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Spring Volume 2009 Newsletter

Q: I’ve been teaching memos, letters, and reports for years in my technical writing class—traditional hard-copy text. My students seem to live in a different, more electronic world. I see them constantly on their handhelds, living in virtual social networks. How can I modernize my classes for this generation?

A: Great question! The times they are a changin’. So what’s out there that’s new and exciting in terms of communication channels? Of course, we could focus on instant messaging and text messaging. We could look into Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube. For this installment of our quarterly newsletter, we want to share with you information about a new horizon—actually a new world: the virtual world of Second Life.

“Where Are We Going? Where Have We Been? Past and Present Trends in Technical/Business

Communication We know what technical/business writing was two decades ago—memos, letters, and reports. We know what technical/business writing was one decade ago—Web sites, e-mail, and online help. What shape will technical/business communication take in the next decade? Prognosticating the future is all conjecture, but consider these possibilities:

∞ Second Life ∞ YouTube ∞ Twitter

FAQ

Table of Contents

∞ FAQ—What’s on the horizon for Technical/ Business/Workplace Communication?

∞ Editorial—The brave new world of Second Life® (SL)

∞ Dot.com Updates—new sites to check out for information on SL

∞ Activities—Assignments for SL projects

∞ Rules and Regulations—Tips for participating in SL

∞ Handy Definitions—new, cool SL terms

For use with Sharon J. Gerson

and Steven M. Gerson’s textbooks:

∞ Technical Communication: Process and Product

∞ Workplace Writing: Planning, Packaging, and Perfecting Communication

∞ Workplace Communication: Process and Product

Reader Alert! In subsequent newsletters this year, watch for issues devoted to Twitter and YouTube.

Editorial

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What’s Second Life? Created by Linden Research, Inc., Second Life® is a 3-D virtual world, a digital continent populated by avatars. To access this virtual world, all you need to do is download a free Second Life (SL) viewer application which runs on Macs, PCs, and Linux servers. You create your avatar (your virtual self) and “teleport” into alternative worlds. What Goes on in These Virtual Worlds? Isn’t this just an MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role-playing game) for geeks? No. SL isn’t a game. It doesn’t have goals, prizes, or ulterior motives. Instead, SL provides a virtual site where businesses, educational institutions, and governmental organizations create “public and private spaces for communication, collaboration, and training” (Secondlife Grid). Really? Which Companies Have SL Presences? Here’s a quick look at some organizations that have SL sites: Adidas

American Apparel

AOL

BMW Calvin Klein

Cisco Systems

Coca-Cola

Coldwell Banker

Comcast

Dell

H&R Block

IBM Kraft Foods

Major League Baseball

Mazda Mercedes-Benz

Microsoft National Basketball Association

National Public Radio

Nissan Pontiac

Reebok Sears Sony Ericsson

Sprint Starwood Hotels

Sun Microsystems

Toyota

That’s an impressive and diverse list of organizations.

IBM’s SL Courtyard

Editorial, cont.

SL isn’t a game. It doesn’t have goals, prizes, or ulterior motives. Instead, SL provides a virtual site where businesses, educational institutions, and governmental organizations create “public and private spaces for communication, collaboration, and training” (www.virtuallifegrid.net).

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Why Would You Want to Enter this Virtual World? SL provides its end users and its host organizations a multitude of technical/business communication values. Here’s a list of reasons why organizations use SL (Webber).

1. Marketing—companies use SL to tell customers about new products. SL allows companies to develop “working models of new and existing products” and hold virtual events with guest speakers (Webber). In SL, a company can build brand recognition, “test- market future product lines or host events to foster brand loyalty and generate buzz” (Jana).

2. Training—first there were hardcopy manuals, then instructional videos. Now, with SL, you and your avatar can actually be involved in virtual hands-on tutorials. SL is an especially valuable tool for training when employees and clients are geographically dispersed, when actual equipment is expensive, and when situations are dangerous. There’s no danger in a virtual world where no machines can be broken and where no one can be hurt following a procedure.

3. Modeling, Monitoring, and Product testing—whether it's a new car, software product, machine, or a hotel resort, it can be cheaper to create an SL version and get feedback from potential end users than it would be to build an actual prototype in RL (real life). For example, at AT&T, geographically dispersed engineers from Atlanta, Austin, and New York used SL to monitor virtual virus attacks on network devices. In a virtual environment, such testing can be managed with less potential for real harm to a company’s systems.

4. Networking—meet others in SL without leaving the comfort of your home. Make connections for information, job seeking, research, new ideas, marketing approaches, and more.

5. Providing Customer Service—IBM has opened an SL business center staffed by an international core of IBM sales representatives. In this virtual business center, customers can buy hardware and software. Plus, these avatars of actual clients can get answers to their computing questions and solutions to their business problems. Why would IBM do this? They “seek to engage with clients in the way they prefer to engage,” says Lee Dierdorff, vice president of Web strategy and enablement for IBM. SL becomes an extension of IBM’s customer service, provided “over the Web, . . . over the telephone, and now . . . over a 3-D virtual world” (Brodkin). What are the benefits of an SL business center? IBM’s virtual sales representatives can “speak the following languages: English, Portuguese, German, Spanish, Dutch, Italian and French, and Asian languages” (Brodkin). That’s service with an international flair.

Editorial, cont.

Sun Microsystems’ Pavilion

Graphics provided with permission from Marziah Karch, Senior Educational Technologist for Johnson County Community College’s Educational Technology Center. That’s Marziah’s avatar standing in IBM’s and Sun Microsystems’ courtyard and pavilion.

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6. Recruitment—why should a company pay to fly and house a potential employee for an interview? Why should a potential employee take days to travel out of state to interview for a company? Why not just teleport into a virtual world for a virtual interview—no expenses whatsoever? Check out Manpower’s SL site for an example (http://www.manpower.com/press/secondlife.cfm?mode=secondlife).

7. Developing an inexpensive international presence—visitors from anywhere in the world can teleport into your company’s virtual pavilion. Rather than construct a building, hire staff, and market a product in a foreign country, hoping that your investment will pay off, you can get to know a new market by “observing, interacting and setting up virtual shop” overseas.

8. Virtual Conferencing—you can travel to off-site conferences, you can engage in webinars, you can participate in teleconferences, or you could attend a virtual conference in SL. For example, National Public Radio’s Science Friday has an SL link. In this site, you can “chat with other listeners during the show, ask questions and meet host Ira Flatow’s avatar—Ira Flatley.” You can “stop by another time for a swim in the lake or a walk through our library” (http://www.sciencefriday.com/about/community/).

Ira Flatow’s avatar, Ira Flatley, discusses planets, oceans, Darwin, insects, vertebrates, and other science concerns on NPR’s Science Friday Second Life.

Editorial, cont.

Archived Newsletters!

Want to access archived newsletters saved as PDF files? Go to the following URL: http://www.prenhall.com/gerson

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Ten Tips for Participating in SL

If you or your company is thinking about participating in the virtual world of Second Life, follow these guidelines:

1. For SL use, you have to have “processing power and the right graphics card, plus broadband” (Webber).

2. You can sign up for free. Currently, SL is publicly available for business and education. You lease “land” in SL from the owning company, Linden Labs, but almost 90 percent of everything else in SL is created by SL users. “This includes houses, clothes, cars, educational tools, art, trees, giant models of DNA or body parts, recreations of famous places and many other virtual things” (Webber).

3. “Although you can enter Second Life for free as a visitor, users must pay a $9.95 per month subscription fee if they want to own land. As of January [2009], there were 57,702 premium account holders” (Carr).

4. If you can create your own “professional look for your avatar, [you can] participate and network without cost” (Webber). To get more choice for “dressing yourself and your space,” you spend Linden dollars in SL (250 Linden equal a dollar) (Webber).

5. Take SL seriously. According to Webber, “The majority of businesspeople, educators and librarians will be treating it as an extension of their lives.”

6. When you participate with your avatar, do not make fun of another avatar’s appearance or “disrupt conversations” (Webber).

7. Choose an appropriate (not a “stupid or offensive”) name for your avatar (Webber). 8. Create a profile that is professional. “Your profile can have pictures, blurbs about your

second and first life, links to places you like” (Webber). 9. Security is an issue to consider. For company security, Cisco has their employees use the

same last name for their avatars—CiscoSystems (Wagner). 10. Determine how you will manage the information on your SL site. Since your SL site will

contain thousands of items, companies must manage this “inventory” just as they manage their computers files (Webber).

Rules and Regulations

Following are sample assignments for your students: 1. Your skateboard company’s profits declined 12 percent worldwide. Management wants to enlarge the company’s market share. Currently, the company has a Web site and brick and mortar facilities in numerous shopping malls around the world. To reach an untapped market, the company now wants to create a larger presence on the Internet. To do so, it plans on creating an SL, interactive, online shop. With this goal, accomplish the following:

∞ Research the SL trend to learn how other companies are using this virtual world for shopping. ∞ Write a report proposing your market plan. ∞ Create a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) of an SL shopping site. ∞ Design and create the site, using Linden dollars as the SL currency.

Give an oral presentation about your SL shopping site, including a demonstration in SL. More Activities on the next page.

Activities

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2. You work for an accounting company with a large, national staff of tax preparation specialists. With the tax season nearing, you are responsible for training new hires, some of whom are part time. Your company has hard-copy manual providing instructions on tax preparation and face-to-face training. However, to accommodate a dispersed workforce, including part-time employees who might work from home, you need to modernize your training options. To make training more accessible to your dispersed staff, do the following: Create a tutorial in SL that will allow staff to experience hands-on, virtual instruction. In this tutorial, focus on the following:

∞ understanding basic accounting terminology ∞ familiarizing staff with withholding guidelines ∞ reviewing existing tax laws ∞ implementing new tax laws

Give an oral presentation about your SL tutorial, including a demonstration in SL. 3. SL is beginning to play a prominent role in education. As an Information Technology teacher, you want to create an SL, hands-on, interactive training module to help students gain a better understanding of programming. Have you students create SL tutorials for any of the following topics:

∞ Setting margins on a Word document. ∞ Changing the background on a PowerPoint slide. ∞ Creating a spreadsheet in Excel. ∞ Changing color designs in a Word Publisher document. ∞ Using building and scripting tools included in Second Life for developing computer and programming

skills. ∞ Building an interactive object using animation and gestures.

Give an oral presentation about your SL tutorial, including a demonstration in SL.

Activities, cont.

Check out these URLs to learn more about Second Life: Benner, Katie. “I Got My Job Through Second Life.” Fortune. 23 Jan. 2007.

http://money.cnn.com/2007/01/22/magazines/fortune/secondlife_recruit.fortune/ index.htm.

Brodkin, Jon. “IBM Opens Sales Center in Second Life.” Network World. 15 May 2007 http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/051507-ibm-second-life.html. “Business Communicators of Second Life.” Thomson Netg. 5 Feb. 2009. http://freshtakes.typepad.com/sl_communicators/2006/09/thomson_netg_se.html. Carr, David F. “Second Life: Is Business Ready For Virtual Worlds?” Baseline. 1 Mar. 2007.

http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Projects-Management/Second-Life-Is-Business-Ready- For-Virtual-Worlds/.

“Companies in Second Life.” Second Life Research Blog. 4 July 2007. http://secondliferesearch.blogspot.com/2007/07/companies-in-second-life.html.

Dot.Com Updates

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Jana, Reena. “Breathing Second Life Into Business.” Business Week. 3 Feb. 2009.

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/10/secondlife/index_01.htm. Kay, Jo and Sean FitzGerald. “Educational Uses of Second Life.” Second Life in Education. 5 Feb. 2009. http://sleducation.wikispaces.com/educationaluses. Pichardo, Mallory and Shiang Kwei Wang. “How Companies Are Using The Second Life Virtual.” Slideshare. 3 Feb. 2009. http://www.slideshare.net/skwang/how- companies-are-using-the-second-life-virtual-presentation. Secondlife. www.secondlife.com. Secondlife Grid. http://secondlifegrid.net/. Wagner, Mitch. “Using Second Life As A Business-To-Business Tool.” Information Week. 26

Apr. 2007. http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/04/using_second_li_2.html.

Webber, Sheila. “Second Life for Business.” Fumsi. Oct. 2008.

http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/use/3326.

Dot.Com Updates, cont.

Following are common terms in SL and their definitions: Avatar The computer user's 3-D representation of himself/herself CRPG Computer Role-playing Game Linden dollar (L$) The internal currency of SL. Used to buy, sell, rent, or trade land, goods, buildings, vehicles, clothing, hair, jewelry, art, and more MMORPG Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game RL Real Life Resident The user of an SL avatar SL Second Life SLurl Second Life URL (the Web address for SL sites), lets you create a teleport link to a location in Second Life

Handy Definitions