Got Story?

The idea behind the project is to produce a virtual world steeped in the rich lore and characters of the playwright’s work.

A Midsummer Night’s Virtual World

They ask Got SL story ideas? Oh yeah - we Got Story and not just in Second Life either

Cisco’s new advertising and marketing campaign is aimed at inspiring potential customers and investors by telling stories. The campaign’s ads are called “Voices of the Human Network” and demonstrate how the Internet changes lives every day and connects people around the world. It’s very consistent with the way Chambers speaks on the topic, selling the benefit of his technology by telling stories about how it improves people’s lives.

How Cisco’s CEO Works the Crowd

CNet understands that Google/YouTube is just handwriting on the wall of the Web…

The first 10 years of the Web were focused on text, graphics and pages. With broadband users popping past half of all online users, text is passe. The next generation of sites will be video-heavy, and users will be as much a part of the experience as the content. Get your ad agency’s video production folks together with your word-of-mouth marketers–they’re going to need to collaborate to invent tomorrow’s Web experience.

Get ready for the social-video Web

Most of the buzz about Google’s acquisition of YouTube has focused on video, price and copyright but the really big story is about how videos are a harbinger of the big new paradigm of communication - story-driven virtual worlds. Earlier this year, in discussing how digital technology is transforming the way video is made and viewed, a Time magazine cover story observed:

… movies have two big problems: the way they’re made and the way they’re shown. It has often been noted that if Henry Ford were to come back today, he would wonder why no one had come up with a better idea than the internal combustion engine. A similar thought may occur to any visitor to a movie shoot. Dozens, maybe hundreds of technicians adjust the lights, apply the makeup and dress the set, much the way it was done almost 100 years ago. And as in D.W. Griffith’s day, the film still runs through a camera, then is processed, reproduced many times and sent to theaters.

The addiction to doing things that way baffles Lucas. “Do you still use a typewriter?” he asks a TIME movie critic. “Do you go to a library and consult books for most of your research? Is your story set in type, letter by letter? No. Your business takes advantage of technological advances. Why shouldn’t my business?”

In a nutshell, virtual worlds are among other things, a means of lowering the cost of video production so as with big Hollywood producers are turning to digital tools, the ever-increasing number of YouTube video producing storytellers will look to lower their costs with virtual world technology. The people who got rich during the gold rush were the folks selling picks and shovels, not the gold miners.
GoogleEarth is already a fast-moving train that’s found it’s way into the daily life of a huge audience

Neat toys are about more than creating Web pages on which Google can slap ads. Google Earth, the ubiquitous cable-news prop and workplace time waster that lets users view incredibly detailed geographic photos from around the world, has been downloaded more than 100 million times, and embedded in each download is a request from Google to place a toolbar, a Web gadget that includes a search box,

Fortune

(emphasis mine)

and there has been speculation that it is a move into virtual worlds, an attempt to create a Second Life for Google. There’s already a sizable amount of video produced in virtual worlds on YouTube and Google video and it makes sense for Google to get people using their tools to produce such machinima.
Global technology PR firm Text100 produced a video showing how companies can use Second Life to improve both internal and external communications which really conveys what this handwriting on the wall looks like. And yes, the above link will take you to YouTube Google.

A recent NY Times article about Ornette Coleman says that

… the reason he appreciates Louis Armstrong, for example, is that he sees Armstrong as someone who improvised in a realm beyond his own knowledge. “I never heard him play a straight chord in root position for his idea,” he said. “And when he played a high note, it was the finale. It wasn’t just because it was high. In some way, he was telling stories more than improvising.”

Thanks for the link Nelson!

People tend to view TV and film as the ultimate form of media. However, media is evolving beyond these limited formats into the realms of the immersive and interactive. In her ground-breaking book Hamlet On The Holodeck, MIT researcher Janet Murray explores the future of the narrative and how storytelling will be impacted by immersive technologies. One can see the handwriting on the wall of sports video games. More and more sports fans are choosing to participate in the game instead of being passive observers on the couch. Consider that the latest NFL TV deals bring in about $3.1 billion dollars per year which is $93 million per year for each team on average. Now compare that with the revenues from the most popular NFL video game:

… the success of the latest Madden game illustrates how lucrative the video game industry has become. Its opening-week gross sales rivals some of this year’s biggest movie box office draws: “The Da Vinci Code” movie, for instance, drew $102 million in its first week …

CNN Technology

What’s this got to do with GriotVision? TV is a single, static format whereas GV is about convergence - video feeds of live games within virtual worlds where multiple participants are competing in simulations.

I’ve been going through the archives of the GriotVision pre-launch and finding some real gems. This one is a must read:

GOOD BUSINESS CASES are calculated based on numbers, but they are approved based on stories. … Clever storytelling is one of the quickest and most effective ways to gain executive understanding, buy-in and funding. It also helps attract support and cooperation from reluctant users during project implementation and operation. Vivid stories translate dry, abstract numbers into compelling pictures of how deep yearnings of decision influencers can come true. … Decision influencers are humans first and businesspeople second.

CIO Magazine

It’s to the point and has some good links and tips on storytelling in business as well.

Reuters: “Many people see Web journals or ‘blogs’ as alternatives to the mainstream media…”

Who are the “many people” who see blogs that way? If the piece is honest, and the reporter actually believes it, my guess is it’s the reporter and perhaps some of his colleagues.

But blogs aren’t an alternative to mainstream media, he says, and we agree.

He says blogs are about story telling. And Reuters isn’t? Come on. What is there that isn’t story telling?

That blogs are about story telling is not saying that they’re not journalism. Reuters tells a story today and every day. If you want people to understand an idea, you must tell a story.

Dave Winer - The Small Picture(bold emphasis mine) 

Second Life may or may not be an OS, but it is, for many, the future of online interaction. It’s not Microsoft that should be quaking in its boots- it’s Myspace, et al.

As soon as enough people figure out how to get set up and do cool stuff in Second Life, I believe it will take dominant control over the interactive space. It’s what Sims Online should have been combined with what many of the social networking sites are trying to become.

http://www.yme.nl/thoughts/2006/03/second-life-for-myspace.html