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Real Virtual Company - Needs SL Office Space


ironjuan
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Hi there,

I run a virtual company. We are 13 guys all over the world. I'm looking to use second life so we have a "second life" office... so when people come to work, they just login into the system, go there... and sit... and we can talk via the chat/voice, etc.

So my question would be what will be the easiest/fastest/cheapest way to accomplish this.

Basically I imagine I need to buy some land, build the office, then put chairs and desks, then invite my colleagues to join?

Of course that room should be private and only me and my colleagues should be able to enter.

Anything I should be aware of?

For example I'm a premium user, I thought I could do that at my home... but then I starting putting furniture and it said.... that I run out of space "the parcel is too full"

Are there any "offices" we could rent or buy already premade? any coworking spaces? Is there a SL design firm I can give them my ideas and they'll execute for me?

Thanks for your help in advance.

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Hi ironjuan,

of course there are many options for you. You are a premium member so you can buy land according to the prims you need for your office setup. I understand you have a Linden home, which is nice iof you don't use more than 117 prims. This is very little and only viable for the most frugal needs. If you want your office to be kinda fancy with nice chairs and desks and a conference table and whatnots you better abandon that Linden home stuff and buy yourself a bigger parcel.

The standard parcel sizes in  SL are as follows:

512 sqm - 117 prims

1024 - 234

2048 - 468

4096 - 936

8192 - 1872

16384 - 3750

32768 - 7500

65536 - 15000 (1 full sim)

Your best bet would be to buy abandonded parcels since LL is selling those for 1l/sqm. For tier (monthy rent) levels please look at the info on the Second Life websites.

You can also rent from a landlord but that will be a bit more expensive in tiers, since your landlord will ask like 10% more than LL themselves.

Security is easy. If you don't want anybody not on your visitors list to enter the land, you can erect a banline around your parcel. It's regarded as antisocial behaviour but stil your right as a landowner.

Office buildings, furniture and other nifty gadgets you might use for work you can find on the marketplace.

If you only need the space for a daily briefing  or sumsuch you and your gang can also meet in a sandbox or, even better and more quiet, underwater in some ocean. You obviously can't rez anything there but for a short meeting it'll be ok.

 

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Hello ironjuan,

you can always rent from a rental agency on an estate, there are many rentals cheaper than "buying" and you are not stuck with the purchase. With some rentals you can adjust the amount of prims you are renting if you find you need more or less for the objects (desks, and other objects for your office space) and also have complete privacy where no one can see or hear you and your colleagues when you meet. We provide buildings and many objects at no charge for renters to use, you just deduct the prims the buildings and objects use from the amount you are renting.

You have quite a few options for your virtual office. Before buying/renting I would check the surrounding area and see what the covenant of the sim is (rules).  If I can be of any help to you please IM me inworld. Our rentals have been going strong and steady for 2 years and we are available if you need assistance fairly quick even if we are offline. :)

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I'm genuinely interested as to what business benefits you feel can be derived from this?  Would you mind open discussion about that?

As I see it, you'll be throwing away around 1GB of computer RAM just to sustain a pretty picture of virtual people in a virtual office, in an environment which doesn't provide native support for even the most basic functions such as Powerpoint presentation support, nor whiteboarding.

Yes you could rez a prim and then display a web based service on that but if you're going to do that, why not just use the web based service direct in a browser and forget the SL client?

There are many excellent conferencing/meeting solutions that are geared to what you suggested, I am really curious as to where the derived benefit in using SL exists.

Even Skype conferencing would seem to be a solution and exists across more platforms than offered by SL.

Part of my interest here is having seen the management at LL pick at different target markets while continually failing to address their current loyal one.  At one point they were convinced that the business market would be the best one for them yet failed to address the most basic "typical" business needs for conferencing and application support, plus the fact that a PC for SL really needs to have a good graphics card otherwise the experience is poor.

Although some might resist by saying that if you're all just going to sit around a virtual desk, high quality graphics won't be important but when the frame rate is low, typing speed is impacted too so you're back to voice only and if you're doing that, why not just use a traditional voice conferencing/IM solution?  Plus the graphics card will be hot which if you're using laptops, is never good.

If you really want to do it and have no interest in exploring Second Life, which it sounds like you don't (unless you want to have a virtual office affair for whlch SL provides PLENTY of scope) then I just don't see the business benefit other than novelty.

If you really do want to do it, you can also host your own Opensim simulator and avoid all costs payable to Linden Lab and have an entirely private environment although this would be more like running your own web host vs a hosted service for which there are benefits of just paying money monthly.

Genuinely interested as to the perceived business benefits vs other solutions.

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Here's the thing. We are using ... GoToMeeting and Skype now.

Basically we created in GoToMeeting what we call a "War Room" ... so when people start working from their home, they just login to that meeting room. So as in any office that you are looking at your monitor... you don't see your colleagues (at least not if you look straight to the monitor), but you know they are there, you here they typing... you can feel their presence.

This has done wonders for us. So I was wondering if I step it up a notch.. it if will be better. Like having a "virtual office" get your avatar to show up there and sit... you are there, using voice and chat, and if you want a breakout session or just to talk to some of your colleagues not all you leave the main room and go into a conference room, etc.

Before using GoToMeeting for this... people where good colleagues. Now, where people come and when they start working they log to the room... they are becoming friends!! So I wanted to step this up... the benefits of doing it in SL against what we are doing now... appart from coolness, novelty and experimentation is a more real representation of what's going on. You arrive to a meeting room, if you don't want to be heard you just go to another room in the office, etc.

Makes Sense?

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ironjuan wrote:

Makes Sense?

The "idea" makes sense but only you will discover if it adds value or not.  You're still throwing away up to 1GB of PC RAM just to have a cluedo figure sitting at a desk doing nothing, again, this may or may not have any relevance in your environment.

Interested to know how it works out. :)

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Sassy Romano wrote:


ironjuan wrote:

Makes Sense?

The "idea" makes sense but only you will discover if it adds value or not.  You're still throwing away up to 1GB of PC RAM just to have a cluedo figure sitting at a desk doing nothing, again, this may or may not have any relevance in your environment.

Interested to know how it works out.
:)

I'm really puzzled by your questions.  They almost sound like asking, "Why have a Virtual World to begin with?"  Why don't we all just stick with 2D chat?  Why are schools using Virtual Classrooms? 

I'm just curious here.  Not criticizing.

 

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