Boo!

Be sure to check out some of the haunted houses for Halloween! Here’s a guide.

Business wear in SL

Information Week has a piece on what to wear for business in SL. A lot of people think that it’s silly to wear a suit & tie in a setting where you can be anything at all. Others think–as one of the commentators has it–that some RL/SL continuity is worthwhile. What do you think?

SL Everywhere

I’m kicking myself for not requiring you all to read Snow Crash–or at least the parts that deal directly with the Metaverse. It’s really a large part of the inspiration for what a lot of what people do in virtual worlds. In the book the protagonist (Hiro Protagonist) jack into Second Life the Metaverse using his “deck,” a mobile system that allows him to immerse in the virtual world.

Here’s a guy who’s made his own version, based on a Sony Vaio and goggles.

Xeroxing SL

There’s no trucks in WoW!

Viral out of Saatchi & Saatchi.

Newseum in world

This is why I shouldn’t firm up a readings list. I hope you’ll take a look at this article in the Washington Post that asks whether physical museums make sense when you can just build them in Second Life.

Q & A

Alex: Thank you for agreeing to this interview.

Erde: Just glad we could find a time and place that worked for both of us. It seems that either one or the other of us is usually asleep or off doing something.

Alex: Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s crazy. OK, to start off with, where should I be looking for stuff: on the blog? In the in-world group? On Facebook?

Erde: I try to make sure things show up in all three. Certainly, the blog-posts are automatically put into Facebook. But the blog is the place where official announcements are made.

Alex: Where are we on the schedule? What’s going on?

Erde: We are on week 6. At this point, I was hoping that we would have some building under the belt, and maybe be getting started with scripting, but we’ve done a couple of visits (and another today), and that’s introduced some particular disruptions. So, we are off schedule a bit.

Alex: What about the readings?

Erde: Well, my thought is that getting up to speed with acting in the world is the primary aim, and so that has taken priority. That said, I do want to hit on the Hemp piece, for sure, and talk a bit about branding more broadly. To that end, I’ve posted a new round-up of the schedule here on the blog. That schedule is pretty solid at this point.

Alex: OK, readings aside, we’re all a bit anxious about the final project. What’s up with that?

Erde: Sure. As noted, we will address that at the midpoint of the semester, which is officially in a week, but we’ll be getting started on it today.

The basic idea is that in groups of 1 to 10, I expect folks to be creating projects in Second Life that provide a campaign for a product or idea. That’s very broad, so I’ve sketched an outline of the process here.

Alex: So, I can work alone?! Oh, that rules! I hate other people.

Erde: Brother, I hear that. I mean you’re cool and all, and I think we work well together, but these other yahoos.

Alex: No, it’s not that, it’s just that the costs of coordinating group work outweigh the benefits sometimes. That, and I want to avoid free-riders. Anyway, really glad I can work alone. What’s the catch?

Erde: The catch? Only that no matter what the size of the group is I will have the same expectations of the final product: that it produces some measurable change in the target audience. So if we have a “group” of 1 and a group of 6, the six might have a real advantage in terms of scope. That’s especially true if a large part of the campaign involves personal interaction or an event.

Alex: Oh, so it’s like Ikea instructions: “For this step you must be two people.”

Erde: Something like that, yes. Although I think we may have lost the audience with an in-joke that only the two of us recognize from an Ikea assembly instructions page from the mid-1980s.

Alex: Oops. Now, what’s up with the blogging? I’m blogging, of course, because that’s how I roll. But I need to know what your expectations are there.

Erde: I’m thinking of it as a virtual diary and field notebook. So, I’m looking for observations about your experiences inworld, your conversations, your problems, your interactions. Like any field notebook, I expect to see overheard conversations and snapshots. And some of the participants in the seminar are good about sending me emails/IMs about interesting stuff, but not blogging it. They should blog it…

Alex: But in the syllabus, it says, and I quote “I will distribute a topic, activity, or question” each week. I’m waiting.

Erde: It says that? Oh. Well, I’ve missed a week, but at the end of each class, you’ve had something you’re supposed to be doing in prep. This week it was building the set. You should have a blog post up about what you have been doing to that end. When I don’t see a post about it, I assume the answer is “nothing”–whether or not that is the case. As you can see in the updated schedule, I’ve been more explicit in what I expect each week. If I expect you to keep up with the blogging and I’m not, our heads may asplode with hypocrisy.

As we move forward, I’ll expect daily updates on your progress toward your final project.

Alex: Daily!? OMG! NFW! YGTBK!

Erde: Are you OK? Did you just fall on your keyboard? OK, not daily, but at least once a week. Short of spying on you, which isn’t as easy as it might appear, I don’t have a good way of knowing what you are working on if you don’t report it.

Alex: I have an awesome headset; why aren’t we using it?

Erde: I’ve used voice for meetings in-world before, but the truth is both of our attempts have yielded annoyingly bad results. Some of that is being in the same room (for many of us) and getting the delay involved. We could try Skype, or one of the other options, for better sound, but that doesn’t solve the echo issues. I’ll happily go to voice for our group meetings moving forward.

Alex: Group meetings?

Erde: Yep. If you look at the schedule, starting with week 8 (10/18), you’ll be meeting in your final project groups each week. Most weeks, it will be in addition to our (foreshortened) class meetings, but some weeks it will be just those short meetings. Most of these weeks, I’ll ask to meet with each group for a few minute to see how things are going.

Alex: But isn’t that what the blogs are for?

Erde: Sure, but sometimes more interactive communication is worthwhile. Otherwise we would be offering an MS in Blogs. Ha. I crack myself up.

Alex: Lolz. You crack me up too. But if that’s the case, why can’t we just meet in person. I mean, after all, most of us are already in the same room.

Erde: If you look at the schedule, you will see that I’m asking you to be there a couple of times (Week 9 & 15) to do RL presentations. I’m happy to meet with the groups in person if you prefer, especially if we are meeting during class-time.

Alex: What about this whole machinima thing. What does that have to do with our final project?

Erde: It need not have anything to do with it, although some of you have suggested it could feed into it, and that’s great. Some of you may want to do a more full-blown machinima project for the final project, and that too is great. But this is the last of the “getting to know SL” projects?

Alex: What about our scripting project? Or making clothing? Or voice-changing? Or overriding gestures? Or Gorean ethnography?

Erde: We’ll be touching on scripting, and some of the other bits as well, but not as substantial projects. For example, you will see that during week 9, we’ll be doing a little light scripting, but that will be limited to class. Of course, you may need to pick up those skills for your final project.

Alex: OK, I have more questions, but I can’t think of what they are right now.

Erde: That’s fine, just comment below.

Alex: Oh, OK. Thanks answering all these questions.

Erde: Always a pleasure to chat with someone so charming and handsome.

Alex: Why, thanks! Likewise.

Class Schedule: Today Onward

Week 7 (10/11) IN SL: In-World Media

Blog by 10/9:

1. Post about making your video: what worked, what didn’t, etc., and (of course) link to the video.

2. Group leaders post your group composition (i.e., who’s in it) and a short abstract of your planned project.

Week 8 (10/18) GROUP MEETINGS / Branding

Read:

1. Paul Hemp, “Avatar-Based Marketing”

2. Deeeep Witte, “Selling to an Avatar”

3. (Optional) Au, Marketing in Second Life doesn’t work

Blog:

1. Write about your group meeting (where & when, agenda, what is decided, who is researching what) and how you are putting together your proposal.

2. Respond to the readings for the week. Is there a business case for a RL company to engage in Second Life? What helps to determine an appropriate match? What are the steps to creating a good campaign in-world?

Week 9 (10/25) IN REAL LIFE: Project proposals, virtual work groups, basic scripting

Prepare:

1. A polished, 10-minute presentation of your proposal. Be prepared to answer questions. (Bring a hardcopy of your proposal.)

Read:

1. SLOG 8

2. IBM, “Virtual Worlds: Real Leaders”

Blog:1. Your proposal

2. Response to the IBM article: Is World of Warcraft the new golf? What function do MUVEs play in the formation of groups? In building leadership? Is it useful as a practical tool for collaboration?

Week 10 (11/1) IN SL: Event Management, Live Events, & In-World Representation

Read:

1. Weber, The Next Step: Second Life Professionalism

2. 10 easy rules for events management

3. Second House of Sweden FAQ4. Look over the sites for Metaversality and The SLAgency

Blog:

1. Progress on project: What is the role for integrated marketing in SL? What are the particular skills needed to succeed? Who is doing it well?

2. Response to readings:

Week 11 (11/8) IN SL: Political & Social Campaigns

Read:

1. Scola, “Avatar Politics”
2. Mark, “Virtual Lobbying”

Blog:

1. Final steps of project

2. Response to readings: Is there a difference between branding of products & services in SL and the building of political, health, or social campaigns? What kinds of social campaigns have been attempted, and why or why not is SL a particularly good place for these? Are there “utopian” possibilities for SL?

Week 12 (11/15) IN SL: Future of SL & Social Concerns

Read:

1. SLOG 13

2. Herman, Coombe, & Kaye, “Your Second Life?”

3. Wagner, Linden Lab to Open Source SL Servers

Blog:

1. Final steps of project

2. Response to readings: How m

Week 13 (11/22) AT HOME: Giving thanks, gobbling birds

Week 14 (11/29) GROUP MEETINGS / Assessment & presentations

Blog:

1. Notes on what you have done this week on the project.

Week 15 (12/6) IN PERSON: Final presentation of projects

Prepare:

1. 20-30 minute presentation of project and its assessment. Be ready for questions

Blog:

1. Reflection on your contribution to the project

2. Reflection on the course

3. Materials for final presentation of projects

Final Project Guidelines

Overview

The final project in the course is to develop a campaign around a particular product, service, brand, or idea. This may be a new product in Second Life, it may be a new product or brand available both inside and outside Second Life, or you may partner with a company or organization outside of second life who is interested in marketing themselves in-world. Because Second Life combines communication with virtual objects, the variety of paths through which you publicize this brand is fairly open. In practice, you should plan on using all the tools at your disposal. There are a wide range of possibilities: word-of-mouth marketing, promotional communications, promotional items, promotional events, games, building brand culture, contests, in world video and audio, and “crossover” events and objects that are related to both the real world and the virtual world.

Your product need not have a real-world analogue. If you prefer to create a product that is only available in the world itself, that is fine.

The success of your project is related to how it is received by non-classmembers in Second Life. From the very beginning, you should be thinking about how to recruit testers, and how to publicize your brand or project. Ultimately, my evaluation of the success of your project will be closely tied to (a) how well you meet your own objectives spelled out in your proposal, and (b) the buzz generated by your final product.

I am flexible and open to ideas that may test the boundaries of this broad aim, but be sure to talk to me early and often about the nature of such projects, to make sure you do not hit a dead end.

You should work in teams of 1-10 (note that this is a departure from the syllabus that required–at a minimum–pairs). You should make sure everyone in your group has a substantial piece of the work. Divorces are especially messy, so take time to maintain esprit de corps.

Important Dates

10/25 – Presentation of proposal

12/6 – Presentation of final project

Evaluation

As noted above, I will judge the project on a number of criteria. First, about a quarter of the grade on the project will be based on the proposal and its presentation and defense on 10/25. The degree to which this proposal is complete, realistic, and well-researched will have the greatest influence on the success of your final project, and so it is important that it is as solid as possible at this stage. A description of what is expected in that proposal follows.

When the project is complete, I will be looking to see how well you have accomplished what you set out to do in the proposal. In all, I am looking for a level of professionalism in the design work, whether that is building, preparations for an event, or other materials. Keep it simple, clean, and make sure it all works to the benefit of your brand.

I will want to see that you have tested your material against a set of outside “users” that are part of the target audience. You should plan to record these tests in some way, and make any necessary adjustments to your project.

Finally, by the end of the semester, your project should be opened to the public in Second Life. The degree to which you attract an audience, and that audience takes a favorable attitude toward your brand/idea/etc. will influence the evaluation of your work. You should have in place a plan for measuring this impact.

Proposal

The proposal is, in essence, both a planning document and a sales document. Your proposal should make the compelling case that you have an idea of how to increase the recognition of your brand, and positive affect toward it. If you have a client, this should be the plan you present to the client. Otherwise, assume that I am your client, along with your classmates. You need make me willing to trust you with the image of the brand, and provide me with assurances that you can accomplish something impressive in the short amount of time we have.

At a minimum, your proposal should include:

A clear description of what you hope to accomplish through the project. For example, if you are selling a new energy drink, Blue Bill, you might want to increase name recognition of the product among young drinkers of similar products, and associate it with mellow coolness and confidence.

Who is your audience? What are they like? Are you talking about a psychographic in Second Life, or the people behind the avatars?

An outline of the tools used to communicate your message. For example, you might want to create a Blue Bill can in-world that, when held, causes avatars to glow a bit blue, and walk in a much cooler way. You might skin a motorcycle with the Blue Bill logo, and have Tom Waits do an in-world concert for Blue Bill. At the event, you would have a Blue Bill stage, with free Blue Bill leather jackets (blue, of course) as prizes for those who create the best Blue Bill dance moves. Do not over-promise at this stage–If Tom Waits isn’t going to show, don’t promise him. You might want to do a “conservative” plan, and leave room for more exciting features.

You should provide some form of benchmarking. What are your competitors doing? It turns out Red Bull is participating in an extreme sports Drop Zone, which meshes well with their intended image. Assuming you are targeting a similar demo, would your approach draw well? Are there others who have done scripted cans? Dance contests? How have these worked.

There should be a rough schedule with weekly milestones. You need not go over the top with a PERK chart or anything–unless you think it is appropriate. Simply providing a set of milestones that need to be completed each week, and a rough indication of who will be responsible for these, is enough.

A project is not finished until you have tested how an audience might react to it. Present a plan for how you will test it. How will you recruit subjects? What will the protocol be? Will you walk people through your stage, let them try out your scripted can, and then do a focus group? If so, you need to remember to work the recruitment into your schedule, as well as the development of a more complete set of questions for the focus group.

Of course, the entire project is publicity-driven, but how will you let the greater public know about what you have done. If you build it, they will not come. There are some obvious things here, like listing it in the classifieds or in the event directory. But you need to think about who can drive attention your way, and how you will influence those people to get you the traffic (of people, of mentions, etc.) that you need. This might not be exclusive to Second Life–a widely viewed video on YouTube, for example, may draw people to your brand.

Finally, how will you measure your impact. You do not (necessarily) need to mount a survey and send avatars out with clip-boards, but you should have some metric in mind for success. For example, you might want at least 100 avatars to be carrying your can by the end of the first week. Or, you might be happy with a mention in some of the online news outlets. In other words: how do you know if your project has succeeded.

The proposal itself should run no longer than about 1400 words (about as long as this blog post). Shorter is fine. It should show up on the project-leader’s blog. If appropriate, make good use of images, hyperlinks, and SLURLs.

You should prepare a 15-minute presentation of your proposal. It should not be extemporaneous–you should have a clear set of points you are attempting to deliver. You are welcome to use visuals. Please do not have bullets on those slides. Think about keeping words to a minimum, and using them to emphasize your ideas, rather than distract from them. Present like Steve, not Bill.

Questions

Ask lots of questions, either below, in person or elsewhere!

Thursday meeting (10-4)

Quick note on our meeting for this Thursday. We’re lucky enough to be visiting with a rep from Simuality. So we’ll be meeting at there place (SLURL) at 3:30 to chat for a little, and then move on to talk about the final project and work on our Machinima.

I had intended to do a screencast about making Machinima, but two things get in the way of that. First, it’s pretty easy to do, and unlike (e.g.) building, it’s not something that is easily captured visually. That irony is packed on top of the fact that screen-recording the process of screen-recording is difficult, since just screen-recording can be very resource-intensive.

To that end, I’ll point you to some resources that should be helpful, and will catch up with you as groups to help out along the way.

What You Need

To get started, all you really need is a fast computer, with a big chunk of hard drive open. If your computer is already stumbling when just running SL, you might want to pick the person in the class with the fastest system.

You may eventually want to buy screen-capturing software, but for this assignment, feel free to use SL’s built-in recorder (which is spotty) or the free trial period FRAPS.

Finally, you’ll want to do some post-production. Any tool will work for this, including the free Windows Movie Maker (Windows), iMovie (Mac), or one of several online video editors.

Movie Making

The most important elements for movie-making, just as in the real world, are planning and patience.

Once you know just what you want to shoot, it’s a matter of coordinating your shot in-world. Even (especially) for something this short, pull out some paper and do some storyboarding. How many shots will it take to tell your story? What do you need in terms of sets, costumes, gestures, and actors?

Once you have a plan, block out the shots. Getting used to Alt-Zoom’s camera can be a pain at first, but it’s worth it. If you decide not to use it for this project, that’s fine, but it’s a useful tool to know how to use. Besides, it’s freeee.

Once you have the video, editing and titles is just like any other video production: keep it simple, and remember to tell the story. Don’t let your editing get in the way of that. Recording a B-roll in SL is particularly easy, so think about shooting some establishing shots and long shots while you are working so you have something to work with if you need it.

If you hit a stumbling point, ask me or ask your teammates. First time through, expect this to take several hours to get 30 seconds or a minute of final product.

Resources

Eric Linden’s top 10 tips is a really good place to start.

Alt-Zoom expands on this a little.

The Vidder Maker Six Gates article provides quite a bit more detail, and is a better tutorial than I could write. This one is a must read.

There is an SL group on YouTube that can give you an idea of what others have done. (See NASA’s, or this one, for example.)

A list of resources from the Second Life wiki.

Final Project

We’ll also be making some determinations on the final project in the class. Come again with ideas, perhaps even refined a bit, and we’ll do some teaming up.