Hi everyone,
I'm back in San Francisco briefly after joining M in Europe for a jam-packed 4-city media tour that included a keynote presentation at CeBit, meetings with the German, Dutch and French press, the official Amsterdam office opening and multiple Solution Provider and Resident get-togethers. Read on for more details on the trip.
We had multiple objectives for this visit which started with M's keynote address at CeBit on the Future of Work (see Malburn's comment and link below to download a stream of M's talk):
1. First and foremost, our goal was to bring the perception of Second Life and Linden Lab more closely in line with reality - while the European press has had a tendency to focus on the Hype phase of 2007, we've moved onward. This trip we talked about Second Life Enterprise, the Viewer 2 Beta, Shared Media, the growth of the economy and user-to-user transactions, the power of the virtual goods market, the recent acquisitions of Avatar's United and XStreet SL, M's thoughts about the future of Second Life, and, in fact, how the movie Avatar has affected the world's understanding of what we do.
2. Get to know our international Residents. We'll be doing alot more of this in various venues inworld and out. Meeting Residents and hearing their stories is always a highlight - this trip I met a solution provider whose entire family including his sister and mother are inworld building and selling content, a lawyer by day who runs a community inworld at night and a young woman who's about to give up her real job to become a fashion designer in Second Life fulltime.
Now on with the details....
March 5th - Hannover, Germany - CeBit M's Friday morning's keynote on "The Future of Work" was well received. The auditorium filled up for Mark's portion of the presentation and the audience was audibly pleased with the company's growth stats, our new TUV NORD case study and the videos we created showing what an office of the future and media displays (promoting shared media!) might look like. Afterwards there were more questions then could be answered in the timeslot allowed. At 12N we headed downstairs for an informal roundtable with German academics and business leaders. Interesting conversation followed with questions about everything from our growth strategy to what's the balance between a user made world and LL oversight.
Following the roundtable Mark did an interview with the UK pub IT Pro and then sat for an on-camera interview with FDZ TV for a documentary on the "History of the Internet." We'll post more information about it when we learn when it's going to air.
March 7th - Amsterdam About 40 Dutch and Belgium Residents came to our opening party in our fab new office in the Jordaan. Machinima maker Chantal Harvey was there and took this video of Mark's welcome speech. We had a great cross-section of Second Life Residents and Amsterdam creatives in attendance including a large land owner from Belgium, digital artists from Amsterdam, a virtual world guru from IBM, the head editor of the trend watching magazine Second Sight, Dutch Solution Providers and marketers, educators and innovators. And it was fun to show off our funky new office at Westerhuis.
March 8th - Amsterdam Interviews with the Dutch press resulted in positive interviews in 2 daily newspapers Het Parool and De Pers, with similar coverage online in 10 online pubs. The daily newspaper NRC Next took a more skeptical approach and proclaimed Second Life was only interesting as a "niche, a very active niche." Oh well, we'll get him next time.
March 9th - Munich In Munich we hosted a Roundtable for the press featuring Second Life Solution Providers Markus Bokowsky and Hanno Tietgens and Hanno's client Frank Boerger of TUV NORD. TUV NORD is a German organization that provides consulting and inspection services for clients that require complex safety solutions and has been working in Second Life since 2007. To learn more, download the German and English case studies. In Germany the reporters focused on the health of Linden Lab and were particularly interested in how businesses are using Second Life for meetings and training. 3 online stories published including Computerwoche, ZDNet, Heise.de so far and 2 are in process.
March 10th - Paris Great press meetings in Paris with Les Echos, Le Figaro, LaCroix, L'Expansion and TF1 News. The French press were very engaged, even a bit rowdy and asked interesting questions about the economy, the future of SL and whether or not the movie Avatar has had an impact on our business.
March 11th - Paris Met with a group French Residents at La Cantine for lunch and wine (so civilized!) and conversation - topics ranged from what Linden Lab is doing to support the arts inworld to why more localized images for the French webpage might be more effective for the French audience. We also heard about new projects in the works, the various ways people are using Second Life everyday and what their challenges are. All in all, a great get-together.
