networking

Guildcafe is a social media site aimed at multi-game gamers, but Second Life residents (mostly those who are also gamers) are adapting it for their own network.

Second Life folks are creating "guilds" for their primary affiliation in Second Life. You might find people who play an in-world RPG, or who are active in a particular in-world business listing it as their Second Life guild -- which allows them to do outreach and recruit new people to participate with them in-world.

The site includes a way to create a "gamer resume" listing your games, avatar names, years of participation, guild, server, and so on as relevant. It's attracting a high number of socially oriented gamers, and has actually interesting forums on a lot of topics. There are a lot of quizzes and questions, personal blogs, and other features not found on a pure "silo" gaming site like guildportal. This is really more about community -- the meta-game.

If you try it out, tell them Shava sent you -- I get reputation points if you do! There are lots of fun features here, particularly aimed at those of us who span gaming and virtual worlds, but really kind of fun for anyone.

See you there! Feel free to friend me as "shava"

Yrs,
Shava Nerad/Shava Suntzu in SL

This week, Second Life's business community sees the opening of the Business Exchange, a grand building modeled on the London coffee houses of the 17th and 18th century where people can network with peers, find business partners and attend events in beautiful surroundings.

The grand structure, situated on a purpose built Island [SLUrl] was commisioned by Dynamis, who among other things are responsible for the Businesses for Sale website. When asked about the motivation behind the build, developer Caliandris Pendragon of Nemisis Content Creation said "They aren't looking to make any money out of it [...] I honestly think they have philanthropic ideals"

The huge mansion like stucture, inspired by real life visits to many London institutions, including the British Museum [photo]. houses all manner of function rooms and private offices for use by all and any in the business community that have need of them. One such room is the library, where residents can find links, landmarks and websites collated by Caliandris in her free time, outside of the paid scope of her work. She says she believes in the project, and it's ideals and wants to see it succeed. So do I.

One thing that worried me about the initial launch of the project is the "empty restaurant syndrome". I wonder how people will begin to network there when for now at least, it's just a big empty structure. I do want to see a project like this succeed though, as I think if Caliandris and Dynamis can kick it into gear it could become a wonderful hub of business information and networking opportunities in the future. To that end, Metaversed have already offered to help out where we can, and may well hold some networking meets at this grand locale in the future.