SecondLife as unconference medium: CaseCampSecondLife was a massive success!

The CaseCamp at SecondLife was a blast. CaseCampSecondLife kicked off with chit chat networking and of course audio testing( more things change more they remain the same!). The event was well organized and well executed. Hat tip to the organizers:

C.C. Chapman (Cleon Goff): Crayonville: 5 slide stage is a neat idea. Placing the slide panels on a curve might make it easy to zoom in and out easily.

Kate Trgovac(Katicus Sparrow): Everyone had something to remark about her dress. A nice ice breaker indeed. Proof that SL is not just a game, or a chat room, it is a powerful collaboration medium.

Bryan Person (Zeke Barber): In( and out) world communication and coordination. Seamless!

Eli Singer, originator of CaseCamp : CaseCamp rocks just like BarCamp. Success of unconference depends on the constraints agreed upon by the community. Restricting the presentation to real life cases is pretty neat and sustainable.

The presentation were mainly audiocasts and auido was mostly without a hitch thanks to Lynette from Lynette Radio

Moving on to the presentations:
The camp kicked off with a presentation by Doug Walker from RockPaperScissors. was a lucid and interesting presentation. The RPS Society site started off(mid 1990s) as a spoof( sort of), ended up as a ‘Hobby that went out of Control’. A classic case of never-imagined-even-in-the-wildest-dream community response through Word of Mouth spread. Interesting quote: We claimed that we are the authority in the field, people clued us up, and we became The Authority in RPS. I was amazed to learn several interesting word of mouth, playful marketing techniques from the presentation. The talk ended with group play of Rock, Paper, Scissor by everyone present. No champions were chosen though :).

Then it was Michael from Scotiabank . During my legendary trip to Yukon( ~1997 I did a coast to coast drive from New York, NY to Anchorage Alaska with an Internet friend/stranger: Dan Haas Where are you! ) I’ve encountered the bland Scotia Bank indeed. It was bland to say the least. I’m surprised to see the bank using the social media and the cutting edge SecondLife for its brand engagement. Michael shared how they were able to convert fanatic Sports fans into Fanatic Brand Fans by planting call for action with word of mouth elements. I was not able fully understand the techniques, nor was I able to fully appreciate the Ottawa Senators, till I looked up and found out that they were Ice Hockey, NHL stuff. Dumb me, I was thinking democracy and politics when Senators were mentioned. Holy Canadians, they live and breath Ice Hockey.

Marketing unconference without Google Dance? Of Course Not. John Wall from AccuRev presented clinical details about google optimization. Tip: When you cross the magic 0.5 % hit ratio, google treats you differently and you go into a positive spiral. Whew, that is so cool and so vicious. I started experiencing some audio bottlenecks during this presentation. Though I had several questions in my mind, I was hesitant to ask lest I make a fool of myself asking about things already spoken. I was surprised to find that there were no questions. May by other people were also in a similar situation. Google juice success stories are always inspiring!



Non-profits are always looking for people with spare cash, or spare time or both. If they are liberal minded, Wonderful! The SecondLife gamers sure have time and cash in hand. And SL makes it easy to dispose cash in loose change. Eli Singer’s presentation on World Wildlife Federation‘s Global Warming, Save Our Climate campaign was interesting and educational. By now I mastered the art of zooming in and out and reading the presentation slides. Classic case of how the “New” Social Media is becoming so mainstream! Simple physical artifacts like TShirts and balloons were employed to engage the community effectively. Further reinforced by social media. Classic case of intersection of blogosphere with neighborhood activities. SL has lot of scope for intersecting with real world. This is where my interest is.



I’ll be closely watching Eli on his WWF/SL moves. There is a lot to learn! Eli is very SL savvy, and his avatar has a nice tail. He changed his avatar couple of times. Good Show, Good show!

Totally it was a wholesome and fruitful unconference with impressive( diverse) turnout.

Bonus Links
You can get a freebee for your RPS initiative.