Managing the Gray – Positive Advice That Everyone Can Use to Succeed

Intro: Welcome to the brand new world of digital marketing consumer-generated media and no control PR.  The rules of engagement are no longer black and white.  You need to change, to evolve, to manage the gray, and how do you do that?  You let C.C. Chapman help you.

C.C. Chapman: Hello, everybody.  Welcome to Managing the Gray #20.  Yes, we have reached a milestone here and I could not have done it without all your support.  Thank you this past week to everybody who sent me emails and audio comments and talked to me in person wishing me congratulations on the launch of Crayon.  It was a big deal.  I am very excited about it.  Already there are exciting things happening.  I am jazzed about that.  I had one person go, “Man, Managing the Gray is not going to turn to a whole show about Crayon, is it?”  Of course not.  Managing the Gray is still Managing the Gray.  It is your place for new media insights and what is going on in the world.  When I can tell you something about what is going with Crayon or something cool that we saw then, of course, I am going to talk about that too but everything that Managing the Gray is about is right here.  So, do not tune out, just stay right here.

Today, one of the cool things I have always talked about is I want to do interviews and insights.  Now, I have given you lots of insights over the past 19 episodes, but I have not given you any interviews.  One of the reasons for that is I hate doing Skype interviews.  I do not trust the technology, not Skype.  I just do not trust the recording technology on the PC side sometimes because whenever I do something important, something goes wrong with it.  It drives me nuts plus I much rather sit down face to face with someone and have a conversation.  There is nothing that beats face to face.  When you really want to have a conversation with someone, you record it.  Today, I got that chance.  I finally get to sit down with Alex Laats who is the CEO of Podzinger.  If you are not familiar with Podzinger, you may want to pause here, fire up your browser and go to podzinger.com.  Think of them as — this is my description of them.  They are Google for audio and video content.  You type in any word imaginable and you are going to be pulled back with video and audio content that has that in it.  They have this proprietor software that is amazing stuff that indexes it and does — I do not know how it works.  I did not ask it either because I did not want to get you technical, but it is something you need to be paying attention to because it is very slick, it is very cool and it is going places.  Today, I drove down to Cambridge, Mass., which is down the road from me and sat down with Alex and had about a half-hour conversation.  Here it is.  It is all unedited.  The only thing I edited out was the beginning when I am setting down the recorder.  We just kind of talked about a lot of different things and I hope you enjoy it.  I am so excited.  I am very, very pumped about giving this interview.  I have finally done it.  It is something that we have been trying to set up for a long time and our schedules have just conflicted every time we have tried to make it happen.  Here is about a half hour with me and Alex.  I hope you enjoy it here on Managing the Gray.  Afterward, we are just going to roll the credits right at the end of it.  So, we will see you next time.  All right?  Managingthegray.com for all your comments, concerns and questions.  Talk to you soon, guys.

[Interview with Alex Laats]

C.C. Chapman: We are sitting with Alex Laats, CEO of Podzinger.  Today, we are just going to talk about what Podzinger is, why my listeners should be using Podzinger, why everybody needs to know about Podzinger.  I am a big fan of the software.  How do you classify Podzinger?  If I were to ask you what is Podzinger, what do you say?

Alex Laats: When we say Podzinger, it is an audio and video search engine.  The Podzinger consumer-facing site, Podzinger, is focused on content in RSS format so video podcasts, audio podcasts, but we also provide Podzinger service for third parties under their brands.  We call those white label deals.

C.C. Chapman: Okay.

Alex Laats: We have a very — I do not mind saying it, Googlesque business model where we have the consumer-facing site and we have Powered by Podzinger sites.

C.C. Chapman: Right.  Okay.  I do not want to think that the reasons I think podcasters specifically should be using it or businesses should be because I have a vanity search through Podzinger where every morning in my bloglines it tells me — they say C.C. Chapman ever, which I think is a very powerful tool.

Alex Laats: Right.

C.C. Chapman: Why should marketers be aware of things like that?

Alex Laats: Actually, one of the things that we do even for our white label partners who are not fundamentally working in podcast formats they just work with us…

C.C. Chapman: Right.

Alex Laats: Is we “convert” the content into RSS formats so that you can still have that ability for us to basically perform a live search on content as it emerges and deliver as part of the RSS episodes that contain your desired search terms.  One of our white labels is weei.com in Boston.  You go to their site.  You are a big sports fan.  Anytime there is a Belicheck or Brady is mentioned or Curt Schilling you want that to come to you, you use RSS to do that.  Now, their content — and we set that up that way.

C.C. Chapman: Okay.

Alex Laats: There are a number of different things.  One is the vanity, just checking…

C.C. Chapman: Yeah.

Alex Laats: Maintaining, understanding your name as your brand.  Understanding what is happening with your name and your brand in the world of RSS-based content so just setting up for that kind of monitoring is useful.  If you are a blogger and you are bringing in other feeds on particular topics of interest to your audience, it is also useful for that.  I do not know, there is a bunch of other — who knows what other uses people use it for, but we actually have seen a very steady and continuous growth of what we call RSS searches.

C.C. Chapman: Okay.

Alex Laats: These are searches that people set up and just run automatically like your C.C. Chapman search.

C.C. Chapman: Right.  Nice.  I have no idea about what you are calling the white label, I did not realize you did that for companies.

Alex Laats: Yeah.  It has actually been a major focus for us.  What we have done is — when you are a startup, it is impossible to have enough money to kind of…

C.C. Chapman: Right.

Alex Laats: Really promote your consumer brand so we have become very respected in the podcast community because Podzinger is enabling podcasts.

C.C. Chapman: Right.

Alex Laats: The other way that we are building up awareness and it is kind of the slow and steady path, kind of one customer at a time path, is to enable audio and video search for our white little partners.  We started with Rocketboom back in the beginning of May and they have a lot of attention …

C.C. Chapman: Oh, yeah.

Alex Laats: For their video blog.  We quickly did a few other video blogs like CommandN, which Amber’s video blog.

C.C. Chapman: Yeah.

Alex Laats: Then Hak.5.  We have 88 Slide and a few other…

C.C. Chapman: Oh, cool!

Alex Laats: Kind of interesting video blogs that have the Podzinger search.  We started to get beyond this video blogging to the more mainstream media players who wanted to have search of their audio and video content.  One of the firsts was the TED conferences.

C.C. Chapman: Yeah.

Alex Laats: TED is I think Technology, Entertainment and Design.

C.C. Chapman: Yeah.

Alex Laats: Held in Monterey every February, very high end.  We are a partner of theirs and we could not even get into the main room.

C.C. Chapman: Oh, wow!

Alex Laats: It is that fancy.  Someday we can aspire to actually being in the main room.

C.C. Chapman: Right.

Alex Laats: The idea is they take their video assets, which are very valuable assets.  People pay a lot of money for them and then they make them available online as another thing, which benefits their consumer audience.

C.C. Chapman: Okay.

Alex Laats: But also benefits them because they can sponsor this with advertising.  We are the Powered by Podzinger search of the video archives for the TED conferences and they are continually adding new video from their archives.  It is all very high end video.

C.C. Chapman: Yeah.

Alex Laats: One of things that we can talk about is that — one of the things that differentiate us is that we make it possible for people to actually find and consume like longer form, richer content that is why podcasts are great.

C.C. Chapman: Yeah.

Alex Laats: The average length of the audio podcast is like 22 minutes long.  The average length of the video podcast is 7.5 minutes long so we are not looking — this enables search of content, which is otherwise really hard to navigate and find and consume, without the powerful search.  The same is true for folks like TED and then for our radio partners like Entercom Radio.

C.C. Chapman: Right.  We were talking about before we started recording that we see this as something — podcasting is a delivery mechanism.  It is all about content.  I long for the day when I go to a site — I am not going to say if it is Google, Yahoo! or something somebody new where I search for something and I get back every piece of content imaginable.  I am sure you guys dream of that.

Alex Laats: We think of it the same way and I think it is getting better.  It was not that long ago when people would come to us and say, “I don’t want podcast.  I want audio and video.”

C.C. Chapman: Yeah.

Alex Laats: So, I said, “What do you mean?” because what podcast is — podcasting is just the way of delivering audio and video.  It is a rapidly growing subset of the overall audio and video world because people recognize the power of episodic-based series of content.  It is easy to post, easy to consume.  The consumption is made very easy by folks who are lovers of the iPod, video or audio or whatever.  It is just another format and it is very rapidly growing, but yes, we totally agree.  We think that the world has got to move to a view of this that it is all web-based audio and video.

C.C. Chapman: Right.

Alex Laats: The real problems are how do we enable the consumer to very simply and very kind of usefully find the stuff that they want and then make it kind of transition very smoothly into their easy consumption of that; that is where Podzinger has started.  Search into the content and find exactly the most relevant part to you and then let you start to consume it right from there.  The other ones are the content creators.  It then enables them to help build popularity and brand by having people find their content.  Then the third here, part of the triumvirate is really the advertiser and allowing the advertiser to have a means, some nexus between the consumer and the content that that is rational and we think searches that rational nexus between the consumer and the content so that an advertiser can come in and say, “That’s a connection that makes sense to me and I can deliver my brand message in connection with whatever podcast content or audio and video content the consumer wants.”

C.C. Chapman: Right.  It goes off.

Alex Laats: That is my cellphone.  Sorry about that.

C.C. Chapman: No problem.  That is perfect segue because I know you recently launched an advertising model on Podzinger.  This is where podcasters can sign — I am not that familiar with — are you putting the ads on a search angle or is it actually in the — where does the advertising fit in?

Alex Laats: Yeah.

C.C. Chapman: I know podcasters can sign up.

Alex Laats: Yeah.  There are several elements to it.  I will start with the technology element to it.  We have enabled an ad platform, which is based on some technology, which we licensed in to manage campaigns of advertisements, but then some technology which is ours, which is technology which allows us to classify content, the idea being that if — much like consumers want to find relevant content, advertisers want to deliver their messages in connection with content that is relevant to their message in some way, right?

C.C. Chapman: Right.

Alex Laats: Which increases the power and value of the ad.  In addition to doing the speech detect technology that we do, we have enabled content classification technology that allows us to say, “Okay, is this content, sports content or is this content, technology content or is it entertainment content?”  All of that is kind of hidden underneath the surface right now in Podzinger because that is the platform that has been implemented.  That is the technology component.  The way that we implemented it, both for our white labels partners and for podcasters on Podzinger, is we have now the capability of delivering relevant video ads in connection with your content, but on Podzinger we made a specific decision.  We said, “Look, we’re going to treat all content like it’s creative commons license.”  So, we search for it and we allow people to find it and consume it and download it from your site or wherever you host it.  We are just going to do that because that is kind of the search function, but if it is the advertising function, we will assume creative commons and if we are going make money connected with advertising then the podcaster needs to opt in to that.  That is the opt-in program that we allow.  What that applies to is this whole new category of ads that we are basically needing to charge, which is the ad — what we call the playback ad, which can play in connection with that content.  When you find content, click on it and play it, you will be able to play that content.  Like when I say iPod and someone searches for iPod, if I have an advertisement that I have sold for iPods and you, C.C. Chapman, have opted into the program, if someone searches for iPod and an advertiser wants to advertise in connection with iPod, we will have an ad — in essence, it is like a pre-roll, but it is playing at the place where I clicked.  We call that a playback ad.  It is not pre-roll ad, it is a playback ad.  When that happens, if your content become more and more popular, you will get more place, we will tally the place and once we have got enough to send — actually, it is PayPal.  Once you have got enough to justify a PayPal transaction, then we will send a PayPal transaction.

C.C. Chapman: I realize if people are listening and they have not used Podzinger, they are not going to have a clue of what you just meant is one of the neat things is when you use Podzinger — if I, C.C. Chapman, and I go to the feed, I do not have to go listen to the whole podcast to hear that part.

Alex Laats: That is right.

C.C. Chapman: You enabled it so I can — I click a button and it magically — I know it is a black box, but it magically works where it jumps right to that part of the podcast whether it is audio or video.

Alex Laats: Right.

C.C. Chapman: You get to consume it immediately, which is a huge time saver for any companies because they do not have to, “I just download an hour podcast.  Where does it say my name?”  It jumps right there, which I think is a key thing about Podzinger.  I realize people may not understand that that is what you do, which is really slick.

Alex Laats: At the simplest level, we like to say that in the world of audio and video, the words in the audio and video are generally black spaced to search engines.  So, we make that black space and we shine the light on the black space, right? I am sticking with the analogy.  So that you can actually get into that and find what is relevant using search-based technology.  The premise is that we have all over the last 10 years become used to search as our means of connecting with useful information and content that we want.  The Podzinger bet, if you will, in the market is that search will be just as important in the world of audio and video as it has been in the world of kind of a text-based web.

C.C. Chapman: I think definitely because — we have [unintelligible] where it is all just there.  Give me every bit of content I can about what and give it to me on whatever device I want.  That is where we are all headed.  We cannot wait.

Alex Laats: Right.

C.C. Chapman: Actually, I have a question from one of my listeners.  He heard I was talking to you today.  He is like, “All right.  Ask him this.”  Chris, who hosts the podcast called the Financial Aid Podcast, he wants to know if there are any plans from you guys to open up APIs so that coders can plug in to Podzinger.  He was specifically asking, he was like, “I would love that Podzinger automatically spit out transcripts of my shows and brand it, say, done by Podzinger.”

Alex Laats: Yeah.

C.C. Chapman: Have you guys thought about going down that road?

Alex Laats: We have had a few folks ask us about that.  In general, we try to tell people that what we create is not a transcript, right?  It is a means to enable search.

C.C. Chapman: Right.

Alex Laats: The reason is that we take advantage of the best speech detect technology in the world.  It has been developed based on defense department funds over the last several years out of our parent company, BBN.  It is truly world class, but it does not create a transcript.  It creates a text index.  In some cases, when we speak very, very clearly and we do not interrupt each other, it actually creates very close to a real transcript, but it is not a real transcript.  Now, have we run up against a kind of a clear use that would justify our way for us to think about how to enable podcasters with that text index — we have not figured that out yet.  We are all ears.  At some point, that may become crystal clear, but in the meantime what we do for podcasters is that we have — if you want to be able to have search of your content from your site, anybody that registers their content with Podzinger, we send them an opportunity to put the pods in the search box on their sites so that they can search their content within the Podzinger environment from their site.  That is all free, simple piece of HTML that we enable.  We process all the content for free.  When people have enough volume of listeners then we will think about white label type deals where really then it becomes much more of a negotiated transaction.

C.C. Chapman: Right.

Alex Laats: In those cases, maybe there are certain things that we can do with respect to the text index itself, but in terms of opening it up for kind of everybody, we just have not quite figured out the best way to do that that benefits both the creator of the content and the kind of consumer audience.

C.C. Chapman: One of the things I think is really cool is you guys started doing Spanish, right?  The Spanish podcast or content — excuse me, I want to stop saying podcast.  Now, I assume there is going to be other languages coming down?  I think it is great because it is a global environment.

Alex Laats: It is a global environment.

C.C. Chapman: It is going to be a huge problem.

Alex Laats: Yeah.  Yeah.  Our capability goes to almost any language, but the question is there is a certain amount of expense for us for training the system on a new language.  We have the Spanish capability that is already launched as part of Podzinger for our white labels that are Spanish-based.  We have a number of conversations underway with some reasonably large Spanish-based media creators.  Beyond Spanish, the markets are really interesting so it is a matter of picking the markets.  We kind of covered North and South America and we really need to get Portuguese, which is not necessarily obvious to all of us kind of up in North America, but Portuguese really will expand and cover the base of South America and then we are going into Europe and then going into Asia, Chinese.  The people there are creating audio and video content in Chinese language, which is growing very rapidly.  Japanese is very advanced.  We have been approached by large portals in Korea about enabling this functionality for their Korean language-based audio and video functionality and then obviously the European languages because of our roots with our parent company, BBN.  We have a large base of experience in Mandarin Chinese and Arabic, but this is really a function of just expanding where the sources allow it.

C.C. Chapman: Oh, yeah.  You guys you seem to me like a very scrappy startup like you are hungry for everything.  I felt the energy the minute I walked in the office.  I was like, “All right.  I like this place already.  It has got a cool vibe to it.”  Great paintings on the wall.

Alex Laats: Okay.

C.C. Chapman: So, what is the two-year plan?  People say five-year, but five-year — who knows?

Alex Laats: Five years in this space, who knows?

C.C. Chapman: Five years — what are your goals in one or two years from now?  Where is Podzinger going to be?

Alex Laats: Well, I think that one of the things that — we do aspire to broadening the Podzinger capability across — well, we are already pretty much comprehensive with respect to podcast content that is on the web but that is growing.  That is pushing.  That will soon be at a million episodes of content…

C.C. Chapman: Wow!

Alex Laats: Within the next several months.  We have reached the point where we are pretty comprehensive, but expanding the functionality to a broader range of content on the web, audio and video that is not in podcast format as well as the word user-generating content I think opens it up into a much broader audience and some people that are looking for different types of content.  One of our goals in connection with that is to increase the total audience for the Podzinger’s service online whether that be through our white label partners or through the site.  Our aspiration for the next couple of years is to do everything to kind of continue to improve the Podzinger functionality to build that audience both directly through the consumer site and the white labels and by doing so create a very robust revenue environment through advertising to really improve that model.  I think we should be at a point in two years where we can look back and say, “That revenue model is a successful model and audio and video search is a crucial element in enabling that advertising model.”

C.C. Chapman: I was thinking back to the transcript question and the only reason anybody is curious about that and I am curious about it too, I do transcripts of all my Managing the Gray right now.  The only reason is because of search.  I want the current search engines out there to be able to find it.  They cannot find the audio, but as we move forward in a world where search encompasses everything, we will not need that anymore, which will be nice.  I am sure you want that too.

Alex Laats: Yeah.  We are thinking about — like I said, we have not figured it out, but we are thinking about ways to enable people — for example, one of the best applications may be — like I have said, we do not make a transcript.  It is not like a transcript that you would sell as a transcript.  However, we do create words which you can use to expose to the search engine bots in order to further optimize your traffic.  One of the things that we think about is allowing podcasters to expose the words in their content so that they can higher and higher kind of levels of Google juice or whatever it is that drives traffic to their site.  Our kind of goal is to enable that, but it is safe for me to say that you have to be careful because audio and video is not the same as text-based search.  People use audio and video for different reasons. If you were going to buy a new camera, okay?  You might benefit from finding a video clip about the camera, but not likely.  You are going to find a spec…

C.C. Chapman: Yeah.  Reviews and stuff.

Alex Laats: Or see that review, but if you want to be entertained or you want to be part of a community of interest on a particular set of topics, audio and video is really great for that.  It is entertainment.  It is passion.  It is those kinds of things.  The way that this all going to grow and emerge over the next two years is it is going to have its own path that is going to overlap significantly with the lessons learned in the world of broadcast television and radio programming, which is kind of our historical foundation for audio and video entertainment.

C.C. Chapman: Yeah.

Alex Laats: I like to make the analogy to kind of the way that text-based has emerged and how search has been important, but I do not think we would have all the answers as to how it is really going to play out with audio and video.

C.C. Chapman: Right.  I do not think anybody does yet.  It is going to be a lot of fun to watch.  I cannot wait — our kids, when they get into high school and do research papers, it is going to be nothing like what we used to do.

Alex Laats: No, nothing at all.  In fact, one of the interesting elements of Podzinger is the — in the community of teachers and research librarians, they have really recognized — much as they were leaders and the early Google followers, they recognize the value of Podzinger and the implications, right?  So, one of the implications especially in the world of education is if teachers and faculty members start to podcast their content and make it searchable and widely available on the web, then it really enables a meritocracy of content across the web because the best content will rise to the surface and since this is really long form, rich content, it is not the best content like on YouTube where I watch it for 30 seconds and then I share it.  It is like, “This guy has really got it going on in this topic.”  We have discovered that by searching and discovering and then continuing to play and access this content.  Suddenly, the implications in the world of education are — okay, why would you study American history from the faculty member at your university where the best faculty member is actually available as a podcast from some other university on the other side of the country or the world?  So, it has like super big implications for all that and search is critical to that especially with long form content.

C.C. Chapman: Having worked at a college, they are not petrified.  They are rightfully concerned about that exact thing or why would someone come to my school and have this professor if I can get all this content, his or her content on the web.  They are real world questions.  It could really be interesting to see what is going to happen.  Now, you are a young guy.  You are the CEO of this very cool company.  What gets you excited every morning to get up and come to work everyday?  What motivates you?

Alex Laats: I have always been in areas where the frontier was not clear.  One of the things I like about this area is that the frontier is not clear.  What I also like is areas where the opportunity space is really rich.  There are so many problems that are not yet solved.  I think in the world — my first startup that I started over 10 years ago now was in the world of voice over IP.  We built one of the first IP-based PBX business telephone systems which is now 3-com system.  That was a very rich space.  This world of audio and video online is much richer.  We are talking about a big disruption to the way the consumers enjoy and use audio and video content from the traditional broadcast television and radio world to the online world.  We are talking about a big disruption to the way that advertising dollars are allocated.  There is going to be major re-allocation of those advertising dollars.  We are talking about a whole new range of content creators.  You are a content creator with technology, which is high quality, low price, highly portable so that you can show up with a small bag and lay out, not just one-tape system, not just one recording system, but a backup, okay, which does not exceed the size of one palm.

C.C. Chapman: Crazy, yeah.

Alex Laats: All of this stuff makes this really exciting.  We have a technology base in both our search capability as well as our content classification capability, which is truly distinct and differentiated and hard.  Our challenge is to apply that to these big disruptions and to apply it in a way, which benefits each of the constituents, the content creator, the consumer, and the advertiser and allows us to build a sustainable and high growth business so that charges me up is that challenge and the fact that the frontier is not entirely known and the problem space is huge makes it exciting.

C.C. Chapman: It is going to be fun.  The disruptions are already happening.  I cannot wait until this next election happens.  It is not going to be NBC or CNN that is going to crush a candidate.  It is going to be somebody with their Nokia phone, videotaping and posting it straight to their blog from the campaign trail. Everybody can produce content and everybody has got a voice.  You are already seeing the advertising model shift like you have said.  I mean companies are shifting away from television.  There is actually an article yesterday talking about that a YouTube commercial can be more successful than a Super Bowl commercial.  That has got to scare advertisers.

Alex Laats: Yeah.

C.C. Chapman: But it is fun.

Alex Laats: You used the word scare.  It is an interesting word because there are some people that will be scared by this.  Content creators were like “I’m not gonna move aggressively.  I’ll wait to see how this plays out.”  There are going to be advertisers who will say, “I’m scared.  I’m not gonna play aggressively there until I see how it shakes out.”  Then there are going to be those that say, “Look, the best content will continue to build audience.”  For the best content, this is an expansion.  Those who are confident in the quality of their content will win much as those who are confident about the quality of their print content have continued to win and expand by going online.  Sure, maybe there is less like if you are the Boston Globe and boston.com, boston.com is very successful, large subscribers, large user base, enough unique users, Boston Globe is as strong as ever, if not stronger. I do not know its exact base is, but there is great content finding its home in these different media.  That is where we are seeing — one of the reasons we are so excited about our Entercom deal is that there is leading radio content aggressively pushing to deploy their best content online to expand the consumer experience and expand the monetization opportunity.  I think those that are kind of are sitting or thinking, whose first term in their mind is fear, they are in trouble.  They are going to be in trouble in two years.  Those people whose first thought is opportunity, they are going to be reaping the rewards in a couple of years.

C.C. Chapman: I was recently talking to a roomful of marketers and advertisers and they were like, “What are the numbers for podcast?”  I am like “That’s the wrong question,” because if the content is good and rich and people are enjoying it and they are also engaged in that content, who cares if it is on television, radio, a podcast.  If I am listening to or watching content and I am engaged with it, that is where you want your advertising dollars to be spent.  Hopefully, like you said, people who get that are going to succeed.  They are going to adapt and change as we will do, but people who are “Oh, podcasting bad,” gets none of that.

Alex Laats: Right.  I totally agree and there is a large portion of it especially in the — you know this world better than I, but in the world of advertising there is definitely that kind of a traditional audience size, listeners, demographics…

C.C. Chapman: CPM

Alex Laats: CPM.  There is certainly the ability to kind of measure those things but the metrics that can be measured in the world of online audio and video are so much richer.  We know the average durations of content.  We know the topics of content.  We know which content is listened to most frequently.  We know which parts of which content are listened to most frequently.  We know that relationships between the query terms in the contents that a content that is listened to and a lot of other things that come from search of audio and video.  The way that you put together all that data allows you to say, “Hey, I can effectively deliver,” instead of thinking of this as “I can only deliver my brand message to one big audience with one big CPM,” I can be much more surgical about how I deliver my brand message based on micro and very targeted markets where I can say, “This is a market of people that is passionate about this topic, listens to these podcasts for this amount of time, tends to search on these types of words, subject matter of the content is X.”  That is exactly what I am doing and they do that multiple times.  The trouble is that without tools to search for and understand the metrics, you have no way of allocating, but that is where we are trying to make a difference in this space for advertisers.

C.C. Chapman: Excellent.  I think you are doing a great job.  I wish you guys nothing, but the best.  Thanks for sitting down today.

Alex Laats: Oh, my pleasure, my pleasure.  You make it easy.

C.C. Chapman: All right, cool.

Closing: Thanks for listening to Managing the Gray.  Tell your coworkers.  Tell your friends and tell us what you think by leaving a comment at managingthegray.com.

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Posted in Transcript | View Comments

Managing the Gray #25 is the first podcast of 2007 around these parts and I’m psyched to be here.

Today I wanted to focus on my tips to help you reach whatever new media success you are looking for. I specifically talk about siezing opportunities, being productive, not being afraid to try out new things and how to set goals that you can and will want to achieve.

Links that I mentioned in the show or that I think will be helpful include:

• Speaking English Podcast
• For Immediate Release
• Crayonville Second Life
• One Guy’s Thoughts
• Six Pixel’s of Separation year end episode
• CastBlaster

I have lost my old transcription service, but have found a new one so don’t fret. The transcripts will return. I know a lot of you really liked them so they should be returning soon.

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Update: Full transcript of this podcast.

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I wrote a post on the crayon blog and I’m curious if you have any personal goals for it?

Swing on over and leave a comment. I’d love to hear what your thinking and focusing on this year.

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Intro: Welcome to the brand new world of digital marketing consumer-generated media and no control PR. The rules of engagement are no longer black and white. You need to change, to evolve, to manage the gray, and how do you do that? You let C.C. Chapman help you.

C.C. Chapman: Well, I am sure going to try to help you. Welcome to Managing the Gray #22. I am C.C. Chapman. How are you guys doing? Hope you are doing well.

Listen, I know this is kind of quick back-to-back, Managing the Gray’s, but that is okay, I hope you do not mind because the main reason was — it is two-fold. By the time you hear this I will probably be on a plane or already in London, England for PodcastCon UK. I am on a panel talking about unique ways to use marketing for podcast. It will be a lot of fun. People I am on the panel with are very, very cool and I cannot wait to meet — it is my first trip to London, so I am really looking forward to having some great conversations with people that I have never met face to face or may not even have met before at all, which is excellent. I am very much looking forward to that. That was part one and part two was I got this really good question yesterday through the comment line. They sent me an email at managingthegray@gmail.com and I was like, “I wanna answer this right now.” I want to answer this because I think it is a very, very valid question.

The other reason was because while I am going to be on a plane, there is going to be announcements flying, so I can pre-record this and put it out when the time is right. What that is, is I am very excited to announce that a couple of weeks ago, when Crayon went live, Bryan Person from New Comm Road, Bryper.com, said, “Hey C.C. and Joseph, what do you guys think about holding a case camp in Second Life,” and I said, “Of course, let’s do it. Let’s have it at Crayonville. No questions asked. Let’s do it.” That’s one of the reasons that we put together the island was to have events like this, where people could come together and just have events. So, we are happy to announce that if you go to casecampsecondlife.org, you can get all the details on a case camp being held in Second Life. I do not know if it is the first in Second Life. I do not care if it is the first in Second Life. I am just excited that it is happening and it is going to be a lot of fun. If you are not familiar what a case camp is, they have happened in Montreal and Toronto as far as I know; those are the two that I am aware of. It is where you get up and you give — rather than a traditional speech, there are rules. You are limited to five slides. In this case, you are going to have 10 minutes and you present a case. This is not a sales pitch, this is not theory. This is a real case on something you did in the new marketing space that you want to share with the world. Does it have to be Second Life-related? Heck, no. I am thinking that, if not all of them, I am thinking most of them are not going to be on that. We are looking for people to present. We are looking for people to attend. Because of the limitations of how many people can come, we are going to do it as random style. People are going to register and yes, the presenters get in. There are the other people that have to get in, you know, the organizers and such. We are going to randomly pick people out of the registrations to attend. We figured it was the only fair way because first come, first served does not work because when you hear about this, when I hear about this is different and all that. We just want to make it as fair as possible.

Some people are not going to like it, but we are trying something new. This is going to be the first of many case camps I hope and I hope they bounce off all over the place in Second Life. I think they would be very cool. Would we have another one in Crayonville? Of course, we will, but wherever you want to have them, I think that is great, so casecampsecondlife.org. Bryper has been doing some huge things on this. Eli, I am not sure how you say it, from casecamp.org and Kate from My Name Is Kate — the four of us have been going non nonstop so it has been a lot of fun.

So, now, let me get into this comment. It is Second Life-focused, but it is a really good question that I think — these are the type of questions I do not think are getting answered enough out there in the blogosphere, the podosphere and the mainstream media and I wanted to give you mine, C.C. Chapman’s, perspective on the answer to this question. I think it is important if you guys are thinking about — if you have a client or if you yourselves are thinking about getting into Second Life and you see these articles about building islands and stuff I think this question really hits home to that. He said it to both me and Joseph. I do not know if Joseph is going to take an answer, I did not check with him. He is his own man, it is all good, but here is the comment and the question.

Paul: Wow you did it! I heard you talking about getting old school media interested in reporting about how your new company, Crayon, is doing business online with its headquarters at Crayonville Island on Second Life. Specifically, you commented on when you might be covered in the Wall Street Journal. Well today, Monday, the 13th of November, I was very excited to see my Wall Street Journal. Right there on the front page of the section B is a large picture of Crayon’s virtual Second Life meeting room with, I believe, you Joseph and you C.C. attending what seems to be a very informal meeting. They even included close-up headshots of Joseph and his avatar. However, I was dismayed to read the part about it costing roughly 20,000 to build a Second Life presence at least, according to Emily Steel, the article’s author, Industry Executives. I have been wanting to delve into the Second Life experience, but this now has me a little apprehensive about the whole thing. Could you guys comment a bit about your experience with building your Crayonville Island? How long did it take? How much did it cost? I know you had help from the people at Millions of Us and that probably kept cost down, but when the Wall Street Journal talks about a company like Volkswagen AG spending 20,000 to build their presence, what exactly are they spending all that money on? Is it spent paying their staffers to design and build a lavish Second Life presence? Or, is a lot of it going to Linden Labs for paid promotions and “land purchases?” Well, I am really enjoying the podcast, guys. Keep it up and thanks a lot. Cheers from Paul at pdvd.wordpress.com.

C.C. Chapman: It is a really good question there and something that I am sure many of you are thinking about. So, again, this is my take on things and some of it is definitely factual, some of it is opinion-based. When you go to buy land, there are two major decisions you can and — Oh, first off, the answer to the question is no. It does not have to cost $20,000 and the answer is also yeah, it can cost a lot more than $20,000, but there are two different ways to go. You can buy land. A parcel of land can be any size just like in the real world. This is just like the real world. You can buy a parcel of land. It costs more depending on how much land you buy. You buy an acre as opposed to 10 acres, it costs a different price. Likewise, just like in the real world — all of these is like in the real world, the location matters. If you buy an acre of prime, prime ocean real estate in a very nice neighborhood, it is going to cost a lot less than a little hovel on top of the hill in the middle of the dirtiest zone of Second Life imaginable. It is just the way it works. So, it all depends. You can go in and buy land right now. Anybody can go into Second Life. When you are in there, if you do a Find command, which is Control F on the PC, F where it is on the Mac. You can type in Land Sales. You tell it how much you want to spend. You say how much land you want, how many acres, square meters you want. It will bring back results. You can just go on that land right now and click Buy and you buy and you own it and it is yours. Okay?

Now, here is something to think about because I have had a Second Life office for awhile now. I have always had secondlifeoffice.com redirect to wherever that is. Now, here is the interesting thing. It has moved behind the scenes a couple of times and one of the reasons is — here is the biggest thing about not owning an island. I am going to talk about islands in a minute. One of the biggest things about not owning islands is you cannot control your neighbors. Whoever pops up, whoever is next to you now might not be there tomorrow. My old Second Life office, a perfect example. When I bought it, it was next to a beautiful replica of Walden Ponds. Someone had actually built a ginormous replica of Walden Pond, complete with the woods, the deer, everything. It was gorgeous. Within a week of me buying it, they had sold it and it was empty. Then came along a sex shop. Then came along a beautiful, wooded playground, that is what it looked like, but it was a role playing area. Now, it is empty again. You never know. That is one of the biggest pitfalls about buying land not on an island. For corporations, it is something to very much think about, is that you are not going to be able to control who your neighbors are.

Now, on that note, there is zoning in some cases. As an island owner, people who sell pieces of island, there are huge real estate companies in Second Life, they can zone it. You will see an island that has a theme. Themes may be a better description. You will see an island theme, lots of beach. You might see a winterscape, you might see a dreamscape, you might see a Japanese — I have seen some beautiful builds that are all Asian-influenced, they are beautiful. Samurai Island is a perfect example. Warning, Samurai Island is violent, so be careful if you go there. Everything has a certain theme to it. You can buy land there. It is more expensive because it is at a premium. It is just something to keep in mind. Now, when you buy an island, the biggest difference about the island is you control everything. Everything about the island is yours. You control access, you control who can and cannot get there, you control the night, the day, you control everything. That is one of the reasons so many people go for islands, especially on the corporation side because they want to be able to control that level of access and have that level of detail about it.

Now, how much does an island cost? Actually, the prices are just about ready to go up. Actually, by the time this goes out, they may already be up. An island costs, you buy it Linden Labs and think of it as buying a web server, it is what you are doing, you are buying web server space, it costs $1695 USD to buy the island and then you pay $295 a month maintenance fee. It is just like paying maintenance on a server. That is how much an island costs. That gets you a plain, flat, green island in the middle of nowhere or wherever you put it. That is what it gets you. You can start with that and be done. Now granted I do not think it is going to be very exciting to you as a marketing person or anybody in Second Life, so you have to hire builders to build your land. So, the $20,000 quote, yeah that is probably a good estimate. If someone asks me right now, “C.C., I wanna buy an island for my company and I wanna have it built up. I wanna have buildings. I wanna have some interaction. I wanna have it very nicely done. How long is it gonna take and how much do you think it’s gonna cost?” I would tell them roughly, I would say estimate between $10,000 and $20,000 and probably a month of build time because there are going to be lots of — it is just like building a website.

Do you remember the first person you paid to build a website? You cannot be talking about last week. Go back 10, 12 years when there was not a whole lot of people building websites. Think about what you paid for that. It was not cheap! It is supply and demand. There is not a huge number of people in Second Life who are builders, who are skilled builders. A lot of you play around, which is a great thing, but that is what it is. It depends. You can hire an independent builder who is probably going to cost you less than a big company builder. Now, I am not going to say that independent builders are not as good as big company builders because I think there are some amazing independent builders out there. There are tons of them. It is just a matter of you finding the right one that is for you and that is what is key. There is a developers’ directory and a builders’ directory on secondlife.com. Look them up, talk to them, see what they have built, talk to them. That is the key. Most of them, at least most them I have worked with and most of them I have seen quoted, work on usually an hourly basis rather than a build basis, but I have also worked with some who do on a build basis. You talk about what you want to build, they say, “Okay, that’s gonna cost X,” and you go, “Oh okay.” I have also worked with people who charge based on hourly. You start with an idea and of course the minute you get going, you know how scope creep is, you build more and more and more. You have more ideas, more ideas so it costs more in the end.

The other thing I have learned is that there are builders and then there are scripters. Some do both, do not get me wrong. A perfect example, on Crayonville, our builder built all the buildings. She put it all up, she put up the wallpaper on it, she put up the little things, but she did not script. She did minor scripting, but when like I wanted — when I wanted the jukeboxes and the diner to play music, they are still not happening yet because our scripter is working on that. It is a separation of power and you are paying them individually. Some people will do both. You can also pay for decorators, we decided not to. I have done all the decorating on Crayonville. So, if you do not like a chair, it is my fault. I mean, no, because I am a guy and I do not know this stuff. I am figuring out as I go along. There is that level of difference, too. Every piece of furniture you buy costs money so it can add up very, very quickly or very slowly, depending on how you do it. It is the nature of the beast.

Something else that I wanted to mention is about controlling the island. You control whether it is PG or whether it is mature. All land is labeled as that, so if you are going to buy some individual land as opposed to an island and you are really worried about who might pop up as your neighbor, buy some PG land because that is going to make it — granted you still do not know what is going to pop up next to you, but you can be pretty sure that it is not going to be anything of the adult nature, so look for PG land. It actually will say it right in the “About Land” tab. Actually, it also says that up in the bar across the top of Second Life. Wherever you are, it says that so keep a look out for that. Do not be scared by $20,000. It could cost that much. Might it cost a lot less? Yes, it will and I strongly encourage people to work with people who have done it before.

There are project managers in Second Life. Right now, I own a separate piece of land outside of Crayonville that I hired a project manager to help me build. She is doing an amazing job. She is helping me do that. She knew the builders, I did not know them. She reached out to the builders, she found me a builder. We talked, we went to the land. We talked about what I wanted to do. It is just like any other requirements document on any other campaign you have done. Do not think that just because this is a virtual world, it is different. You have to sit down, you have to write a brief, you have to have discussions, you have to lay out the scope of what it is and then you start building. It is like every other thing you have ever worked on. Think of it like a website. When I was laying out — the office has to go in the middle of the island. Yeah, we could have put it in another corner, we said, “No, let’s put it in the corner.” “I wanted the amphitheatre in the corner.” You lay those things out. It is just like when you build a system or you do a campaign. You want to get it done and make those decisions before it goes to print, the same thing with Second Life.

I know I am kind of rambling here and I have kind of gone in a couple of different directions, but I hope I am giving you the information you are looking for on getting land in Second Life. Do not be scared off by high price tags, it all depends on the campaign. You can get really creative with what you want to do. You could buy a piece of land and just stick a pole in the middle or stick a lighthouse and put an ad on top. Is it going to get you what you want? Probably not. It is going to cost you to do it effectively. Now, I am not saying it is always top money. It might be time that is going to cost you because you could build it yourself if you wanted to, you are just going to learn the skills, but to do it right you have got to have the skills. If you do not have them and I do not have them — I do not have builder skills, I just do not have them, I have to reach out and find them. Let me tell you, there is a thriving building community in Second Life that you can work with. My experiences so far have been hit and miss. I have had builders promise things and then they disappear. I have had them promise and not deliver, but I have also had them promise things and I get them. It is just like in the real world. You do business with people and then if they do not work out, you never do business with them again. Second Life is no different than the web. There is no difference in the agency world. There is no difference in life in general in that sense. So, find people, ask around.

One thing I wish and I really want to make this happen, so if you want to help me, let me know. I would love to get this built. I want a job posting system in Second Life where people can rate builders and this goes beyond builders too. Like, I want to hire a receptionist for Crayonville. I have no way of doing that right now and that drives me nuts. Would it not be great to have a board where I could go and post, “C.C. is looking for such and such.” They used to have forums on secondlife.com which have been disbanded unfortunately, which had that to an extent, but I would still like to have it much more detailed than that where people could rate like eBay where before you buy something, you can actually see the ratings on people. It does help you make a decision. I wish I could have that for builders and scripters and decorators and event planners in Second Life, every type of thing possible because people are doing it. That is what I wish so I wish that can happen soon. Oh, I am wishing a lot today. It must be the rain. That is the way it goes.

I really hope that answers your question about does it have to cost me $20,000? Keep in mind, like with anything else sometimes you get what you paid for and free is not always the best solution. My advice to you, in Second Life, in anything new marketing that you are trying, work with someone who has been there before, work with the expert. Get them in there, learn from them. Pay them what they deserve, but learn from them as well and then take that knowledge and take it to the next project. That is really what it is all about.

I am going to get out of here. I know we have been very focused on Second Life lately and I hope that has not deterred many of you listeners because we are getting back to the — it is just Second Life is a hot thing right now and there are a lot of questions coming in and people seem to be asking me a lot with the questions, which is cool. I love that. I am happy to answer it and I am very happy also to do cool things like this where we boil it down to a very basic question. How much is it going to cost me to play in Second Life? It does not have to cost you anything. You can do a lot of stuff for free. You can interact for free. When you start building and you want to do a proper marketing campaign in Second Life or to open up a proper presence in Second Life, then you have got to talk about it. It all depends on what you want to do, how much it is going to cost. It is the nature of the beast, we all understand that. Virtual worlds are no different, in Second Life, or there or any of the other — any of these virtual communities, they are all going to have different costs associated with them and you just need to be conscious of that and think about it.

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to email me at managingthegray@gmail.com. I am going to get out of here. I will talk to you soon when I get back from London. I will have plenty of pictures and I am sure I will be blogging something before then, so you guys all take care. Thank you for listening. Thank you for passing on the word. I have got a bunch of new listeners lately and it has been very nice to hear from them all. It has been very, very fun. I will talk to you very soon. See you around Second Life. Swing by Crayonville, swing on by cc-chapman.com, say hi and I will talk to you very soon. Take care.

Closing: Thanks for listening to Managing the Gray. Tell your coworkers. Tell your friends and tell us what you think by leaving a comment at managingthegray.com.

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Posted in Transcript, second life | View Comments

We’ve all left jobs because of our boss. If you haven’t then you are VERY lucky!

One of my daily reads, RepMan, just posted about a new Florida State University study that discusses this exact topic.

No surprise that:

…employees work for people who don’t keep their word, don’t give credit when it’s due, talk poorly about them behind their backs and invade their privacy…

If you are a manager of any sort I suggest reading the study and then taking an honest look at you and how you manage.

Posted in Workplace | View Comments

This new year just got a whole lot more interesting when I got a BETA invite from The Venice Project.

I’m already very impressed and I can see huge potential from this. I’m very curious where they are thinking of taking it from here because I can already see some very good marketing angles, ties into lots of other technology and an almost take over of my desktop if they were to add some features.

This is certainly going to be a shift in the way I consume content. The fact that this is so young and already so powerful excites all the senses.

Stay tuned. I am!

Posted in Cool Tools, Video | View Comments

Intro:  Welcome to the brand new world of digital marketing consumer-generated media and no control PR.  The rules of engagement are no longer black and white.  You need to change, to evolve, to manage the gray, and how do you do that?  You let C.C. Chapman help you.

C.C. Chapman: Well, hey everybody.  Welcome to Managing the Gray #21.  I am C.C. Chapman, VP New Marketing for Crayon and all around just new media dude, that is what I love, that is what gets me excited.  Today on Managing the Gray, we are going to talk about a lot about Second Life, but a lot about some other things too.  It is kind of interesting.  The focus on Second Life this week, this episode, whatever you want to call it, is more from the angle of opening up a real world business in Second Life.  Crayon recently did this and it has been weird.  I have been in Second Life since February and I spend a lot of time there anyways and everything has shifted since the company has gone live and I am just going to talk about some of the different things, some things you got to think about, just some reflections just because I know a lot of people are thinking about this even just freelancers who might be thinking about setting up a virtual office where there is just, you know, a shack down by the beach, maybe it is a skybox up in the sky; who knows?  If you are really going to conduct true business in Second Life, or any virtual, I think this is probably going to be true for any virtual world and I have been stressing that a lot lately is that there are other virtual worlds out there right now.  I am just most impressed by Second Life and eventually there will be other virtual worlds out there.

The concept of virtual worlds as an environment where people chat and interact and conduct business is going to expand as we move forward; there is no doubt about that and Second Life is definitely going to be part of that.  Is it going to be the only kid on the block?  Heck, no.  Just like there are lots of different browsers, different pod catchers, different everything.  That is the way it goes, competition is a good thing and when it comes around I am looking forward to it.  I just had to get that out there, but first I want to play an audio comment from someone that I met in Toronto.  Toronto, yeah, that is way up, right?  From New Mexico?  But this guy came and this comment I have been meaning to play it and I missed it on the last show, so check this out.

[drum roll]

Reid Givens: Hey C.C.  It is Reid from New Mexico.  You know, it was great seeing you up at the Canadian Marketing Association’s Digital Marketing Conference in Toronto.  It was a really great event for anybody who could not show up.  I mean the list of speakers was just outstanding and of course C.C. you were definitely one of them.  Now, I was leaving an audio comment because of something you said in your presentation.  You were talking about in order to do a podcast successfully, you just have to make yourself an expert, which is true.  We have known for a long time that that is one of the things that you have to do in order for people to pay attention, in order for people to, you know, show up and continue to download the podcast or to engage with you.  They want to know that there is something you have to offer, but a lot of the side conversations that I heard there seemed to doubt this in themselves either standing around the coffee break table or, you know, sitting outside, making phone calls, you would hear people get together in their groups usually with other people in their company and talk about why they cannot be an expert and it was just kind of shocking to me, you know, so many people going, “I just don’t know enough to really be an expert in my space.”

Well, I do not think that is necessarily true.  If you look at it, if you are working for a company that manages to make enough money to keep paying you, you have got to be an expert in something; you are bringing some kind of value to your market.  In order to do that, you have got to be an expert in something.  Dig through your organization, dig through yourself, find the people who really know what is going on.  That is where your expertise lies.  So, if you just look for the expert, you will find them, and guess what?  It is you!  So, get out there, do what you need to do, you know, engage in the space, get with your customers, it is really the most important thing.

Well, C.C., it was great seeing you out there.  You will be hearing from me soon I am sure and keep up the good work, man.  We really appreciate it.  One final comment before I forget.  If there is anybody who listens to this podcast or anybody who knows anybody who lives in the Albuquerque area or pretty much anywhere in New Mexico that is into this space; have them try to get a hold of me.  You know, drop me an email, you can send it to reid@reidgivens.com, that is R-E-I-D at R-E-I-D-G-I-V-E-N-S-dot-com, or I am sure if you let C.C. know or post a comment to his blog or something, somebody will let me know.  Trying to find some people in my area that are into this space, so if you know anybody or if you are that somebody, you know, let one of us know so that we can get together and start moving it forward.  Thanks!

C.C. Chapman: No, thank you, Reid.  Reid was great.  Meeting Reid in Toronto at the Canadian Marketing Association was amazing.  He came up all the way from New Mexico to the Canadian Marketing Association conference.  Do you see the weirdness there?  But I think it is amazing because what was cool about it was he wanted to interact, he wanted to be involved in the space and he came up with dinner.  It was really cool, Michael Seaton and Brian Eisenberg and I know I am forgetting someone else, and Mitch Joel.  It was great to hang out with Reid and Reid, one thing I am — I am going to agree with you that people can be their own expert.  What I was getting to in my podcast presentation was, I said, “When you’re speaking, when you’ve got the microphone, when you’re talking into it, you’re the expert on whatever it is you’re saying.”  I am not trying to make people think that they can, you know, “I am the la-la-la…”  You do not know what it is, is that as you are speaking about it, treat it like you are the expert.  Maybe you are not, but speak about it, speak from your heart, speak from what you know because what you know other people are going to want to know.  They are going to want to listen to what you have to say and they are going to want to consume that knowledge from your head.  That sounded really sci-fi freakish but it was not meant to be.

Reid, one of the things I am going to give you a bit of advice on is I know you were saying you are having a hard time finding people in your area.  What you should do is — it reminds me back to when I first started podcasting in December 2004.  I started going, “Where’s all the Boston podcasters?  There’s got to be people in this area into it,” and I could not find any.  There seem to be all these other patches, but nothing in — so I just started a Yahoo group doing a podcasting.  We have since moved to Google groups, so people who are listening and want to find us, but I started a group and what was amazing is people started coming because other people started going, “Man, there’s no one in this space either!” and they would go search the web and they would find the group, so why don’t you start a group, Southwest Social Media or something.  Something cool and tag it appropriately and people will find it.  Put it in Yahoo! groups or Google groups or Gather or My Space or LinkedIn, whatever you want, but I guarantee people will probably start coming because you cannot be the only one in any area.  This goes true for any area.  If you are into a topic, there has got to be other people out there.  Stick your flag in the ground, a virtual ground, if you will, and people will find you, trust me.  So, thank you for the comment.  If anybody else wants to call it a comment — Reid obviously produced that one, which was very, very nice, but you can also call him in at 206-309-4729.

Now, I said I want to talk about Second Life.  What has been interesting is, so we have Crayonville, it is our main office and we treat it like an office.  We have meetings, we have social gatherings, we are going to be having conferences and seminars and presentations and live podcasts and group meetups and everything else.  It is different. It is really interesting because let us face it, Second Life is a social network, it really is.  It is chat on crack.  I mean, it is — take all the best things of chat, all the best things of social networking and kind of put them in a three-dimensional video gamesque-like environment and you have got Second Life.  Well, when you are doing business, it is kind of hard.  Little things like the other night, I was actually in a world and a client was there and we were talking about things and then suddenly, I had all these friends popping up and arriving.  A little piece of etiquette, it is probably the biggest piece of etiquette – if you see somebody online — one of the things in Second Life, you can see wherever they are and you can teleport right there.  That is just like walking in the front door without knocking or ringing the doorbell.  You do not do it in real life so why do it in Second Life?  It is rather rude.  Take two seconds, IM them, say, “Hey, do you mind if I swing by?”  If they do not answer, do not do it, understand that they might be doing business.

It was really funny because when people started arriving, I am IMing my friends, “Dudes, I can’t talk right now, I’m doing business, please understand,” and they were really cool about it.  Just keep that in mind, do not drop in on people.  It kind of freaks them out.  What is interesting though too is I realized the other day that I now have events on my calendar and I treat them just — the difference between real life and Second Life do not exist.  Like today, the Second Life business communicators are having a little get together.  I put it in my calendar just like any — it says, “Second Life Business Communicators.  Location:  Hipcast Pavilion.”  I did not need to specify that it was Second Life.  I did not think about it.  It was just another location that I have meetings at now.  I have those all the time now and it is very chic.  I wrote I am having a concert at my new place, my personal space over in Dirty where I wrote on the calendar today, it said, “C.C. concert at night,” which is what I usually write when I am going to a concert, on our main calendar here in the house and I wrote it just like anything else only that is in Second Life, that is kind of funny, but I am going to be busy so thus I put it on the calendar.

So, the blurring of the lines, I do not think about it.  It is just like if I have a Skype conference call.  I do not have to specify Skype, I just know, “Oh, I’m talking to, Neville or I’m interviewing David MacMillan.” I am not going to be seeing him face to face.  I am doing it via Skype.  I do not think about the technology anymore.  It is just I am connecting with the people and that is what is very, very cool.

One of the other things that has been really interesting, a learning experience, is you want to chat to everybody.  People are coming in, I am like, “Hey, mornin’, what’s up?”  You want to talk to everybody but you instantly have four or five people and you cannot talk to everybody as lengthily as you would like and let us face it, a lot of the questions you are going to be answering are newbie questions.  I do not know how many times I have told someone how to sit in the chair, I am like, “Hey, let’s go sit over here and have a cup of coffee,” and they are like, “How do I sit?” and that is great.  I love educating people.  I am actually writing something right now on the basics so that I can give it to people because I know people need that and it does not seem to be out there in that handy of a format, so I am just trying to put it out, really basic as “How do I sit?” because let us face it, there is an orientation island but everybody skips it because they want to get right in and start having fun.

If you do a search for “Help” on the map, you will find Help Island where you can go after you leave, anytime once you are in world because you cannot go back to Orientation Island.  You can check that place out, too, it is handy, but I am trying to put together the basic guide.

One of the other things we found is interesting is the concept of having a receptionist is really critical because I might be sitting over in a chair or I might be actually doing something elsewhere on the island or elsewhere in the world.  I could be anywhere in the world and people might not realize how to get a hold of us yet and so I had a friend of mine the other day, she did an experiment for me, just sat down as a receptionist for the day, and she was answering questions left and right about the company, about what we are doing here.  She would email me or IM me, both in world and outer world saying, “Hey C.C., can you come in for a second, so and so is here to talk to you.”  It worked just like a real world.  It would be just like if I was in my office in the building and the front desk person called up and said, “Hey, Mr. Chapman, somebody’s here to see you.”  It is the same concept.  The fact that it is virtual, the fact that it is on a computer; it does not matter.  It is still conducting business.  I think that is really, really entertaining and it is challenging, it is, because Second Life, I used to be able to go in and just do whatever, you know, wander around, be Cain and just wander and I cannot do that as much anymore and that is a little sad, but it is also exciting because the other stuff I am doing is great.  I mean, to be able to walk somebody from Coke, from the front desk over to our theatre and show them the new Diet Coke and Mentos ad was fun and to see them go, “Yeah, I don’t like this one as much as the last one,” or “I like this version better,” and it was fun to see — just to have the interaction and we shared that experience.  Yeah, it was virtual, but it was real.  There is a bumper sticker, “It’s virtual but it’s real.”

I think Second Life is a really interesting thing.  Another point that people are worried about from a business standpoint is, there are limitations on the servers that host the islands.  There are limitations on the number of people you can have and people start freaking out about the limitations and I do not get it.  Yes, would I like to have 300 people on my island instead of the 50 or 60 max?  Oh sure, definitely.  Do not get me wrong, but at the same time, when you book a room in the world, you know, when you book a conference room or you book a meeting room or a restaurant reservation, you have a set number that you put, you are used to that.  Why do we think that the virtual world has to be different?  I do not get it.  The fact that I can pull 50 to 60 people from around the world together in one spot, that is pretty cool.  Yeah, would I rather it would be more?  Definitely, and we will get there, but do not let it scare you off.  Embrace it, use it, leverage it.  Be unique, think of something different.

If you sell out an event, maybe you should do another event right away and get more people.  It is just the nature of the beast and do not throw up your hands and go “Oh, if I can only have 60 people at the event, I’m not doing it.”  That is 60 people you can engage with.  I do not get why you would pass up any opportunity.  Record it, put it out afterwards.  Reach more people.  There are lots of different ways to do it.  I seem to be having that conversation a lot with a lot of people because we are planning events and I have been doing lots of event planning lately and it is a road block, but it is one you can get around.  It is more of a speed bump than a road block.  Yeah, it hurts for a minute but you just keep going afterwards, so do not let it scare you off.  Check it out, try it out, do those things.

On that note, something I want you to think about.  Yeah, it is a little self-serving, do not get me wrong, but I have got the microphone at the moment.  One of the things I have been thinking a lot about is — so on my personal space I am opening up a cafe, I am opening up the U-turn Cafe which I do a podcast for, but I wanted a place for people to socialize and I want another space for live musicians to play for free, obviously.  A musician wants a stage to play, come on over, you can play it here.  I am going to do everything I can to help them to do that and one of the things that is funny is somebody said, “C.C., are you gonna get sponsorship?” I said, “I don’t know.”  I said, “You know what?  I think it would be a great opportunity for a company to sponsor it.”  You see, every concert tour and every venue out there is sponsored by somebody.  Do not want naming rights from somebody?  “Oh heck no, forget that, it’s mine,” but if someone wanted to sponsor, if company X, the Company X Friday Acoustic Series or something, who knows, and they want to put a banner up behind my stage or give out free product in Second Life, heck yeah, you could do that and I do not think people think about that.  That is cheap money.  It is a small change if you want it compared to other campaigns and that could be easily something to experiment with and try.  I think it is a neat thing and something that I have been thinking about and I am not opposed to because somebody asked me and I had to stop and think about it.  Was I opposed to that?  I do not think I am.  I think I would love — especially if it was like some technology company or even an alcohol company, anybody.  I would put up a banner behind the performers that says “sponsored by” or “brought to you by.”  Oh come on, of course I would.  In Second Life, that is really easy to prim.  I pop it up, I take it down afterwards; real easy to do.  It was just something I was thinking about, an opportunity that I have not seen much of in branded experiences.  Why not?  You are having a dance party, you are having a casino game, why not get it sponsored?  If it is just for that day, that week — it does not have to be intrusive at all.  It can be very simple and very dead on and very appropriate as well and the neat thing is where I control my space, I can pick who I say yes or no to.  It is just something to think about as you are playing in Second Life.

If you are looking for me in Second Life, check me out — you can find me — secondlifeoffice.com currently does bounce over to the Crayonville offices until I get my other space up.  I am Cleon Goff, C-L-E-O-N, space, G-O-F-F.  Just look me up, say hi.  I would love to talk to you.  I always ask people when they come in, “So, how did you find this?” and they say, “Oh, I listened to this podcast,” and I love it when somebody says, “Oh, I listen to Managing the Gray,” and I am like, “Oh, cool!  Well, nice to meet you.”

It is a lot of fun, so try Second Life, do not be afraid of it and if it is not for you, it is not for you because it is not for everybody.  Is it the end-all solution for everything?  No.  I stress that to everybody.  Podcasting is not the right solution for everybody either.  Social media and new marketing as a whole, there are so many tools in that arsenal that you can pick from, so many of them.  Figure out what is right.  Try them all because if you do not try them, you do not know if you will like them or not.  Try them all.  What fits, move forward with and what fits for you is not going to fit for the next person or your next client or the next person you talk to.  You have got to figure out there is not a silver bullet to solve any problem except maybe werewolves and even that I do not know.

So, I am going to get out of here.  As always, you can email me at managingthegray@gmail.com or call up the comment line, 206-309-4729, and as always, managingthegray.com has got all kinds of goodness going on, on it, lots of blog posts over there outside of the podcast as well, so I would love to talk to you soon and I hope you are doing really well and get out there and try it.  Just try stuff, guys and girls.  Be creative, embrace this new world.  Ask your questions, be the expert.  All right?  I will talk to you soon.  Take care.

Closing:  Thanks for listening to Managing the Gray.  Tell your coworkers.  Tell your friends and tell us what you think by leaving a comment at managingthegray.com.

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