Glob – The Indusgeeks Blog

Happy Birthday to us! So we have successfully ( or something like that : ) ) navigated 730 days of our existence! Going by the 1000 days business rule we still have about 9 months to go !

So what have we been doing as company ( besides slacking on the blog)?  We recently concluded the Tata Indicom in SL campaign which was a major success by virtual world standards. Detailed analysis will be presented soon here.

We have also been steadily working towards building our own virtual worlds platform and moving  towards creating focused applications for virtual worlds. I had posted an imaginary conversation highlighting the need for a clearly defined utility for these 3D immersive environments we called ‘Virtual Worlds’.  I think that utility or a part of the answer has emerged over the last year in the form of learning , training and collaboration. Indusgeeks is in the early stages of creating its own learning framework and platform using virtual worlds called ‘ Metamersive Learning Spaces‘.

As we forge new partnerships with companies like Servitium and LP + . We hope to add to the pedagogical utility of these virtual worlds and in creating and defining new standards for 3D/2D interactive , immersive learning.

Last year saw us becoming a Sun Advantage Partner and being the only company in India to work with Sun on their Project Wonderland platform. We also tied up with Intel as a part of the Intel Software Partner Program giving us access to Intel labs for testing our software on the latest and older Intel technologies – essential for benchmarking our solutions.

When we started 2 years back – as with most startups- it was with some ideas on what might pan out. As with most startups.. those ideas didn’t quite work out the way we thought they would . However, we are here in the middle of a full blown depression recession and working on a very exciting project that we can’t talk about yet.

Personally it has been a fascinating journey for me. To see the core team grow from college pass outs to able professionals capable of handling stressful deadlines and tough times. We have grown from 3 to 14 people and grown our revenue to very respectable levels.

2009 will be a year to grow and change as a company as the Geeks grow up! However, what will not change is our commitment to enjoy our work and not take ourselves too seriously!

Sing us a B’day song will you

- Sid

12 days after the Child Rights and You’s (CRY) virtual presence was soft launched by Indusgeeks we have now started to build up a considerable “tail” or trail on the web. We have yet to hold our inworld press conference and do the launch event in-world. We believe that’s part of Phase 2 and not Phase 1 as is usually the practice. As mentioned in the previous post we are still in the First phase of the campaign. Let’s see what the results have been so far :

1 . Hindustan Times – Front page box and then half page inside. (Real life newspaper)

2. Indiainfoline News. -

3. exchange4media.com

4. agencyfaqs.com

5. contentsutra.com

6. ITnewsoline.com

7. SecondLife Today

Blogs :

1. Russian Blog

2. French Blog

3. Your2ndPlace

4. Watblog

5. Indianpad

6. Alootechie

7. India-Forums

This in addition to almost all major aggregator sites like digg and boxxet adding it to their lists. Even one in Korea!! This is not an exhaustive list… by the very nature of web 2.0 it’s difficult to be exhaustive…. this is what a cursory search turns up on Google..

I am not even counting the lead up to this when the articles appeared in DNA and Business Standard and even Hindustan Times before. Also there was a small mention in Economic Times Delhi in the real life paper!

I am not trying for a minute to suggest that… marketing and newspaper hits etc. are the only reason to enter Second Life. Cheap publicity is a terrible motive , but it’s not necessarily terrible! Seriously though, I think publicity about the medium is not only desirable but required in India. Most people have very skewed notions of what Second Life or virtual worlds are all about. So a presence like that of CRY’s makes people sit up and wonder….. if a NGO is here can’t be all that bad… hmm.. maybe I should check it out!

And that’s precisely the kind of reaction required to bring virtual worlds into the mainstream Internet market and educate the masses and corporates about V-Training , Conferencing, Collaboration etc. which is almost never mentioned in the media in India yet…. So keep plugged in for Phase 2

On the 28th of January Child Rights and You ( CRY) opened a virtual action centre in Second Life. (CRY already had a smaller functional presence on Second Life in Non-Profit Commons ) Indusgeeks partnered with CRY to conceptualise, design and create this presence as a part of an overall initiative to raise awareness about CRY online. This made CRY the first Indian NGO and probably the second major organisation in India after Wipro to open a space in Second Life. The brief to Indusgeeks was to create a place which reminded people ( mostly adults as children can’t legally enter the SL Main Grid) of children and yet had a certain sense of design sophistication. We believe that from the reviews that followed we were able to accomplish that.

We partnered with CRY because we felt that they represented causes for children that all of us empathized with. The difficulty with our generation at times seems to be lack of awareness and then a lack of motivation to even do something about causes we feel for. The effort in launching this larger new media campaign for CRY was to reach out to this demographic and tell them – that they now had a convenient way to partake in the cause of child rights.

Phase 1.: The launch of the CRY presence on Bombay island ( part of Bollywood Estates) .Typically this phase is used to generate buy in for the medium from both internal and external stakeholders. . The subsequent press and blog coverage ( HT, Indiainfoline, IT News etc.) and internal organizational interest has already marked this phase a success.

Phase 2: We will soon launch a viral campaign with a machinima to raise awareness about the options of donating and engaging online with CRY. This phase is characterized by a larger engagement and picking up on the ” Long Tail” created by the 1st Phase.

Utility : This is phase where we convert the interest generated in the first phase to have all the internal stakeholders ( volunteers, staff etc.) to use the medium for communication and interaction. This is the phase where we introduce V- Conferencing, meets, events etc.

Phase 3 :Will feature an ” interactive experience module” where viewers of the viral machinima will be able to experience the video! More details on this as it unfolds..

The CRY office in Second Life

The CRY office consists of an auditorium to display movies and hold events etc. , a CRY shop ( Expressions of Childhood) ,outdoor cafe , gallery showcasing child rights posters and materials. It has donation boxes which direct users to the website or let me pay in Lindens.

The challenge now is user adoption for greater utility and purchase.

This is a work in motion much like Second Life…. so stay tuned in

- Sid

Been too long since we’ve spoken here. Not because we didn’t want to but just couldn’t find the time, what with all the work………. Okay!Okay! so I was lying. We binged and partied and had a huge New Year’s hangover and finally got around to blogging now .

So what is Virtual Training ( V-training) , Virtual Collaboration and Orientation ? I am going to try to explain this over the course of the next month here . To start off here’s an interesting video on Zdnet.com

Indusgeeks is doing a lot of work in the corporate sector in India and abroad on these lines. Virtual is fast, easy and cheap for all manner of orientation, collaboration and training activities within an organisation be it Marketing, Sales , HR or Product Development.

This Indusgeeks video ( although tad boring ) demonstrates some possibilities by simulating a real life presentation on Second Life , using various 3D ( special tools/software developed by Indusgeeks) as well as traditional 2D A/V tools.