What Did You Get for Christmas? I Got an Avatar from Far Far Away!
Posted on Jan 17, 2008 | Categories: Collaboration, Communities, Enterprise2.0, Innovation, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Tools, Learning, Personal KM, Photography, Productivity Tools, Social Computing | 5 Comments
While James Dellow, over at ChiefTech has put together a really nice and well thought out blog post under The Potential for Enterprise Metaverses where he is actually exploring further the role of virtual worlds (i.e. Second Life) to enhance the overall business collaboration and eLearning experiences in the corporate world, and while Jasmin Tragas has put together an incredibly enlightening article on Avatar Affinity, here I am again revisiting the world of the metaverse. Yes, that is right. Even though I have been in Second Life for quite some time now, in the last few months I haven’t spent as much time as I should have, or could have.
Well, things may change from here onwards, folks. Now it seems to be a good time. I think it is time to revisit it again and continue exploring its full potential within a working environment to help improve the way we share our knowledge and collaborate with other knowledge workers across the border in this distributed world. But to me there is one other special reason why I am going to hang out much more in Second Life this year. And that is my current avatar elsua Gaea. Allow me to explain further.
Back on the 6th of January, and while over here we were celebrating the Three Kings or Three Wise Men, I got pinged by Jasmin Tragas saying that there was a lovely present awaiting for me in Second Life and that I should check it out shortly. And I did. Whooooaaahhhh! I got a lovely new outfit for my avatar, which lately was a little bit left behind. Of course, I had to try it out and lo and behold somehow my inspiration to keep on making use of Second Life re-gained its full energy and commitment. So much so that I already got a couple of community events piled up for the next few weeks and I will be participating as well in a couple of interviews around the subject of social computing!
Earlier on today I actually spent a few minutes with Jasmin hanging out together chatting about a few things around knowledge sharing, social software and collaboration. First time we ever hanged out together in Second Life and before we knew it we went further with a photo shooting session, then we played drums and before we knew it time flew, when you are having fun!
Here are some of the pictures we took:
So, if late last year I lost the connection with my avatar, something that for one reason or another may have happened, I guess that thanks to Jasmin I got it back, not only for her spot on article on Avatar Affinity, but also because she spent quite some time and effort in putting together a really cool outfit for my avatar without asking anything in return. There you have it, the power of social networking and connecting with other knowledge workers regardless wherever they may well be!
And then they may say that virtual worlds don’t help get people together and connect, well, they may need to think about it twice now!
Fancy hanging out in Second Life some time soon? … I am ready 
(Thanks ever so much, Jazzydee Raymaker, for the lovely present! It is greatly appreciated!!!)
Tags: Second Life, Avatars, Jazzydee Raymaker, elsua Gaea, Jasmin Tragas, James Dellow, ChiefTech, Wonderwebby, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Virtual Worlds, Metaverse, Affinity, Connections, eLearning, Remote Collaboration, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Fun, Play, Play at Work, Social Capital
