Secondference in Gijon, Spain

My Spanish colleagues, Claudio and Gemma, maintain a blog - Virtual World Works - largely aimed at highlighting their work in Virtual Worlds on behalf of our parent company. They also kindly link to the posts I make here at Slambling - so you run a distinct risk of falling into an infinite loop if you follow the links.

Checking out their blog, I see that they are attending /secondference, the first meeting of Second Life’s users and professionals in Spain, which is being held tomorrow, 19th May. I mention this, because I've not seen anything about this elsewhere, and thought you might like to know about it. If you are a cheapskate like me, then one of the more appealing aspects of this conference is the price tag - it's free! What is more, you can save those carbon miles and attend it from the comfort of your PC (Mac or other weapon of choice), as it is being held in both the atomic and virtual towns of Gijón.

According the '/secondference' website: "It is the first meeting of Second Life's users and professionals in Spain, which also includes the participation of Linden Lab. Companies and users will speak about Second Life as a business, educational and entertaining platform. Everett Linden, director of community initiatives and social networks from Linden Lab, will travel to Spain and participate in the event, which will be attended by major industry and user groups. /Secondference will be broadcast in Second Life, and (only by reservation), you will be able to participate in the event in real or virtual Gijon. The event is free, but registration is required."

Date ----: Saturday May 17th in the afternoon (sorry - I don't know what time!)
Venue --: Hotel Asturias, Gijón or Second Gijon in Second Life

Leaving it late, maybe: but you can register here.

Want a Job?

Here's another short post while I ponder how to write up both the MMC and Ruta Maya (Mexico Tourism) sites. I don't make a habit of promoting blogs here, other than thru the blogroll on the right of the screen. However, I made an exception for Kanomi's highly amusing blog earlier this week, and I'm about to make another.

This one is a favour really.

It seems that the North America division of Capgemini, the company for which I work in the atomic world, has started to offer employee blogs. By way of supporting this sort of blogging initiative (and by extension supporting the company's efforts in innovation) it would be churlish not to give them a mention.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, here for you edification - and maybe your job prospects - I give you the Capgemini North America Recruiting Blog.

Company Island - A Work In Progress

This week I have not been quite as active in blogging interesting (or, indeed, not-so-interesting) sites in Second Life as I would normally be. Partly, this is due to a number of RL commitments that have reduced the time I've spent in Second Life, and partly it is due to my continuing work on the company island.

You may recall that we actually acquired the island at the end of December. Since then, when the opportunity has arisen - and the creative juices have been bubbling - I've been doing a "first fix" to get the island into a state where it is of practical use within the company. I don't expect most of the buildings to survive through future reconstructions. Looking at the experiences of a number of friends I am expecting maybe a couple of such reconstructions before we are all happy with the final result. I'm therefore keen to capture the island in its current state - and besides, I've not had much opportunity to go elsewhere recently.

The slideshow below features a number of buildings and a few open spaces... oh... and a giant TV. OK, I think I must've got the idea for the TV from Prados Azules, though I readily admit that mine is very simple and basic compared to theirs. I can't pinpoint any specific influences for the other buildings - but perhaps you can see them more clearly than me. The chairs in the "boardroom" will one day be a tolerable recreation of the real world ones, found at our training facility outside Paris - though, to be fair, they aren't bad now.

So, in the absence of a more usual post, here's my pictures of the company island - a work in progress:

Early Days

Here's a few photos of the company private sim, after (quite) a few hours' work. I daresay most of this stuff will be torn down, but it provides a start point - and cost nothing to produce, aside from a few L$ to upload some slides. I have also discovered the joys and frustrations of working with .RAW files, finding the free bailiwick software a really useful tool to use alongside my trusty Paintshop Pro. I may not have produced the most elegant file in the world, but it works well enough. I even managed to stick a company logo on it - in the form of a rather blocky mountain. However, you can't see it in this photoset.

The real effort will start in the New Year, when I can onboard the rest of the team. The construction to date does give us a couple of meeting areas, too. And so to the pictures:

People who know New New Alville might recognise some re-use here!

Sogeti Netherlands (and Sweden, a bit)

Last night I got an Instant Message (IM) from my friend VeeJay Burns to let me know that his company island was now open to the public. VeeJay, who blogs at Mindblizzard and is credited with first coining the term "metarati", works for the Dutch division of global IT company, Sogeti, where he is a Project Manager. However, over and above his day job he is also a Metaverse Evangelist within the company, and has been one of the prime movers in them setting up a presence in Second Life.

His division, Sogeti Netherlands, has had a private island in Second Life since around March, 2007. Recently, another division, Sogeti Sweden, moved in next door, resulting in a 2-sim island. I am interested in all of this for several reasons: 1) VeeJay is a friend of mine; 2) we both work in the IT industry and 3) Sogeti is sister-company to my own employer, Capgemini. So does that mean my assessment will be biased? Ummm... yeah, probably! Let's just see how it unfolds.

I gather the principal aim of the Sogeti presence is to provide a virtual space where colleagues and clients can meet, work and socialise. It also provides an area where staff can come to learn about virtual worlds and the (expected) future of the internet: web3.D. Although casual visitors are welcome, the site is not intended as an out-and-out marketing exercise. While using mentors, much of the work has been carried out by the Sogeti team themselves as part of the learning process. If you are reading between the lines, you will no doubt detect a non-too-subtle management of expectations. Certainly that was clear to me when talking about the build with VeeJay. However, I think his concerns are largely misplaced. True, the site does not feature "Wow Moment", jaw-dropping, cutting edge effects - but then, there are few that do, and those are largely related to the media and entertainment industries.

Before you even arrive you will likely have spotted the first piece of company branding - on the map you will see that the Dutch sim is in the shape of a spade (the suit of cards, not the digging implement), while the Swedish sim has a lake in the same shape at its centre. The "red spade" is the company logo. Capgemini, just to be different, uses a blue spade. I will concentrate on the Dutch sim, as the Swedish sim is still deep in construction.

The Dutch sim is modelled as a tropical island, subdivided by 2 broad boardwalks that span the island North-South and East-West. There is a sandbox, a couple of large beach huts, the Red Spade Bar and 2 large outdoor auditoriums. With Christmas on the way, there is also a Santa's Grotto under construction. The white and tomato(?) red brand colours run through the buildings and furnishings. And just to make sure you are in no doubt, there are flagpoles flying the company colours and logo too. Initially I thought this was fine, but the more I think about it, the more I think this is a bit over-the-top. I'd cut down on some of the flagpoles for a start.

The seating in the auditorium has a neat feature. When you take your seat you are placed into Mouselook mode and your focus is directed at the screen ahead of you. This might seem a tad excessive, but the thinking is to make it easy for newbies to attend seminars and presentations. I love the elegant seating in the Red Spade Bar, but then I would, since I made them [grins]. OK, to be honest, they need some fancier sitting animations, but they do the job. I opted to go with the Windlight viewer (and kill my PC's performance) to glean the following pictures:







The Dutch sim is largely complete, but I am still not sure why Sogeti have chosen to open it to visitors. My suspicion is that they want to see how their sim is received in the wider Second Life community, in terms of style, content and brand promotion (earlier management of expectations notwithstanding).

I like what they have done, but have a few suggestions for tweaks they may wish to consider:
1. Reduce the amount of branding (a little, not a lot)
2. Add an orientation area for staff and clients (this may already be planned)
3. Cut down on the amount of tropical vegetation a little. It looks good, but can get in the way.

Spanish Jobs with Infoempleo

I've been meaning to visit the Infoempleo island in Second Life for a couple of weeks now, since discovering that my company's Spanish division had taken part in a recruitment fair there in mid-October. I finally got around to it tonight. It took me a bit of digging to find an English language description of the company, but eventually I found this:

• Infoempleo.com is Spain’s leading employment site for qualified job seekers. With over 15.000 vacancies and more than 1.4 million registered users, Infoempleo is an ideal meeting point for candidates and employers and a comprehensive showcase of the Spanish labour market. Infoempleo is also notable for its specialisation. As well as being a general employment site, we offer nine specialised channels focusing on specific industry sectors. These channels represent an excellent source of information and job opportunities in consulting, finance, construction, auditing, tourism, telecommunications, IT, secretarial and franchising.

They have a rather busy site in Second Life, comprising 4 tall pillars, each supporting a number of interview platforms (each basically a room and some brand information), along with an auditorium at ground level. At the time of writing, it appears to be supporting 19 different Spanish companies. I don't intend to list them, but you can perhaps discern who they are on the sign in the picture set below. Among the list, I spotted several IT consultancies (including the one I work for) and a couple of banks.



The site is perhaps best described as "functional." It is there to do a job, and people will come here because they are interested in the jobs available, rather than to marvel at the architecture. But I was concerned about how close the various platforms were to one another. I'm sure the distances have been calculated (surely!) to avoid "conversational leakage" from one to another. Also, I am not sure whether all of these companies were holding inworld interviews on the same day.

Whatever the truth of the matter, it is encouraging to see Spain taking a role in Second Life. Kzero has some interesting stats (from May'07) on Spanish residents in Second Life, while highlighting in this article (from June'07) the general absence of Spanish companies. Perhaps that imbalance is changing.

Capgemini France - An Update

A while back I reported that the French arm of global IT consulting company, Capgemini, had held a 3-day recruitment fair in Second Life. It seems that this first delve into the virtual world has given them an appetite for more. They have now taken up residence in part of an island called The Blast Machine , owned by a company of the same name, who have already done a great deal of work with Capgemini in interactive media.

The principal building is identical to that used for the recruitment fair. The only difference I can see is that the classy Scope Cleaver tables and chairs have now been moved into the new building. Outside, there is a "landing pad" for teleporting visitors and a small outdoor seating area.



The building is OK, professional rather than stunning, with slideshows and other information on prominent display. Personally, I find the degree of branding rather over-the-top, working on the assertion that "sometimes less is more." But it is certainly unmistakeable!

Looking ahead, it is not apparent what Capgemini are planning for this site. It is currently tucked out of the way, presumably awaiting a re-think on its usage. It seems to lack facilities for locking it down for private meetings, and the surroundings are not that conducive to informal get-togethers, or creating a workable community. If I had to guess (and believe me, it is a guess) I would expect the site to host occasional public events, and possibly rely on "the long tail" to provide a relatively low-level but long-term connection between visitors and the company. As with so much else in Second Life, the future will tell.

Another Capgemini CTO Blasts Back

The ever-readable Ron Tolido, Dutch CTO at global IT company, Capgemini, joins the party and goes for the virtual jugular. His latest blog entry may amuse, infuriate or both --- enjoy!

Capgemini CTO on Virtual Worlds

You might find the following article of interest. It is from the August Technical Briefings by Andy Mulholland, Global CTO for leading IT company, Capgemini. I have already mentioned Andy and his co-CTOs in an earlier post, and would commend you to their blog. I do not necessarily subscribe to all the views here, but I thought you would be interested. For Capgemini legal folk, Andy has cleared this for posting!

IBM and MIT recently co-hosted “Virtual Worlds: Where business, society,technology and policy converge,” which witnessed a strong presence from global corporations spanning diverse industry sectors, from Bank of America to BMW,and General Motors to Target. Toyota stated they were investing six figure sums to reach—what they perceived to be—the next generation of consumers in their own environment.

Virtual worlds are creating massive—or as some would say, disproportionate—interest, with the most popular name in the business today, Second Life, home to nearly one hundred globally or nationally recognizable leading enterprises in addition to its 4.5 million registered citizens. (There is even a Swedish Government embassy for Swedish nationals.) CyWorld is used by 80% of South Koreans under the age of 20, and now the Chinese have announced that they are establishing a virtual world for up to 150 million Chinese nationals to use. For those who wish to keep up with the news in virtual worlds, Reuters has its own bureau in Second Life, and its business reporting service can be found at:
http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/category/second-life/business/

“What is a 'virtual world?'” is the usual question from those who are not naturally familiar with the Internet. It is formally defined as, “A computer-based simulated environment intended for its users to inhabit, and interact via avatars (computer generated replicas of people)” (source: Wikipedia). This habitation takes the form of a three-dimensional graphical representation of the various aspects of a “normal,” real, physical world with rules such as gravity, topography, locomotion, real-time actions, and communication—until recently only in the form of text, but now real-time voice communication using VOIP is also becoming available. A virtual world is a persistent environment that continues to exist even after you leave, unlike a user-defined application.

This type of virtual world developed through massive online multi-player gaming,where role playing through the creation of personal avatars was a major part of the attraction; particular examples being World of Warcraft, EverQuest, Ultima Online and Lineage. The attraction started by Second Life was that it does not involve gaming but rather the creation of a world that develops in response to the wishes of its “citizens’’ to provide the kind of environment that they want to “live” in. This has led to the advent of a new term, “Networked Virtual Environments” or NVEs, which are being used to describe online platforms where participants are immersed in a three-dimensional representation. NVEs are potentially the next stage of development of collaboration tools and particularly add extra value when objects are involved, as they can be “seen” more clearly as 3D representations.

Second Life is the easiest to understand commercially, as its proprietors Linden Lab have released historical data showing it to have nearly 2.0 million active users, known as residents (who have been there in the last 60 days). Sales between residents are transacted using Second Life’s own unique currency, the “Linden dollar,” (L$), which had a fluctuating conversion rate of 260–320 to a US dollar in 2005 to 2006.

The Linden can be converted into US dollars by several well-known banks, and some—ING Group as an example—even allow purchases to be made in Second Life on their standard credit cards for recharge to the cardholder in their national currency. Linden Labs makes its money from the sale of “land” to residents, who after purchase have to pay a subscription to continue to own the land. It’s the owners’ challenge to decide how to use the land, which runs all the way from individuals creating their own buildings as “homes” to which they invite their friends for socializing (creating a consequential market for furnishings, etc.), through to businessuse (IBM has over 5,000 employees working in Second Life). The Second Life economy in 2006 was estimated at more than $600 million by an analyst tracking virtual worlds and their growth.

A quick round up of activities in various sectors shows a variety of reasons for their growing presence in the virtual world. Automotive represents a good example to analyze, with most global brands present. General Motors, Nissan and Toyota were early adopters of the ability to offer test drives, which in reality were more like driving games, but this has now broadened into making Second Life a part of the overall marketing mix complete with links into first-world activities. The use of Second Life has now become an industry-wide shift, driven by experimenting with new ways to use 3D experiences to interact with their existing or potential customers.

For the automotive industry with tangible physical products, it is the addition of 3D to represent their products on the Internet that provides critical new capabilities. Launches of new models are made at manufacturers’ sites in Second Life in the same manner as at their own physical premises, including “free gifts” to encourage visitors to attend the launches. The recent launch of the Mercedes C Class saw visitors who registered and visited being offered a free set of Mercedes Racing overalls complete with a helmet for their avatar to wear! Marketers say that the issue is how to market to, and engage with, a generation that has grown up with gaming and being online as a major source of their entertainment and information. On Second Life they can now buy the car of their choice as a 3D model that they can use to drive around and visit different locations in the virtual world.

Johnson Controls see a different approach, with a representation of your house created in a virtual world that you can access from anywhere in the world via an Internet device in order to check if everything is okay, adjust the heating, reset the alarms, etc. In the meanwhile, consumer companies are experimenting with how to extend the rapid growth in “social networking” (Web 2.0 sites such as Facebook, MySpace, etc.) into something that connects to their “brand,” and its use in a virtual world. To summarize, there is a strong belief that virtual worlds will develop as the medium in which the current “Internet Generation” will increasingly combine various aspects of their lives as they link social networks to gaming, to making choices on what and how to buy. Come to think of it, the title of the MIT and IBM event was well chosen indeed.

Capgemini CTO's SLug it out

I have been a fan of the Capgemini CTO blog for a long time as it provides a frequently insightful view on the world of IT, and the strategic trends that are emerging. I have to confess that much of what's written goes straight over my head, but it's good to know that these things are being talked about... ummm... whatever they are. The blog is not the work of one individual. Rather it is a series of postings from Capgemini CTOs from around the world - and this makes for some dry amusement on occasion, when they fall out with each other. I also have something of a vested interest in their musings, since they are the MegaBrains for the company for which I work.

My personal interest is piqued whenever they stray onto Second Life, which both Andy Mulholland and Ron Tolido have done a number of times in the last 6 or 8 months. Andy, after a period of skepticism now sees merit in Second Life. Ron, on the other hand, remains stoutly skeptical... nay, negative about Second Life. I would particularly commend you to Ron's posts as he has a wonderfully dry wit - as dry as the Atacama Desert. This means that you get some entertaining sparks flying between the two, and if you are an SLer, or indeed an IT professional, you might find much to comment on within the blog.

The latest mention of Second Life comes from Ron in a post entitled "iPhone launched in Second Life." OK, it's not really about Second Life, but you might want to take a look anyway.

OK... I know this is something of a non-post,. In truth, I'm just trying to improve their Technorati rating (by 1) . Admittedly it has improved a bit of late, but still manages to languish - even the rambling, messy blog you are reading now has a higher rating. Next post will be a proper, pukka SL post though. :-)

Capgemini By Night and Japanese Delights

I have just completed what is, by my standards, something of a mega-post. Sadly, owing to a "gentleman's agreement", I will not be posting it to this blog until after the weekend - so you will need to check out 3pointD to see what I've been up to. By way of light relief, and picking up on a comment on my last post from Trojan Bade - about Capgemini - I thought I would share with you some "Capgemini by Night" images:

Right... and now I promise that's it for that subject.

On a different tack, and more because I found myself there and took the pictures than for any other reason, here are a couple of Japanese commercial sites. The first is H.I.S - from the content of the main office this must be a travel agency. While here you can watch a video which appears to be the making of the video. It's all a bit post-modern for me! Anyway, here are some night time views (I will go back again at some point and derive something more meaningful):


On the adjacent sim of "Mirai" you will find this marvellous, as-yet unpopulated palace, which describes itself as a "castle for shopping magSL Tokyo Japan". I can only suggest you go figure:


No deep analysis - I just thought you might like to see these. They are near "Suntory" blogged by my chum VeeJay at Mindblizzard.

Capgemini France Recruitment Hall

Building on yesterday's post, I thought I should pop in to see what the Capgemini France recruitment hall on the island TMP3 actually looked like. By the time I got there it was past midnight in the UK, and long past any sensible French person's bedtime. But I took a few snaps, just to prove I had been there:


The more eagle-eyed of you might recognise the conference table and chairs. Yes... it's evidently my riff of the week: the work of Scope Cleaver - again!

I may be biased - but I think the facility looks pretty neat.

BTW - for the really avid reader - you may have noticed that this is NOT the mega-post currently in gestation!

UPDATE 21-06-07: The mega-post is now available at 3pointD.