Glob – The Indusgeeks Blog

Indusgeeks was featured on the Business Channel ETNow recently. Find the video here : Indusgeeks on ETNow Technoholik .

The show featured Indusgeeks CEO Siddharth (Sid) Banerjee talking about  Metamersive Learning Spaces application developed on the Second Life platform  and an older marketing campaign done for Child Rights and You (CRY). It features client and partner testimonials from CRY and Learning Possibilities.

Indusgeeks is proud to present Metamersive Learning Spces  as one of the very few  3D Training, Learning and Collaboration( 3DTLC) related solutions featured on the Second Life Work website by Linden Lab. We are now extending the MLS framework to other virtual environments like Open Sim, Shockwave, Unity 3D and Flash.

Metamersive Learning Spaces features ( demo video here ) :

1) Fully functional 3d multiuser classroom

2) Automated converters for PowerPoint and other audio/video media

3) Easy Web Interface to point media to different screens in the 3D environment

4) Full Security with Private regions and group limitations

5) Text Chat logs

6) Customizable 3D Learning Environment

Cool article in the Economic Times about us..

http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=ET&BaseHref=ETM%2F2008%2F12%2F12&ViewMode=GIF&GZ=T&PageLabel=13&EntityId=Ar01301&AppName=1

Check it out

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