Second Life, Plurkshops, and Immersive Experiences

Yesterday, Connie Reece the social media maven who is known for her pink hair and feather boa (and shh, don’t tell her, but she is also one of my role models as I turn my love of social media into a business), led a Plurkshop titled Second Life: The Value of Immersive Experience.

Now first, I should probably explain that Plurkshops are community workshops that were created by the Plurk community. We have had eleven plurkshops so far, including discussions about social media, marketing, Plurk, and blogging.

Second, let me say I have absolutely no experience with SL (Second Life). I remember when it first came out, but I was already playing 2 massively multiplayer on-line role-playing games (MMORPGs) and figured that was enough. Plus I had a rather old computer at the time, so was concerned that it wouldn’t handle SL very well.

Over the years, I’ve been told multiple times that I needed to get on SL. I don’t know how many times I’ve downloaded the program, ready to start, but for some reason I’ve never once completed the registration to use SL (or if I have, it was so long ago that I’ve forgotten and the system has erased me, it definitely didn’t recognize my e-mail when I checked last night).

In fact, my lack of experience was why I volunteered to write this review of last night’s Plurkshop. In part because there was a lot of information and writing out some of it would help me wrap my brain around it, and because there was a great mix of SL pros and newbies, so there were a lot of great questions asked and answered.

For a few days before the Plurkshop, Connie had a questionaire about SL posted on plurkshops.com, the best place to go if you’re wanting to know about an upcoming Plurkshop or find information about a prior one. Some of the questions really had me thinking. For instance, can you guess how many active users there are on SL (people who have logged on within the last 60 days)? Care to guess how much businesses invested in virtual worlds in 2007? Any idea how much real money people spend on virtual goods? (Here are the answers.)

In addition to Connie, (who is Reece Llewellyn on SL), we were honored to have 2 SL pros, Patricia Anderson and Sarah Hutchinson.

Patricia (Perplexity Pleccable on SL) is an Emerging Technologies Librarian at the University of Michigan and helps with SLUM (Second Life University of Michigan). She is also active on both Plurk and Twitter as pfanderson.

Sarah’s blog, Grid Life, is written by her SL character Kippie Friedkin. Sarah mentioned she has been active in SL for about 2 years and started out working for an interactive developer for a company that offered SL services. She is also a mentor in SL. On Plurk and twitter, she is known as kidmarmite.

Since there were a couple times last night that I wished I had a SL dictionary, I’m going to start by mentioning a few of the terms that came up in conversation.

Second Life – Defined by Connie as a virtual world.

Immersive Experience – Defined by Connie as a way of learning which involves as many of the 5 senses as possible during the learning experience and by pfanderson as meaning you have to be there to understand. Showing isn’t the same thing.

Machinima – Defined by moomoney as movies made in a 3d gaming platform, by pfanderson as machine video and by rickwolff as machine + cinema.

Blingtards – Defined by moomoney as people with big hair, ridiculous bodies, and glowing attachments.

Griefers – Definied by moomoney as people out to cause trouble.

Simulation – Defined by rickwolff as a place with buildings, garden, etc. where avatars gather regularly.

At most plurkshops, there are several threads of discussions running through the conversation, which is at the same time one of my favorite things about Plurkshops and one of the things that can make them difficult to follow.

This one was no exception. With topics covering everything from companies using SL to healthcare to getting started, there was a LOT going on during the 1.5 hours that it lasted.

Pfanderson started the discussion off by asking about the value of immersive experience. Moomoney suggested that the value is directly proportionate to what you put into SL. Pfanderson mentioned that she was surprised to find SL so useful and engaging since she hadn’t come into it from a gaming background.

Bethharte wondered what the easiest way would be for someone to immerse themselves in SL after they get registered and are ready to play. In addition to stories about griefers targeting new people, some good ideas were made for getting started from a suggestion by girlfromkansas to look on YouTube for orientation videos, to Connie’s offer to run a plurkshop IN SL, to many of the experienced SLers offering to help those of us who are just getting started.

Connie said that a good way to get introduced to the best aspects of SL is to attend events there such as BlogHer, Relay for Life, and Nonprofit Commons. Pfanderson added that just giving SL 15 minutes a day can make learning it a lot easier.

I found it surprising how many businesses are using SL. Large companies like Dell, may have a special last name for their employees to use. Some, like Cisco and Sun require employees to create SL accounts as part of employee orientation according to kidmarmite. Connie pointed out that B2C (business to consumer) companies such as Coke, Toyota, etc. are more likely to be there than B2B (business to business) companies.

Even non-profit companies are using SL for events and meetings. As kidmarmite pointed out, holding meetings and events in SL saves time and money.

Pfanderson also pointed out that metrics on SL don’t look like you’d probably expect. Although most avatars are created by people under 30, it’s people over age 45 who actually spend the most hours in SL. Connie added that the median age of users is actually in the early 30s and in regards to the nonprofits companies on SL, the age is actually much older.

To me, one of the neatest uses of SL was as an educational platform, from Italian professors who us SL for language immersion experiences, to truck drivers learning to parallel park, to a pandemic response simulation and crisis response. Pfanderson mentioned other educational options, from Genomics training labs to historical immersion experiences.

Of course, this is only a small part of the chat that went on last night. You can read the rest here.

I have to admit, I’m really looking forward to registering and trying out SL now!

Resources:

www.kippiefriedkin.com – Grid Life: Life in SL according to Kippie Friedkin

slum.wetpaint.com – Second Life at the University of Michigan

mblog.lib.umich.edu/slum/ – Includes the slideshare Getting Started in Second Life among other interesting posts.

http://www.kippiefriedkin.com/2008/07/25/second-life-viewer-cheatsheet/ – kidmarmite’s Second life Viewer Cheatsheet. Wow!

slfreestyle.blogspot.com/ – How to look stylist in SL for free!

www.slconvention.org/register/ – Second Life Community Convention registration

slhealthy.wetpaint.com – a wiki collecting health groups in SL

http://del.icio.us/tag/education+slurl – A list of SL educational resources on del.icio.us

fleeep.net/blog/sl-calendar/ – Fleep’s SL Events Calendar

http://writersinthesky.blogspot.com/ – Books, writers, and SL