I'm A SecondLife Land Owner

As you can see from my one lousy link from yesterday, I've been looking around at buying land in SecondLife.  I finally made the plunge into upgrading my service from just  basic so I can get more Linden $$$ per week and own land.

What made me change my mind?  It certainly wasn't the speedy rendering of the graphics which sometimes takes as long as steeping a cup of tea.  Was it all of the new marketing ventures like Crayon that launched?  Nope.  It was this article from a professor (I forgot to tag the url) who thought SecondLife would be a good place to teach a class.  Yes. That simple.

One of the biggest challenges I've had to overcome working from my home office is whether I'm working or not.  Am I working hard or hardly working?  Believe it or not, I work harder from home because I have little distractions and when I have a distraction it is either my wife, kids, or my cat.  I don't take 15 minute breaks to get a cup of coffee or hide out down by my friend Craig's cube in Compliance to avoid people. 

Now if I had an office in SecondLife where I can meet people or people can drop by and actually see me at a desk they'll know I'm either working or I paid my wife to sit at my RL desk and chat away.  Also, meetings could be easier sitting around a table.  We can look at a presentation, pass around notes - heck if you bundled it with real chatting and video capabilities then everyone would feel like they are participating.  Plus, the other upside would be people could tell when you are late or leaving early.

So, I went off and grabbed some First Land.  It took me a few days, but I got this swell piece of property for L$512 and then I dropped a free house on it.  Sure it is nothing right now and maybe I don't even keep it, but I bought some property.   I did learn a few things quickly 1) Set your newly acquired land so that other people can't build anything on it.  I had to delete this one jerk's step from my land 2) Buy your First Land, ummm first otherwise you don't get the special deal 3) Don't sell it to the first person who offers to buy it from you.  Just like RL, these people know the true value 4) Location, Location, Location - I spent about an hour picking through what was offered to get this spot on a cliff. 

My next venture out in SecondLife is to look for something to buy and perhaps change my lame house around.  Yes, I'm too busy to play around with the object designer, so I'll buy what I need.  I stopped by a NYC Chef's business because he had recipes for sale; unfortunately, they were a little expensive in Linden $.

PardonMyFrench

Eric

Comments

[Taran Rampersad (aka Nobody Fugazi)]

Education? Check out Dudeney Ge over at EduNation ;-)

http://www.knowprose.com/node/16357

SL *is* a good place to teach classes and learn stuff. Forget the rest of the hype. :-)

[C.C. Chapman]

Welcome to the fun of owning land in Second Life. I do think it changes your outlook on the whole world once you have a place to call your own and can make it your own. It's a very powerful shift in the way you think.

There is a lot of great things happening in the educational space and SL. Having recently left an academic institution who was investigating Second Life as an option it's a very exciting time.

Have fun shopping and decorating.

[Eric Frenchman]

I was speaking with co-workers about this post today and you won't believe the interest I raised. What was eye opening to everyone was the ability to meet in a Second Life and review presentations and whatever else is done in a meeting (conference meeting bingo). CC, I agree with you that I think the opportunities are endless in an educational environment. Taran, thanks for the link. Not the one I was referring to, but a good one to browse.

Eric

[foreclosures]

Relationships count. When asked for three factors that influence their online purchases, 62% chose familiarity with vendor. 39% gave the opinions of friends and colleagues a major role. Only 21% said emails and coupons were influential. Makes sense to me. A coupon from an unknown does not impress yours truly. A sales- pitch email from an unknown is likely to be deleted. However, a coupon from a desired and trusted source might even get me to cough up my email address. The reverse is not true.