Our collegues and friends Gizzy Electricteeth, Pipe Hesse and their cat Linden down in Australia are running a public build of the Australian Open Tennis right now. Whilst British hopes are dashed alread with Andy Murray getting knocked out in the first round they are are still very high with respect to the Aus Open in SL. Regular readers will know the links between what we do and tennis. IBM sponsors and provides the sites for the major grand slam tennis events around the world.
Wimbledon 2 years ago was where we cut our teeth in seeing how we could represent the tennis data in a metaverse. This was done privately. Pipe and Gizzy then built a massive stadium for the Aus Open which very much expanded the ealry wimbledon proof of concept. Last year it was private though. Then this yeat in June we swapped places again. Taking and adding to Pipe and Gizzy’s work to create the public Wimbledon 07 event. This was an experiement in how people would repsond and we kept it small an intimate but staffed during the live event. So now we are back again with the Australian Open and they awesome stadium build on Slam1 is open.
In order to keep things fresh they are having an official fashion contest for all you couture experts out there in Second Life.
We dont often do things that are press releases, but in this case I am pasting this in here to help you all out there.
This year, in conjunction with its sponsorship of the Australian Open
tennis, IBM is holding a ‘Couture on the Court’ competition to find out
who can create the best avatar tennis outfit in Second Life.
The winner will be voted by the SL residents and the first prize is
$250,000 Linden Dollars.
The top 10 eligible entrants will be awarded prizes – which will be
amounts in Linden Dollars.
Entry is open to any avatar created before Jan 8 2008 however
eligibility to recieve the Linden Dollar prizes is restricted to those
who fill in the full details of the entry form.
Entry, voting, and the full terms and conditions of the competition are
on IBM’s Australian Open island in SL – which is public this year (for
the first time). SL URL is
http://slurl.com/secondlife/slam1/201/239/24/.
Entries close 12am Jan 21, 2008 AEDT. Voting is open between 12am Jan
22, 2008 and 12am Jan 24, 2008. The winner will be announced on Friday
Jan 25 2008 .
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Second Life is just not working out for the mainstream. IBM is trying to promote because they have a major stake and first mover advantage in it. I think this marketing effort is a waste of time.
Tennis Plaza
http://www.tennisplaza.com
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@tennis The aim of using any metaverse Second life or any other is to enable people to engage with one another and with the content. It is still early days, so I guess it depends on what you call mainstream. I know at Wimbledon I got to talk to 200 people a day about wimbledon and what IBM does. Not as pure marketing but as enagaging with interested parties. The website we do for wimbledon has 8.5 million unique users. They are not a like for like comparison. I could not have a dialogue with 8.5 million people.
We are exploring Second Life and othre metaverse technologies. The benefits we have seen just internally of people interacting in an avatar based environment over and above the traditional text and voice ways are leading us to expierment further.
Last year the Australian Open build in Second Life was used exclusively for invite only customers, just as hospitality would be at the actual event. This year the team have opened it up to compare and contrast.
If people want to come along and see the potential they can, and just imagine what it these sort of interactions would be like in 20 years time. Not to replace real life and being there but a step forward from flat TV. Unless we explore these options we wont know what works, what we need to change to make these experiences deeper.
I wish I would have seen this blog earlier. I would’ve most definitely submitted an avatar. I love Second Life. I have noticed that it’s not taking off as fast I thought it would, but it’s still a great way to interact with people.
Hi Ian,
The Australian Open’s website says it’s $250,000 worth of virtual currency, which is not quite the same thing :p
I wonder how much it is worth in real money though. This has not exploded into the mainstream like it was expected to.
The real money and second life money don’t have much in common and it’s very difficult to conver to real dollars.
I love second life, and now tennis in second life! Thats cool still wondering how can it be monitized.
http://www.mytenniscircle.com just got launched, check it out its a free tennis social networking site!
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