Company Updates

Update from Second Life

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Hope everyone out there has been having a great holiday season!  I can’t forget to thank Neville Hobson for inviting me to attend my first ever virtual world holiday party last week at the Crayon headquarters.  It was a bit chaotic with all the conversations going at once, but once the music started streaming and everyone discovered the dance orb, it felt just like a real world office party (minus any embarrassing copy machine incidents).

Now as we draw even nearer the end of 2006, there are the inevitable looks back at what has happened.  Wagner James Au provides a great recap for the momentus year Second Life had. I’ve been amazed at the growth of and excitement around this virtual world myself, and agree with several others that the proprietary world of Second Life itself is probably less important than the experiments taking place there for business and education in a 3D virtual platform.  That was one of the goals we had with our creation of Dell Island—to not only participate in this fast-growing world, but also to learn and lead in the potential 3D Web.

So, we built a place where we can interact with customers, and stretch our eCommerce skills.  Speaking of which . . . If Santa didn’t bring you the new XPS gaming system you asked for, there are now even more options for purchasing one at the Dell factory in Second Life. As you can see from this snapshot below, we’ve added another color option for the XPS 1710 notebook, and now the desktop gaming system, XPS 710 is available in both the black and the red chassis. 

Yes, 2006 has been exciting in Second Life and 2007 shows just as much promise in my humble opinion.  In the short time I’ve been a resident the number of accounts has gone from about 200,000 to more than two million.  It may not be for everyone, as Steve Crescenzo notes in the we only he can articulate. But for the more than 800,000 of us who Linden Lab reports have frequented the world in the past 60 days, it’s an exciting adventure.

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.