Beads of sweat had begun to appear on Business Futurist Craig Rispin’s forehead. It was a combination of factors – stage lights; a heavy purple jacket; and enthusiasm. It was late 2006 and Rispin was holding court at the Last Thursday Club marketing event. A keynote slide on Second Life (SL) appeared on the screen behind him. Were these marketers even aware that SL existed? He feigned surprise when he was greeted by a sea of shaking heads. Of course they didn’t know. Here was yet another opportunity for connection and innovation and it was passing marketers by. Rispin hit his remote. A movie lifted from the internet began playing on the screen.

A woman’s voice introduced the crowd to Second Life, a world where anything is possible. A world that is built by its community; complete with its own real-world tradable currency, the Linden. 3D images of human-looking characters communicating in giant cities danced across the screen. It looked like a typical street scene in a busy city, until on of the characters leapt into the air and began to fly. Internet based; real money changing hands, human-like characters that can fly. “People spend real money in this thing?”, quizzed an audience member.” The speaker nodded his head. “There is a lot of money is in this thing, and major brands are moving in.” Behind Rispin, the video’s poster frame made the pitch: Second Life – Your World, Your Imagination.

It seemed bizarre to me. Was this really a vision of the future that excited people? Sitting at our computers connecting in a high-tech, low touch environment? In a nation with fast growing rates of obesity and depression, was remaining virtually motionless and physically isolated for long periods of time really what we needed?

Rispin impressed me and his speech on future trends was engaging, but I couldn’t match his enthusiasm when it came to virtual worlds. “I’ve got enough in my first life, thanks” summed it up nicely, and a quick search of the expression “First Life” on Google indicated these sentiments were shared by others. Check out getafirstlife.com for a one page parody.
My first life carried on without a 3D virtual world interruption for almost a year.

A few weeks ago, entrepreneur and event convenor, Vicki Prout began enthusing about the potential of  SL and virtual worlds via email. She was promoting an upcoming workshop she was convening on that very topic. Vicki doesn’t do things by halves, so she had decided to import Californian Second Life guru Dell Wolfensparger to run the program.

Since Craig has spoken back in 2006, millions more people had registered and tried out SL. Not everyone stayed, but some had, and there were thousands of active users doing business and having fun in this virtual world. As a communication futurist, it was time I went and explored.

Dell Wilberg and Teami Zeami stood in Venice having a conversation. They weren’t real in an analogue sense, but in a digital sense they existed. They were conversing. Dell Wilberg wore a cowboy hat and talked about the architecture around them. Teami Zeami, bald and handsome, listened intently.

Dell Wolfensparger and Tim Longhurst sat in a corporate training room on George St, Sydney. They were real in an analogue sense, but at this moment, they existed more digitally than in any other way. Dell wore a cowboy hat and tapped at a keyboard. Tim was bald, handsome and reading, preparing to tap back.

The training room was filled with a mix of communication and education professionals. In SL, we were each represented by avatars. I adjusted my settings to have my avatar look as much like me as possible, but most of the others didn’t bother modifying their avatars at this early stage. Our avatars were exploring Venizia, a ’sim’ based on the real world Venice that was designed by Wolfensparger.

Prior to entering the training room, it is fair to say that I was apprehensive about a game that appeared to have relatively poor graphics (I’m from the Xbox Generation) and that I guessed was designed to suck the money out of thousands of sedentary fools.

NOTE: This post is to be continued. It’s in draft form, but I have to go and do real world work… I thought I’d post it incomplete because I’d rather get this out there and finish it soon… In the next installment – how I spent my 16 hours in Second Life…

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Footnote regarding Craig Rispin: Soon after seeing him speak at Last Thursday Club, I met Craig at Australia’s futurist convention, Ausforesight, in November 2006. Our conversation quickly moved to the topic of how he was now able to take his ideas all over the world through speaking. He’s been a great friend and collegue this year and he has been a great adviser to me regarding my consulting business. Even though I’d describe him as a turbo capitalist and he’d probably describe me as a serial activist, we get along like a house on fire.

I promised that I’d blog more than ever this October and so far I seem set to break all personal blog post records – thanks in part to my use of Moblogging.

Using a service from Hipcast, I call a US-based phone number and anything I then say is posted to timlonghurst.com.

My first few audio recordings are fairly basic – talking about where I am and what I’m doing. They’re totally spontaneous – I think for about 30 seconds about what I’m going to say, and then I dial the number and speak. I post my first take and then I get on with my life (there is an option to listen and re-record, but I am yet to use it).

The first problem I’ve found with moblogging is that the post is automatically published using the uninspiring title Audio Moblog.

The second problem with moblogging is that the content of what I’m saying is not indexable by search engines (at least, not yet) and that means that the topics I discuss on the phone are only available to the people that press ‘play’ and listen to them.

The first problem can be solved by logging in to my blog and renaming my audio posts, but that’s a little time consuming.

Similarly, the second problem can be solved by logging into my blog – but this time, typing a transcript of anything I say. Now, I’m not likely to do that anytime soon, but I suppose I would be prepared to pay someone else to do that if the quality of my moblog posts reached a point that I wanted my posts read by a wider audience.

As I become more sophisticated with moblogging I’ll post again with the lessons I’ve learned.

Postsecret has been around for ages. Every now and then, someone will send me a link to it. It’s a site that speaks to people. Two friends emailed me the link in the past week, so I thought it was about time I mentioned it here. Check it out.

What would you describe as inappropriate? Cutting off a small pig’s tail, or running an advertisement to inform consumers about the treatment of factory-farmed pigs?

Well if you’d say that torture is inappropriate and a confronting campaign educating consumers about that torture was appropriate, you’d be digusted to learn that some magazines refused to print such advertisements. You might even decide to call the publishers and ask why:

Marie Claire [PHONE: (02) 9464 3300]
Delicious [PHONE: (02) 9353 6666]
Good Weekend [PHONE: (02) 02 9282 2197]

So how controversial are the ads? Well, Womans Day and the Australian Womens Weekly are running them, so I think it’s fair to say they aren’t exactly off the charts when it comes to controversy.

Thanks to Julian Lee and the Sydney Morning Herald for running this story.

Congratulations to animal rights campaigners Voiceless for having the nous to run the campaign.

At the AusForesight 2006 conference
in Melbourne I promised to build a forum to discuss foresight and communication. It looks like the site will be maintained by a team of futurists from several countries, but mainly Australia, at least in the beginning.

I chose wordpress because it is low maintenance, allows multiple
contributors and is based on open-source software that is freely
available. If we choose to export this blog and carry it on at its own
domain in the future, that is an option. So flexibility / scalability
was a primary consideration.

Join in the conversation at the Vision Cafe.