Tag: Real life

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Very poor marketing

I’m posting about the Harlequin novelist a second time because the only way to make a comment on the press release is to give them a trackback to a web page. My first post was too indirect to serve as a good response.

A romance novelist apparently has a book series (of two) with a Victorian female detective. A site called PR Web has a press release about it: Author – and Her Victorian Creations – Come Alive in Second Life

In addition to live question and answer opportunities, book aficionados and Victorian enthusiasts can participate in the upcoming Victorian Ball, to be held on Thursday, January 24th at the ACTIV8 complex. The overall aim of the Second Life promotional campaign is to bring new and existing readers of Raybourn’s novels and fans of Victoriana together in an environment that allows for community interaction with the author, while immersing attendees in the world of the novel.

Harlequin’s hosting the event in Second Life is a natural fit since the publisher continues to seek innovative means to reach out to readers and because ‘Silent in the Sanctuary’ is a novel set in the Victorian era, which is very popular with Second Life residents.

Second Life marketing agency TheSLAgency is handling all of the technical and marketing aspects of the program, including re-creating several key creative features of the book’s setting and plot items.

This would be of note only as a moderately interesting Victorian event in SL, were it not that SLAgency has done such a spectacularly poor job of marketing the events, which transforms it into a perfect target of ridicule.

As an active member of the Independent State of Caledon (a group with over 700 members, an active internet forum, wiki, and innumerable blogs), I had never heard of this marketing effort until I came across a tangential reference to the press release somewhere. Neither had my compatriots, and I’d wager that none of the residents of Antiquity, Steelhead, or Babbage had either. It certainly doesn’t speak highly of a marketing agency when they miss a community not only situated squarely in their target audience but that has been highlighted in a variety of guides to Second Life. It’s not like we’re hard to find.

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Under the radar

Whatever “radar” is. I was bemused by this press release from Harlequin (as in the romance publisher): Author – and Her Victorian Creations – Come Alive in Second Life – SMP

Deanna Raybourn, author of Silent in the Sanctuary, the latest novel featuring Victorian sleuth Lady Julia Grey, will be making a series of special interactive appearances in the 3D virtual world of Second Life throughout January.

One event was last night, and there’s a ball scheduled for the 24th.

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Tag, I’m it! I’m it! I’m it!

First, it was the Defender of Murdann; then my web-friend Marion Rickenbacker, whose photography I love; and now I’ve discovered that Lady Edwina Heron has joined the fray. (And I suppose I should also count Miss Achariya Maktoum, who tagged “all of Caledon”).

The rules of tagging are simple, and as follows.

  1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
  2. People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
  3. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
  4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog
  1. I was in a modern dance collective that performed The Shakers (1931) by Doris Humphrey by being coached with Labanotation. The collective also performed a dance I choreographed.
  2. I worked on a dairy farm in Blokzijl, Netherlands, for three months in 1976 through a program of the Future Farmers of America.
  3. I’m descended on my mother’s side from Anne Hutchinson, one of the founders of Rhode Island; John and Priscilla Alden, Pilgrims made famous by a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; John Middleton Hester, who served in the army of the Confederate States of America; and Preston Tinsley Henderson, whose 1854 will includes specific mention of “a negro boy at five hundred dollars” and “a negro girl at three hundred dollars”. Such is the stuff of American ancestry.
  4. I have a Bacon number of two, in two different ways: I have a friend who was at a dinner party with him, and one of the members of my clearness committee when I became a Quaker is his cousin.
  5. I prefer strong black tea with milk and sugar.
  6. I’ve broken bones in both my feet, on three different occasions.
  7. I have been thrown by a horse.
  8. I own eight Hoya species: H. australis, H. carnosa, H. caudata, H. curtisii, H. lanceolata bella, H. longifolia, H. multiflora, H. serpens.

Now, really, who’s left to tag? This thing has spread faster than any noxious blog meme I’ve ever seen, so I refuse to check to see if I’m repeating people: nox Pinion, and via Twitter, cala, Kirakitty, Lactose, rikomatic, Gloire, SinTrenton, ZoeConnolly.

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Miles Van Der Rohe?

While not yet in Second Life, I got an email telling me that:

The object ‘Einladung zur bizMart Adventsaktion’ in Second Life has offered you inventory.
Log in to accept to decline this inventory.

= Einladung zur bizMart Adventsaktion is owned by Architect Miles

Suspecting advertising spam (a scourge still in its infancy in Second Life, but on the rise), I did a search on “architect miles”. Nothing that would help me figure out who he is, but a distressing number of results for this:

Designed by legendary modern architect Miles Van Der Rohe