SLENTRE.COM

Last week, about a dozen avatars in Second Life had fun at the pilot Comcast Costume Contest party. Comcast employees including SL DJ Rayne Broome and Fidelina Ferlinghetti pooled their resources and offered $L2,000 for a costume contest. In keeping with a cable TV theme, participants were asked to sport costumes portraying a TV or movie character.

The dance party was a first step at integrating Comcast and the SL community. Visitors were invited to join a group – Comcastic – to keep in touch about other parties and events. Comcasters are eager to find out what residents would want beyond a dance club. Comcast employees have set up a survey asking SL residents how Comcast can best serve the virtual community.

(Comcast party hostess Fidelina Ferlinghetti doubles as a Comcast employee in RL. )

The in-world event was organized by several Comcast employees, hailing from Washington, California and the New England region. Most have been in Second Life at least a few years and felt it was important to keep the event connected to Second Life culture.

There was actually very little discussion about Comcast services and more conversation about people getting to know each other. The first avatars to arrive were served by Charter and Cox – two rival cable companies.

(Long-time SL Resident Rayne Broome acted as party DJ and host.)

Rayne Broome said “Being a DJ for many SL events in the past two years, I find it is always about the music and playing what people want to hear. This event was more about meeting people and getting to know them.”

(Castic Constantine poses outside the Comcast Clubhouse.)

“We’re trying to go into this without assumptions,” Castic Constantine suggested. “Just like everything in SL is created by users, we only want to put up what SL users are interested in. We’d like to create this business presence wiki-style, based on what people ask for. In the meantime we’ll hang out and have parties.”

There are two parts to the Comcast build: the clubhouse and something that might be called a customer service center. The customer service center has a TV that streams humorous Comcast commercials from a YouTube playlist. The center also has links to Comcast Internet forums and blogs.

(Comcast Clubhouse housed on Caldbeck in Second Life.)

“To be honest, we don’t know if our neighbors in Second Life want any of those things when they’re in Second Life. That’s why we put up a survey,” offered Castic.

The survey asks Second Lifers what they might like and options included parties, “office hours” where they can ask questions of Comcast employees, links to resources about Internet customer service, and much more. The survey can be accessed in the SLENTRE.COM sidebar or at this link:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=vaSEPurcWPid1zdheW_2f59w_3d_3d

Comcast Clubhouse – http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caldbeck/211/208/41