Why Radar Can't Pronounce My Name

He can't. Few can. Even I can't. How did it come to this?

It's a sad tale that I've seen repeated several times in our virtual world: people with very awkward names. But why do they occur? I will tell the story of how my name came to be, and then to pronounce it.

I'm a very inquisitive person and I love to try new things, especially online services. I'd heard about the Second Life Virtual World™ and how people were apparently making millions living in a virtual paradise. Finally I obtained a computer sufficiently powerful to enable me to try it.

As I do with any new online service that I happen to test (and I test an awful lot of services), I use a throw-away id. I don't use my real name unless it's a serious service, which at the time I did not believe SL to be. The trouble was I couldn't figure out SL right away. Usually you can jump into a service and determine how it works within a few days or even hours. Not SL. Not with its steep learning curve and deeply rich culture.

So I continued slogging along as a pathetic newb for days, learning the ropes. Weeks passed. Then months. At that point, I had grown virtual legs and was finally capable of operating competently. But something else had happened. I was connected. I had a reputation, friends, stores, and even a pretty serious blog. It was too late to change my name without losing a ton of social capital.

So here I am, with my awkward name. I sympathize with others who also made a mistake when they signed up, especially those unfortunates with digits attached to their first name.

More recently, I've been showing up or mentioned on several podcasts where the well-meaning and professional hosts completely butcher the pronounciation of my name. Some even ask the impossible question, "what is the possessive form of ArminasX?" So to clear up the confusion, now I declare the correct pronounciation:

• ArminasX should be pronounced as "Ar-min-AXE"

Just consider the "s" to be silent. Or even better, just call me "Armi".

Should I get a new avatar with a new name? No, it's far too late for that. But I do have some thoughts on the qualities that make a good name. But let's save that for another day.

Crowd Particles!

This week I built a new experimental product: crowd-based particle effects. I was contacted by friend IYan Writer, who was organizing a space/ambient music event held at MMC Island last Thursday. IYan wanted particle effects that would enhance the "spacey" mood of the show.

Headlining the show was Cypress Rosewood, whose music was indeed very spacey. According to IYan's press release:

The legendary SL space musician, Cypress Rosewood performs his musical magic with flutes, guitars and synthesizers throughout the SL world and is a metamedia treat to see live, in concert.

In Second Life CYPRESS has been a pioneer of live space and ambient music. He has performed over 150 concerts of his special brand of aural vibrations that can aid healing and relaxation. Cypress is also developing a Space Music Museum alongside working on many groundbreaking projects. He is also one of the primary designers for the first major music manufacturer on the SL grid, Gibson Music Instruments, building their "Gibson Island" to be opened in May of 2008 sometime.

I had not visited MMC Island before, perhaps because it is "an extension of the Multimedia center of RTV Slovenia (Slovenia 's public broadcaster) in the virtual world of Second Life". Fortunately for me, few were speaking Slovenian during the concert!

The stage itself was spacey: set high in the dark sky, attendees sat on pink cushions floating in the air at the Orbital Station. Dance balls surrounded the audience where the daring could dance in the air.

We decided to build a special attachment that would be provided to each attendee. The invisible attachment would produce the required particle effects.

But then the question was, "what effects would be appropriate?"

Virtually all of my wearable particle effect products would be inappropriate as they produce a fair number of particles each. If used by a large crowd of say, 40, you'd blow out the sim with particles.

I decided I'd better make something very subtle.

Instead of blasting out many particles, the device makes a single stationary star every few seconds. When used by a crowd, a subtle 3D field of stars rapidly appears around everyone.

To make things more interesting I added a few spectacular twists. Once in a very long while it emits a multi-colored nebula, and at other times it may go Nova, explode, collapse or emit tantalizing rays from the wearer.

Testing the device was very strange. My laboratory at Electric Pixels had 40 invisible devices lain out to simulate a large crowd. With a black background, the visible effects were eerie indeed. Stars always, but with occasional explosions and novas!

So how did it go? At first I was concerned, because I could not predict the number of attendees. If too few people showed up, particle emissions would be insufficient to produce a spacey view. If too many people wore the effect, there might have been a particle overload. But no, it was just right. Interesting effects appeared at just the correct rate, and I think it was a success.

What other crowd-based effects might be possible? I'm not sure yet, but imagination is our only limit. Let me know if you have any ideas!

Unstaffed!

Readers of Second Effects may recall a few weeks ago I began yet another business experiment: onsite staff at my store, Electric Pixels. The idea was to have a friendly face meet and greet visitors to the store, and to help them find items they could not locate (which is actually becoming an issue, since I now have over 150 items on the store shelves!)

My observation was that shoppers generally seem appreciative when greeted by a live person, and often I was able to help people find and buy items they probably would not otherwise have found. Also, you'd be surprised at the number of people who come randomly to a store like mine.

One recent visitor, Quanishia Tuqiri, has the bizarre habit of picking a random keyword, punching it into SL Search and then TPing to one of the search results. It turned out to be mine the night she came by, and after a lively discussion of many things, Quanishia is now a good friend. Visitors with no intention of shopping can often be transformed into customers with an explanation of your store's products.

Another important aspect of live interaction is to identify the need for products that don't exist. Shoppers frequently TP through dozens of stores looking for a specific item. If you are there on duty, you can find out precisely what they seek, and sometimes even build products for them right in front of their eyes! This can't happen unless you or your staff are present.

So I hired a very nice friendly face to work at the store. I set up a time clock and began paying hourly wages. Results were very unclear at first, because of the irregularity of SL shoppers - some days are good, while others are catastrophically bad. I decided to run the staffing experiment for a few weeks to see what happened over the longer term.

Unfortunately, after three weeks it was clear that there was no appreciable affect on sales. But there was an appreciable affect on my costs! Overall, I lost a considerable sum of Lindens, but I learned a few things about staffing in this type of sales situation:

• Hourly (or by minute) payments are questionable. It's not clear whether your staff is actually working consistently even though they might be physically present, since its so easy to be busy IM'ing others. Meanwhile, someone may show up at the store and even slight delays in greeting them don't look good.
• Difficult customers are hard to deal with. Somehow I am usually able to successfully interact with even the most dreadful personalities by being very careful what I say and how I say it. However, not every one is able to do so, and in one case I received a complaint during the staffing experiment. Inspection of chat logs revealed a catastrophic miscommunication. Understandable, but still not good.
• Some customers just don't want to talk. Half of our visitors simply didn't respond when addressed. Perhaps they spoke other languages, or maybe they were in a hurry. Some were simple rude. Regardless of the reason, it meant that staff were not required to handle half of the visitors.
• Some customers talk too much! It's fine to be engaged in a discussion, but when things get busy it's often tricky to disengage from one customer and start with another. This always happens in real-life stores, and Second Life is no exception. But staff have to be able to do this seamlessly. Hah - in one case, a randy customer became overly interested in my staff and asked her "when they got off work".

Will I hire staff again? Perhaps, but things will be slightly different. I want to organize a different payment scheme in which salary will be more directly tied to sales results. Not commission payments, exactly, but something close to that. That way the staff will have appropriate motivation to do the work. However, I haven't figured out the right formula yet. The hourly payment scheme attempted this month was just a bit too close to Camping for it to work effectively.

Another change would be to train the staff in sales techniques. While many people may think it's easy to simply jump into a store and start selling, there is actually a science to selling. I have a real-life friend who teaches such skills, and I am thinking of engaging her to train any new staff with proven techniques.

Finally, if I were to hire again, I would have an open job posting and either interview or somehow evaluate applicants until the right one came along. Hmm, that might be a good blog post in the future....

Staffed!

When "real life" people hear that I own a successful virtual business, they are usually puzzled or amazed. What will they say now when I tell them I have employees?

You might be wondering what staff would do at a particle shop? It's pretty simple, really, they are doing what I often do at the store: talk to visitors and help them. I've found that it is a great way to ensure everyone has a good experience, and it's also the best way to find out what people are looking to buy.

In spite of my efforts to make the store easy to navigate, trigger demonstrations, access informative notecards, some people still have problems finding items in the store. Perhaps they are simply impatient, or maybe they can't read. It's then that they really appreciate a friendly someone to guide them to the correct place.

But this work does take a lot of time, and lately my Second Life existence seems to be getting busier than ever. So, after chatting with friends who make a not-so-great living camping, I realized I could provide a better paying job for them and handle visitors with a lot more care. After buying a timeclock (well, two of them, since the first one didn't do what I needed) and some negotiations, I have staff!

This is definitely an experiment, and experiments are one of the actions I've advised Second Life businesses to do in previous posts: keep trying things. Eliminate that which doesn't work, and do more of that which does work. In this case, I intend to compare results before and after to determine the effect of in-store sales personnel.

The best part so far: staff say, "This is so much more interesting than camping! You get to talk to people who aren't zombies!"