Gruppo Banca Carige

Banks in Second Life seem to be emerging as one of my themes of the month. As two Dutch bank prepare to depart from Second Life, here's an Italian bank on its way in.

While having a look around the growing Italian area of Second Life (which looks quite weird on the map view incidentally) I saw a name I didn't recognise. Most of the sims in this part of the grid are named after Italian cities and/or regions - but Carige was not familiar to me, so I went along for a look. It turns out to belong to Italian bank Gruppo Banca Carige. Based in Genoa, and with over 900 branches throughout Italy, the group employs over 5000, and serves 1.7million customers. I don't know when the Second Life branch was opened. In fact, I will stick my neck out here, and say that this branch is not yet complete and not really open to the public.

OK, actually this seems like a safe bet to me. Although the majority of the building work is complete, there are parts, particularly in the Leisure Area, where there is still a reasonable amount of work to do - for example, dropping the putting green onto the island surface (it currently hovers around a metre above it). There are a few such "floating" objects that need to be tethered.

However, to be fair, the bulk of the island is in good shape. It is dominated by a large, modern office building, resembling a set of billowing sails. It is still a tad spartan inside, but it is evident that work is in progress. Beyond the office building, in one corner of the island, sits an outdoor auditorium. At the moment the seating is simply floating in mid air, a feature I like! However, more sober heads may decide that this minimalist and distinctly NPIRL* approach to auditoria is going too far. I shall look forward to checking this on a subsequent return visit.

The previously mentioned Leisure Area seems to take up around a third of the island, with a (short!) golf course, tennis court, gym and pool. In a nod towards the city of Genoa, there seems to be a recreation of the city's lighthouse. But we've not finished yet - no sirree. There are several more buildings - all largely complete: a recruitment office; an overseas relations office and meeting spaces for both domestic and business clients. Oh... and finally, there's a dance area. Phew! And all of these set around an ornamental lake. It is a neat piece of juggling to fit in all of these features without it looking strained and crowded. Here's the photos from my trip (there's a lot of them, so I've reverted to PictoBrowser):

Will this see a change in the perceptions of SL by RL banks? Nah... can't see it myself. But I hope Banca Carige enjoy their virtual adventure.

Dutch banks depart Second Life - some thoughts...

Sometimes I get the impression that Linden Lab places rather a lot of emphasis on the "Lab" part of the name. Like a vast scientific experiment, they have created this fascinating virtual world, given it some vital nutrients (in the form of LSL, the L$ and the like) and then sat back to observe what happens. Generations have come and gone under their watchful - but largely uninvolved - eye. Aside from some essential maintenance to weed out what they (often rightly) perceive as dangerous and damaging fauna, Second Life is left to get on with it... whatever "it" may be.

"And quite right, too!" is a reaction I can understand. However, as both a private citizen of Second Life and a rather stop-start corporate evangelist, my feelings on the matter are somewhat mixed. My private citizen self says "Yeah... leave it to the residents and watch how it plays out. All sorts of stuff happens - some good, some bad - so just seize the moment, enjoy it while you can, 'cos it may not be here forever - but let's hope it will." In my more frivolous moments I might even be tempted to add a: "party on, drude"

My corporate evangelist self has a different take on it (and is unapologetic about the buzzword frenzy to follow). Second Life provides a great environment for immersive collaboration and innovation. It collapses geography, instantly co-locating colleagues from around the physical world in a common, shared 3D space where they can network and share ideas around a single virtual view. It is also an environment that challenges marketing people in unexpected ways. It reveals that virtual spaces, while capable of sharing many of the same visual cues as the physical world, are profoundly different in ways that I, a mere mortal, find hard to nail down and that drive some fascinating challenges when trying to define marketing campaigns in this seemingly familiar, but actually rather alien, channel.

Returning to my laboratory metaphor, it seems to me that LL don't really care whether corporates thrive or die in SL. Indeed, it would be unscientific of them to get so involved with the subjects of their observation. Yet this is a naive (some might argue, arrogant) view of the role of corporate (and other non-resident) users of Second Life. Unlike most laboratory situations, the Observed pay handsomely for the right to be observed.Yet they get little in return. A small example is the unwieldy sales process, about which I might write on another occasion.

What has prompted me to write now is news, reported at Mindblizzard, that Dutch banks ING and ABN Amro are pulling the plug on Second Life. To grossly paraphrase Lady Bracknell, in The Importance of Being Earnest: "To lose one bank from SL, Mr. Rosedale, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness."

Both banks took an "innovative" and "creative" approach to Second Life. They didn't just set out their stall and hope people would wander by. They actively sought to build genuine communities here, offering something distinct and unique at a time when most corporates were treating Second Life as a 3D billboard. I am therefore deeply concerned about their departure, and deeply concerned about the long-term viability of Second Life as "the Virtual World of choice" for the future. I still firmly believe that web3D will be an important part of the digital experience for all of us in years to come. But this turn of events is worrying me, a fan of Second Life. I have to wonder whether Linden Lab are simply too detached from both the world they created and the physical world in which they are running a business.

[Apologies if this is a bit rambling - but it's late, and I wanted to get this posted. I'm not a journalist, just an enthusiast - but I hope I got my point across.]

Itau

Brazil, as you may be aware, was the first country to get a Second Life Grid Global Provider, in the form of Kaizen Games. There was an expectation that this locally-supported service would see Brazillians flocking into Second Life, but I'm not sure it has really done so. Nevertheless, many of the busiest residential sims in Second Life are Brazillian, and it is perhaps surprising that there does not appear to be an equivalent level of commercial interest.

Tonight I stumbled across one such Brazillian commercial sim: Itau. It belongs to Banco Itau, a privately-owned bank with its headquarters in São Paulo. It is the second largest private bank in the country, accounting for around 11% of retail banking services. However, the sim does not appear to be pitching itself as a major promotional tool for the bank. I really need one of my Portuguese-speaking chums to translate it for me, but at least part of seems to be concerned with environmental and ecological matters. Thus far, the build extends across half the island and comprises 3 buildings - an arrival zone, an auditorium and a "conviviality suite", where you will finding rolling displays, presenting a variety of eco-stats. A pathway winds through hilly woodland, linking the buildings. For freebie-chasers it looks like you might be able to grab a T-shirt or 2 - though I wasn't able to prise one out.

I don't really have much more to add - but you might want to go and figure it out for yourself. Oh, I've just been back for another look, and there is a quiz in which you can participate, on the subject of "sustainability."

Banque Cantonale Vaudoise

While pottering about today I noticed a coupled of islands with the initials "BCV". I last tried to access these (unsuccessfully) some months ago - but they are open now**. In my RL world BCV is an acronym for Business Continuity Volumes, something techie in the world of data centre storage. So I was half-expecting to find another IT company - perhaps with a walk-in SAN, where you could surf on a disk drive, fly down some fibre optic cable... or somesuch nonsense. In the event, BCV turned out to be Banque Cantonale Vaudoise, a Swiss bank. "Founded in 1845, BCV is a banking group offering a full range of retail,private and corporate banking services -concentrating most of its general banking business in the Canton of Vaud."

The primary BCV island is solely for the bank itself, while BCV island 2 seems to be given over to various Swiss companies. The whole place is rather intensely green, with the occasional pale blue - part of the bank's branding. The main building is rather nicely made, and contains a gallery along with the usual information displays one might expect. Next door is a rather odd auditorium that took some getting into and aside from a funny little, black office, that is about it for the main island. A causeway links the two islands (so I guess that makes it only 1 island really), in the middle of which is curvy, shiny, faintly-mushroomy sculpture. The second island is split into a variety of plots, none of which particularly grabbed my attention. There are a few fun items here: you can fly a UFO (hitting Page-Up to make it hop upwards); be fired from a cannon or be catapulted off a water slide. There may be other hidden pleasures, but I didn't spot them.

While Blogger sorts out the issues with images, I will post up another Flickr set - only 3 pictures tho.



** VeeJay points out in comments that he was here back in July. My, how time flies! I coulda sworn it was more recently than that when I tried to get in. Oh well.

Belgian Bankers and Blue Pills

The Benelux virtual banking community - in effect, ABN Amro and ING - is now stronger by one more member: Keytrade Bank. I have to say at this point that my knowledge of Belgian banks, until now, has hovered somewhere around the zero mark. But the chance discovery of this island has changed that a little. I don't claim to be a world authority, but at least I've increased the paltry sum of my knowledge.

Keytrade launched into Second Life at the end of September. Their press release informed me: "Keytrade Bank was Belgian’s first 100% Internet bank... We are also the first Belgian bank to become active in Second Life. Our ambition is to bring real value to users all over the globe, not only to Belgian residents of this virtual world." They continue on their website: "Our island in Second Life is to be considered as a field of experimentation for future products and the proof of our will to be at the cutting edge of web-based financial services."

Their first step, aside from having their island constructed by bluepill GROUP, has been to offer visitors a free currency calculator that maintains real-time information on exchange rates between the Linden Dollar and a host of real world currencies. The same device also offers financial news from the Dow Jones Newswires.

The island itself comprises a large, airy, vaguely horseshoe-shaped building that partially encircles a pond. Inside, lifts provide access to smaller meeting rooms, while at the apex of the horseshoe is a circular hub with information displays that, I assume, is intended to resemble a trading floor. Outside there is a zeppelin that you can borrow to explore the island. I like this idea, but the scope here is strictly limited, since there is only the 1 sim to explore, and there is no real complexity in the landscape that might make the zeppelin flight interesting.

Here's the outside:


And the inside:


I lost count of the number of calculator dispensers (illustrated above) inside the building. For those who are still eager for free branded T-shirts, there is a selection available. However, I'm not sure they will have that many takers.

The build quality is high. This is an attractive build, with subtle colour schemes and good, rich textures. However, despite the zeppelin and the calculator, I did not feel engaged with the place. There is no evidence of events (at least, not yet) - nor any obvious location to host them. I suppose I'm saying I did not get a sense of social interaction - it felt a bit austere and aloof to me.

bluepill GROUP, whom I have not encountered before, have surprised me by having contact locations in Barcelona, Bonn and Brussels. It may be safe to assume that it was the last of these that secured the Keytrade business. In existence since 2004, they describe themselves as "a fully specialised metaverse consulting and 3D implementation company focused on understanding and harnessing 3D virtual worlds for Real World Companies." They have an island in Second Life not far from Keytrade - so I think I will pop by to see what's what sometime.

Credit to Credit Agricole

We've witnessed the arrival of a number of banks and financial institutions in Second Life, plus the departure of one - Wells Fargo having decamped to Active Worlds. At the tail-end of last year it was Dutch banks, but the last 3 months has seen the arrival of the French banks. I've been a bit slow off the mark picking up on this one - Credit Agricole.

Credit Agricole (please excuse the absence of accents!) is the largest banking group in France, and second largest in Europe, so their arrival in Second Life is hardly insignificant. As far as I can tell, they've been here since April 2007, but latterly they have expanded their presence, which now stands at 5 sims. As is usually the case with me, I stumbled upon the build by accident and went to have a look.

The main sim has 3 principal features:

• A boat - "Le Jules Meline" - is a museum in memory of Jules Meline, the inventor of "mutualism". This at least is the information given on the island, though the Wikipedia entry suggests otherwise. There is a lot of information in French about Mr Meline on the boat, which is a fairly straightforward construction. The textures are not particularly rich or engaging, giving it a rather dull, lifeless feel in my view. There is a piano on the forward deck, presumably for use in intimate soirees.
  

• "Le Cafe Mutualiste" is a reproduction of their first local branch at Poligny, in the Jura. It is kitted out as an informal meeting area, with comfortable seating inside and out. Again, the textures are rather plain, giving it a flat, dull feeling. However, there is a lot of artwork inside - mainly pictures made in SL - which bear further inspection.

• Finally, there is a modern building which provides a rich source of information about Credit Agricole, and is evidently the "business centre" for the sim. I've noticed with French builds - and this is no exception - that there is a tendency to bombard you with information from large numbers of panels and billboards. It is good to have this amount of information, but i do feel it could be scaled back a little. Perhaps rather than use a large number of static displays, why not use a smaller number of dynamic displays, in which the information is cycled every few seconds. This would give them more space, and thus more of a sense of space. Just a thought...

There are several smaller buildings on the sim, but I could not discern their purpose. Ironically perhaps, these lesser buildings actually use far richer textures and have a much better 3D feel.

The other sims in the presence are given over to different "big themes", such as Nature or The Future. These look failrly new and are in different stages of readiness. As you can see from the last picture, some structures are still at the "plywood texture" stage.

I do not have a view on the bank's intentions for Second Life. However, I read a French blog (that of David Castera) that suggests the reason the bank is here is that they see web3.D being with us in, say, 4 years and recognise the need to get in early and start experimenting. They also want to bring the concepts of Mutualism to a Second Life audience. Beyond that, my French was not really up to the job, and Google translation was more Zen-like than useful. If I interpret this right though, the build has been done by a company/group called stonfield InWorld.

It's not a build with a high wow factor, but it is a welcome addition to the financial presences in Second Life.

Spaceship Suruga

I seem to be on something of a Far Eastern riff this weekend. Here's the latest in this medley of Oriental delights.

I reported a while back on Suruga Bank's then new island in Second Life (as well as name-checking Korea's Acid Crebiz), and have checked back from time to time to see if it was open. Last night, while rambling in the general vicinity I thought I'd give it a pop - and this time I was able to gain access. If you look on a Satellite Map view, the site looks completely black - and there seems to be a good reason for this. The entire site seems to be contained within a huge expanse of blackness. There is no terrain as such, rather a number of coloured discs and something akin to a space station, floating in space against a backdrop of stars. The effect, to my jaded eyes, was refreshingly new and exciting.

A teleport system will take you each of the 3 disks. On two of these you can watch videos, including (what looks like) an introduction to Visa cards and their benefits. I would like to know a bit more about this, since I am off to Tokyo at the end of the month, and have read that credit cards are not widely used for payment. The video goes some way to supporting this assertion, since it does seem to be "Credit Cards 101" - fun though! It made me chuckle a couple of times.

The main theme of the build is "d-labo" (dream laboratory) which links with this website. As far as I can tell, this ties in with the opening of Suruga Bank's new branch (if that is not too small a word) in the prestigious Tokyo Midtown tower. It looks like "d-labo" is either the project name, or the name of the company designing and managing the build in RL. Certainly the Second Life "d-labo" shows many of the features to be found in Real Life. The builders in Second Life seem to be the busy Japanese virtual worlders, Meltingdots (who offer their own portal into SL here). But enough of the blather - to get the idea of the place it is best to view the pictures:


The guy in the video is spouting the virtues of Visa cards.


I think the main aim of this sim is to promote Suruga Bank's opening in Tokyo Midtown. You may argue - largely successfully - that Second Life is not an ideal promotional channel. But be that as it may, I really like this build. It shows a lot of humour and imagination, while also looking to address the client's brief of co-ordinating the SL channel with other promotional channels. If some can explain to me the subtleties of the d-labo website, then I would be grateful!

Italian Variations

A couple of quickies for this post:

First off, it looks like virtual Venice has opened officially in SL. When I snapped the following pictures I noticed a large crowd of people, some tables bedecked with virtual victuals and lots of formal seating. Being in no way fluent in Italian I thought it best to remain aloof from proceedings. The sim I found slightly disappointing, perhaps because it is so ambitious. The builders have used photo textures to replicate many of the city's famous buildings - and I'm not sure they work terribly well. One or two would be fine, but there are just too many in my view. Also - and this would be difficult - one doesn't get the feeling of the city from the sim. I say "difficult" because I find Venice very intimate and close, bordering on the claustrophobic - but this sense seems to be missing in the wide, sunny paths and piazzas of this sim.


Next door is the sim for the Veneto region, in which Venice is situated. This is still under development, but it appears to be aimed at promoting key aspects of the region, inclduing tourism and agriculture. It also provides a handy teleport into virtual St Mark's Square.

The last Italian site I wanted to mention is IW Bank, an online bank that targets cool, trendy tech-savvy Italian 20-somethings (apparently). Their sim is not open to the public yet - but when I saw the Satellite Map, I was amused by its use of branding in the construction: