I’m talking about CaseCamp Second Life here as if you can attend. You can’t. It’s sold out. That’s how popular an unconference and virtual online world mash-up is. How’s that for proof that these new channels are working in ways we could have never imagined possible?
What is CaseCamp? Here’s what the wiki says:
“CaseCamp is an unconference for marketers. Following in the footsteps of BarCamp, and building on the model of DemoCamp, CaseCamp brings together people interested in marketing-oriented activities to learn from their peers via case study presentations. CaseCamp is structured on purpose. The goal is to create an independent forum for great dialogue. Typically, a presenter presents a case (good, bad, ugly, lessons learned, etc.) and then a lively discussion ensues during a Q&A period.”
CaseCamp is established on a wiki where, as a community, each individual signs up and self-organizes the flow of the event. These are typically held in physical locations (we did a CaseCamp Montreal a while back). A bunch of cool people have set-up CaseCamp Second Life for Thursday, December 14th, 2006 at the Crayonville Amphitheatre.
In case you’ve been living under a rock with no access to any form of mass communication, Second Life is (according to Wikipedia):
“a privately owned, partly subscription-based 3-D virtual world, made publicly available in 2003 by San Francisco-based Linden Lab… The Second Life ‘world’ resides in a large array of servers that are owned and maintained by Linden Lab, known collectively as ‘the grid.’ The Second Life client program provides its users (referred to as Residents) with tools to view and modify the SL world and participate in its virtual economy, which concurrently has begun to operate as a ‘real’ market. At precisely 8:05:45 AM PDT, October 18, 2006, the population of Second Life hit 1 million Residents.”
In short, to do anything of substance in Second Life you need to spend real money. So yes, the Crayon guys bought some land and invested real dollars in building their little piece of metaverse heaven.
I was scheduled to present a case study at CaseCamp Second Life, but I have a last minute obligation that prevents me from attending. Thankfully, Michael Seaton from Scotiabank and The Client Side is picking up my slack with: Scotiabank Shoots And Scores With Viral Marketing. It’s a fascinating look at how Scotiabank listened, reacted and rewarded people engaged in their brand.
So, why can’t you attend?
Crayonville (and Second Life) can only support about fifty Avatars (another name for Second Life Residents) at a time (it’s a server capacity issue if you’re into the tin foil hat of it all). Those that signed up at the wiki (and, at last look, the number of registrants was close to one hundred) had their names placed into a draw to attend. The draw took place this past weekend, so if you did not get an email, you’re not allowed past the virtual velvet rope.
If time permits, I’ll conduct some quick interviews post CaseCamp Second Life and turn it into a segment for an upcoming episode of Six Pixels Of Separation – The Twist Image Podcast. I’ll also explore the power of CaseCamp, Second Life and what happens when you mash the two together.
In the meantime, you can get more information here: CaseCamp Second Life.