THOUGHT (aka Centric's Blog)

The best part about writing science fiction is looking at a bunch of disparate events and technology, finding the connections, extrapolating their futures, and then asking, "Hey…how will people react to all this stuff?"

Take photography, for instance.  My mom has daguerreotypes of my great-great-great-great-grandparents, just as formal and upright as you’d expect, and that’s all I know about them  By the 1890s, my great-great-grandfather, an engineering professor from New York, took some pictures of him and his family at their brownstone.  I’m assuming they had an early Kodak camera, because the shots are casual: here they are in their parlor, here they are on their stoop.  I have a better idea of what their lives were like, and what books they read.

Now, my grandfather’s family could afford a portrait of him as a baby, but it wasn’t until he was in his teens that cameras and film processing got really cheap that they could take snapshots with goofy faces. After my mom was born, the technology had advanced so he could start documenting his kids‘ lives.  By the time yours truly came along, he was taking color pictures all the time, as were we, recording birthdays and family gatherings.  We even have a picture of him a month before he died, though I shot that one with my wife’s digital camera, something that had been an extravagence when I met her but was cheap and accessable by the time we’d gotten married.  Within one hundred years, photography had gone from sending your film off for processing to media cards, from photograph albums to Flickr streams.  And as the technology gets cheaper, faster, and smaller, we’re going to be able to record even more of our lives.  Like Charles Stross wrote in a recent article for the BBC, we’re now living in the dawn of history.  My great-great-great-great-grandchildren are going to know more about me than I know about those people in the daguerreotypes (barring nuclear war, alien invasion, or my forgetting to put batteries in the camera).

And things will only get weirder as resolution, data storage, connectivity and portability all improve.  UK police officers are going to start wearing head-mounted cams when they go out on foot patrol; what happens when those cameras get smaller and have fast uplinks to their stationhouses?  Who makes sure everything those headcams record is unaltered?  What happens when those cams show police officers engageing in brutality or corruption?

Now, what happens when those cameras get in the hands of teenagers?  How can you market entertainment to a nation of kids who are busy entertaining themselves?  What do you do when your children become microcelebrities?  How do you console them when they’re no longer at the top of the charts?

Or what will happen when aid workers in Africa record and flash back pictures of militia using Western-made weapons?  Or when a corrupt government denies that food riots happened when there are fifty thousand videos all over the web?  And then what happens when you start rolling all of this footage into something like Photosynth, where you can recreate that same riot from every single angle, from the soldiers to the press to the rioters, from the order to shoot to the last victim taken away?

I don’t know.  But it’s going to be the kind of thing my greats didn’t think about when they were posing for those first pictures. Be ready.

About twelve years ago, Digital Equipment Corp. released the following video talking about the business potential of the internet.

"Come, take a look at the future we can build together."

Today, with a minimal amount of tweaking, the audio track could be pasted into a machinima piece about Second Life. Would we all laugh about that in, say, five years?

Also, check out this browser emulator. Here’s what NCSA Mosaic thinks of Centric’s main page:

How low-tech is our current page and technology going to look in 2012?

If you’ve never worked with the media, there’s one thing to keep in mind: the only thing they like better than building something up is tearing that same thing down. It does wonders for their sense of power, and hey, two sensationalistic articles are always better than one.

Which is my preface as I turn the Flamethrower of Truth on Time Magazine, who joins Forbes in the "we really, really don’t get Second Life" category.

(It would be interesting to turn the clock back a decade or so and see how many articles they ran about "nobody making money on the internet.")

I really don’t have time to go through all the factual inaccuracies of the Times blurb–which start with the fact that Second Life is not a website, and "notoriously slow to load" is an oxymoron when applied to a world that’s accessed from a dedicated client, rather than an internet browser.

What I do have time to throw the Flamethrower of Truth on is Time’s allegation that spending time in Second Life is "pathetic" and that corporate presence is a case of "CEOs trying too hard to be hip."

Yeah. Pathetic like all those people who wasted time developing code for personal computers in 1982. Pathetic like all those people building the first websites and web applications in 1994. I mean, hey, they could have been kayaking and jogging and networking at trendy bars–you know, those hip activities that make you a Big Person that People Should Know. Instead, they created things like the Macintosh and Windows and Office and Yahoo and Google and eBay and . . .

You get the picture.

And "trying too hard to be hip" like IBM’s CEO and the 230 IBMers in world, who are taking this opportunity dead seriously. If you wonder why IBM might have a moratorium on picking up new real-world office space, look no farther than Second Life. Trying too hard to be hip, like the 200 real-world educational institutions in-world who are delivering distance learning in a much more engaging and interactive environment. Trying too hard to be hip, like the dozen companies I can’t talk about on this blog, for whom we’re developing useful, engaging, or entertaining places, events, and applications in Second Life?

Again, you get the picture.

It’s easy to be a critic, especially when you have spent no time in-world. I say to the media: why don’t you take off the ties, turn off the TV, and dive into Second Life for a week. Then come back and tell us what you really think. Not what you think will sell magazines.

I have to be politically correct far too often.

But it amazes me that people are still asking questions like, "So, do you really think virtual worlds will be a big thing?" So, here you go, an unvarnished response:

Yeah. Like, well, duh.

In fact, I’ll go on record as saying today, right now, I think virtual worlds will be a much larger revolution than the entire internet to date. They will fundamentally change the way we meet, the way we work, and the ways we are entertained. The explosive growth we’ve seen to date is a crumb on the hors d’ouevre tray when compared to the feast that’s about to come.

Why? Well, the first internet revolution was one of disconnection. It removed us from the physical. Instead of going to the store to shop, you could do it online and bypass the pesky salesperson. Instead of waltzing down to the local watering hole to gab with the passerby, you could do it on a forum. And instead of spending time at the library, you had instant access to a wide range of information–again, without human contact.

But this is a tool. It may be enormously useful, but it is passionless.

Then, people discovered the internet could do more than deflect you away from the irritating salesman and the strange people you might encounter in the library. It was a place where you could connect with, and communicate with, people who you considered friends. First in the ecosystem of regulars on the message boards, and then through the developing social networks and social media.

And now, in virtual worlds. Virtual worlds are social networks writ large. They’re about connecting. About conversation. About making friends, and seeing them, no matter where they are in the world.

This is engagement, and this is passion.

And you can see it. People are already treating virtual worlds like Second Life as real. "I don’t want that last name," they say, as they register. "I’m embarrassed with all these people around me," they say at orientation. "I want to look great before I go to that presentation," they’ll say, later. And then, "I met the most amazing person and talked with them all night!"

Recall these words: embarrassed, appearance, meeting, talking. Were you ever embarrassed when you went to buy something at Amazon? Did you think about your appearance? Most importantly, did you meet someone there?

We all know the answer. No.

And this is why virtual worlds are the single most important revolution of our time. We’re already acting as if they are real, and we’re sitting in front of a flat screen, navigating with a keyboard, and looking like wooden, emotionless dolls most of the time.

Think about that. We’re participating in worlds that are incredibly early-stage. Second Life still does not have integrated voice. It doesn’t have a dedicated controller. No world has automatic facial and gestural mapping. No world has any immersive elements whatsoever–no iGlasses, no HUDs, no retinal overlays. And we’re operating at the ragged edge of computing horsepower and network speed in order to deliver this extremely limited experience.

But, as today’s Treo or iPhone is significantly more powerful than the Pentium 60s I used to launch Centric, tomorrow’s computers will be able to handle virtualities with ease. And the immersive elements will come.

First, voice. Suddenly, you can communicate, free, with anyone around the world with the nuance of voice and language. The virtual word becomes a much more powerful social space. It becomes a much stronger educational space.

Second, platform. Thank you, Katharine Berry, for opening the door to useful virtual world applications that don’t require a PC. When you can easily access a virtual world from your phone, suddenly they are with you everywhere.

Third, the controller. Suddenly, virtual worlds are much more friendly to the hundreds of millions of people with game consoles.

Fourth, real-time facial expressions and gestural mapping. Suddenly, the virtual world becomes a place you can do real business, because you can see the reactions of your prospective partners or customers. It also becomes the best way to communicate, period, whether it’s business or pleasure.

Fifth, immersive displays. Whether they’re iGlass overlays or direct retinal projection, suddenly the barriers between virtual worlds and the real world are down. We can overlay virtuality on reality and use this as a tool to communicate–or as a means to participate in different consensus realities. At this point, it’s difficult to imagine all the possibilities of a mature virtual worlds platform. Will it end up like 2012 Calling, or Monetized, or Vinge’s Rainbow’s End or Stross’ Accelerando?

Maybe a little of all of those. Maybe something we cannot imagine.

But the change will not be small. Nor will the opportunity.

I attended the Platform International Animation Festival in Portland and it was a blast. I saw great films, experienced outstanding art installations, and hung out with a lot of fascinating and creative people. Oh, and drank beer. Portland is the most amazing beer town you can imagine. No, I’m serious.

Shawn Bowman talked me into a Guitar Hero competition at the Someday Lounge. Despite my initial misgivings, I really enjoyed it, and ended up taking 4th place. Don’t believe me? Check out the photo! Some people from Encore - the creators of Guitar Hero - were there to participate, and I hung out with them after. A fun, drunken time was had by all.

Scott McCloud gave an inspiring talk on comics - their history and future. Laika threw an outdoor barbecue for us all to enjoy. The whole city pretty much supported the festival: the animators, and the artwork, showing that they’ll likely be a center for animation in the near future.

I participated in a panel on Second Life, and Jason Stoddard attended virtually from San Francisco. The discussion ran the gamut from the impact of virtual worlds on social interactions to China and the upcoming HiPiHi platform to the future of animation and how animators and other artists can use virtual worlds to advance their art. Second Life is a platform in which animators, filmmakers, and other visual artists can prototype, do portfolio work, and create new tools and venues for expressing their work. Everyone was excited by the possibilities.

I left ecstatic.

I was interviewed for an article in the Asia Times about China and virtual worlds. Talked about Second Life, HiPiHi, QQ, and the future. Good stuff all around.

It’s funny how things work. Consider this:

Centric came up through marketing. We’ve been brought in to develop brands, to create communications strategies, to do the creative that delivers the right messages and compels response, to plan the interactive and conventional media around the campaign, and to produce and execute all the facets of the campaign on time and to budget.

And yet, today, we’re getting more inquiries for our Second Life work than anything else. From RL companies, that is.

From metabrands–companies that only exist in Second Life–we’re becoming known as a branding, strategic, and creative agency. Which is exactly the same thing we’ve done in real life.

It all started with Second Talk. Sure, we could have developed this product, called it the Portable Integrated Voice Application, put it up on SL Exchange, and been done with it. Instead, we thought about this from the point of view of the brand, and from the point of view of marketing it:

• What should it be called? Second Life didn’t have voice at the time, so why not Second Talk? Especially considering that secondtalk.com was available.
• What was the top level benefit of the product? It allowed people to talk and be heard. Which lead to the tagline of "Be heard."
• What was its unique value proposition? Well, it was the only portable voice chat enabler that was completely free. Which led to the top-level messaging on the website, the notecard, and on the press release.
• How should it be propagated? Sure, we could open a store, but creating a freely-available networked kiosk and giving them out to anyone who wanted one would be easier and would allow Second Talk to spread far and wide. So that’s what we did.

Of course, that’s for a metabrand that we created ourselves. But that has now led to working with several native metabrands, and to launching at least one new metabrand of our own. Each of these brands has its own unique goals. It’s our job to help them build the foundation of success.

And the formula in Second Life is very much the same as in real life:

Brand = ((Position + Personality + Consistency) * Delivery)^Time

Position is what you do and why someone cares about it. Okay, so you design skins in Second Life. What’s different about them? Higher quality and lower price might not be specific enough to differentiate effectively. What’s your unique position?

Personality is how you deliver your product or service. Are you the value leader, with brown-paper-wrapped prim boxes? Are you the luxury marque with white-glove service? The knowledge leader? The technology gurus? The jokesters? Personality is where someone makes a connection to your product on an emotional level.

Consistency is how well you can apply your position and personality to everything you do. If you’re the jokesters, can your customer service people carry on the lighthearted tone? Does your signage reflect this? Are your notecards fun and light and easy to read? Brand isn’t just a mark, it’s a tone, and it should be reflected everywhere.

Delivery is the kicker. If you can’t deliver on your promises, the value of your brand equation goes to zero. If you’re billing yourself as the ultimate luxury experience, but guests are treated like they’re enjoying a fine trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles, your brand is toast. This is why every successful brand is a reflection of the actual company culture–not something created out of whole cloth. And this is something that metabrands probably understand better than any RL company. In the instant-feedback, completely transparent world of Second Life, metabrands live and die by delivery.

Time raises the value of your brand exponentially. Have great products, a unique personality, apply it consistently, and deliver on it for a long time, and you’ve built a strong brand. There’s no substitute for this, and no shortcuts.

If you’re running a business in-world, you may scoff, and think, "This branding stuff isn’t for me."

But consider all the new faces in SL. Who will they trust? The guys with ads plastered all over the mainland with layout that looks like it was lifted from a flyer tucked under your windshield wipers and copy full of spelling and grammatical errors–or a well-presented company with a coherent, integrated program that communicates key messages effectively with memorable creative?

Here are a few dos and don’ts for metabrands:

• Do think about what your unique selling points are–what can you claim that nobody else can, and why would your potential customers care about it?
• Do anticipate the arrival of RL brands–they are coming, make no doubt about it
• Do use what you’ve learned about the world to express yourself, to be real, to be accessible–this will be your strongest differentiation from RL brands
• Don’t assume that since you’re a SL native, you’re immune to branding–if someone can communicate more effectively and compellingly than you do, you’re at a competitive disadvantage
• Don’t just launch and assume you can rebuild the brand foundation later–once you’re out in the open, it’s very hard to repair first impressions
• Don’t put off upgrading your communications to an integrated, coherent program with real differentiators–the sooner you can start the brand clock ticking, the stronger you will be

Of course, RL brands make their own mistakes when they enter SL–usually based on the fact that "well, we’re a huge brand, and that’s a draw in itself." So here are a few dos and don’ts for them:

• Do look at the competition beyond RL–even if your RL competitors aren’t in SL, that doesn’t mean you have no competition
• Do commit to a coherent in-world program that is reflected in your larger marketing activities–if your customer service people have no idea about your SL presence, this is a big problem
• Do have some fun, take some risks, take off the ties, and play a bit–this is a different world, with different rules, and it isn’t all about measuring impressions, deepening engagement metrics, or holding meetings
• Don’t assume that the strength of your RL brand is reflected in SL–there are many well-established metabrands that will eat RL brands for lunch
• Don’t assume that your brand is a draw by itself–if there’s nothing to do, no reason to come back, no direct links to useful services, no conversation, why would people want to spend time with you?
• Don’t start (or stop) with the build—define goals and strategies before starting, then consider ongoing visibility, marketing, staffing, events, and other tactics to make your presence meaningful

And then let’s get together, build strong brands, create strong communities, and (gasp) have some fun!