Your World or Mine? Exploring the Metaverse

I attended my first Austin Social Media Club meeting tonight. What a cool group of people.

Tonight's session focused around Second Life and how Dell and the American Cancer Society are using it. Dell seems to be focused more on brand building, while the American Cancer Society is actually raising funds through things like virtual Relay for Life events (which is one of their most financially successful events in real life) and garage sales.

I've dabbled around in Second Life a bit and quickly realized it would need to be a weekend project for me to acclimate myself to that metaverse. Plus, I admit, it kept crashing my computer which made it incredibly frustrating.

One of the things that Laura Thomas spoke about when she was trying to sell the idea to her higher ups at Dell, was the importance of getting buy-in from management. Okay, got that. My VP of Marketing, Koen De Witte, is encouraging a couple of us to look into it.

And in looking into it we'll need to answer the simple question of WHY? And that one word has so many connotations to it like:

• WHY spend the time building a virtual universe when we should probably focus on our real universe of marketing and lead generation?
• WHY become a part of this world if we aren't even sure that this is where our customer base is located?
• WHY step out of the box, when the box we're in is so darn comfy?

All valid questions as are the others that are certain to ensue. But the reality is and Connie Reece really hit the nail on the head with this one, is that this metaverse is here and if it's not the one that lasts long term then another world will pop up. Would we as an organization rather be part of this now or miss the boat entirely. And mind you, I totally get that Bulldog would not be an early adopter at this juncture as SL has been around for several years now.

And Laura made another great point about future generations when she spoke about how her daughter is aleady functioning in a virtual world when she visits Webkinz and purchases virtual items for her Webkinz pet.

Oh, lordy, didn't I write a post earlier about feeling old?

The world, both first life and second life, is changing and evolving. The question now is do I or does my organization jump on board and learn about it or ignore it and hopes it goes away?

Light up our night

One of the unexpected perks we've found with our new home is fireworks! We're not too terribly far from Dell Diamond - home of the Round Rock Express farm-league baseball team and on their Friday night home games and other special nights they shoot fireworks following the game.

Last night Charles called on his way home and I didn't answer the phone and he was close enough to the house that he saw the fireworks and knew immediately where I was - standing out in our driveway watching the show of course.

Tonight I heard them going off and hollered for Charles to come watch with me. He comes bounding down the stairs with a boyish grin. We stood outside in our "jammies" watching. He commented, "Yeah, all the neighbors are saying look at the newbies watching the fireworks. It'll get old fast." I told him, nah, everyone loves fireworks. And no sooner had I said that, but we heard our next door neighbors coming out of their home and then across the street we heard a bunch of teens running out to grab a peak. Hilarious.

So, now you'll know where you can find our wildselves on Fireworks night at the Diamond.