Banana asked that I drop a quick blog entry on one of the ways that I have been using Second Life for our clients that makes beach clothing. They are getting ready for the 2009 product line photo shoot and wanted to be very precise in the types of photos they need.

Beach Concept - Meta Magic Studio

So when I saw the “Tahiti” concept build done, I took a few hundred photos (yes that many!) of the type of pictures and feelings that the client could choose from.

I asked Banana for some waves and long beaches and he was able to give it to me in less than one hour. Then using windlight and working with draw distance and environmental settings, I was able to do sunset and sunrise pictures very quickly.

As you can see from these samples, the “mood” and setting is easily demonstrated. And very cost effective. It would takes us days to story board out all of the different shots, now we can do it in less than one day! A huge savings in time and money for the client and best of all, a fast way to get input.

Beach Concept - Meta Magic Studio

We are now looking at combining real life models and Second Life scenes — stay tuned!

Beach Concept - Meta Magic Studio

Beach Concept - Meta Magic Studio

Meta Magic Studio staff

The next two days will be review days of sim builds that Meta Magic Studio has (hopefully) developed to customer satisfaction. One of them is a final check off phase, where basically we turn over the “keys.” The second project is in next to last phase review which means the client goes through the sim to give us our final punch list. And the third one is in a middle phase, where we begin the actual work of content layout.

The first two projects are under strict NDA and are not even built under the “Banana Stein” creator name, nor with any Meta Magic Studio bragging rights. Such is life. Now I am very proud of my builds, but sometimes clients want “their” name as the project creator, so for a (hefty) fee, we will accommodate them. (We charge 2x more than standard fee for such a set-up.)

The third project - which has my name all over it - is exciting, but I wish it would be moving faster. But sometimes the clients do not move as fast as we would like.

So keep your fingers crossed for luck for us!

Concept build - Meta Magic Studio

Over on Meta Magic Studio sim, you can see a prototype build we did of a “Tahiti” style resort for a client. It will be up for a few weeks as they do some testing.  (SLURL)

Also I am beginning a new project pn Friday with a small client as we begin testing a concept of providing virtual classrooms to small work forces. They want to see if 3D virtual spaces work better than their current 2D web approach (Web Ex). I see lots of potential in this project.

Mike (Mirror Twin) reminds me to say if anyone has any projects or concepts, just to drop us a note card in world.

————————————–

Cisco Live Pavilion

In light of the recent news posted in The Avastar of the closing of the Geek Squad sim, and the subsequent lazy media fall out that will happen, and Gartner’s new report, Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2008, which states the Virtual Worlds are in the “Trough of Disillusionment,” one wonders about the health of corporate prescence in worlds like Second Life, Google’s Lively and all of the other virtual worlds.

Corporations leaving Second Life is nothing new and should be expected. The vast majority of companies that arrived in Second Life in 2007 came in soley for the marketing hype value. Sure many of them gave lip service to community development and the other key phrases such as immersive and interactive worlds. Yet their actions indicated that they had no clue what they were doing and where they could go. And far to many of them did not take the time or put the resources to learn how to do it, falsely believing in “if the just built it, the community would come.”

So much of this reminds me of the mid-1990s when companies rushed into the internet and made real bad websites for pretty much the sake of building a presence. I can remember working at Plantronics when our first web site was being developed and what a piece of crap that one was. But we learned from it, realizing that this was the future.

American Apparel

The first super hype company in Second Life was American Apparel, with its launch in June 2006. At the time there were great promises made by American Apparel as it was the first major retailer to set up shop in Second Life. Many in the Second Life community were alarmed by corporate entrance, as many of the fashion designers were worried that their business would be wiped out by $1L clothing. Industry analyst at the time were focused on sales:

“The amount of money American Apparel has made so far on Second Life is probably not as much as they would make in a day at a single store,” says Evan Wilson, a videogame analyst at Pacific Crest Securities.- Source: Newsweek

And while American Apparel made promises of hiring virtual sales reps, introducing new products and test marketing, in reality nothing happened other than the odd-community protests and griefing events. So where was the community outreach efforts? From my perspective, America Apparel had a wonderful island built, then they just left on its own. So when they closed the sim one year later, it was considered a failure of Second Life.

Could it be that it’s actually the creative execution that’s at fault here, rather than the medium?

AOL’s presence in Second Life was a theme park; you took pictures, got a few things, and then nothing. AOL left Second Life so it could incorporate AIM into another virtual world. What was their purpose in Second Life?

Pontiac

One of the most successful community developments was done by Pontiac. It had a very strong community within Second Life to the point that they had a virtual spokeswoman Callie Cline. But the effort ended. As Callie wrote:

just remember this… most large companies have an agency they work with who implement their marketing plans… report back to the client, etc. they try new things all the time… (not just pontiac, all companies) pontiac does things like “the pontiac garage” where bands play, (one in time’s square, one on jimmy kimmel live, etc) and they do tons of other marketing things that shape and leave an image of the brand in people’s mind.

so i’m sure SL was one… well i know it was. personally, i think most companies, like most of us, are not sure about SL’s future, and the early ones who are trying are working in a world with no real established rules, and we’re all sorta making this up as we go along, aren’t we?

so to see some of them leave, is sorta like them stopping advertising on a particular tv show or magazine for a bit, no? it doesn’t mean they won’t ever come back, to them it just might be, “we tried that… *scratch head* hmmm, should we keep doing it?”

i think as time goes on, and trends and methods are established in virtual worlds, the companies coming in will have more to look at.

don’t be scared nexi!!! it’s ok!

personally, i had a BLAST working with pontiac, they did a lot of things no company did who had come into SL, the community they built loves them as does a lot of the SL community. i’ve gotten probably 90 im’s of people very upset by this… and most from people i have never met… that was surprising.

they did build a hub of “car culture” in SL, so to see them announce a departure is a bit sad.

Now with the Geek Squad, we read that Best Buy would not let there be community development. From The Avastar:

The island is set to close on September 7 after owners Best Buy continually refused permission for it to be properly promoted, according to the source who wishes to remain anonymous.

He told The AvaStar that he had been encouraging Best Buy to let him hold events such as computer training classes and technology seminars to boost traffic flow but was rebuffed at every attempt. He continued to try to promote the island by hosting events without telling Best Buy, and by working with other tech companies in SL.

Now the mass media - and I am talking about the likes of CNN, Time and even Wired - will just hear about a closing and never ask the hard questions. Why did it close?

Maybe Best Buy thinks it got all the value it can out of it. Maybe Best Buy see no value in community outreach and development. Maybe Best Buy has no clue.

Cisco Live

If you are a brand the worst thing you could possibly do is try and replicate your RL brand strategy wholesale in a virtual world - different rules apply. In my discussions with potential clients, the first question I always ask is “why do you want to be in Second Life?” If they can not answer this question, then I know that they are not ready for a virtual world presence. My second questions is, “What type of Web 2.0 offerings do you have?” If a company does not even have a basic blog, they are not ready for a virtual world presence.

The strenght of virtual worlds is the immersive and interactive aspects that give the user a sense of presence with others, which is not defined by location. Authentic experiences happen “within” an individual - the more personal they are the more authentic, because they enforce the self-image.

As reported in the Times Online:

Virtual worlds such as Second Life will become an indispensible business tool and vital to the strategy of any company intent on reaching out to the video-game generation, one of the world’s leading consultancies has said.

McKinsey & Company, the management consulting firm whose observations about corporate behaviour are closely watched, said that virtual worlds were on the cusp of a major expansion - particularly as a way to reach younger customers - and that companies were “ignoring them at their peril.”

As a developer for Cisco Systems, it has been my profound pleasure to watch them grow into their virtual campus. Not everything and every event has worked perfectly, but they have learned, adapted and continue to pursue community building. Their success is measured by interactions. Dannette Veale recently shared how they do their virtual world planing:

1. Figure out who your audience is and what they are looking for.
   1. For example in Corporate Event Marketing our primary audience is Cisco customers or potential customers. Therefore I developed our Second Life TechChat series rather than a program to address employee training.
2. Identify your key virtual environment program objectives. This shouldn’t be a list of many items, rather a list of a few targetted items.
   1. For example with our TechChats our primary objective is to raise awareness about a variety of technical area that Cisco is working to address and a secondary objective it to grow our audience base inside of Second Life.
3. Determine how you will measure item 2
   1. Will it be click-throughs to follow-up URLS?
   2. Will it be surveying of attendees?
   3. Will it be eyeballs that viewed the event live and/or archived?
   4. A combination of elements?
   5. Something entirely different?
4. Determine the longevity of the virtual environment you are programming for.
   1. Is this a one-off communication need?
   2. Are you looking to create a pernicious community?
   3. Will you utilize the environment for ongoing outreach, events or training?
5. Allocate budget based on 1-4
6. If you are still stuck in the ‘dialing for dollars’ budget dance, it might be time to scale back your program objectives identified in step 2

In the closing part of the article, Dannette shared a email that she received:

Dear Dannette:

I and my staff at iFiber Communications would like to thank you, John Chambers, and the rest of the folks at Cisco Systems for bringing Cisco Live! to Second Life. We really enjoyed the presentations, tour, and the customer appreciation party. If it had not been for your bringing these events to Second Life, we would not have been able to attend Cisco Live. We are in a very rural area of Washington state, four hours away from SeaTac Airport, making both travel time and budget a limitation…

…We hope to attend more Cisco Second Life events in the future, and we look forward to Cisco’s expansion of its Second Life presence. It is a great way for us to keep up with technological changes, and it is also an excellent educational medium. And, we would love the opportunity to increase our Cisco training through Second Life events, if/when that becomes available.

Lastly, I would just like to mention that although we attended through only one or two avatars, there were, at times, five of us watching the presentations at our NOC. So, there were actually more folks attending virtually than just the avatar counts!

Sincerely,
Cassandra Heide (aka Zena Silverstar)
Director of Information Technology

Other clients have not been as successful. When asked why, I state “Once you get past the development stage, the real work begins and to many companies do not want to invest the resources to grow their community.” Or put in web 1.0 talk, if you do not update your website, your traffic does not come back.

So in closing, if you want a “successful” presence in any virtual world, realize that it requires more than just building it.

]]> http://www.metamagicstudio.com/blog/archives/54/feed http://www.metamagicstudio.com/blog/archives/40 http://www.metamagicstudio.com/blog/archives/40#comments Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:16:44 +0000 admin http://www.metamagicstudio.com/blog/?p=40

Meta Magic Studio Blimp

We have received a few emails wondering what Meta Magic Studio has been up to lately. Some are even worried that we have gone away on vacation! Ha!

As usual, we are under NDA with our clients, so there is not much to say at this time. But we are happy to say that we are busy with two new clients developing their Second Life community presence. We also continue working with a number of companies and not-for-profits in building their web 2.0 networks.

Plus we continue our long term relationship with Cisco Systems and are currently working on their AXP Pavilion and other updates to their four public sims in Second Life.  Cisco also has an extensive plan for their very successful tech chat series with presenations starting again in September and planned through May 2009.  Dannette Veale recently posted a blog entry on this subject.

Our team remains very busy. Mike and Jen have been putting in major hours with new clients while Dot keeps us organized. As for me, I am spending about 50% of my time in Second Life, 20% on OpenSim, Multiverse and Google Lively, while the rest of the time is spent with other web 2.0 projects for our clients.

From a long term perspective, we remain bullish on the Second Life grid despite the doom predictions. We are also beginning to work with OpenSim projects with an eye on the universal avatar and universal permissions systems.

On a personal note, I am not that “excited” by Google’s Lively. It remains a poor example of community 3D space, but since it is Google, we are not writing it off.  We are supporting a couple of efforts at this time.

All the best

Guy “Banana” Schilling

Meta Magic Studio - Second Life - August 2008

Meta Magic Studio has owned the sim Los Arboles since December 2006. The sim is intended as a demonstration sim where we show case build examples including office spaces, amphitheater, theater, gathering spaces plus some other unique concepts that demonstrate prim usage and texture development.

The Los Arboles sim is a “standard” simulator offering from Linden Lab which they classify as a private region (island). From Linden Lab:

Private regions (Islands) are a great solution for large projects, community development and permanent event spaces. Private regions can be grouped, or joined together to create a contiguous space, so you can add to your land mass as your community and projects grow.

Linden Lab also offers Openspaces sim.

Openspaces (light use regions) are also available so you can add ocean or open park land. For more information, check out our Information on Openspaces knowledge base article.

While both sims are same in size (aprox 65K sq meters), their performance and prim allotment are vastly different.

At Meta Magic Studio, we wanted to easily demonstrate this to our customers, so we decided to purchase an Openspace sim and have it placed next to Los Arboles. We have called it Meta Magic Studio - heck, marketing is important!

The build here is more tongue-in-check than Los Arboles. We have textured the land with our logos and made purple trees.

Meta Magic Studio - Second Life

In more words - Google has a long way to go, but some things they got right.

It is a 2.5D approach to interactive worlds. It is better than Active World but not even close to Second Life. I know there is the power of Google behind this so I can not dismiss it right away, but this thing needs help.

I have read were people said it was easier to navigate than Second Life, but my initial testing on 10 people showed similar problems. It is NOT intuitive. People with gaming backgrounds pick it up faster, but their reactions to the graphics is a barrier. Those with no / little gaming experience were happy with the graphics but left on their own, could not figure out how to move and interact.

Lively is a endless series of disconnected virtual chat rooms, each capable of holding up to 20 avatars at once. Rooms vary in size a little and can be listed on the website, or remain unlisted. This is not what I would expect, at least you need to be able to get 100 avatars into a room. My personal sim on Second Life has achieved 80 avatars before crashing.

I plan on spending the next few weeks in here, learning it and seeing what opportunities present themselves.

Initial Positive Feature: You can set up a room off of your website, so people do not have to figure out in world where you are.

Disclosure: I am a contractor for Cisco Systems and I develop their Second Life Virtual Campus. My opinions are my opinions!

Yesterday, Tuesday, June 24, I was at Cisco Live! SL all day. Lots of very well attended events going on throughout the days. Here are just three highlights:

11:00 am - John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, Q&A

There were avatars camped out of this sim busting event as early as 8:00 am, eager to hear from THE MAN. Held at Cisco’s Bandwidth Stage, which straddles two simulators. the capacity for avatars was 100 in order to have a good presentation experience. And there were over 100 avatars that attended the event.

Once again, Mr. Chambers demonstrated his considerable brain power and his ability to connect technology terms with users’ needs. The questions from the those attending were insightful and relevant.

It should be noted that the audience was polite and eager to hear from John Chambers. It is amazing to me that the “mainstream” press about SL events is the one time penis affair, while the numerous events like this that take place weekly get no press coverage.

I guess it is true bad news travels fast.

The audience before the arrival of John Chambers

12:00 - Tech Chat - How to Transform the WAN Edge with Cisco ASR 1000 Series Routers

This TechChat featured Michael Weir, technical marketing engineers with Cisco’s Midrange Routing Business Unit (MRBU). During the TechChat, Mr. Weir discussed the new Cisco ASR 1000 Series Routers and how they transform and extend the network edge with scalable services intelligence.

As a novice to this world, I was bit out of my league when it came to understanding all of the technology. But it was obvious from the questions from the audience that Mr. Weir knew his subject and was able to address their questions.

3:00 - Cisco Customer Appreciation Party

Two hours of great music and dancing held at Cisco’s Bandwidth Stage. Rich Desoto (RL = Rich Palmer) was at 3:00 and Cylindrian Rutabaga (RL = Grace Buford) came on at 4:00.

I am a huge fan of both of these talented artist and once again, their performances were outstanding. Lots of energy from the audience, including some jokes and pranks kept this party going. And after the show ended, an impromptu dance party continued as we listened to the wonder Kona Live Stream.

By the time I logged out at 5:30 pm, I was exhausted. But I will be back in world for Wednesday and Thursday Cisco Live SL events. See you there.

Cisco Live! Pavilion - Second Life

The final step in any development, is the deployment. The time that you release to the world your new offering. I always enjoy these moments and believe that they should be marked with some sort of celebration or at least a big cheer. But usually, with the normal day to day activities and the typical time pressures, these deployments are never fully acknowledged, let alone celebrated.

And with any deployment, there is the natural nervous anticipation of users reactions. Who will visit? How many will visit? What worked? What didn’t work? What can we improve? Are we getting the anticpated results, or is something else happening?

Plus there is the dread of something not working or not being accepted or worse, not useful. I always prepare myself for the negative reviews; that way, if it does happen, I am mentally prepared.

Deploying builds in Second Life come in various ways: the reveal of a secret, the slow build out, or the bang - here it is.

Meta Magic Studios’ latest project which launched today is the Cisco Live SL Pavilion which is in support of the annual Cisco Live mega event being held in Orlando, Florida next week. Cisco Live is Cisco’s annual IT and communications conference. The conference features Networkers, their premier education and training program, and other special programs designed to meet the diverse needs of today’s IT and communications professional from increasing technical proficiency to understanding the impact of technology on business. (There is one planned for Johannesburg, South Africa in December)

The Cisco Live SL Pavilion was a true collaborative effort with many talented people contributing and putting in an amazing amount of effort. Meta Magic Studio (MMS) began this project back in March when we were still called SL Brand. So today, I am going to take some time to thank some of them. (If I missed you, I apologize as I am writing this right before a meeting.)

From Cisco

Dannette Veale (Dannette CiscoSystems) - Main Cisco contact point for Meta Magic Studio on this project. This is not the only project Dannette is working on, but her organizational ability is outstanding. Not only was she able kept MMS on track, but she was able to provide an amazing insight and resources inorder for us to bring this build to life. Dannette was key in getting the budget, build “look” and all the numerous details that are required for a succesful build. And she was always very encouraging of MMS efforts and ideas - and was very understanding about our “technical” issues.

Tawni Unite (Tawni CiscoSystems) - I call Tawni the “slide person” for the Tech Chats, which means she has not-so-easy task of co-ordinating the various Tech Chat presenters and getting them to provide their power point slides early so that the slides can be convert to jpeg images so they can be viewed in Second Life. Not an easy task. I know that she has numerous other responsibilities, so please do not think this is all she does.

Alison Gemmell (Alison CiscoSystems) - Alison did not play a direct role in this particular developement, but she is always a great resource for MMS. She never hesitiates to help us when we are tyring to weave our way through the huge Cisco world.

Randy Sisk (Randy CiscoSystems) - While Randy has moved away from the day to day management of Cisco SL, he was there at the beginning of this development and helped co-ordinate the initial meetings and the ever so important budget, plus location of the build.

Dennis Mancini (Dennis CiscoSystems) - Dennis, who is Senior Art Director at Cisco, provided “visual” direction for the build and color scheme. He was able to describe via a simple sketch what the “look” and overall feel for the build. Hopefully we were able to deliver his vision.

Packet Sort Game Development

Lewis Moten (Dedric Mauriac) - I call him Dedric, and he is an amazing developer that MMS contracted with to develop the all important collaborative game which we call “Packet Sort.” While the game is simple in concept, it was no easy scripting job he undertook. The delivered product is an amazing use of the SL platform to show a complex concept of how the ASR 1000 Series Routers are able to distinguish video packets, voice packets, data packers and threat packets and then route them accordingly.

You can read about the game development on his blog - Cisco Data Sort Game.

Dedric’s Blog

Twitter and Other “Cool” Gadgets

Talia Tokugawa - Most of my conversations with Taila begin with “Hey T, do you know how…..” which is my lame way of crying out for help. And Talia delivers every time. This time we are getting a twitter board!

Talia’s blog

Musicians

There is going to be a customer apprecuation event held on Tuesday, June 24 at 3:00 pm SLT. Two great musicians will be apperaing on the Cisco Bandwidth Stage. At 3:00 will be Rich Palmer, known in SL as Rich Desoto and at 4:00 will be the ever lovely Grace Buford, aka Cylindrian Rutabaga.

Rich’s website

Grace’s website

Meta Magic Studio

Jen (Cheerie Beery) - Jen is our photoshop person deluxe and she is beginning to work with building. The doomed screens that are featured in the build are Jen’s concept, plus she has a great eye for details that I do not think about. She also made the silly Cisco Live hats by taking already developed sculpties and texturing them.

Dot (Dot Baum) - Dot keeps track of what we do so we can make a profit.

Myself - lol. I am the main wonk for Second Life at Meta Magic Studio, which means it is my head if it does not get done.

Photos of the development

Phase 1 - Initial Concept before Cisco input

Color scheme based upon Cisco Live doc.

After review by Cisco, the concept changed to more rounded platforms with less branding.

Phase 2 - Cisco Review Concept

Phase 3 - Kiosk Development

We developed a kiosk that was deployed at Dr. Dobb’s / CMP 4 - Hosting Life 2.0 Summit

You can see the windlight effect from the base glow. Also we have fully developed the “screen” concept that helped “frame” the build while remaining rounded / soft.

Phase 4 - Build Development

Taking the “round platform” concept, we wanted to create a “iconic” image that was both functional and eye appealing. We elected to go with this type of sphere versus a fully geodesic dome to cut down on the number of prims.

We wanted the sphere to be elevated over the Cisco Campus since it is placed opposite the EBC tower (sim 2).

Note the “Blade Runner” type of display boards that rotate pictures / textures. Originally we going to have the boards be free floating along an invisible track, but the scripting load was not worth it. Instead we implement a simple rotating script.

Phase 4.5 - Game Development

Phase 5 - Approval

Phase 6 - Deployment

I am always impressed when some one is able to execute a non-violent game. And able to execute it in Second Life® with all of its inherent limitations. Stay tuned for more on this….

Photos from our morning testing. That is Cheerie and Dot with me.

Collaborative Game Testing - Meta Magic Studio