Our client Text 100, an international PR firm, has opened up their virtual office in Second Life. The news was picked up by PR Week (subscription required), and Georg Kolb of Text 100 had a few words to say about it on his blog. Right now the sim is reserved for use by clients and internal staff, but I believe it should be opening up to the public in just a few weeks.

As Georg writes, “we think it offers interesting new possibilities for education, innovation, collaboration and marketing. E.g. we will use our Second Life office for internal trainings where we can make our best trainers better available globally. Using the three dimensions of the virtual world we can also enrich any kind of online meetings for our clients. E.g. they will be able to use our office to hold press conferences. Or they could use it to solicit feedback on a new product design from users. Or they could pull a global work group together to hold a workshop in an inspiring environment that could be entirely customised for the topic being discussed. The possibilities are virtually (!) limitless.”

From my point of view, there are quite a few interesting things about this project. It is an important and early use of Second Life for business communication and collaboration. It is also an example of a forward-thinking company who realized that they needed to part of the world themselves if they are to understand it and advise their clients on this new technology. Lastly, the design and build process itself (which we did in collaboration with the talented Endira Udal and Rez Menoptra) was rather enjoyable because the client really wanted a build fit for a virtual world, with bold structures designed for such things as flying.

While Text 100 will be rolling out some fun things for the community in the not-too-distant future, what I wanted to focus on in this post was the importance of seeing companies use Second Life as a platform. SL is not just a big playground, although play is an important part of it. It is useful to remember that the virtual world is more than any one community or use. Text 100, like many of our other clients, is here to push the boundaries, to innovate, and to learn how virtual worlds can be effective for both its own use and for its clients. So congratulations, Text 100, on your 25th anniversary and your 31st office!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 8th, 2006 at 12:40 am and is filed under Clients. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.