Second Life Convention: SL Views and my views

The second day of SLCC has been pretty much a full day of sessions, originally I was planning to go to the non-profits in Second Life (which was led by the person from American Cancer Society), and wanted to tie that into Camp ASCCA (the blog has uploaded its 300th media clip today, congrats Robert French) and Ike Piggot, who has put Accentuate the Positive 2.0 on hold for a big job at American Red Cross....

But, I woke up late and then got a spot in the SL Views session. The first half was a more deep tech session, but I was able to put in some views as a newbie and consumer thinking, and the second half was lead by Catherine Smith, director of marketing, on marketing SL and marketing SL companies.

The session was off-the-record, so I can not go too in-depth on what happened, but the interesting point is that SL businesses have the same issues and questions about PR in SL as small businesses in RL have about PR in RL.

The SLCC was an interesting event. Some of the people were what you expected at an avatar / online world conference, and others were more surprising. Yes, I bought the T-shirt, and yes, once again there seemed to be just me and one other PR person there to learn / experience SL moreso, and be able to give better counsel to clients and our agencies. I was a little suprised that Text 100 was not there, especially after their big to-do about their SL office, but not surprised that other PR voices who hype SL were not there. But, then again, this seemed like a replay of Vloggercon - some people just talk the talk, while some of us go to the events to participate. And, well, the social part of social media is participation, but some people do not get that.

A note to self for work: just because it's cool, does not mean you need to shoe horn every damned client into the environment, or open an office. How about just experiencing the environment, learn what it is about, and if you think you have a client or product that makes sense and gives something to the community - repeating that, gives something to the community - then move forward with an SL plan and strategy.

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Comments
7 comments
  1. Thanks for the great 4-post summary of what went on at the SL convention... now if only you'd been able to share what Catherine Smith and the others said!

    Your point about PR people not being at SLCC is right on. Just talking-the-talk and not walking-the-walk is a ticking time-bomb (how's that for a bunch of cliches?). I wanted to be there and was actually in town, but had to leave before the weekend. Darn!

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  2. Did anyone at the event report on Starwood's aloft project?

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  3. Thanks, Jeremy.

    I will echo Andrea's comments.

    To be able to see what was going on for someone that can't attend, I appreciate the series of posts.

    As you related, it isn't all that surprising that, with so many touting SL and how it can be adopted for some PR tactics, only two attended the conference.

    Why Text 100, in particular, didn't have anyone there is surprising.

    Andrea's comment about the ticking time-bomb and Scoble's reference to the return of the bubble this weekend could be showing that there is more hype than substance in many of the speculations and predictions making the rounds. It is still rare to find any true implementations out there. And that goes beyond SL to blogs, podcasts and vlogs when you consider the number online vs. the potential adopters.

    Maybe, even today, we are still early. Or, perhaps, there won't be the great buy-in so many are hoping for in PR.

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  4. Kevin, nope on Starwood's hotel in SL. I haven't really read much about it yet, but am interested to see what they are going to do, and how they try to re-do the hotel experience.

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  5. Hello Jeremy. I'm afraid you're off the mark about Text 100's alleged lack of attendance at the SLCC. We had three staff members on site throughout the event, enjoying the experience, and learning along with everybody else. Perhaps you just didn't recognize us in 'real life' form!

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  6. David, surprised that there wasn't a shout out or that one of us didn't bump into the kids. Next time, maybe.

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  7. I got off my "meds" long enough to read your blog on Second Life. Compliments. Electric Sheep Company, a NYC based company, has been doing some interesting Second Life work, including a Second Life shopping mall.

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