Wiz Nordberg

Companies considering Second Life should scan their ranks for the right people – somone like our latest hiring, a five-day-old newbie.

Taking chances on people

We hired a newbie yesterday. He was only five days old. He called me Mr Nordberg! Nobody has ever done that before!

Many people have approached me over the past few weeks with a rush of energy and ambition asking to be involved in SLCN, either as employees or in some other capacity. Many have just been a few days old. That is usually a warning signal, and means that a real-world person, filled with curiosity about Second Life, has decided to “jump in”. This fellow was somehow different. In his short few days, he tried hard to learn to dress better, take care of his appearance, he could follow me flying rapidly across our property (not many newbies know how to keep up).

I realised this morning that there is a larger lesson here for companies considering Second Life. Companies new to Second Life need to be a bit more like our new newbie employee and a bit less like “the rest”. Because Second Life is a social space, it comes down to people. If you are a company wanting to get into Second Life, you need to look throughout your company and find the right people. Don’t look exclusively to the marketing or publicity department without considering the rest of the company.

Seek out people who are ambitious, open-minded, fairly technical, and have a vivid imagination. Especially imagination. The biggest factor in being successful in Second Life is imagination. When you see an avatar, you need to see “the person”. When a black bird flies overhead, you need to imagine a wild untamed hawk, not the mess of black pixels that it really is. People you choose also need to have good business sense. That’s why many “techies” fail at realising opportunities in Second Life. Having a business sense means compromising on “perfecting things” and quickly moving on to engaging people and customers.

Recent corporate entries to Second Life, such as Comcast’s amazing new build, prove that even traditional corporations can harness imaginative departments and people in their company to create entertaining and engaging Second Life spaces. If you are considering investing in a Second Life effort, put the spreadsheet aside for a moment, walk around your company, and look at the faces.

Right now, Second Life is about people. Start there.

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