Today is my 3rd anniversary rez day in Second Life and time to reflect on everything that has happened in that time. Of course I have been online as epredator for a lot longer than just the Second Life existence but the past years have been the most formative of my career. Much of the anecdotes and experience of driving innovation across social media and in large enterprises has been triggered by those early days in SL. It is those years and the successes, failures, highs and lows combined with the personalities involved that really form the basis of the book I am mapping out in between all the other things I am doing. I am even more convinced than ever that people really need to hear the complete story as at every conference and event I go to people ask about it and are usually amazed at just how mad this roller coaster has been.

Visually in SL things have changed a little, but not a greta deal, but my understanding on the depth of engagement, the positive and negative stories alters every day. So despite having this 3 year period of exploration it does not stop here. I often tell people we are all forever N00b.

Part of the most formative story elements are captured here in a Flickr set via Snapzilla.

Clearly these pictures on their own need the narrative woven into them for what was going on in the physical world, but thats part of my job. As the person who experienced it I need to share what I have learned. Just as I have learned to present and to convince as well as my background of being able to create and invent with code and technology this will be an interesting experience. It may end up that many people will benefit from what I have been through, or it may just be a cathartic experience. I will let you know. 

So we go from Roo and I trying to make a space hopper on first land

A few days later turning a light on and off via a webpage in april 2006 to show external messages being able to interact with this virtual world.

Before I knew it Rob had joined me too and I was busy showing my message broker in world.(Just another few thousand to go after us 3 got going and 40,000+ people personally talked to up to now.)

… and now director of Feeding Edge ltd with 2 islands to my name and starting as a rental landlord, 

Those three years have also ended up with a press highlight reel. The most recent being some fantastic coverage in the Irish Times which was a result of being invited to do the opening keynote at the ACE conference.

 
This of course is part of the continuum that has been the past 3 years, hence the signpost. You can’t go and meet and greet great people, share what you know if you have not spent time doing it and making sense of things. A common misunderstanding that people have of social media in general is that of overnight success. Computers are thought to make things happen quicker, process equations solve problems, move data really really fast. However, people work at their own pace, adoption curves, politics and experience all get enhanced by digital technology but reputations still require effort and building. So in sharing what I have been doing on blogs and in social media and metaverses, and the next phase of sharing, hopefully in print and on Kindles all over the world the personal story is really the key. Of course understanding the balance of the positive nature of the support and the less than positive challenges that have been faced on the journey will take some thinking through.

Wish me luck and any authors want to offer their perspective please feel free to share 🙂