IBM's Almaden in SecondLife

'IBM lays down the Second Life welcome mat' is of interest; IBM has opened it's doors:

IBM is accelerating its presence inside the virtual world of Second Life, throwing open the doors to most of its properties which until now have been off limits to non-IBMers.

Starting next week, Big Blue will open 12 "virtual islands" to public access - that's anyone with a Second Life account.

Another of IBM's islands, called Almaden after a research facility near San Jose in California, is already open to anyone.

Other areas will remain private haunts for the roughly 1000 IBM employees - including CEO Sam Palmisano - who are actvie inside Second Life...

The Sakoku period of IBM within SecondLife is probably still in effect, though less so. There's the issue of not wanting their competitors to know what they are up to, which is perfectly understandable. Curiosity got the better of me, so I quickly headed over to Almaden by searching for it on the map (the SecondLife update is now underway) and spent about 10 minutes wandering around. I took some other pictures which you can see here.

Almaden

I didn't search for Almaden under 'places'; I probably should have to make sure that it is there. Of course, when I got there I quickly realized that this place was pretty much an area for customers. There were seating areas for where people could sit down and chat - which really isn't necessary (avatar legs don't get tired) but probably has some psychological value. There's an outside auditorium, an inner auditorium (in case it rains? No, probably in case they have more than one event), a skybox in the air and a somewhat hidden area that houses the Almaden Garage.

Of course, the visual reference to the Wikipedia caught my eye, especially in a surreal corporate setting. There's plenty of visual aids around explaining what IBM wants people to know - effectively Powerpoint presentations - and some free t-shirts. It appears incomplete; some things remain untextured (and there were various basic prims left around by what appeared to be IBMers). Still, there is an orientation area which walks newbies through the basics of SecondLife which is probably the best indicator of what the Alamaden sim will be used for - getting people into SecondLife to attend IBM events.

SecondLife has a learning curve, even for basic usage. It would seem that IBM's strategy with Alamedan is to hand off a SLurl on the web, get people to sign into SecondLife and get them to come to their island for orientation. This has some obvious benefits for IBM as far as branding of their products and services, and in it's own way shows a responsibility to the community when it comes to educating people on SecondLife usage. It's IBM's Welcome area, or one of them. When the other sims are opened, we'll know for sure.

If IBM has announcements in world, even the mainstream media who have been whining about how hard SL is will have to find themselves within SecondLife - simply because that's where the news will be. They've already missed a lot, and only through the Reuters SecondLife office and various weblogs has there been much coverage of events held within SecondLife. Maybe the old dogs will learn new tricks. Maybe they're at the end of 'Old Yeller'.

One thing is certain - IBM appears to be interested in bringing their clients to SecondLife to engage them, and is taking steps to make the transition to SecondLife as IBMish and easy as possible. Will it work? Time will tell.