Second Life

More than one yer ago, when asked bout the possible usages of Second Life in teh tourism industry, would have been easy to say that Sl was the new pervasive and innovative way to advertise. Fortunately, I didn't say it, and now I don't need to deny myself.

Actually, I sill believe that Second Life can play an important role in an integrated communication strategy, and in these last year we have had some interesting examples.

Take a look at the videos ant to the link.

To stay in Italy, one of the most interesting cases is Tuscany. A project sponsored by a public foundation, have made several eventrs and activities. Concerts, live events, contest and now a real-life exhibition on art espression in Second Life. Rinascimento Virtuale is a multimedia expo held in Florence till 7th of jary 2009.
In Tuscany islands in SL from all over the world virtual tourist attend live evenvents and some of them bought virtual land to participate to the project. This project strongly interact with Web and many of the initiative have offered contents and inspiration to real-life events.

In Italy, the Roman Museums created a SL location to host exhibition with creative sets, in the virtual Genova there has been events on culture with guest like Derrick De Kerckhove

Dublin in SL is another example of this kind of usage, now officially sponsored by the Irish Tourism Board.
Started as an Irish pub, originally created just to hang out with a few friends, now evolved into a full-blown simulation of the center of Dublin,
including many point of interest like monuments, pubs, the Guinness factory.
Also the virtual Dublin features regular concerts, festivals, parades, confirming that these are the elements that keeps virtual place live.
Another successfull example is VisitMexico, a project focused on archeological site Chichen Itza, integrated into other activities supporting their nomination for the New Seven Wonders of the World.

On the map mentioned in the likn there are several locations from all other the world that have been reproduced in this way.

What is interesting?

In my opinion the most interesting aspect is that many oh these viatual location have been created indipendetly, and in many cases by team that put together non-rofessional but passionate people.

This is the revolutionaty aspect of Second Life: you can create with no limit in an immersive and collaborative envirnonment, and your creation will be persintent, available to be lived and enriched with events and interaction by anyone else.

In this period there is a debate on the Second Life "bubble". in Italy, as often, now the media are only focusing on the failures. They remind me the articles at the beginnin of the web...

There are now more than 60 virtual worlds platform as Second Life, an increasing number of successfull applications in many different areas such as art, fashion, e-learning, collaboration...

So I am happy I don't have to deny myself: Second life and Virtul Worlds allow a kind of interaction, collaboration and expression like no other media. Create a success case for a company is just a matter of strategy, integration and experience design.

Thanks to the group "Professional Second Lifers" on linkedin for the preciuos info, especially to Jane Wilde, Clint Leifert, Dave Bloch and Mark John Wiseman.