Cattle Puppy has been busy working with the team at Telstra Enterprise and Government. They are using Second Life tools for quick virtual prototyping of their real world construction projects in Sydney and Melbourne. Last week was the public launch of the very impressive Melbourne Executive Briefing Centre.

Watch Leonie Valentine's avatar introduce the venue in the short machinima clip we produced for them. It's under the "Show Me" link in the Executive Briefing Centres introduction.

Two new words to add to you glossary:

Metanomics: Metanomics is the study of business and policy in the "metaverse" of virtual worlds.

Intraverse: Private virtual world - as in IBM's internal Active Worlds environment.

Both of these stem from a series of mixed reality events in Second Life put on by The Johnson School at Cornell University and Metaversed.com. Nick Wilson (57 Miles in SL) has also setup the Metanomics website where you can participate in pre and post-event analysis.

I've been involved with the series because SLCN.TV has been covering the sessions. For anyone looking at virtual worlds as a platform for business or commercial activites, these sessions are required viewing.

Spacejunky Live Gig
I returned from Sydney last night where I sat on a few panels talking about the
Australian Music Business. It's no secret that these are not happy times for the record industry and the message that artists are getting is it's now a DIY world so roll up your sleeves, become online savvy, and be your own recording/marketing/distribution/booking machine. It's always been a tough business for artists - even when there were boom times for the record companies - and now it's even tougher.

But along with change comes opportunity, if a band is willing to try something new. One area that I am excited about and mentioned at the conference is the potential for live performances in Second Life. Music performances in SL are glue that brings people together to socialise and it's a vibrant and active scene.

AIIA Building in SLThank you to Sheryle Moon and the AIIA staff for inviting me to give a brief talk at the annual Directors dinner last night. There really wasn't enough time to go into much in depth, so I thought I'd touch on a few points here.

Modern communication is now driven by social networks, instant messaging, and Flash Mobs. An entire generation has come of age living online. A comparison of June 06 to June 07 traffic at Facebook.com shows it experienced a growth rate of 270%. The MySpace crowd is enterting the workforce and they are bringing Facebook with them.

Virtual worlds like Second Life have been called the 3D web. That might lead some companies to think they should be transitioning their current websites into new platforms like Second Life. Don't get caught in that trap.

Web-based applications, are more mature - and commercially, have been able to show a good Return on Investment. Successful sites have either provided revenue or cut costs, and we have all been trained for a self-serve world from banking to blogging. Automation has made this an efficient and sterile process. In other words, NO human contact is needed .

Second Life needs human contact.

Look at your own organization and identify the areas that require humans. Then, apply the same ROI thinking for your B2B services, export strategies, or direct marketing. If your organisation needs to touch people, think about how an immersive and social space might play a role for you. Obvious areas that come to mind:

Check in with SLCN this weekend to watch the Second Life custom sessions from the BlogHer conference taking place in Chicago. The first session will be streamed live at slcn.tv on Friday (27 July) at 12:45 - 2:00 PM (PDT). Other SL sessions will follow on Saturday.

Bruce Willis in SL
Despite a one hour delay it was well worth the wait to hear Bruce Willis interviewed in Second Life about his latest movie, Live Free or Die Hard. Die Hard 4 as it is also known will be released by Fox on 27 June.

Main SL Best Practices in Education VenueThe virtual conference starts at midnight SLT on Thursday, 25 May.

SLCN will be providing live video coverage of the event. Second Life residents will be able to watch the proceedings from in world movie screens and non-residents will be able to watch from the SLCN.TV website.

Sheryle Moon, CEO of Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA), announced yesterday that the AIIA is entering the 3D virtual world - Second Life. The initial announcement was carried by ZDNet. The official launch will on May 30th in Sydney.

In this story, David is SLCN.TV and Goliath is the UK's BBC. The BBC's New York office was preparing a news story on the International Technology Exhibition created by the V3 Group in Second Life. As part of Cattle Puppy's sponsorship of ITE, SLCN.TV was already filming the ITE events and proceedings and was approached to provide pre-recorded footage to the BBC. An SLCN.TV film crew then met with the BBC news team to take additional footage of Caroline Hepker's avatar visiting the ITE site. Apart from the live interviews in the BBC News item all the footage was created by SLCN.TV.

He fluttered around like a peripatetic butterfly at the Texas Aussie Music Party, but at ITE 2007 his feet were firmly on the ground. Virtual-ground at least.

The 'He' is SLCN.TV's Executive Director Wiz Nordberg. Wiz spent today directing and filming events, interviews and key-note speeches at Second Life's International Technology Exhibition 2007 on Silicon Island in Second Life.