The world of wikis
You know how I mentioned we’ve got lots of cool things brewing at Treet TV, well the latest and greatest is our wiki. It’s been going for a few weeks now but I am only just starting to get the hang of it and it’s fantastic!
Why have all those documents sitting on shared drives, latent, dead, inaccessible, when you can have a living resource being created, shared and published for all to see and enjoy?
In the past I’ve only edited a couple of pages on Wikipedia so never really got into the way it works.
Now I am neck deep into the formatting of pages, the referencing, the private/public options and the ways to track changes and build up content assets dynamically.
So I guess I am a convert. We’re using MediaWiki and so far I’m really pleased with the results. Although it is only just starting, feel free to go and have a browse around:-
Twitter as a publishing tool
We’ve been hard at work transitioning our entire network across to HD and relaunching as a new service called Treet TV. Along the way we are constantly implementing automation systems that improve our service for users.
One of the recent changes includes the introduction of a live Twitter feed that informs people the moment that a new video is available for viewing.
The feed is here: http://www.twitter.com/treetbot
This means that our show producers, who are keen to get their show and start promoting it to their audiences, can be informed via their twitter feed rather than by emailing us, or checking on the website.
It is the first time I have seen an industrial application of this kind (although I have heard Jeffrey Paffendorf has a Twitter feed from his fish tank to notify him the PH levels).
It is an exciting new feature of our service and just a hint of more great things to come from Treet TV.
Why not watch live shows from virtual worlds on TV?
I got the good news today that one of our shows has been short-listed in the Online Machinima Film Festival. Congratulations to the very talented Pooky Amsterdam and her team for The 2nd Question, a quiz show for science nerds.
It’s great to see the rise in profile of content created in games and 3D social virtual worlds.
Although traditional TV broadcasters have definitely made the crossover to the internet and mobile phone spaces - with SMS voting and distribution of shows to iTunes - they are yet to fully understand how the game space can translate into TV content.
Why don’t we see video-game competitions broadcast as sporting events? Does it take less skill to play “Guitar Hero” than to bowl? Or throw darts? Or drive?
Good point Kevin. We certainly have seen the potential with the sports shows we have been filming in Second Life. Our ice hockey, dirt field races, simboarding and sailing regatta have demonstrated how sports in game spaces can be just as compelling as those hosted in the analog world.
Sure the graphics and production values can do with some improvements, but that is happening all the time so don’t be swayed by that passing stage. Just think back to how lacklustre the world wide web looked in 1997.
We are in the process of launching a multi-world, high definition service called Treet. TV (you can see our temporary site at http://www.treet.tv). This content starts to look far more compelling with widescreen as well as the high resolution versions (for downloading) that look quite stunning on a digital TV set in the living room.
Kevin, broadcasting live events from games to your living room TV might be sooner than you think. All acquisition enquiries from interested broadcasters should be directed to me, Starr Sonic! I am ready to take your call.
Wisdom of crowds in a virtual shoot
The dynamics of social enterprise to create online encyclopedias, open source software and alternate reality games has proven itself as an effective model for creativity as well as engagement.
However, we haven’t really witnessed this kind of remote collaboration when it comes to producing TV shows apart from the webcam social TV model - which is more like a live chat with streaming video.
There are occasional productions that assemble separate elements created by individuals (such a 24 Hours in Cyberspace), or other examples where the creator integrates comments and inserts from others (such as the brilliant Zee Frank clips).
However, there are few video shows that are entirely created collaboratively with a remote team.
I believe SLCN is pioneering in this area and we’ve had some fascinating experiences along the way.
One of the quirky shows we film weekly is RacerX Gullwig’s Giant Snail Races. The free-wheeling nature of the races has inspired many people to get involved in the commentary and in more recent months the production.
Innovations have been introduced by some of the participants that enable remote camera control (notice the Racer-Cam in this photo) and even live vision mixing.
The full operation of one of the SLCN studio cameras is in the hands of someone on the other side of the world. As the system is developed all cameras will be controlled by remote teams as well as the vision mixing. Our studios will eventually be racks of computers managed at data centers.
As exciting as the tech gadgets and tools are becoming, it’s really the people activities that are most interesting.
Participants take great care to dress up their snails in zany outfits for the races, all hand designed and made. Waelya from Brazil enthusiastically runs classes during the week to help people improve their racing technique. All of them want to make the TV show look as colorful and creative as possible.
The Giant Snail Races show on SLCN has become a creative collaboration between a team of people who rarely meet in real life. They gather in Second Life as well as contribute to an email discussion list where a lively debate takes place about how the show could be improved.
The process of sharing and creating is far more compelling than the process of consuming. People are gravitating to games and social web experiences because they are an active participant.
Not only are the numbers growing but the length of time people spend on these activities is high.
In an environment where attention is the most scarce commodity, advertisers need to figure out how to become part of this social enterprise phenomenon.
If Red Bull is sponsoring the break-dancing stage at your local music festival, where attendance will be in the thousands not tens of thousands, then why wouldn’t they want to support the special interest activities taking place in digital social communities that are springing up all over the place, wherever people dare to click?
Sustained engagement with brands supporting creativity
Earlier this week we filmed our weekly Real Biz in SL show, hosted by Cybergrrl Oh, on Orange Island. I had the pleasure of meeting Fab Outlander, the island manager, at the Second Life Community Convention in Tampa, Florida several weeks ago.
The show did a tour of the Mad Pea game environments. Mad Pea are an innovate production company who have made several mystery games in Second Life. They were finding it hard to continue paying land fees to keep their free games operating. After approaching Fab he immediately made space available on Orange Island for them to set-up their games. To see the amazing skill of these creatives you can watch the full show on SLCN.TV.
I find Fab’s idea particularly smart given the number of brands who have demonstrated that creating corporate headquarters or shop fronts in Second Life is not enough to attract potential customers.
The era of UGC means that brands simply need to support content initiatives that are relevant to their brand, rather than paying outrageous fees to advertising companies (or virtual world development houses) to create content themselves.
This encourages more of a marketer-user interchange and stimulates the viral push for spreading the word to a wider audience.
Leo Burnett had a similar idea way back when they set up Motorati Island for Pontiac. Instead of building their own island of excess, they offered free space to anyone interested in creating something with a car culture bent. The island was home to high profile tenants such as Callie Cline, Ask Patty and the Dirtfield Raceway. There have been few examples like this since.
Despite the backlash of brands having a disappointing experience in Second Life because they were oversold and under-delivered on the opportunity, I can see that many brands are starting to take a peak back inside the virtual world space. After all, sign-ups and concurrent users of Second Life are still growing and our rising viewership statistics indicate that the community is very much alive and well.
Sure, the numbers don’t compare to prime time TV, but neither do the costs. There are also advantages to be gained from growing sustained and valued relationships with customers - or as Zain Naboulsi from Microsoft called it ‘deep touch’.
I encourage any brand manager to look at some of the amazing creativity and dedication of people participating in virtual worlds and to work out how to support and nuture them as part of any future thinking marketing strategy.
Virtual world conferences
I’ve been woefully silent on my blog of late. No excuses but there has been a lot going on! I am about to head to the USA where I will be attending the Virtual World Expo in Los Angeles. Directly afterward I’m crossing the continent to Florida for the Second Life Community Convention.
The Expo in LA is very exciting for us. We will have the chance to mingle with a lot of entertainment companies who are wondering about the opportunity in virtual worlds. With a year and a half worth of experience in creating content inside Second Life, we’ve got a lot of knowledge as well as data that has been collected from our viewership that is thankfully on a very steady upward curve.
SLCN.TV will be hosting a party on the Wednesday evening where we look forward to entertaining some of the conference delegates as well as several of our show producers and talent who we work with every week on SLCN.
This event is supported by our friends at Monogram Virtua who we are also working with to develop a pilot for a weekly entertainment show.
After LA I fly to Tampa, Florida, where the SLCC will be held. I am running a mini-track on film and television in Second Life. The first panel will be moderated by Draxtor Despres and feature, amongst others, our friends at Illclan who have produced high profile machinima such as The Grid Review and the CSI New York Second Life content.
The second panel includes virtual world reporter Cybergrrl Oh, Mattia Crespi from ISN Virtual Worlds and Robustus Hax from Metaverse Broadcasting.
Thanks go out to my dear friend Johnny Austin from Joysco Studios who prepared this fantastic design to promote the mini-track and to Dancing Ink Productions who are another of our supporters for this event.
TV coverage of SLCN
A few weeks ago freelance journalist Sonia Lear produced this news story on virtual television production. It aired on News Hour Asia Pacific. Paisley Beebe, the host of our weekly evening talk show Tonight Live, was also included in the story and following her blog post about the feature I have had many compliments from virtual world colleagues.
Somewhere in the not too distant future
On SLCN.TV we have a quiz show called The 2nd Question. One segment features a notable quote each week. Today it featured Ray Kurzweil:
I’m an inventor. I became interested in long-term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished, not the world in which it is started.
After recently discussing technological singularity theory with a friend, and then seeing this quote, it prompted me to watch the TED Talk by Kurzweil.
He talks about exponential growth and the rate of change of technology and science, of which Moore’s law is only one example. It made me think of the Highlander when Christopher Lambert talks about the quickening.
Kurzweil predicts that by 2010 images will be written directly to our retina, providing full immersion virtual reality and augmented reality where we will be interacting with virtual personalities and be able to experience the world as someone else does (that made me think of Strange Days and the devices that record someone’s experiences).
What kind of world will this be like and how will people want to make their own media and share it?
One of the best things about being part of the evolution of SLCN is to work with our CEO, Gary Wisniewski, who is a truly visionary person.
He puts a lot of thought into the future of how virtual worlds will be used - leap-frogging the technical and social limitations that exist today.
Some days we muse about how people will do cooking shows in the future, or leave virtual video instructions for family members.
One thing that we are counting on is the capacity for virtual worlds to make it easier for people to do these things.
The tools and processes we are developing at SLCN.TV are all aimed at providing a layer of services that removes obstacles for people to create media using their virtual, rather than real, lives.
Although to many this may seem abstract today - in fact most people we meet who see that we are making television in virtual worlds think we are a little strange - we are building an enterprise that is meant for the world somewhere in the not too distant future, rather than the one we are in today.
Skating on frozen moments in time
Today I was watching a wonderful presentation by Mark Pesce, a futurist and thinker who I greatly admire and I am lucky to know quite well.
His presentation titled “Those Whacky Kids” talks about the phenomenon of co-presence (a term that emerged out of research in Japan by Mimi Ito that analyzes mobile phone behaviour) where teenagers keep a close circle of friends continually informed of their activities during the day using text messages.
Mark rightly noted that we are inherently social animals. The proliferation of social network tools online demonstrates how new technology that satisfies core human desires can really succeed.
From my experience in virtual worlds, recognition and influence are other social drivers that are important in online spaces.
There are many Second Life residents who spend a considerable amount of hours every day on creating events and activities inworld that attract participation and interest.
The successful ones provide regular and consistent events, create blogs and forums for their members to interact, have applied creative thinking to utilizing the virtual space and attract motivated teams who help them achieve their goals.
As a result they have been able to attract a high number of group members who are loyal and committed.
Events in virtual worlds can range from fashion parades, sports event, music performances, awards nights and so on.
At SLCN we believe that these events are worth capturing and sharing.
The events we broadcast and archive are usually ones with a demonstrated established or potential audience, who are interested in not only the live event, but also watching replays or downloading the video footage if they could not attend in person.
The final show that is created from the event is packaged into a clip that is replayed on our channels inworld, posted on our website and made into video podcasts.
Since we began in March 2007, SLCN has assembled over 750 hours of broadcast quality content. Through our collaboration with inworld producers we have built the largest single repository of content filmed inside of virtual worlds.
These archives provide entertainment to a growing audience of inworld viewers who enjoy seeing the many and varied activities happening inside this new and exciting place called Second Life.
All of it is thanks to the hundreds of people who like to socialize and entertain for their own pleasure and entertainment.
This reminds me of a quote I heard sometime ago, “Myspace is where you go to make plans, while virtual worlds are where you go and do it!”
Real vs Virtual Cost Comparison
Now we have blogs everyone is a journalist and with You Tube everyone is their own TV network - right? Well, not quite, however, you get my point. The barriers to entry are considerably lower than they used to be and people are able to express themselves and reach an audience relatively easily.
For those who aspire to something more than homemade video quality and a larger audience than their friends and family, the world of video production is still veiled with complexity that makes it beyond the reach of most talent.
Sure, you can get some filmmaking buddies together and make a pilot for a cooking show, or maybe you’ll even produce it long enough to succeed like the Rocketboom crew or Lonely Girl15. My hunch is that they are the exception rather than the rule.
Television studios and professional video producers are still the main purveyors of taste when it comes to watching content on the telly from either over-the-air broadcasts or as high definition downloads.
At SLCN.TV we see virtual worlds helping to bridge that gap and enable a whole new bunch of creative people produce compelling content in a low cost and accessible way.
Take for example one of our most popular shows, hosted by popular Second Life jazz vocalist Paisley Beebe.
The show has been running for a year now and has a strong following of people who show up for the live broadcast as well as those tuning in for replays and downloading the show as a video podcast.
The real life Leonie Smith, the woman behind the inimitable Ms Beebe, has worked for many years in theatre, the arts and community radio.
She knows the hard work needed to create professional productions and relishes the environment of Second Life for it’s many benefits.
For a start, a virtual world provides a veneer that would otherwise cost a considerable amount.
Studio hire, lighting, cameras, make-up and wardrobe add up to a hefty price in Sydney, Australia, where Smith resides.
The table here provides a very rough cost comparison.
Right now the environment of virtual worlds like Second Life are a little clunky as a tool for animation production (it will be interesting to see how the public responds to the HBO airing of the Molotov Alva virtual documentary), however, as it improves so will the ability for the video outputs to be highly compelling and draw large mainstream audiences.
Once virtual worlds start to enable people with great ideas to connect to a large audience we are going to see the bar lowered and a larger collection of watchable and interesting content available to the punters in their living rooms.
Now we just need a video search and filter tool that will do for online video content what Google search did for the internet 10 years ago. Any volunteers?