Virtual World applications that work.

Last batch of conference notes: again, my opinion, my mistakes.

Rice - Moderator
Jason Stoddard - Centric, a metaverse developer
Wilson - CEO of Makena, There.com
Paul Ledak - IBM
Robert Gehorsam - Forterra

Wilson: There.com is the original social virtual world

Moderator: Jason, what really works?  Is there a pattern, a formula?  What makes the excitement jump out?

Stoddard.  You wnt to think your brand is it, but really, it's the story and the function.  Marketing via tech development, like BofA's Keep the change program, developed by IDEO, 700K new accounts.  The other area - a story.  You create a complelling universe and allow them to participate.

Rice: does the format make a difference?  What if virtual laguna beach was made in Second Life instead of There.com?

Wilson: this is the dirty secret of virtual worlds. There's nothing to do there.  It's a big blank space.  Like Marconi.  He turned on his television.  Do you think he saw anything?  The way you do something is, people create stuff, people meet each other.  What companies do we know that make people watch Tv?

Well, MTC does.  you get them to come help put stuff in your virtual worlds.  Blizzard, WOW knows how to make people do things.  Schools do.  The military does.  The question is, you're going to companies who know how to do this. They are the pros.  MTV knows more about getting people to do things they wouldn't otherwise do, than anyone else in the world.

Rice: I like the stat that 70% of people in SL don't like marketing.  But they are selling the heck out of things they made there  It's the idea of the ownership of a brand that - people are crazy about brands, I've been mainly in SL.  I've had red bull and coca cola and dell and mac but some of these companies aren't even there.  They were made by residents who wanted that brand.  I willingly said I wanted to be part of the Pontiac thing.  does it contribute to a success to be able to play with a brand?

The ownership of the brand.  Will companies release a little, to say, go ahead you can play with it?

Stoddard: I hope so.  Let's roll back to Web 1.0.  70% of people wouldhave been disappointed with ads then.  Everyone will be ayt some point or another. 

The concept of ownership is a moot point. It's always been with the people who are perceiving the brand.  To anyone but Kleenex (r), does it matter that everyone calls it Kleenex?

Wilson: the most successful brands are owned by the consumers.  They embrace it.  Successful brands MUST be owned by the consumer, because that's the only way you get participation.

Rice: does IBM being involved change people's perception?  Now they're interacting with actual humans.

Ledak: we have over 3,000 people interacting in virtual worlds, as employees, we are employing vastly different ways just to get our job done. The concept of the 8 hour workday is changing dramatically,  When you're dealing with people in Hanoi and san Francisco and New York, people don't feel obligated to come into the office, you can go it and work at any location any time you want.  As a business person this lets you have a real connection with your customer, the way you might not have done.

Stoddard.  We've talked a lot about what's going to happen with B2C, but not much about B2B.  This is an incredible environment for virtual office ssytems that simulate a typical office environment.  What are the possible ramifications of that, if you can scale back on office space?

LedaK: it saves you on the office space.  Why pay for the office, be more comfortable, do it at home, do it from your TV.  When you are in these virtual spaces, you can collaborate like never before.

Rice: can this break?  Are this applications used for real-time work?  B&H photo and video, their website is also used in store. That can't fail, they actually use it in store to sell products.  Jason, you just help people understand this.

Stoddard, that's a wonderful point.  No more scheduled maintenance on Wednesdays, apologies to any Linden Lab folks.  It's daunting to go into some corporations who say we can't give you the demo, the world has shut down. Or we need to cancel this meeting because the're rebooting the universe.  We came in as science fiction writers and to us it's wonderful.  To Pontiac or IBM this is no good. for entertainment, the current state is not bad, considering what we need to work with.  We'd like to talk with There.com because it answers some questions that we'd like to have answered.  Right now the infrasctructure needs to be addressed on a global basis.  Most people underssand that this is a really early stage platform.

Rice: you have pimp my ride coming, it's gonna get pounded.

Wilson.  We're open on Wednesdays.  I come from systems that need to be up a lot.  Mean time to failure and service level agreements.  We keep it up because of our members, it's important to them.  Look at MTV, their environment never breaks. When you have a client like that, you understand, because they say "What do you mean it's off?"  you're dealing with someone who deals with real consumers.  14 year old girls are not as amused by "we have to reboot the world" as we are.

Do you watch total request live?  MTV's VJ Vanessa logs on while she is on TV.  Millions of kids go log in right then.  I'll admit the first one didn't go great but after that it didn't go great.  I don't want XHibit mad at me from Pimp My Ride!

Ledak.  you touched on our Fortune 500 partners come to us with.  This technology is still in its infancy. The graphics technology and the grid techology an a whole lot of "who is this stuff gonna work?"  Not a whole lot of investment yet in concepts like firewalls and failover and scalability and security, and we are good at that as a company.  We get a lot of that.  How do you take  a corporate environment so when you design an Airbus you don't have Boeing people coming in?  This is not rocket science we know how to do it, we simply have to apply it to these technologies.

rice: mission critical?

Gehorsam.  Much of this stuff comes from the gaming industry.  going forward as this technology starts to get used for enterprise or other apps, it's going to have to integrate with other mission critical systems, and some are back office and some are real time.  Rfid tags on supply chains?  And this is the front end for these?  It can't fail. All the other systems can't fail. Why should this one, because it comes out of the game industry, be able to fail.

Rice.  I'm glad you brought up the game industry.  Now Sony is in on the Game.  Google, we're just waiting for that other shoe to drop.  The Xbox 360 platform.  Can these virtual world applications that exist in just a virtual space, desktops and all the other platforms they ahve to support, can they move to these other environments?  Can everything that has to be done be done on the xbox platform?

Wilson: the masters of the addiction are the people who make games.  We went to trilogy and said come build your thing on my platform.  Let you apply your mad skillz to that.  Here's the other nasty secret about virtual worlds.  You know who our biggest conpetitor is?  Blizzard's WoW. What if they said we're going to turn this into a social platform and let people build their own avatars?  We might as well just pack our bags and go home!  I'm kidding - it would make us stronger.

Rice: A lot of people say necer compare Second Life to World of Warcraft becuase one you do whateve you want, and the other is a game.  do people want to be told what to consume, or do you want a game?

Wilson: people wan't different things at different times.  You can go in WoW and just wander around.  And you can have games in There.com

Stoddard.  I have to disagree that virtual worlds are games and vice versa.  The amount of inteest we have from people who were never gamers, once they discover something like second life that is not quest games and are not themed - some people aren't interested in a quest.  Maybe you seed it.

Wilson: to me that's a game.

Stoddard: it's semantics then?

Wilson: it's semantics.

Ledak: there's no doubt that virtual world is riding off of game technology.  The graphics chips, the server technology. What's chaning is the business models for TV and gaming is chaning.  TV is going to internet TV.  You saw the apple itv announcement.  Those devices will also do 3d, if not immediately very shortly.  The subside model for traditional game devices will change. Those will be devices that will not be subsidized by the network or the game console makers because they don't make money on secondlife or there.com.  you'll see new devices for doing these things, and this industry will have to start funding itself. And all that will happen over the next few years.

Gehorsam. The consoles are gatekeepers. the consumer is expecting a level ofr quality that a PC game simply can't guarantee.  Now they're moving into networks, thy will try to extend their walled garden concept.  There will be opportunities for entertainment oriented virtual worlds.  certainly sony putting up Home stakes the basic UI realestate.

Rice: what's the most important takeaway to build this?

stoddard: focus on your goal.  to engage more deeply?  to engage a small customer base? help high-dollar equipment through demos? Well be looking back on this in 5 years as the evolution of web 1.0 all over again.  It will change everything that we're doing.  But why go in without a goal?

Wilson: it's a simple recipe: listen to your customers.

Ledak: standards and interoperabilty.  businesses have invested in these vw's they become investments, who will the players be over time?  Businesses have to move their assets to be successful.

Gehorsam.  Plastics?  Develop tools that increasingly empower the non-technical user to experience things.  Approach this with speed, fearlessness and collaboration that is needed to get this industry going.

Stoddard: this is the only thing that advertisers have that even has a chance of being long-lived.  This is our opportunity to create something that will live on when the spigot is turned off.

Audience: What is the role for government, can government help or hinder?

Rice: Who is government? US, world?

Ledak: the government can exploit them to communicate with people.

Wilson: maybe they can actually talk to their constitutents?  I'd gladly give a free account to any member of the US government.

Audience: where do you see university intitiatives fitting in, what would you like to see us doing and researching?

Gehorsam: lots of universities are starting a game curriculum, the U. of South Florida is a lab for basic and applied research for virtual worlds. 

Companies like IBM are world leaders.  Academia can do other research. Issues of social networking and identity as well.  The lab is reaching out for academic consortia  partners.  U of Indiana, professor Ted Castranova (sp?).

Wilson: I wanted to help geeks get to lawyers. Tech people don't understand law and vice versa. 

IBM: upstate new york, experimental media and performing arts center.

Audience: who is sovereign over these worlds?