3pointD.com

Second Life resident Chili Carson is launching what could be a great boon for SL’s business owners as well as their customers: a Chamber of Commerce for the virtual world. While news of the venture first surfaced at the Second Life Community Convention and on New World Notes, 3pointD has some fresh details from Chili as she builds out the concept and seeks to garner support in the virtual world. The question now is whether the chamber can withstand the slings and arrows of the Second Life community.

While Chili (otherwise known as Arlene Ciroula, chief operating officer of Baltimore-area CPA and consulting firm KAWG&F) is still in the process of hashing out details with a small planning committee, she hopes to launch the Chamber as soon as possible, perhaps sometime next month. A second introductory presentation will be held Sunday, September 10th at 1:00 PM SLT (IM her to RSVP or to be put on the mailing list for announcements) to discuss recent developments. Other SL residents involved in the planning process so far include Lou Tones, Sudane Erato, Gwyneth Llewelyn and Bean Wollongong.

At the moment, the planning committee is working on hashing out the application process through which businesses would join the organization. Initial plans are to form a membership committee which would review applications and then accept or reject businesses based on a set of standards, also under development. A board of directors would be elected by members. A framework for presentation to prospective members is currently being drawn up, and an election for board seats will be held after a first round of businesses join the organization. Members will pay a small fee, and have access to information, support and promotion for doing business in Second Life. Some of those resources will be available to non-members as well.

The shape of the venture has been well thought out by someone who seems to have a great deal of experience fostering business growth in the real world. Among the benefits to members that are envisioned by the chamber are a business directory and newsletter, chamber-sponsored workshops and seminars, industry-specific expos and conventions, member-to-member discounts, and an executive dialogue program, among others.

The chamber will also provide a repository of information about SL businesses to the broader community, and some assistance for real-world companies coming into SL, as well as guidance on how to integrate themselves into the world “in a positive fashion.”

The chamber will also see to lobby on issues affecting the Second Life business community, to advocate for sound business practices in Second Life, and to set standards to assure commercial transactions are conducted “with the highest possible level of professional conduct and ethics.”

As with many past ventures in the SL business community, the chamber will stand or fall based not simply on its soundness, but also on its resolve. One without the other will not be enough. Though 250,000 avatars log into SL on a regular basis, it’s still a small community, and many residents tend to bristle at any attempt to build structure of any sort atop the individual efforts at work on the Grid. Most people simply give up when they do not get wide buy-in immediately.

But that doesn’t mean a chamber of commerce can’t fly in Second Life. If it does its work well and is willing to invest a lot of time in slowly garnering members and building a helpful reputation, it will eventually benefit from the network effects of the growing SL business community and see its subscribers take off. The hard part is hanging in there long enough to see this start to happen. Competitors will crop up and naysayers will criticize the organization for being elitist and for running against the prevailing currents of Web 2.0 and the 3pointD world.

But the timing just may be right. With more and more people streaming into Second Life, there is currently a real need for more and better business information on the Grid. Even a simple shopping directory (one more useful than the SL search function) would be a great boon to SL businesses and shoppers alike. If the chamber of commerce emerges as a source of useful information, it could catch on fast.

The one thing that could trump it is a more 2.0 version of the same idea. But Web-based community sites for SL — things like SLProfiles and Web-based retail markets like SLBoutique and SLExchange — have trouble catching on. Word of mouth still seems to be the best way to get one’s message out in Second Life. That may change once the API is more open and truly useful Web tools begin to be built, but it hasn’t happened yet. The best way forward for a chamber of commerce is probably just to build it and try to get people to come. If it works, though, it could easily become a great resource. We wish Chili and her crew the best of luck.