Remember how, back in April, I wrote about Coke's launch event, and we've also reported on how Coke is leaving according to Business Week? We must have reported on this Wired article too, but I can't find it.

Tateru wrote a short piece about Mike Donnelly's talk at SLCC as blogged by ESC's Joel Greenburg (remember ESC didn't do the work on this one, Crayon did) in which Donnelly states, as far as we can tell from the quotes given he regards the campaign as:

1. Not over
2. Already a success

But, the naysayers are out already... Tony Walsh on his blog is unimpressed by Coke's claim of a success, and has some numbers he regards as less impressive to back his ideas up.
Who do you trust here? Greenburg doesn't have a direct interest - he's not getting more business out of Coke, because he's not getting any at the moment and you'd have thought Coke would probably stay with Crayon if they really like what's going on. Donnelly doesn't need to say the campaign is a success if it's not - although no-one's mentioned an exact amount less than US$0.5M (as quoted from the talk) on an experimental campaign that fails isn't going to get him fired and Coke could just pull out. A little comment from reading both articles back-to-back had me thinking. Walsh criticises the campaign on the metrics he chooses "because activity around these Virtual Thirst web destinations has barely increased since I last checked back in early June" but Donnelly says "We rented space on Crayon Island for the duration of the campaign. There's no reason to build an island without a long term plan" and the analysis is about an event based campaign: "Like the real world, there are a variety of events marketers can sponsor in Second Life; they do not need to build a sim. It all depends on the marketing problem you need to solve and the strategies for solving it."

So, shortly after an event there's a rush of signing up to the various aspects of it, which then tails off - but I'm sure Coke will hope with their launch of the competition winner event there will be another rush of new material and interest. With this being their strategy, why is seeing this pattern of engagement indicative of failure? Or is there an axe to grind on one part?

As brilliant plans don't always have a way of working out, I left for Austin quite late on the 9th. Not much was happening yet in the world of SXSW. Check-in took place from Noon to 8pm, but I was on a mission that could not be stopped. I was after the Nokia N800 tablet.

I arrived at 8:30pm after a two hour drive into Austin. I met up with BuhBuhCuh Fairchild and we immediately headed over to CompUSA to get the glorious device, which would later turn out to be downright awful. When we returned, it was time to party.

Word on the street was that the place to go was The Blind Pig...

I'm still in Austin due to unforeseen circumstances, but I managed to find a computer to share some of my stories with you, starting with my favorite. As previously mentioned, qDot Bunnyhug (Kyle Machulis) was at SXSW on a panel dealing with teledildonics. In preparation for his panel, he brought along some exciting new sex toys, some of which vibrated and others that were single use.

At BarCamp Austin, he gave me one of these single-use sex toys, which amused me to no end. I was so thrilled with it that, after a few drinks, I probably walked a good mile to Ze Frank's party at Malatov on Saturday night. I ran into Tony Walsh, of Clickable Culture, and asked him to film for me. I got in line and asked Ze Frank to finger the sex toy. You'll just have to see it to believe it! Stay tuned for more stories about the sights and sounds of SXSW.

South by Southwest, or SXSW for short, is rapidly approaching. Scheduled for March 9th-18th in Austin, Texas, it is an annual festival that celebrates music, movies, and web development. Attended by over 10,000 people from all over the world, it is a staple of Austin tourism. It is known for giving bands their big break and panelists major credibility.

Some of our very own Second Life residents will be speaking on panels there, including Spin Martin, Aren Mandala, Hamlet Au, BuhBuhCuh Fairchild, Zero Grace, SnoopyBrown Zamboni, Reuben Tapioca/MillionsofUs, qDot Bunnyhug, Walker Spaight, RC Mars, and Jade Lily. The topics they are covering vary wildly, such as Your Video Blog Can Save the World, Terraforming the Internet: When 3d Models Meet Business Models, Avatar-Based Marketing in Synthetic Worlds, On the Edge of Independant User-Creation in Gamespace, Sex and Computational Technology, Web 2.0 to Web 3D, Gamers Games: Microcontent and User Creation, and American Cancer Society: Applying Technology for the Nonprofit Sector. Other residents rumored to be attending are Max Case, Jeremy Neumann, Glitchy Gumshoe, and myself.

There is a group in Second Life, appropriately named "SXSW'ers". If you are interested in attending and would like to hear about meetups, join that group. For now, I'm just askin' if you're going! Well ... are you?

Tony Walsh has a post over on his ever interesting blog, Clickable Culture, about some comics available exclusively through SLBoutique. The comics are from the "He Is Just a Rat" series, both written and drawn by Tony Walsh himself. Along with your purchase of 5 RL comics you will also receive an in world T-shirt. The SLBoutique is run by the Electric Sheep Company and while setting up an account takes a few minutes it makes purchasing in world items from a website a snap.

I'd like it if I could actually read the comic in world as well. I have not had the best experiences with in world books at this point. They tend to have all the bad points of reading from a screen with added hindrances of having to manage your viewpoint. However, comics could be the perfect medium for this, considering that they require less reading.

Tony Walsh, blogger for Clickable Culture, has posted about his reactions to an article that recently ran in the Hamilton Spectator, in which he has a feature. The article itself isn't terribly original, except where it mentions McMaster University professor Robert Hamilton.

Hamilton mentions some issues he has with SL, and Mr. Walsh provides his input in a point-by-point comparison, making it clear that, just like so many who feel the need to comment on SL, Hamilton doesn't seem to be very well-versed in his subject.

(Via Clickable Culture)