Wheeleis is a Second Life based night club for folks with disabilities. The space is run by gentleman in the UK named Simon Stevens, an independent Disability Consultant and Trainer who has cerebral palsy. Simon is using the community power of SL to gather and support those with disabilities. I hope you will vote for the wheelies program and support them in their bid for the Catalyst award.
Recently Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute created an artificial intelligence program to run within the platform of Second Life. The researchers are studying the interactions that occur with real people through their avatars. The RPI students created the program to maneuver the avatar and understand some fairly straight forward questions, asked in English.
Operators of "Second Life" don't seem concerned about synthetic agents lurking in their world. John Lester, Boston operations manager for Linden Lab, said the San Francisco-based company sees a "fascinating" opportunity for AI to evolve. "I think the real future for this is when people take these AI-controlled avatars and let them free in 'Second Life,'" Lester said, " ... let them randomly walk the grid."
The Wall Street Journal published a story recently about how business are leaving second life. They site a Gartner study that I think is fundamentally flawed as it examines only large bus businesses and does not examine locally owned SL industry.
The Virtual world space is where the entrepreneur has the same access to resources as large retailers. The playing field is level and real items of value are creativity, time, and skill. On a business level large businesses do not realize that the virtual residents shun corporate patronage, and encourage buying local. Literally, buy items made by local content creators and do not bother visiting big box retailers. On so many levels corporate venture have failed in Second Life, Second Life did not fail them.Failure to understand the market before entering is entirely the fault of business not the community.
E Marketer Daily posted a report from the Virtual Worlds conference and had some surprising pieces of information. The charts provided show that time spend in Second Life is on a very steady and rapid increase while participation volumetrically speaking is increasing at an equally impressive rate. Expect additional investments in marketing from some of the more advanced media companies and expect and equal amount of resistance from the residents of the virtual spaces. They are there in part because they are tired of the consistent bombardment of marketing messages.
The Ohio University has set up a fairly innovative experience inside Second Life focused on educating residents about food choices. The experience asks residents to choose 3 meals and then it tells them about the amount of calories, fat and the long term impact of their health if they continue to eat this way.The below video give a real nice overview.
Some friends at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars have put together a nice article on the Eco-tour of Second Life. Developed by UC Berkley Graduate Student Stephanie Gerson, the tour looks at how some virtual spaces are examining real world ecological issues and developing solutions. I have always maintained that one of the best uses for this virtual spaces is as a 3-D collaborative platform for big problem solving. I am glad to see an issues such as the ecology being tackled.
Forester has published an article on working in the virtual world. The article looks at using virtual world and 3-d world technology as a complimentary tool enhancing meetings and supplementing face to face interaction. It is important that Forester is looking at the technology not as a backbone of business but more as a tool of business, and that may be the critical item. If virtual worlds can become 'business as usual' then the adoption rates will rise moving forward.
One of the major intellectual quandaries in the virtual space arena is what are the roles of real world laws, if any? New York University Law School and Harvard's Berkman Center, with the direction of Professor Beth Noveck, even set up the State of Play conference to address some of the concerns. They included legal questions on Intellectual Property rights, taxation, pornography, and free speech. Now Virtual Worlds Management is conducting a Virtual World Law conference in New York this spring. I am not sure of the attendees or the nature of the presenters, academic or professional, but their conferences have been well attended in the past and their content is consistently very good. The conference will involve the American Bar Association's committee on Virtual Worlds and Multiuser Online Games. Their participation will help in world business owners address legal questions they have in the wake of some of the more public virtual world law suits.
I know it is a bad play on words but the fact that Herbie Hancock is running a contest asking for a remix of his own music speaks volumes about community engagement. Herbie is opening up his art form (ironically jazz its self is a very open art from taking cues from so many various genres) and allowing the creative community to play. As a measure of course he is encouraging a new level of interaction with his art - from listening to co-creating. If only other brand and marketers could feel comfortable with constituents, admirers co-creating the experience. I admire the fact that this is in conjunction with the launch of the Pangea Island (supported by Universal music Germany) in SL. More on that in a later post.
In a recent article 'Second Life Still a Waste of Time' Ken Wheaton exposes on how virtual world environments are a waste of time energy and money for advertisers. Ken not only does not get Second Life, Ken does not get 'community'. Ken is used to putting adds on TV and radio, and maybe a banner add or two. Ken can not carry on a conversation with his market - all that traditional marketing knows is that you have to broadcast the message loud ad far and hope that it sticks to something or someone. If you throw enough of it on a wall something is bound to stick.
Jaffe Juice has a great set of ideas on why traditional marketers are afraid of SL and virtual worlds. It is outside of of the traditional marketers frame of reference. This is why brands are not going to marketing firms to carry out their virtual world marketing - they are headed to specialty metaverse development firms. Seems like clients would not be shrugging their shoulders and leaving virtual worlds if their marketing teams did a better job of helping them understand the environment, set realistic goals, expectations, and developed a conversational approach to consumer engagement. But hey ... marketers like Ken just don't get.
