If you’re able to get a half-hour cleared at 2pm SLT today, do join us in Second Life (SLurl) for the next session of Virtual Worlds Keynote. Hélène Zuili, CEO of MakeMyWorlds will give a case study entitled “Real World Expos in Virtual Spaces”. If you’ve ever wondered about a true marriage of real and virtual trade shows, this is the session for you.
If you think you might have questions do make sure you’re there for the live session; the Q&A portion is not recorded! This is to keep each episode short and to the point for maximum usefulness in business environments. As usual, if you have questions for a speaker you might have missed, you can also email me at info [at] calebbooker [dot] com.
Recap from last time:
Last week we held the very first session of Virtual Worlds Keynote with guest speaker Jonena Relth, President of TBD Consulting. Her topic was “Why We Sold Our Real Building and Went Totally Virtual” and proved to be a valuable resource for anyone who has ever considered taking a team online. I loved how grounded in real-world concerns her approach was, and the story that she tells about the discovery of this new tool is meaningful for a wide variety of professionals. You can view it in its entirety here:
Why We Sold Our Real Building and Went Totally Virtual
This video now begins its life as a tool that you can use when proposing a solution for cutting travel budgets, team building exercises, or cost effective training. You can get the code for embedding this on your blog by right-clicking on the video itself, or click here for various social networking options.
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To join us in Second Life, you’ll need to do the following:
Go to SecondLife.com, create an account, and install the software.
Log in through the Second Life software using your user name.
Click here to be teleported to our studio before 2pm Pacific.
Clear a half-hour of your schedule at 4pm SLT and join us in Second Life (SLurl) as our guest Jonena Relth, President of TBD Consulting, gives a 15 minute presentation entitled: “Why We Sold Our Real Building and Went Totally Virtual”. We’ll be recording and broadcasting live through Treet.tv.
If tough economic times have driven your business to look for new cost-cutting measures, or if you’re at risk of losing highly skilled employees due to a long commute, do not miss this! Extending well beyond virtual environments, Jonena will cover how her company has combined a variety of Web 2.0 technologies and old-fashioned spreadsheets to get the job done right.
After the presentation we’ll be holding a Q&A that will not be recorded, so be sure to arrive on time to secure your seat!
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To join us in Second Life, you’ll need to do the following:
Go to SecondLife.com, create an account, and install the software.
Log in through the Second Life software using your user name.
Click here to be teleported to our studio before 4pm Pacific.
I’m seeing signs of the new rush into virtual worlds beginning. Let me give you a few references:
Myst Online is back! Why does this mean anything? Well, it failed twice. The game just isn’t financially viable. The creators, however, just switched the lights on and aren’t even worried about making any money out of it. That’s how cheap it has become to run these things!
Layoffs Won’t Stop Project Wonderland – The latest from a GigaOM affiliate blog about the Wonderland team’s determination, stating that the project has enough momentum to carry it forward without any need for Oracle’s help and a number of companies are taking a serious look. Isn’t this exactly the kind of thing we started seeing just prior to the first dot-com bubble?
These are three specific examples, but in general I can tell you that there’s more virtual worlds news trying to cram itself through my news reader than ever before. I’m also hearing a lot of behind-the-scenes chatter of some huge announcements coming this summer. Brace yourself folks, 2010 is going to be a big year for virtual worlds.
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Want some hard facts, but don’t want to go through hundreds of articles to find it? I can’t blame you. Here, chew on these PDF links:
In creating and running a wide variety of online events over the last few years, one thing has remained consistent: people undervalue information directly in proportion to how convenient it is to acquire.
Ask yourself: if the meeting is easier to attend, was the meeting just as worthwhile? More? Less?
Oddly enough, since most of us instinctively equate sacrifice with worth, many feel that spending four figures on a flight and blowing a few days of work off to attend a meeting will be more beneficial than saving ourselves the time and money and absorbing the same content in our office. This despite all survey and testing evidence that says online meetings are just as beneficial and enjoyable. Still, can you blame people for “going with their gut”?
This is why I think NMC is making the right move with their SL Pro! conference, to be held in Second Life February 23-25. They’re going ahead and charging $99 in real-world dollars to attend virtually. By charging a real-dollar amount to attend they’re creating a perception of value in the content.
I wouldn’t be surprised if paid attendance online events started to become a lot more common in 2010.
We had two big setbacks in the virtual worlds industry these past few months.
Metaplace closed its doors due to some low numbers. Personally, I think this was a case of having built for tinkerers first, rather than creating a bunch of games and then saying: “You can also tinker!” The gratification was seriously delayed. They’ve gone into hibernation in order to create “something great”, which was their approximate tagline the last time they tried to hype their brand before launch.
Forterra Systems is also in trouble. They laid off half of their staff, and are saying things like: “We haven’t decided anything. It might be acquisition, further partnerships, further investment from investors, or organic growth over time…” which is possibly the scariest language a corporate leader could ever use. Again, my two cents here: they were narrowly focused on military and emergency response training, and had killer AI. Then, over the last year, they started announcing compatibility with SCORM and a bunch of other standards only corporate trainers care about. This moved them from their core competency, simulation, into competing directly with training companies. Bye bye niche market…
Meanwhile, to the shock of the entire world, Second Life lives! I’m about as “platform agnostic” as a person can get but I have to admit that Second Life got my recommendation as the platform of choice many times this past year for two very simple reasons:
Its cheap to build in.
It can basically be forced into whatever shape you need.
That’s it. I mean, it’s horrible in many ways that other platforms are fantastic, but the bottom line is the bottom line.
We’ve had our illusions properly shattered. Geniuses can fail, hacked-together products with bad customer service can win, and the “economic downturn” didn’t destroy the planet.
Now what?
Well, now we have a bunch of recently laid-off technologists wandering around in a slowly recovering economy trying to figure out what their next move is. The two companies I mentioned set loose a small hoard of brilliant people in a world where developing costs are at an all-time low, there are more niche markets than you can shake a stick at, and the world is just begging for a truly unique idea.
Here is my one and only prediction for the new year: 2010 will be the year of the entrepreneur.
Does that sound like you? If so, drop me a line. I’d like to hear about it.
