Waking Up

I awoke this morning at 6:45 am. Due to a cell phone ringing. And ringing. And ringing. During the third sets of rings, I realized that it was my phone and this amount of early activity most likely indicated some sort of emergency.

So I answered.

I was wrong.

It was xxxxxxxxx (name deleted to protect the guilty). He was way to cheerful. He was talking a mile a minute. He was on a speaker phone.  I knew that he had coffee.

He did not realize it was 6:46 am in the freaking morning. He also had forgotten that I hate mornings. And phone calls. And that I despise speaker phones. And I really can not handle early morning phone calls on speaker phones at all.  And I had no coffee.

But xxxxxxxxx had a question. And he wanted to know if I had a few moments so we could further explore his question. I wanted so badly to just hang up and roll over back to sleep. But I did the “correct” thing, I asked what the questions was.

And here is the question that I was asked at 6:47 am. “How would you explain virtual worlds and their importance?”

Ahhhhh jeeeeeezzzzzzz

So I took a deep breathe, counted to 10 and stated “To whom are you going to be using my wordsmithing?”

He laughed and then I heard a voice in the background that I recognized as his boss. “Sorry to wake you, but we have breakfast presentation in about 20 minutes and we want to include virtual world development in our next budget.”

Good god, these two are crazy I thought. The again, I realized I was crazy for being on the phone at 6:48 am.

So I game them my elevator speech.

Once the stuff of science fiction, virtual worlds are becoming central to the future of marketing, technology, entertainment and brand-building. Virtual worlds have immersive and interactive aspects that give the user a sense of presence with others. This connection via a 3D avatar creates authentic experiences which happen “within” an individual - the more personal they are the more authentic, because they enforce the self-image.

Virtual worlds such as Second Life will become an indispensable business tool in the next two to five years. We believe this has to do with consumers’ desire to be engaged in a dialogue with the companies. We also feel that in the future, wise companies will use virtual worlds as places to assemble active communities of their most passionate supporters. Virtual world development is vital to the strategy of any company intent on reaching out to the video-game generation, be them customers and or employees.

Then silence….

After a few akward seconds, I inquired, “Is that what you are looking for?”

Boss lady of xxxxxxxxx said, “Yes - thank you! Now I have a question. What are avatars?”

Oh my…..  and now it is 6:49 am.