A Wider Net

Day 2 started off with a celebrity-laden presentation by Rohan Oza, Sr. VP of Marketing for Glaceau - the Coca-Cola-owned makers of Vitamin Water and Smart Water. He described the meteoric rise of their product in a category they had to define themselves - “enhanced water”. Despite the plain packaging design and unprecedented category, Vitamin Water is already bigger than Snapple, will be bigger than Red Bull next year, and bigger than Gatorade in three years, according to Oza. I found their celebrity partnerships particularly impressive, especially when you consider that 50 Cent signed up when the company first launched, demanding a stake in the company instead of payment, and his own “formulation”.

The first breakout session of the day for me was a data collection session led by Motorola Sr. Sports Marketing Manager Sharon Brown. Motorola also featured a celebrity-studded presentation featuring, among others, Danica Patrick, who made history this week by becoming the first woman to win an Indy car race. Sharon described a number of comprehensive private and industry events where Motorola captured date in return for prizes or entrance. Many of their programs also involved SMS text messaging to gather email addresses in return for chances to win prizes.

Today’s luncheon keynote was Jeff Singsaas, the General Manager of Event Marketing for Microsoft. Jeff opened with a stunning reel depicting some of the 20,000 events Microsoft stages annually. 75% of these events are Microsoft branded events. He slipped in the mind-melting stat that Microsoft is spending nearly $1billion on events annually.

He proclaimed that Digital will never replace face-to-face events, something I whole-heartedly agree with. Then he proceeded to detail Microsoft’s strategy to deliver virtual events - online companions to face-to-face events as a mechanism to extend reach and lifespan of the event. In one example, a CES virtual event website, they received 100 visitors online for every 1 visitor on site - a staggering bonus to their event spend ROI.

Ron Allen, Microsoft’s Marketing Solutions Manager, detailed their internal platform for executing virtual events. In a nutshell, they are working to deliver online alternatives to most onsite event components, using a variety of media and navigation techniques. Streaming video and photos are just part of the overall online experience. You can see what this looks like at their virtual events demo site. You’ll be able to see the whole keynote when the EMS team post it to their website.

The next session I attended covered 360 degree engagement - live and online components of events. This session also featured Microsoft technology and the speaker was Connie Fontaine - Manager of Experiential and Multi-Cultural Communications from Ford. She spoke in depth of their innovative partnership with Microsoft to launch the Sync feature - a system that lets you control your phone and MP3 player with voice commands. In fact, last night they won an X award for activation of a cause related event (not sure what the cause was).

She described a very interesting social networking/social media/viral campaign featuring two young women, Kim and Seana, who traveled across the USA performing music and delivering videos of their experience along the way. While the webisodes were somewhat scripted, the women were real. In fact, they surprised us at the end of the session by having Kim, the singer/songwriter of the pair, perform a song in front of us - 300 marketing people in chairs (tough crowd). She sounded delightful but she was about 4-foot-nothing and we could barely see her! One attendee commended Connie for being a true representative of experiential marketing by bringing Kim into the presentation. I agree - that was a very cool touch.

During some of the exhibit hours I checked out a variety of products ranging from interactives to video projection spheres. My favorite was the immersion dome, which I will feature in a separate post.

The last session of the day was the unveiling of data from the EMI EventView study, which George P Johnson launched nearly a decade ago. This data, however, covered the past three years. Highlights from this presentation:
- Event Marketing, as a percentage of a large company’s total marketing budget, dropped slightly from 26% in ‘05 to 21% in ‘07, probably due to the rise of digital marketing.
- Trade shows, as a percentage of the types of events large companies participate in, have risen from 52-62% since ‘05 - trade shows are UP!
- Marketer’s perception of ROI value of various types of marketing was down slightly over the past three years, but Event Marketing is still considered the top ROI model due primarily to two factors - the # of people reached, and the focussed targeting of that audience.
- Procurement is apparently having less of a say in the final decision of which vendor is selected for Event Marketing activities.
- 41% of large companies plan to implement green initiatives in their event functions within the next year. Only 25% had no plans to do so at all.

And last but certainly not least, the night was capped off with a networking party at the River East Art Center. Ethos design provided the environment which included a massive lighted bar, distinctive modern furnishings, and large projection scrims with video images of an artist painting what appeared to be Japanese text and illustrations on rice paper. The artist was also in the room painting actual panels among us. Everything they provided was eco-friendly in some way. Bacardi was a sponsor, and is 100% to blame for any typos in this post.

Tomorrow is a half-day before we catch a flight. I may not be able to write about it until Thursday. Regardless of what happens tomorrow, this has been an outstanding event full of valuable information and conversations

I just got back from Vermilion, a fabulous Latin-Indian fusion restaurant where we enjoyed some explosively flavorful combinations. I am told this is the hottest trend in Chicago cuisine. I can see why. According to our waiter, one of the dishes, a lobster tail thingy, was voted one of the top 20 dishes in America by USA Today. How could we NOT try it? HIGHLY recommended (the dish AND the joint.)

Today was a great start for the Experiential Marketing Summit. We ran into many old friends in the trade show and event marketing industry, and we were pleased to hear that the attendance reached over 1,000 people this year.

The morning started for us with a 3.5 hour workshop led by Event Marketer Magazine founders Kerry Smith and Dan Hanover (the event organizers) talking about some research recently gathered by the Event Marketing Institute and trends about the industry as a whole. Kerry started with the research slides and revealed that, to everyone’s surprise, ROI measurement is markedly down in the event industry. 82% of the industry reported measuring ROI of their events in 2005 compared to only 67% in 2007. If you’re thinking that gets you off the hook - guess again. They also found that companies that measure are 2.5 times more likely to get their marketing programs funded than those that don’t measure.

One of the clear problems with ROI measurements was illustrated at the start of the session when Kerry asked who in the room actively measured their events and roughly 30% raised their hands. However, when he asked who had dedicated budgets for measurement, hardly anyone raised their hands. Apparently corporations want their measurement and they want it for free. That clearly won’t cut it.

Dan Hanover, a lively, entertaining, and intelligent speaker spoke next. He started by explaining that the term “destination” will replace the term “experience”. There were a lot of groans in the room as people saw a rebrand in their company’s future. Destinations are defined as places people will line up to attend - can be trade shows, mobile marketing exhibits, private events, popup stores - whatever. As long as people want to get there and will go out of their way, wait a while, and even pay to get in.

Dan also reminded us that event marketing is getting more and more expensive while attendance probably isn’t going up. We need to reach more people. To do this, the industry needs to come up with ways to get more people to draw 4 additional people into the brand. “This is the only way we’re going to be able to afford this stuff in five years,” Dan forecast.

The highlight of the day was the luncheon general session with Amy Curtis-Mcintyre, formerly the marketing maven behind Jet Blue’s meteoric rise. As of last Monday, she is with Hyatt Hotels. Amy was a fantastic speaker - warm, funny, smart, sharp, and refreshingly frank. She had a remarkable ability to answer seemingly complicated marketing problems with very simple and logical solutions. She shared an outstanding anecdote about a trip she and her husband took to a fancy resort in the mountains, riding there in a rented Jeep SUV. When they were ready to leave, they packed up the Jeep and discovered to their surprise and delight that the resort had filled the tank with gas without asking. The Jeep had been running on fumes when they arrived. This was so amazing to them that they spoke of little else about their fabulous trip other than this mind-blowing gesture. It made me wonder what my company can do to surprise and delight our customers to this degree.

She said that her goal at Jet Blue was to make Coach Class “suck less”. In fact, by eliminating First Class, the whole Jet Blue plane felt more upper class. She also shared that she launched jetblue.com with a budget of $200K in only 60 days and it turned $5K in ticket sales on day 1. She said it was simple and idiot-proof - something she takes seriously with everything her customers touch. One of her most colorful yet insightful comments dealt with corporate branded merchandise: “if people don’t want to steal your sh!# then your brand is in real trouble.”

She described how Jet Blue spent as much time and effort marketing to their internal audience as they do their customers. Treat your employees very well and they will treat your customers very well. Think about how a shoddy photocopied job application form feels to an applicant compared to one that is beautifully designed. She said “great design rules” - we couldn’t agree more.

The afternoon sessions were mostly great. First, I took in Ric Peeler and Bryon Rhoads from Intel who spoke about their social media experience with events like CES and the Intel Developer Forum. They had many interesting tips and examples to offer. One highlight was their CES 2007 exhibit which allowed people to produce videos in the booth and upload them to YouTube. The highly Intel-branded videos enjoyed about 100,000 views in aggregate, including user-generated content highlighted by this Dancing Dork.

The last session that I attended didn’t do much for me. It was billed as a “virtual event” overview but it was actually about two people who use a $99/mo webinar package to sell cruise vacations to retired people.

After the sessions they opened up the exhibit hall for a reception with free drinks and nibbles. There were many interesting exhibits, including KAON interactive who makes the V-OSK virtual product demo kiosk, which I will write about in detail later.

All in all, it was an outstanding day 1 and I need to crash immediately in preparation for day 2!

If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, consider yourself lucky. Twitter can be an incredible time sink and it’s not clear that the signal to noise ratio can be managed to the point where it’s anything but a life-logging digression. In fact, studies will one day show that reading too many posts about menial situational updates like “I’m eating a peach” will actually make you dumber. But if you’re a marketing professional (given the nature of this blog, you probably are), you probably need to stay in tune with the “tweets” of Twitter because there is a fair amount of interesting things you can do with 140 characters or less. If you need a primer on Twitter, check out their FAQ.

I started using Twitter again recently after some previously tweet-resistant coworkers fell victim to the Twitter gravitational forces. So far, I am not hooked, nor am I leaning that way, but as I occasionally skim the posts from the various people I follow, I have found a few ideas that have inspired me among the many that have completely wasted my time. Earlier today, I received one that inspired me to write this post.

An exhibition, the New Media Expo, had started “following” me (subscribing to my twitter updates). Why? Because they want me to attend their expo. By “following” me, they expect a “follow-back” where I return the favor by following their updates (Jonathan Coulton has to write a “follow-back” song to the tune of “Hollaback Girl”.) Even if the user isn’t prone to automatically following everyone who follows them, most people will check out the new follower to see who they are. The “open rate” for twitter follow announcements has got to be worthy of the marketing hall of fame. But what I really like is the fact that the response mechanism is a subscription - they tune into you by following you, automatically, on twitter.

The New Media Expo, and many other events, are targeting influencers within the twitter community, and “following” all of their followers and followees. That’s not a word… I’m pretty sure. Example - they figure Robert Scoble is a good person to connect with for a tech event. They follow him. Then they look at his list of people that he follows, and they systematically follow all of them. Of those people some will opt to follow the expo’s twitter feed. And their friends will find out. And viro-exponentially it goes. That’s also not a word, but you get my gist. Gist is a word - a strange and miserably overused word, but a word nonetheless. GIST also stands for Girls Into Science and Technology, which is really really cool, and Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor, which is really, really not cool. My Scrabulous skills just leveled up.

Back to Twitter: So you can market your event through twitter using this viral, WOM, tap-the-sap-of-the-influencers method, and you can also do one or more of the following:

- Tweet news from the show, like Forrester.
- Automatically Tweet the RSS feed from your event blog. Don’t have an event blog? Start one now - your attendees want in on the process.
- Enlist twitterers in the same fashion that many events enlist bloggers. Give them access and privileges and ask only that they enjoy the show and post what they want.
- Incorporate mobile device features into your event offering such as mobile agendas, alerts, handle questions from text messages or tweets, and SMS polling. Using Twitter as a Q&A vehicle will naturally inspire people to tweet about the show.
- Offer free passes to influencers with many followers that align with your target demographics.

Did I miss anything?

Yup - my twitter feed

Looks like AT&T will finally deploy 12 stores worth of Microsoft Surface interactive displays. For this, we cheer and do the cha-cha. All 12 stores are located in only 4 cities. For this we put our cha-chas back in the bag.

I’m jazzed to see this cool technology in use at last. While I wish they would move faster, as we have a line of interested clients that runs right out the back door into the street, but I appreciate their slow and methodical approach to releasing it only when it’s ready. After all, Vista, Zune, and the XBOX 360 could have all used more incubation time (although some would argue that Vista stayed in the egg too long and spoiled).

According to Engadget, this in-store kiosk will allow you to place two phones on the surface, the one you’re buying and the one you currently own, then transfer contacts and stuff from one phone to the other by simply dragging and dropping. Funny - I thought having the store clerk do that was simple enough. But I think the OTHER applications of surface will make more sense - comparing features of multiple phones, playing with demo assets, exploring coverage maps, etc. (things the store clerk generally can’t wrap his head around.) I can’t say I love the pictures of the in-store display, but I love the Surface itself. As they continue to refine the application, adding drag-and-drop support for ringtones and wallpapers, for example, this will only get better and better. When people actually try it, I predict they will talk about Surface more than they talk about their new phone. Since the iPhone won’t be part of the display, this is pretty much a guarantee.

Microsoft announcement here

Thank you Engadget.

Yesterday Apple held a town hall press conference to announce the release of their software development kit (SDK) that provides third party developers the opportunity to create and publish their own applications for the iPhone and iTouch devices. This conference turned out to be another major game-changer in the mobile phone industry and there were lots of big surprises. Since many of these announcements will greatly affect the business community, especially sales and marketing professionals, I felt it was worth reviewing the highlights for our readers.

At the top of the conference Steve Jobs announced enterprise support for the iPhone, enabling synchronization between iPhones and Microsoft Exchange. In fact, they appear to have integrated with Exchange more directly and fluidly than any other smart phone platform. Email, contacts, tasks, calendar will be very easy to handle on your iPhone, and all of the data can be remotely wiped for security protection. This makes the iPhone, with all of it’s multimedia presentation capabilities and it’s chic design prestige arguably the most desirable and most productive mobile work tool that you can fit in your shirt pocket.

And for sales professionals it gets even better: They demonstrated a Salesforce.com SFA application for iPhone. It apparently also links to the phone’s GPS-like mapping capabilities.

What exactly is the SDK? The SDK is a set of tools that allows developers to make applications for the iPhone. It costs $99 and if the examples in the press conference were any indicator, then they have made developing on this platform crazy simple. They demonstrated examples of what could be done in 2 hours, 2 days, and 2 weeks. None of the examples were ready-to-market apps, but they showed two very important things: First, the platform is powerful - more powerful than developers anticipated. It seemed to have no trouble rendering 3D games and animations. Second, the development kit is robust, making it possible to make the iPhone do just about anything.

Making it easy to develop applications is only part of their strategy. They also made it easy to publish those applications, easy to make money with them, and they even made it possible to obtain funding for their development. A new feature called the App Store allows iPhone users to download applications through their phone directly over wireless or sideways through iTunes. They share revenue with developers 70/30 - 30% goes to Apple and there are no additional fees. Developers set their own prices including, if they want, free, and if they choose to distribute free software, Apple won’t charge them or the end user a dime. What was not clear is what the developer will have to go through to get their content certified and on the store for users to download. Many people will be critical of this distribution method because it is far less open than the Windows Mobile platform which allows you to download applications from any mobile website. This is a mixed blessing - while Apple can control the applications this way, keeping buggy and malicious code from their platform, end users really want more control over where and how they buy content and applications for computing platforms. Regardless, they have made developing for the platform even more appealing by announcing a $100 million developer fund that should stimulate the creation of a good amount of quality software for the platform.

It didn’t take long for other software announcements for the iPhone to make waves, such as this one from Epocrates that provides doctors ready access to drug information.

Apple is clearly betting that mobiles phones represent the next generation computing platform (a common belief) and they want to own it. Decades ago computers evolved from room-filling monstrosities into desktop personal computers and for around 25 years we have watched them infiltrate every desk and home in the industrialized world. Apple may have had a chance to own that massive market 25 years ago, but many believe they handed it to Microsoft. Now Apple has stepped in with an absolutely stunning solution to the smart phone space. If they are correct, and if mobile phones are, in fact, the next mass market computing platform, then we may see their technology trickle down to the average consumer, much the way PC’s started in business and education and gradually made their way into homes. Then we, as marketers, will have a consistent small screen to work with instead of the wildly fragmented and closed systems currently offered to consumers through carriers like Verizon Wireless.

When you look at these announcements and compare them to their competition, they have suddenly made most of the major smartphone players irrelevant including Microsoft who watched their Windows Mobile platform drop behind the iPhone in the US market. Fake Steve Jobs said it well when he basically ranted that this announcement has killed, or re-killed, the rest of the smartphone players. While I disagree that this has killed Nokia, the rest should consider new day jobs. Seriously - who wants Windows Mobile now?

Is it enough for me to put up with the questionable AT&T network and the lousy track record they have for customer service dating back to Cellular One? No… But when the new iPhone comes out in the June time frame with 3G network support (fast data) and more storage space (32GB), then I may be sold, price depending. I fear the price will be astronomical. For the record - I still think the iPhone needs a keyboard like almost every other smart phone in the world including the probably-too-late Sony Xperia. It also needs more memory, a memory expansion slot, voice dialing, and 3G support. Let’s see how many of these things Apple addresses in June. I can live without physical buttons if they add decent voice control - an area into which Microsoft is clearly investing heavily. Sigh… I guess I have to admit that I really really really want one of these now.

Credit: Top image is from Engadget’s live blog post from the conference.

Motion Computing, maker of the impressive C5 medical tablet computer, has released a new rugged mobile tablet PC, the F5, an impressive field sales device. We have been fans of tablet computers for field sales and exhibit applications for many years. We find them to be excellent for one-to-one or one-to-few presentations and they make great tools to put in the hands of customers for impromptu interactive experiences.

The F5 is even better than your typical tablet because it was designed with this application in mind. For starters, they ruggedized it and made it fairly light (actually, it weights the same as the MacBook Air.) They added a handle to make it easier to carry and to hold. And they added extra features such as wireless internet connectivity, a camera, RFID and barcode readers, speech recognition, and even theft prevention to make it an outstanding device for the field.

Some applications for this are somewhat obvious: field presentations, data gathering, site surveys, and real time estimates with access to full CRM data. But I also see this as a great exhibit gadget.

Let’s imagine that you have a large trade show exhibit with many product groups. You can hand one of these devices to everyone who registers at the reception desk. They bring it with them as they tour the booth. After filling out some basic information, the device plots a tour through the booth and guides the visitor along. As they tour the booth, the tablet senses RFID tags and displays information about nearby products and how they relate to the specific needs of the visitor, based on the information they provided. Interactive activities may include video demos, 3D pen-based walk-through experiences of products or solutions, games, scavenger hunts, and augmented reality visuals (more on that on one of my next posts). At any point the visitor can opt to have product information sent to their office email or downloaded to a memory stick on their way out. The custom guided tour would provide great value to the visitor by tailoring the presentations to meet their needs, while providing tremendous measurement data for the exhibitor. Also, exhibitors may gather feedback and even content from visitors such as comments, ratings, photos, and videos, then share them on the show floor and online.

I will be writing more about this device as soon as we put it through its paces. In the meantime, you can get a chuckle at Engadget, where they compare the handle-held device to that other bit of hardware brilliance, the infamous Speak N’ Spell.

Twofer tuesday (which is not a tradition at A Wider Net) continues with a wonderfully clickable snapable mighty morphing memory stick. Compatible with real Lego® bricks, these USB drives can take whatever shape and form factor you desire, provided you have the bricks, the patience, the free time, and the space next to your computer’s USB “inny”.

Put your logo on it. Wrap them in a biodegradable box labeled “Building The Future”, “Connecting With Your Audience”, or “We Make Your ____ a Snap” so they can dispose of the disposable slogan and keep the chummy tchotchke.

From Engadget. Manufacturer: Solid Alliance. Still looking for US resellers.

WindowGain, based in Newton, MA., has developed a unique model around outdoor video billboards. They have gathered ideas from event/staging companies, digital signage networks, retail displays, and billboard ad sales, then greatly extended the practices and technology to create a first of it’s kind network of large-scale daylight-visible video billboards. There are lessons here for everyone in the marketing, exhibit, and advertising industries.

The opportunity: WindowGain realized there are plenty of empty storefront windows around the country that create inexpensive opportunities to place content in busy public locations. They needed a way to get great quality content on those surfaces, keep them constantly changing, and keep the costs reasonable.

The technology: They needed very bright images and a system of distributing content to multiple locations. Similar to the edge-blending techniques that are being used for large scale video projection at corporate events, they created their own blending and warping technology that allows them to combine multiple video projectors to seamlessly produce massive High-Definition images with twice the light output of any single projector on the market. Arrays of smaller projectors have other big advantages: They tend to be cheaper to buy and maintain than big single projectors and they require a fraction of the projection distance so they can fit in tight storefront window-sized spaces. Once they had the image projection problem solved, they created their own digital signage software that allows them to distribute content to all the signs in their network. Similar to the big signage platforms, they can mix media - video, flash, powerpoint, and live feeds - and combine different content types onto one screen. They can tailor the content by time of day, day of week, time of year, and location. It sounds like a very comprehensive solution.

The most popular storefront signage solution that I have seen uses see-through holographic screens, which do not block the windows for visitors trying to look through the window. But they tend to be small screens, since most holographic screens are only available in smaller sizes, and because they are semi-transparent, they can look quite cluttered if the area behind the screen is brightly lit. WindowGain has solved these issues by targeting windows that no one uses anyway and using solid screen materials.

Content creation: While they accept content from automatic feeds and from customer’s agencies, they also produce content for customers upon request. Their ability to automatically receive and publish content from data feeds also means that these displays can provide information such as news, stocks, weather, and scores that viewers will appreciate in return for having to look at the big advertisements.

The result: They have created a network of high profile high quality digital signage opportunities that they sell to advertisers - local, national, and global. They have also taken dull empty windows and filled them with brilliant images, breathing life into a busy business district. This is a great story about finding ways to reach people, overcoming technical obstacles, and delivering something attractive in place of emptiness.

I suspect the people from this thread will have something to say about the possibility of lots of big video displays around the city, but I personally love the idea. I think that as long as they can maintain a minimum level of visual quality and appropriateness for a public space, and mix it up with artistic elements that people find attractive, then the lack of precision targeting will be forgiven and the visual improvement to the area much appreciated.

This is a “three-fer” post covering a three SMS solutions of note.

First, Airquake, a small incubatee of Atlantis Tech, has been offering SMS solutions for years now with a particular focus on large event SMS communications. Now they have added some great mini solution examples to their website (example shown). Each is interactive and I recommend giving them a try. They illustrate the use of SMS messaging for marketing better than any examples I have seen. You can also see through their demos, and the other examples below, how the use of SMS can establish a relationship with your customers. They become connected to you from a data perspective (you capture their phone and email information) and from an access perspective (they have access to information, products, and services anytime, anywhere). You can provide them with value on the go, thus creating the mobile component of the experiential marketing continuum.

Another example is Pangolin SMS - another SMS marketing veteran who offers solutions around everything from SMS interactivity at nightclubs and events to interactive television.

SMS Messaging is being used in all sorts of interesting ways now, especially in Europe. At a bar, you can order drinks without leaving your seat. At a conference, you can use text messages to send questions to the presenter, participate in polls, and check your agenda.

But the most intriguing use of SMS I have seen lately is the cool way that Finland has used SMS messaging to unlock public toilets. By capturing the phone number of the person unlocking the door, they cut down on misuse and vandalism by being able to identify who was there when the bad deed occurred. Well, they can identify whose phone opened the door, anyway. They also have found a way to restrict use of the public toilets to their own population - you have to know how to text message “open” in Finnish. Maybe it’s written on the door somewhere. I suppose if you stay in there too long, they probably charge you rent. I did some quick math, and I discovered that if they charged you by the minute, at a typical cell phone plan overage rate, it’s still way cheaper than a hotel. And you thought math would never come in handy.

Dan Parks, President/Creative Director for Corporate Planners Unlimited, Inc, has created a first-of-its-kind virtual convention center in Second Life. He recently gave me a tour and I will admit - this experiment is an example of extraordinary vision that could only have come from someone who had spend 20 years in the event industry. You owe it to yourself to try this out at your first opportunity. I will try to explain what it is and why I think you need to see it.

By the way - the image above features the exhibit hall on the right, the convention rooms on the left, and two skyscraper towers in the background. The “smoke” is actually low-flying clouds. See the thumbnails at the bottom of this post for the really high-res shots I took.

First, since there are still many people who have no idea what Second Life is, let me expend a paragraph on that topic. Non-Newbies can skip ahead. Second Life is a computer-generated world that you access through a free downloadable application - the Second Life Browser. Using this application, you can create a graphical 3D representation of yourself - an avatar - that you manipulate like a puppet within the second life world. It doesn’t have to look like you (it can be a different gender or even species) but it is what you will look like in this second life. Using this avatar, you walk or fly around this fantasy world, meeting other users, experiencing wild places, chatting, playing games, etc. It’s like a video game except it isn’t nearly as much fun. In fact, there’s very little to do in Second Life that the average working professional would find interesting. Companies like The Gap have spend big bucks setting up virtual stores and virtual hotels in Second Life only to find a lack of participants and a similar lack of real money. Ironically, the company most vocal about not wasting money in Second Life, IBM, is also one of its biggest investors, participants, and technology partners.

Two significant things have changed within Second Life that have changed my perception of it’s value for marketing and event professionals. First, a Massachusetts company called Vivox has introduced a voice chat technology that enables Second Life users to converse with other users by simply talking through a standard computer microphone or headset. It’s a free call anywhere in the world. You can talk privately person to person or talk openly in crowds. This is a surprisingly cool ability. As you walk near other people in Second Life you can join their voice conversations. This means that, in a business meeting, you can introduce yourself and network with other attendees. It is the most face-to-face experience I have ever seen online.

The second significant change within Second Life is the construction of Virtualis by Dan Parks and his team of hired guns - architects, landscapers, and designers. They have built a monumental convention center and meeting facility within Second Life and it will soon be open for business. It would take far more text than a mere blog post would stomach in order to fully explain all there is to see and do at Virtualis, so I will stick to the bullet points and get to why this is important. First, Virtualis has a massive virtual exhibit floor, complete with large 3D exhibits. You will be able to watch streaming videos, examine product information, and talk “face to face” with booth attendees. They have even come up with the ability to webcast live from the real world, using any standard webcam, into these exhibits for the purpose of product launches, product demos, and presentations. No other virtual trade show comes close to this level of functionality, attendee mingling, and user experience.

Virtualis also has a large ballroom and many smaller meeting rooms, all found within a beautiful glass building lined with waterfalls and other interesting visual elements. In the ballroom, Parks has provided a variety of meeting support services including a dance floor, a follow spot, podium, and presentation areas. Two nearby skyscrapers are loaded with meeting rooms and areas dedicated to the press. In fact, an outdoor ampitheater is equipped with multiple live virtual video cameras that can actually webcast a press conference out of second life to the real world.

Other features include a massive yacht full of meeting rooms (that may be private - I’m not sure), an outdoor learning facility with all sorts of special effects and presentation capabilities, and a koi pond.

Because you can participate in group activities, network and speak to other visitors, give and receive video and slide presentations, and browse exhibit halls, this is a fairly complete meeting experience. You just have to remember to find food in the real world while your avatar sits in a hot tub on the yacht.

It isn’t perfect, however. As I mentioned in previous posts, Second Life is an unstable and rapidly growing platform. It is not ready for you to abandon your sales meeting in Fiji to save money by having it at Virtualis. This is an experiment. You can book 100 people or so to attend an experimental summit or exercise here. Some will have trouble connecting, and some will have trouble navigating. It is a very new and very demanding technology. It is, first and foremost, a vision of what can and probably will be done with the next generation of Second Life or a competing platform. If the underlying technology were bullet-proof, and if the user interface were more intuitive, and if everyone had the necessary computer horsepower and bandwidth - then I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this as a real meeting solution. All the pieces are there. For now, I recommend seeing it, experiencing it, and keeping a close eye on it. Book a meeting there with nothing but your most adventurous audience and enjoy it with your virtual guests - but expect the few problems I mentioned. And when this technology is robust and real, you can say you’ve been “with it” since the beginning.

Highres pics: