JoelFoner.com

Viral Success Factors for Virtual Business

Please join our global discussion group
every Tuesday at 12PM noon U.S. Pacific / SL time

This Tuesday, Mar 9, at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

Click here to teleport to the Epoch Institute in Second Life™
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Wells/97/56/27

This Week’s Topic

Viral Success Factors for Virtual Business

Why does one viral virtual business attempt succeed, while others fail? What are the key aspects of a successful business plan, product model and marketing strategy that catapult a virally based virtual business into the headlines? What are some characteristics that work against success, and how can they be avoided?

This week we will explore these and other questions about the nature of viral virtual businesses. Bring in some examples of viral virtual businesses you know about, both on the web at large and in virtual worlds, so that we can compare and contrast their strategies and results.

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon SL, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and Read more…

An Exploration of Game-Based Education

Please join our global discussion group
every Tuesday at 12PM noon SL (US Pacific Time)

This Tuesday, Mar 2, at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

Click here to teleport to the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

This Week’s Topic

An Exploration of Game-Based Education

The incorporation of game-like elements have started to become more common in educational settings, as well as in business. The typical reason for these additions have been to increase “engagement” and interest. In some cases there are clearly documented improvements in objective results.

In this session we will explore common game-based approaches, find out how game-based curricula and approaches can enhance education, and discover situations where game-based learning may be ineffective or even counter-productive.

… I wonder if I put up a leaderboard and keep track of points for number of comments in the discussion whether it will further enhance the depth and quality of the discussion? (kidding… sort of?)

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon SL, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and Read more…

News Slam 2!

Please join our global discussion group
every Tuesday at 12PM noon SL (US Pacific Time)

This Tuesday, Feb 23, at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

Click here to teleport to the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

This Week’s Topic

News Slam 2!

This week we’ll be taking another run at “News Slam”. News Slam is a mashup of a poetry slam and a current events quiz show – with a twist.

What is a News Slam, and why are we doing it?

Staying current with world events is always a challenge, given everything else we’re all trying to do in our lives. News Slam is a fun way to catch up with some things going on around the globe while maybe finding a topic we all want to dig into in a deeper way, either in this session or a future one.

I suppose we could even say that this is a serious game, enabled by a virtual world, but… that would be too serious – let’s have some fun and learn some new stuff!

News Slam How-To

Join us! You can find a news item while you’re here, so don’t sweat it if you don’t have any preparation time. If you can spend a few minutes searching, you might find a nugget that will be really interesting, so if you have a few minutes, please feel free to go hunting.

* Anyone and everyone is encouraged to participate. This is not a contest!

* When you’re up, you’ll say two things (in text or voice – either is fine)

1) One sentence that explains a news item about a country other than the one you’re currently living in

2) One sentence that gives your reaction to the news item (either about the news itself, or the way the item is written or presented)

THERE IS A TWIST – you can Read more…

Google Buzz Hands-On Workshop

Please join our global discussion group
every Tuesday at 12PM noon SL (US Pacific Time)

This Tuesday, Feb 16th, at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

Click here to teleport to the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

This Week’s Topic

Google Buzz Hands-On Workshop

There’s been a lot of buzz about Google Buzz this week. We’ve all probably heard about various security concerns, and rather than re-hashing that, I thought we would do something a bit different. This week we’ll have a hands-on workshop focused on two goals:

1) Develop a list of best practices with what we know so far about Google Buzz in “public mode.”

Public posting is the most common mode so far, as people experiment to see how Buzz is, or is not, like the other social networking services that we already know. Some things take a little practice and tinkering, and already there are some key things to know about interacting with Buzz. Let’s find out what we know as a group!

2) Get some hands-on experience using Google Buzz in “private discussion mode.”

Private Google Buzz posting is a feature that has received relatively little coverage that I’ve seen. I think this is potentially one of the “killer app” parts of Buzz, and suspect it will be the usage mode that gets Buzz to be a go-to tool for team coordination of projects and other not-so-public discussions.

I’m going to try to have a web conferencing rig running for this week, so we can have a live shared browser view while working through what we know and what we can figure out.

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon SL, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and see you soon! Read more…

The debates about Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) appear to be continuing unabated. Integrated Marketing Communications, if you haven’t run in to this phrase before, is a set of strategies that remove the traditional boundaries between public relations, marketing, advertising and other corporate messaging, in both the online and offline spaces, to create an environment where all efforts are coordinated in a synchronized way.

These debates repeatedly raise a few questions. Is IMC a winning strategy? Is it the future? Is it the right thing to do? Can it be implemented in an old-school organization? … and others.

Recently I’ve been attending #IMCChat,  a great weekly Twitter Group Chat hosted by Beth Harte (@BethHarte on Twitter) and Anna Barcelos (@abarcelos on Twitter), and after these sessions and a number of side discussions decided that it’s time for me to weigh in.

Many of the arguments for and against separation of advertising, marketing, product management, branding and public relations are internally focused. Questions abound as to the merits of having silos, or silos with communication, or no silos at all, with discussion focused on whether these approaches work for the organization.

Inward-Facing Analysis is Fundamentally Flawed

I believe that any inward-based analysis is fundamentally flawed, that the battle was already fought in public on the social web, and has essentially nothing to do with the “view from inside the castle.”

Why do I feel comfortable making such a bald proclamation? The answer lies in the social media era itself, which I think of as starting around the time of The Cluetrain Manifesto, which was published ten years ago and recently revised. The words of each of the 95 theses seem to be just as powerful today as they were ten years ago, and perhaps even more so.

Three Reasons IMC has Already Won Read more…

Are We Engineering the Species that will Replace Us?

Please join us for a discussion every Tuesday at 12PM noon SL (US Pacific Time)

This Tuesday, Feb 9nd, at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

Click here to teleport to the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

This Week’s Topic

NOTE: Since we’ll be watching some of the videos linked below at the start of the session, We Are The Network is scheduled for 90 minutes rather than an hour this week, to allow enough discussion time for a topic that will no doubt be … large.

Are We Engineering the Species that will Replace Us?

“It’s just science fiction!” We tell ourselves this little white lie about the movies we flock to. We think “wow, that’s cool, and pretty scary, but that could never happen.” The science fiction of the future is starting to happen closer and closer to home, and there are now some surprising signs that we may already have reached milestones on the road to engineering a cyborg (part human, part computer) species that will ultimately replace us.

You may think this is random paranoia, and feel free to say so on the way in, but I challenge you to say absolutely that we’re not on the path by the end… I’ve found it pretty hard to avoid the uncomfortable conclusion that “we will be Borg” sooner than any of us had expected.

In this session we’ll review some real working examples of technologies that would have seemed unbelievable five or ten years ago, and a compelling TED talk that maps out a potential roadmap for our future.

What does this mean for us? How will we get ready for these changes? Where will this head as it unfolds, and what will it mean for our society and humanity in general?

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon SL, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and see you soon!

Three things to consider:

1) A science fiction movie trailer, one that we all probably presume is “way” in the future, and a quick explanation of a plot element of another related science fiction movie.

2) Real working engineering results, with proof videos that demonstrate significant pieces of functionality from the movie trailer

3) A compelling TED talk that ties the threads together in a way that will likely make you stop and think.

It’s a fun ride… ready? Here are the links: Read more…

How in the World do you Explain a Virtual World?

Please join us for a discussion every Tuesday at 12PM noon SL (US Pacific Time)

This Tuesday, Feb 2nd, at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

Click here to teleport to the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

This Week’s Topic

How in the World do you Explain a Virtual World?

If you have spent a while working, building, creating or socializing in virtual worlds, you’ve no doubt ended up trying to answer the questions “what is a virtual world?” or “what is Second Life?” Most of us who have virtual world experience are used to the blank stares, incredulity, interesting assumptions, and inability to fully communicate what in the world a virtual world “is” to those who have no context for the discussion.

How do you explain a virtual world to someone who has no idea what you are talking about? Which ways of explaining what a virtual world “is” work, and which don’t? Do you need to tailor the explanation to the person, or are there generic explanations that seem to reliably connect with your listener? Are the press-induced brand identities of places like Second Life too overpowering to overcome, except on a one by one basis? Can a virtual world grow sufficiently to have more than hyper-niche acceptance if each new user must be courted individually.

These and other questions arose near the end of our last discussion “How Would you Measure the Health of a Virtual World,” so we are continuing the discussion into a related new area this week.

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon SL, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and see you soon!

How do you explain virtual worlds to people who don’t know anything about them?
http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2007/07/how-do-you-expl.html

Learn to explain virtual ventures to relatives
http://svensworld.de/learn-to-explain-virtual-ventures-to-relatives.html

VWR: What is a Virtual World?
http://www.virtualworldsreview.com/info/whatis.shtml

How Can I Get Event Announcements (choose one or more)? Read more…

What is a Twitter Group Chat?

When you first start out with Twitter, you find that you can post status updates, and your followers will (may?) see them. Then you learn that putting an “@” sign before someone’s Twitter name creates a reply. Conversations with more than a couple of people get pretty awkward with only these tools.

Luckily, some folks figured out that by adding a “hashtag” (#), you create a unique phrase that is easy for Twitter Search to find. This is what enables Twitter Group Chats to work. For instance, searching for #hockey will find an on-going stream of Tweets about hockey.

It didn’t take long for people to realize that you could organize a group chats with hashtags. Twitter Group Chats are highly socially viral. They encourage lots of social interaction, and spread quickly, assuming the topic is interesting.

Twitter Group Chats are socially viral in a big way, and here are the six reasons they spread so quickly!

1) Starting a Twitter Group Chat is “Too Easy” Read more…

How Would You Measure the Health of a Virtual World?

Please join us for a discussion every Tuesday at 12PM noon SL (US Pacific Time)

This Tuesday, Jan 26th, we will be at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

Click here to teleport to the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

This Week’s Topic

How Would You Measure the Health of a Virtual World?

Linden Lab, the creators of Second Life, have issued a post titled 2009 End of Year Second Life Economy Wrap-up. While economic measures are clearly relevant, are they the only, or even core way to judge the vibrancy and health of a virtual world? Are the economic measures complete and consistent as presented, or is there more to learn based on what is and is not included, and what the numbers say to us? How would you measure “health” of a society or world? What are the key indicators other than economic? How does our approach for measuring the health and well-being of a virtual world connect to the physical world, or does it?

It seems that we are faced with similar questions outside of virtual worlds. Some economic indicators suggest that we are in economic recovery. Does that evaluation connect to the health of our society (not just in economic, but medical, community, educational and other terms), both in the U.S. and globally? How would we decide that we are doing well, or not doing well, overall?

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon SL, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and see you soon!
2009 End of Year Second Life Economy Wrap-up (including Q4 Economy in Detail)
http://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2010/01/19/2009-end-of-year-second-life-economy-wrap-up-including-q4-economy-in-detail

The Radical Libertarian: The Measure of a Society
http://radicallibertarians.blogspot.com/2005/12/measure-of-society.html

Should society measure “progress” not just by increases in GDP, but rather through a set of more precise quality of life indicators?
http://www.helium.com/debates/111694-society-measure-progress-increases-gdp-through-set-precise-quality-life

Green Economy: Taking the Measure of a Society
http://blogs.worldwatch.org/greeneconomy/taking-the-measure-of-a-society/

A Better Measure of Society’s Well-Being
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/a-better-measure-of-societys-wellbeing-20091002-gghw.html

How Can I Get Event Announcements (choose one or more)? Read more…

A question appeared in tonight’s #blogchat discussion asking how to get automatic reminders of the start times of Twitter chats. I shared my way of doing this, and got many positive comments about it, so I figured I’d blog it to help out a broader audience.

Warning – this is a really easy solution, and it doesn’t involve any bright, shiny new tools!

Whenever I hear about an on-going chat on Twitter, or a chat-enabled blog site, or in a virtual world (I am involved with several projects in Second Life™ and other virtual worlds) I just add it as a recurring appointment to my calendar, and set a reminder in the calendar! In my case, this is Google Calendar, so it is available everywhere and syncs to my phone, but this trick should work just as well for most calendaring applications.

For a Twitter hashtag-style chat, I start the calendar entry with a #, for example #blogchat, and then follow that up with a space and the full URL, so that a click will open a brower tab pointed at the chat in progress. I tend to use TweetChat for Twitter chat discussions, so the calendar entry for this example looks like this:

#blogchat http://tweetchat.com/room/blogchat, with a reminder set for 15 minutes ahead.

A few clicks, and it’s done. I hope this is useful for someone else as well. It’s been pretty valuable for me to keep track of how various chats relate to other appointments, and to remember to get online when chats of interest are about to start.