It’s been
too long since I’ve blogged here and I hope that people don’t think that’s
because we’ve joined the companies quoted in a recent Forbes
article (registration required) saying they were pulling out of Second
Life. GigaOM
has a good post that debunks many of the business myths perpetuated in that and
other recent articles.
I’ve
actually been kept busy with 2D activity-leading an initiative to look at
potential new designs for the home page of Dell.com. But, that’s a future story to come. As I recently told an L.A. Times reporter who
chose to leave all of my comments out of her
article, we remain pleased with our entry into the metaverse through SL and
we plan to continue building our community there and learning from our first
foray into virtual worlds. There has
been a drop in the daily traffic to our space over the past few months, but in
all honesty, we haven’t given people a whole lot of new and interesting reasons
to visit. As I noted in
a response to a ZDNet blogger, though, we still see a lot of opportunity to
connect with people through this platform.
We did do a
Rock the
Ark party, and streamed in a video from our Inspiron launch event. And, we recently streamed Michael Dell’s Small Business
Town Hall into SL, and he
even took a question from the group watching there during his live Q&A
session. And, we’ve built out a StudioDell Theater where you can watch videos
from our Webby-award-winning StudioDell
site. But, as we hear from Grace
McDunnough and Linda
Zimmer, it takes more than those sort of things to make this environment
work. We need more ways for you to
interact with us there.
So, as
further evidence of our continued exploration in 3D interactions, I’m excited
to introduce a new member of the Dell family in SL -Todd Dell. Todd is part of our Online Community Outreach
team and he is about to begin keeping office
hours on Dell
Island to provide assistance to residents who visit our virtual space. From directing you to the new StudioDell
theater, to helping you with Dell customer service and tech support issues.
Todd is based in the U.S.,
but will have the contacts inside of Dell to get assistance for customers in
other parts of the world.
Beginning
August 6, Todd will be hanging out in our new coffee shop, The Buzz and Bean,
in Dell City Monday – Friday, 5 – 6am SLT and 12
– 2pm SLT. Based on traffic and demand, we may adjust those hours in the
future. Yes, I know avatars can’t drink
coffee, but we thought the comfortable atmosphere of a coffee shop might be a
relaxing place to chat about whatever is on your mind. Although advice for your live life isn’t
exactly the sort of questions Todd hopes to be able to answer for you. Do drop by with your Dell-related inquiries
though!
