The first phase of any of our engagements involves what we call “Brand Translation”. During this phase, we examine a real-world brand and create an experience that is suited for Second Life, that captures the sentiments and emotions of the real world experience.

I’m really proud to announce te launch today of our project with Diageo (and Thebar.com ). Developed in partnership with our friends over at Bite Communications, this has been one of our most challenging (in a good way) and hopefully creative projects.

The big problem we started with was: “How do you translate drinking in an environment where alcohol has no effect?” We chose to focus on the social aspects of the drinking experience. The result is a virtual bar kit, available for free for any Second Life bar owner (provided you’re over 21 and located on a Mature sim without explicit content). Within the bar kit are a wide variety of Diageo’s brands including beer, wine and spirits like Tanqueray, Captain Morgan, Johnnie Walker and Guinness. All the bottles have been programmed to provide a variety of cool social networking features, including toasts and other animations. We hope everyone enjoys it and look forward to watching it be used and develop.

To launch, we’re having a Bar Crawl — please join us to celebrate.

What Thebar.com Virtual Bar Crawl — Make a Toast in Second Life!
When Wednesday, March 21st
Time 3pm-6pm Pacific Time / (6pm-9pm Eastern Time)
Where Second Life

LOCATIONS:

– ASpiRE! Isle, ASpiRE! Magazine and Modeling Agency
http://slurl.com/secondlife/ASpiRE%20Isle/144/165/26/
ASpiRE plan to have a trivia contest and great prizes.

– The Witch’s Brew
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Evalua/223/226/28

–The Blarney Stone
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dublin/80/106/26/26/
“Real world” Irish band Callaghan will be playing live at The Blarney Stone.

I will be recording one of these every morning. The basic idea is that I call someone interesting as I get in my car and talk with them until I get to work. Here is the route I will drive. What’s cool about this is that the drive takes about 10 minutes so it’s a perfect length.

This morning I talked with Mark Wallace of 3PointD. Our discussion covered the recent State of Play Conference, taxation of virtual world revenues and a variety of other things. I also pointed out tha Second Life’s population has doubled in the last 6 - 7 weeks. My challenge to you all is to guess what the population will be in the first second of 2007. Leave your guess in the comments of this post — closest guess without going over wins $500, US currency.

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Eddie and Irina came out to Sausalito yesterday and made this cool podcast. We had a really fun time chatting about Second Life and delicious takeout from our local Indian restaurant, Avatars.

Our own Rodica Buzescu was just featured in this article in the Boston Globe.

The article covers a variety of subjects including the CyberONE course at Harvard and a broad array of philanthropic and business related initiatives in Second Life. Here’s a little excerpt:

“Rodica Buzescu of Somerville, who graduated from Harvard in June, is a project manager for Millions of Us, a California-based start-up that helps companies establish a presence in Second Life.

Millions of Us joins a coterie of companies and individuals making a living developing objects and experiences in Second Life. It’s created virtual Toyotas and built the virtual loft where Warner Bros. invited avatars to preview Regina Spektor’s latest album a month before its release.”

Go Rodica!

This is very exciting . . . . you can watch ongoing coverage via 2 live video streams here.

Feels a little like the moments right before a Space Shuttle Launch. Over the next 3 days, we will be uploading audio blogs and time lapse films of the build every few hours right here, so stay tuned. Also, we’ll be on Rocketboom Friday!

Click here to see video. From the Second Life Community Convention — film created by Thought Plasma.