Digital Refinery

I got a great email today, via the Teen SL mailing list, from Travis.  Travis is a 'resident' on the teen grid, which means he's under 18 so when he logs into Second Life he is logged into the teen area not the adult area.

The adult grid has seen a huge increase in the companies coming in to SL to use it for marketing.  This week Sky News announced they will be the first news channel to have a full time presence in Second Life.  Other commercial companies include IBM, Dell, BBC, Reuters, American Apparel, Apple, Weather Channel, and Amazon.  Films, albums and perfumes have been launched in SL.

Generally these companies go to one of the three big developer companies in SL, Electric Sheep, Rivers Run Red or Millions of Us.  They will create a sim, script activities and objects, arrange events and launch parties, and create avatar shapes and skins for major stars and VIPs coming to launch the sim and promote the companies.

The developing companies have been employing pretty much anyone who gets well known for scripting and building in the virtual world Now here's the interesting part - adults can't get into the teen grid area.  Any major builds there, such as the Global Kids sim with erupting volcano have been created in the main adult area then transferred over to the kids area.  This usually causes lots of problems as scripted objects with adult owners then don't workin the teen grid where it looks like that adult doesn't exist.

So a group of kids have formed a development company, Digital Refinery, to provide this service0 I think its a brilliant idea! Here is Travis' email:

Hi, Im Travis better known in Teen Second Life as Reallife Orca. And I am here to tell you all about my new company, Digital Refinery

Digital Refinery is a company which specializes in creating immersive and interactive experiences and advertisements for real world companies in the Virtual World of Teen Second Life.

Our mission is to provide support to outside companies interested in establishing brand recognition that is targeted toward minors 13-17 in the Teen area of Second Life.

As cultural and technical experts of the "Teen Grid", we act as liaisons between adult owned islands and the mainland, which is inaccessible by adults. We also act as engineers; creating products and establishing services within the virtual space that are specifically geared toward teens. We create from the perspective of a teen, because we are indeed teens ourselves. Even though we are teens, we believe in and uphold the standard of adult-level professionalism and customer satisfaction.

Check us out on the web at http://www.digitalrefinery.org

Fab!  Entrepreneurial too :-)