Dell’s Second Life Island: Beautiful Architecture & Surprising Interactivity
The blog posts and MSM coverage on Dell Island’s opening in Second Life yesterday is comprehensive — the Red Herring article was especially good so I’ll spare you the basic news.
After the launch event I spent some time wandering around the island and asked the Dell and GCI teams (Dell is a client) a few questions. Here are some great photos from Virtual Bailey. Here are a few personal observations.
Dell did something really right on their Island. Yes, they have the architecturally beautiful buildings and interiors you would expect from a leading brand. But they also built in a lot of interactivity, things to see and do and a few clever surprises. That’s missing in a lot of SL sites that seem to emphasize infrastructure. Interactivity makes people want to return and spend more time on Dell Island which is the whole idea.
You can sit down at a drafting board and design your own computer. I tried it yesterday and (after a false start) managed to design and purchase a virtual laptop which is now in my SL “inventory.” Cool.
Just for the experience I proceeded down the path to buy the real version of the computer — a link took me to dell.com where the exact version of my SL laptop was configured and ready for purchase. I’m impressed with the fairly seamless integration.
Afterwards I literally flew to Dell’s town center to find Michael Dell’s dorm room. Dan Zehr, an Austin American Statesman reporter, was there taking the pictures that appeared in today’s AAS — another good story. He made a comment about a band poster on the wall: “Who would have known Michael Dell was a Pretenders fan.” Also spotted ZZ Top, The Police, Star Wars and Blues Brothers posters.
Side note: I made the mistake of sitting on one of the bunk beds in the room and got stuck! It must have been a hilarious site to any visitors — my avatar was literally flailing as I tried to escape. Not sure how I managed it, but I eventually flew out of the (closed window) down 10 or more stories into the ocean. Not sure you can repeat my experience here, but I had a few laughs.
One of my favorite surprises was the view out of Michael’s dorm room — The University of Texas campus, including the infamous Tower. I’m wondering if it might be lit up at night. I’ll try that sometime.
You also can go inside a computer, but I ran out of time. A computer museum opens on November 18 — there was a team on-site working on that. These are good reasons to return — few SL enterprise sites are thinking like this.
Dell also plans on putting “kiosks” on other commercial islands in SL. They will pay SL residents who own the properties (many of them shopping malls) for the spaces. That’s a nice way to support SL entrepreneurs.
The team tells me 50 percent of the journalists/bloggers invited to the preview already had Second Life accounts and avatars. That’s a high percentage vis a vis adult Internet users, but not surprising considering all the SL events and discussions going on in the past months. A few reporters did not like having to enter SL — their corporate firewalls made it difficult and time consuming.
The team also said running a virtual world event takes about 2-3 times the coordination of a real life event. A lot of things can go wrong, too. I was listening and watching from behind the scenes, and I can tell you my adrenalin was flowing watching the team pull it off without a hitch.
In the future I’ll see if Laura Thomas, Dell’s SL project leader, will do a Q&A on her SL development experiences. I ran into Laura one morning while she was in the midst of working with Dell’s lawyers to buy their virtual land… that alone must have been an interesting experience.
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