This just went out in Second Life to members of our Inside Millions of Us Group (open enrollment, btw). It’s the announcement of a very cool event we’re putting on live this Thursday March 1st at 2PM SLT with HBO from the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival.

“Pack your skis, put on your parka, and join us for some side splitting laughter as HBO and Millions of Us present the Second Life premier of the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival brought to you by HBO.

Each year, with a mission of discovery, innovation and tribute, the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival presents cutting-edge new talent to the industry and features appearances and performances by some of the biggest stars in comedy at the height of ski season in Aspen, Colorado.

Please join us for an exclusive roundup of entertainment including live broadcast from Aspen, Colorado and footage from the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. The event will be hosted in HBO’s Virtual Comedy House, near the snow-capped mountains of Playground Island.”

The event will be hosted by the hilarious Hyla Matthews of This Just In, appearing as an avatar and presenting a variety of exclusive material from the festival.

Event starts at 2 PM SLT on Thursday, March 1st. Please IM Baccara Millionsofus to RSVP or email baccararhodes@gmail.com

Here’s a slurl.

The build is by Versu Millionsofus and it’s great. Also, this was PM Eliana Sur’s first gig as an MoU’er. She came from Wired, where she was one of the mad geniuses behind NextFest and she rocks. Well done Eliana, Versu and team!

Here’s a video we did over the last few weeks for our friends at Ogivly One in Beijing to celebrate Chinese New Year. Machinima by Buhbuhcuh Fairchild at Alt-Zoom Studios.

Nice article today via Alex Veiga at the Associated Press.¬† The cool thing about the AP and other wire services is that you get to watch the same article get syndicated out.¬† This article on MSNBC has the goofy picture of me below — most of the others are just the article sans mug shot.

Another interesting piece¬† from David Kirkpatrick at Fortune via CNN Money in which Linden Lab CTO estimates that there are now 65 ancillary businesses like Millions of Us employing 350 people and serving real world corporations with projects totalling $10 million under development.¬†¬† I happen to think his estimate of the dollar value of projects underway is low, but it’s cool to see the overall size of the market.

This piece appeared last weekend but I didn’t manage to see it or Tivo it. Here’s a link to the entire piece thanks to David Pogue at the New York Times. Spin Martin aka Eric Rice and Philip Rosedale make nice appearances in it as well. David Pogue gave me a pretty tough grilling during the filming, saying things about the Second Life economy like, “But none of it’s real” and the like. I was pretty happy to see that the one quote they used was the one where I try to explain why virtual worlds are so powerful for real world companies. “It’s never been just about products but about the transformational power of those products”. Virtual worlds show companies who their customers would be if the bounds of the real world were removed. Pretty important data.

This is going to be cool. Working with our friends (and next door Sausalito neighbors) Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners, we’re bringing MINI into Second Life. But we’re doing it with a twist.

For the release of the new 2007 MINI Cooper S, they’ve created a series called Hammer & Coop which is being released as a series of 6 webisodes here. Starting tomorrow at 5 PM SLT, we’re going to kicking off a game around the films, set in Second Life but spilling over onto the web and various other forms of social media.

That’s all I can say right now: the secret’s part of the fun. If you want to attend the initial event and haven’t gotten the invite (it comes in the form of a virtual bucket of suds containing all the necessary clothing and such), just IM Bianca Darling and she’ll hook you up.

Tomorrow morning starting at 9 am SLT we’ll be doing this event with Cisco and the Santa Fe Institute. Mixed reality with all the fixings!

As you can see, we’re running some streaming tests in preparation. The event will be streamed live to 4 locations on Cisco’s islands. Here are a couple of them.

Should be a lot of fun!

Here is the text coverage of the piece.

I still haven’t seen the televised version (it was on at 6 am I think) but we recorded it and I’ll try to figure out how to post it later. I’m pretty happy that one of my favorite observations about virtual worlds as a vehicle for business made it on the air.
“People who participate in it are showing not who they are, but who they would like to be. When Armani sells me a shirt, they’re not selling me a piece of cloth. They’re selling me the transformative capability of that product. Companies find it very interesting to see what their customers would like to be if they had the power to determine that.” ¬†

Those of us in the Second Life development business have been saying for a while that virtual worlds are going to explode in the Entertainment industry in the next year. Now it’s confirmed in Andrew Wallenstein’s recent piece in the Hollywood Reporter

This quote from me makes it official that Millions of Us is going to be laser focused on the category. “We’re going to double down that this is the year entertainment explodes in Second Life.”

Looks like Reuters (also picked up by Yahoo! and CNN) covered Scion’s ‘08 model lineup release this morning “Toyota launched a redesigned Scion xB and a new model called the xD in Second Life — an online community with 1.2 million “residents” — and at the Chicago Auto Show on Thursday, holding simultaneous press conferences in both the real and virtual worlds.”

I’m personally excited about the new xB and xD. Unsurprisingly, I love the styling of the new xB. It’s still has that iconic Scion boxy look, but now with a little bit more aggressiveness to it.

However, what I found most exciting about Scion’s support of Second Life is the potential that Second Life residents can influence potentially not only on Scion but Toyota. From the Yahoo article:

But Toyota Motor North America president Jim Press last year said he is not worried about Scion sales, calling the brand the automaker’s “incubator.”

If Toyota see’s Scion as an incubator and Scion see’s Second Life as a way to “connect with the trendsetters”, it only stands to reason that we all have an ability to influence not only where Scion goes but also Toyota with their product development. How exciting is that!?

Edit: Added link to CNN