Real Life and Second Life Come Together Via the Twitterverse

While the flurry of activity that is the Consumer Electronics Show has passed, there are still some great stories to come out of it. I was there for two entire hours myself, thanks to a “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” type of experience getting to Vegas. Although, instead of an obnoxious guy hanging with me, I had my Twitter friends.

The point of my visit was to set up a mixed reality event between Second Life and Real Life to launch our new Crystal monitor. Crystal is a product for the creative, style-conscious person and SL residents are builders, designers and style mavens; so, where better to take this experience?


I turned again to the great team at Involve to bring Crystal into virtual reality, and they’ve created a true functioning SL version that is available for one more week at Dell Island. As Aleister Kronos noted, it has the “nice touch” of being able to set the texture for the screen.


Well, weather and other unfortunate issues conspired to keep me stuck in the Phoenix airport during the time I was supposed to be setting up the computers and streaming video from the Dell Lounge booth at CES. I was twittering about my frustrations (you could find it all archived on http://www.twitter.com/lpt there) when a fellow metaverse evangelist, Peter Haik at Metaversatility saw my distress. He was at CES and asked if there was anything he could do to help. Well, to make the long story a little shorter, he dropped by the Dell booth and ensured that everything was ready to go, so that I was able to simply slide in at the last minute and unveil the virtual Crystal. Thanks very much, Peter!


Yes, I did finally make it to Vegas (as seen in this photo), and as Dan Zehr of the Austin American-Statesman noted once the people in Vegas got to mingle with the people in Second Life, things got really interesting.


I had the opportunity to meet Paul Jackson of Forrester in RL, and we continued discussions we have had previously via the phone about the viability of Second Life and the future opportunity of virtual worlds. He’s recently published a new report titled “Getting Real Work Done In Virtual Worlds.” I highly recommend it as a good read for anyone interested in this arena.


After CES closed for the evening, Peter (who had stayed to assist throughout the event) and I watched my LSU Tigers win the BCS national championship (couldn’t help but brag) and chatted about exciting things happening in other areas of virtual world development such as Metaplace and Multiverse.


All-in-all, I left CES inspired by the “village” of Twitter as a support system and jazzed about the continued opportunities in virtual worlds. As Gartner predicts, by 2011, 80% of people will have a “second life” even if it’s not in Second Life…

About the Author: Laura Pevehouse

Laura Pevehouse was profiled as one of five “social media mavens” in the March 2009 issue of Austin Woman Magazine and named an AdWeek’s TweetFreak Five to Follow. She has been part of the Dell organization for more than 15 years in various corporate communications, employee communications, public relations, community affairs, marketing, branding, social media and online communication roles. From 2014-2018, Laura was Chief Blogger/Editor-in-Chief for Direct2DellEMC and Direct2Dell, Dell’s official corporate blog that she help launch in 2007. She is now a member of the Dell Technologies Chairman Communications team. Earlier in her Dell career she focused on Global Commercial Channels and US Small and Medium Business public relations as part of the Global Communications team. Prior to that, she was responsible for global strategy in social media and community management, as well as marcom landing pages, as a member of Dell’s Global SMB Marketing, Brand and Creative team. When she was part of Dell’s Global Online group, Laura provided internal consulting that integrated online and social media opportunities with a focus on Corporate Communications and Investor Relations. She managed the home page of Dell.com, one of the top 500 global web sites in Alexa traffic rank, and first brought web feeds and podcasts to the ecommerce site. In her spare time she led Dell into the metaverse with the creation of Dell Island in the virtual world Second Life. Laura has earned the designation of Accredited Business Communicator from the International Association of Business Communicators, and received her Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Louisiana State University. Before joining Dell Financial Services in 2000, she worked at the Texas Workforce Commission and PepsiCo Food Systems Worldwide.