I used to work at a company that was exploring the business uses of Second Life. Sad to say the subject has been so dead over here in Europe that this all seems a lot like something that should have been ready during the hype 2 years ago.

Not to mention, this whole setup sounds all to familiar to the way in which ActiveWorlds works; and a lot of good it did that.
For years, Linden Labs has argued that its sole hosting of the Second Life universe was a unique selling point, something that made it more secure, more reliable than its competitors.

Sorry Linden Labs, you really have lost me.
I’m ready to jump aboard the OpenSim, Croquet and Multiverse projects!

See: NY Times Article “Second Life: Tamed for Corporate Consumption”.

Bas van Ulden – ABN Amro bank

ABN Amro, the Dutch international bank, was one of the first Dutch high profile companies to have a presence in Second Life. Over the last few months they have often been used as an example how to do things right and wrong in Second Life.

As leader of the team involved in getting ABN Amro in Second Life, Bas van Ulden was the perfect person to share inside information on what the bank had learned from their activities in Second Life.

The decision to get involved with Second Life originated from an internal project called the “Innovation Challenge)”. This was a competition where in ABN Amro employees were asked to come up with new ways of innovating within the company. The team that brought forward the idea to set up a virtual ABN Amro office in Second Life won the challenge. The team was given unprecedented freedom within the bank to make their idea a reality. They were freed from their regular duties at the company so that they could work on the project full time. Approximately 10 ten team members (9 trained as industrial designers and 1 as information technology specialist) set to work in August 2006 and festively opened their virtual office on December 7th 2006.

Although the ABN Amro had many reasons for getting involved in Second Life the foremost reason was that to experiment with the new and emerging medium that is virtual worlds. In actual fact the bank already uses a host of new media formats to reach their customers:

• They use MSN Messenger as means of advertising and even offer a chatbot to handle simple transactions and request for information.
• Skype, the free VOIP service is also used to communicate with customers. Particularly those modern young professionals who no longer have a regular telephone.
• Mobile banking: using SMS services and mobile internet on mobile phones to handle simple transactions.

Following this line, ABN Amro bank saw Second Life as another means of communicating over (long) distances, much they used the above mentioned media next to their call centres and websites.

The team was also convinced that although virtual worlds are still in their infancy, it believes that the internet as we know it may very likely resemble a virtual like Second Life. By being ahead of the game and learning to use the medium now, an organisation could create an advantage for itself; learning the do’s and don’ts before competitors and thus being better able to communicate and engage (potential) customers in the near future.

Lessons Learned

The most interesting part of Bas van Ulden’s presentation was when he discussed the lessons the team learned in using Second Life for corporate communication. Firstly, the team found that their approach to building their virtual office worked well. Their approach was as follows:

1. Stick to the mantra “Just Do It”
   By not getting bogged down in over-researched or discussed marketing and business plans, the team go to work straight away on getting to learn what Second Life had to offer and what they wanted to do with it.
2. The team was kept small and empowered
   Free from other commitments in the company and most importantly free to explore new ideas without having to consult various commissions and/or marketing executives.
3. Use especially creative people
   Avoiding the pitfalls of assigning technical people to use a technical piece of technology, the team leaned on the creative skills of employees schooled in fields such as industrial design and other creative fields.
4. Look for partners
   Realise that you can’t do everything yourself and that you may need to find help externally. The ABN Amro team approached experienced Second Life users to help them out with some issues they couldn’t solve in a timely manner.

In exploring the possibilities of Second Life, ABN Amro bank came to the conclusion that Second Life was not a perfect platform for corporate communication. Some of the issues mentioned:

1. No good rights and role management
2. Sim-limit
   Due to the technical limits of Second Life, there could only be so many objects on any island at any one time. This meant that one could only effectively host an event for 40 avatars at a time.
3. Forms of payment are limited
   Buying and selling of Linden dollars (the virtual currency used in Second Life) is only possible by using a credit card. Although the credit card is ubiquitous in the United States, it doesn’t quite have the same level of penetration in Europe. This means that most Dutch and European customers will more of the than not have little or no means of paying for items in Second Life.
4. The interface of Second Life still has a high learning curve
   Although moving around and chatting in second life is easy enough, the team found that some of the more advanced features they used (interactive elevators called “helavators”, and freebie clothes that had to be unpacked through Second Life’s inventory system) were too difficult for the average newbie visitor.

Best Practices

As a result of these and other challenges, Bas van Ulden shared the following best practices with us:

1. Focus on designing an aesthetically pleasing environment
2. Develop a good rights structure (determine what visitors can and cannot do on your island).
3. “Just Do It” – don’t get bogged down in the planning phase but just go out there and start building
4. Keep the environment as newbie friendly as possible: consider making a small version of Information Island to (re) educate new users on how to use the Second Life interface.
5. Create a rich experience where you socially and emotionally involve your visitors
6. When holding events in Second Life, ask for RSVPs from within Second Life. This eliminates those people who run into technical troubles while trying to get into the event at the last minute.

Barend Raaff – DNB Media

Barend Raaff is managing partner of the multimedia company DNBmedia.

As an introduction to the symposium, Barend wanted to share his vision of Second Life and the category of virtual worlds as a whole.

One of the most important things to remember is that like the television, the telephone and the internet, virtual worlds are nothing more than a new form of media: a new medium through which we can communicate with each other.

As with the introduction of every new medium, it takes time for us to truly grasp the unique value and benefits of a new medium; let alone to use it to its full potential.

Barend recalled a few anecdotal examples of how the telephone, cinematography and the television were first used when they were introduced:

Telephone:
people used to comb their hair and even dress up before speaking to another party through the telephone; they were just so used to dressing up before meeting someone that it just seemed the right thing to do.
Consider how we now lounge out in our pyjama’s or even use the toilet (ask any call-centre rep it happens!) when we conduct our business on the phone.

Cinematography:
Standard stage plays where recorded in ordinary theatres with a statically mounted cameras. The recorded images where then projected on a screen in a similarly constructed theatre.
When the movie industry started experimenting with new material and for example filmed an oncoming train, the images frightened the audience so much that they ran out of the theatre!

Television:
Leaning on the success of the “wireless” (radio), the first television shows were nothing more than the filming of a radio studio with just the faces of radio opera voice actors in view.

In this respect, Barend wanted to prove to us that with the introduction of every new media format, we need to take the time to get used to it, explorer its uniqueness, it strengths and weaknesses and eventually how to use it to the best effect.

At this point we were reminded of the famous “ARIA”-model (Amazement, Resistance, Imitation, Authenticity) devised by the Tilburg University professor Dr. Hans van Driel.

A quick recap from the Tilburg University website:

1. “Amazement. At first there is amazement about the new medium, even admiration. A small group utters that feeling of amazement.
2. Resistance. The large majority of people can be found in the second phase, the phase of resistance: a new medium is seen as threatening or absurd. Therefore resistance is frequent. This resistance can of course be explained by the familiarity with established media.
3. Imitation. In its initial stages a new medium has no other possibility than to imitate expressions of familiar media.
4. Authenticity. A new medium does or does not develop its own power, does or does not develop its own peculiarities that distinguish it from familiar media.”
   - http://www.tilburguniversity.nl/faculties/arts/cc/research/cc2.html

In light of these adoption phases in relation to the introduction of new media, Raaff feels that we are still in fase 3 of the adoption of the new medium that is 3d virtual words.

For example, most companies wanting to start in Second Life would do nothing rather than build their own office or a facsimile of it in a virtual world: in fact imitating existing architecture and corporate presence.

Raaff believes that this is “too easy”; building a virtual office in Second Life adds no value to the medium nor does it use it the medium in a creative way (no attraction through amazement). But most importantly, you are not using the full potential of the medium, thereby diluting your message to your audience.

After being reminded of these principles of Media Theory Barend wanted to prove a point: we are still exploring the possibilities of virtual worlds such as Second Life.

Where exploring and learning are not the most easily defendable motives for a commercial organization to invest in virtual worlds such as Second Life, Barend asked us to think of all those (pre-)teens now using such virtual communities as Habbo-Hotel and NeoPets. These kids are already used to spending real cash for virtual items and communicating via electronically mediated communities.

By the time that virtual worlds really come of age (I estimate in 5 to 10 years time), it’ll be these young potentials with disposable incomes that will expect to be able to continue building a virtual persona in fully fledged, fluid 3d virtual worlds.

By being ahead of the game, companies will be ready to optimize their communication for their future customers. These companies will be better able to understand their customers and to better anticipate their customers’ needs.

Most importantly though, companies who are best adapted to this new medium will have the advantage of being able to create a stronger emotional and social connection to this new generation of customers; ultimately creating stronger loyalty and through it a longer, more stable, more profitable relationship with their customers.

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Powerful stuff Barend! I agree wholeheartedly with all that you had to say.

To many attendees, this overview of the new medium was an eye-opener. To me it was a very well-crafted and complete story that helped me to see how I could better communicate my very similar ideas better to those that will listen.

Somewhat off topic, Raaff also tried to tie in the whole Web 2.0 aspect of Second Life: on how it was a true platform through which one could foster community, simultaneously participate and could create their own content (because of time constrictions, this subject was kept short).

I believe that this has much to do with the “User 2.0” concept that we have developed at Tam Tam: we believe that the new generation of internet users are changing rather than the applications themselves and that this is in fact the true drive behind the whole Web 2.0 movement, not the technology advances that have brought it to the masses.

In my view it is inevitable that the true values of User 2.0 (a sense community, active participation, transparent communication, user-generated content) will be the things that a savvy organization will need to cater for in virtual worlds.

The symposium, titled “Next Night 2.0: Second Life – Hit of Hype?“, was organised by the Dutch new media organisation Generation Next.

Speakers were Barend Raaf (DNB Media) , Bas van Ulden (ABN Amro bank), Dobre Burgh ([Lost in] the magic forest) and David de Nood (EPN).

Although much of their stories were much along the same lines as what I have discovered about Second Life and 3d virtual worlds, i found that most were on the ball. They also gave me some great sound bytes and succinct descriptions and terminologies that could turn out to be very handy.

Main plus of the evening though, was Bas van Ulden’s story on how the ABN Amro project began and what they have learnt so far from experimenting with virtual worlds as a corporate communications platform. Some great pointers, a couple of eye-openers and an engaging enthousiastic speaker to boot.
Great job Bas!

Next post: my notes from this event.

But what is really going on?
Is Second Life the true future of the internet?

I’ve started this blog because I want to give my two cents on this new medium and how I feel it fits into the scope new media.

Yes, there will be copy-pastes from news feeds and the like; but never without my personal point of view on the matter.

Who knows, I might open your eyes to something.

Stay Tuned!