venus, into Second Life. She's on the loose, and her virtual body count is rising. Track her down before she kills again!

CBS has finally opened up their website to support tonight's multimedia show. Also in Second Life the sims are ready to rock. The CSI-NY - Electric Sheep Company gang put in an amazing 416 islands, good enough to hold about 20.000 concurrent logins.

From their website you can immediately sign up for your new flashy virtual alter ego. Of course not necessary for those already having their Second Life avatar. However I took a little peek and I must admit, I didn't go further than the avatar selection, but the Electric Sheep Company did a good show on the graphics. It has a slick look and feel.

I skipped the registration part and went on to step 3: Downloading the new 34 Mb On-Rez viewer, available from this location. The first addon to the default Linden Lab viewer is that aside from English and Korean it now has German and Japanese language support.

Okay, time to immerse

Best Practises for employees

Thursday, 1:30pm - 2:30pm

Best Practices for Employees in Virtual Worlds

With companies issuing avatars to large groups of employees what are the best practices required to create a smooth operating environment for those individuals. What standard operating procedures should be implemented to create the best experience a company projects when sending employees into public virtual worlds?

Speakers:

• Bob Ketner, Creative Director, Studio SFO
• Adrienne Haik, Metaversatility, Inc.

Bob gave a pretty fast ramble on best practises, kind of hard to keep up with taking notes. Here's a few tidbits though:

Why is doing Business in a VW a good idea?

• Employees are already there
• It can solve problems
  - I can't reach you
  - too little time to come over
  - info retrieval
• Gamers are doing it better
  - Gamers focus on getting the job done (single action focus)
  - Gamers are selforganising folk
  - Your new (young) employees are aleardy gamers
  - Are using PC's a lot more effectively

Work can be a drag. How many of you say "Hey I can't wait to get to work on monday", and how many say "I can't wait to play World of Warcraft tonight".

IBM is currently looking into World of Warcraft Guilds, as it takes Guildmasters a lot of experience and compentence to manage all these guildmembers. These Guildmasters are actually people that distill and manipulate digital info in an advanced way. So which skills are involved?

The Avatar as a Uniform

Metaversatility's Adrienna Haik gave an insight as to how serious business in a VW can get.

• It's important for employees to understand they are in a virtual workspace, and not a game.
  -Let your people take it serious and avoid them flying around during discussions and stuff.
  - Visible clues like chairs, desks and other office furniture may help.
  - Set up different spaces for different forms of communication and interaction.
• Interaction guidelines, rules of engagement for the natives
  - How do you react to weird encounters? Your clients my come in as Furry's. A client new to SL can go ballistic if he's shocked by some appearances.
  - Take time for clients and new employees to acclimate. Take them shopping for instance.
  -Respect the community. You're on their turf.
• Your avatarname is associated with your business.
  - Like with email, use a personal and business avatar.
  - Think about sexual harassment by avatars representing your brand
  - Your employee is your best marketing instrument inworld. Have them take the brand serious and advocate it.

There were several things in here which I didn't agree on. Especially the private and professional avatar distinction. I've only got one avatar as the lines between work and play are blurring. We're in a global business now and shifting timezones lead to business encounters at many different hours. Nor do I see the leaders of the industry, like Ian Hughes (IBM), Jeff barr (Amazon) and Christian Renaud (Cisco) have different avatars.

When speaking to Jeff Barr on this after the session was done he came up with several good reasons. First of all, these are community leaders. They've got a very professional attitude towards second life and have to build relations on their reputation. Switching Identities makes you have to build multiple reputations. Another thing (which at least goes for Jeff himself) is that they've probably all had PR training and know what they can and can't say. A third reason why you may not consider switching avatars is by self-protection. For some people there might be tempting stuff in Second Life. If you want to stay away from that, it's a strong motivator if you've got a reputation to think off.

It might be different though for regular employees who come into a virtual world to do some work then go off again. They have a completely different precense than their community leaders.

Reuben's Keynote

Reuben Steiger ,Millions of Us – The Avatar Age

Where are we, and how did we get here?

The avatar age is a way of categorising this industry as more than virtual worlds. VW sounds isolated and niche. It doesn’t do justice to everything that’s going on.

The most primal and basic sort of human togetherness is sitting round the campfire. Surprisingly it is one of the most popular events in virtual worlds as well.

What is an avatar?

In Hindu lore it was the earthly form of a god. Now it’s an online persona. It’s an inversion. In history it was from ethereal to prosaic, now it’s vice versa.

Houston, we have a problem!

Only 25% of US residents trust conventional advertising. Over 70% trust recommendations from their friends.

User generated social communities represent the fastest growing market segment, totaling 31% of all consumer internet usage. This is not a niche thing. This is where the market is trending.

Second Life has been on top of the virtual world market when it comes to press attention, yet it represents only a small minority of those millions of virtual residents.

• Over the next year social networks will become avatarized
• Virtual Worlds will become more like social networks
• Television tie-ins will increase for virtual worlds.

Virtual worlds will evolve from a Habitat (1985) to a Second Life (now)

Where did it all begin?

Philo T. Farnsworth (1928) invented the television, just across the street from 1100 Sansome street (Linden Lab HQ).

What happened to communities? Before the automobile and television we lived in small villages, architecturally build on the community principle. Over the past decades we’ve lost that sense of community. The basic civic getting together has gone. Virtual Worlds are so important because they offer the opportunity to reestablish this togetherness.

How will this stuff manifest in the potential future? (again Scion City example)

SAND – episode on Scion City, a narrative where residents are invited to solve the mystery.