A firefighter turns his hose towards the sparse collection of tall pine trees surrounding the building and aims its stream of water into the flames that are exploding outwards from the branches and foliage.

Protected by a heavy, flame-retardant vest and a helmet with a transparent face shield, he is doing his best to deter a total disaster.

But the conflagration is spreading – inexorably moving from one tree to the next and soon the entire landscape is ignited in an orange glow. The crackling sound is menacing and the fire’s determination to consume the building, unstoppable.

This would be one heck of an expensive and dangerous training exercise if it were happening in real life.

But it isn’t. It’s an experiment in Second Life, the virtual world designed and hosted by San Francisco-based Linden Lab Inc.  And the point of this flaming simulation isn’t to train a firefighter, but to give an average person an idea of what it might be like.

“You can don the firefighter gear that our Ministry of Natural Resources has and take on a fire in a simulation,” says Glen Padassery, acting director of the youth and new professionals’ secretariat at Ontario’s Ministry of Government Services. “That idea is you are a career tourist – you have a day-in-the-life type of interaction.”

Ontario’s Public Service is hoping to find new young professionals to replace its ageing workforce. As the average age of a Second Life user is 32, the virtual world is an ideal environment to attempt recruitment.

The award-winning simulation set up by the government may be a virtual island, but it isn’t alone.

Many organizations are turning to virtual worlds as a useful recruitment vehicle and honing techniques for measuring the success of such projects.

Analysts say it’s one more step towards virtual worlds becoming more mainstream and less dominated by a population of computer nerds.

“As youth move more towards the online space, we wanted to make sure we had a presence that would be fulfilling and meaningful to them,” Padassery says.

The government worked with New York-based virtual world design firm The SL Agency to launch a pilot in April. The team selected five of the 18 careers that Ontario was looking to draw attention to: firefighter, medical technician, civil engineer, economist, and traffic analyst.

“They wanted an experiential marketing package that would really show what it’s like to work as a fireman, or in a health clinic,” says Leigh Rowan, vice-president with The SL Agency. “Second Life is perfect for that.”

Aside from the forest fire simulation, users can take water samples from a virtual pond and analyze its contents. A healthcare simulation allows your avatar to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on a dummy, or watch a bank of television screens to monitor live traffic flow across the province – the real video feed supplied from real highway cameras.

“From Second Life, you can actually send HTTP requests,” Rowan explains. “So we bring in snapshots as thumbnails into Second Life. When you click on that, it launches into an actual video from that camera.”

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We hope your summer has been off to a wonderful and relaxing start. We can’t quite say the same about our summer - while it has been wonderful, it has been busy as ever as we work our tuchases off with a variety of wonderful initiatives. Read about them below, as well as big news from IBM and the creators of Second Life.

IBM and Linden Lab Announce ‘Interoperability’

Recently, IBM and Linden Lab, the software programmers behind Second Life’s virtual world platform, announced that they had brought an avatar from one virtual world to another. In short, this is a great feat for virtual worlds because it allows for portability — the same thing that happens when you change your cell phone carrier from one to another, and you keep your number. TheSLAgency celebrates this achievement as it will eventually allow companies and organizations to receive traffic from all operating virtual worlds.
For more information on Interoperability, please read here:

CALL to Businesses: Fall Business Conference Planned for ACTIV8 Island - Get Involved!

ACTIV8 Island, TheSLAgency’s virtual world headquarters, will be hosting an exciting mixed reality business conference in the 4th Quarter 2008. While final details are still being arranged, we are actively securing sponsorships and engagements with a variety of leading global business brands. For more information on how your company can take advantage of this excellent opportunity, and for more information on ACTIV8 business programs, contact Louis Mourelatos at lou-at-TheSLAgency.com and stay tuned to further newsletter announcements!

Introducing your Personalized Second Life Mentors - A Virtual Concierge! Also, Take a Tour of a Great Recruiting Experience in Second Life!

Did you know that TheSLAgency staff features Second Life mentors? We are proud to offer your company one-on-one hands-on acclimation in the virtual world. Learn how to better control Second Life for yourself, as well as browse businesses, brands, and attractions in the virtual world. Contact us via email, or find Hurley McMahon or Knuw Kidd in-world today for more details.

And, after overwhelmingly popular demand, our Second Life mentors are still giving tours of our Ontario Public Service Careers Island in Second Life! On this island, users can interact with various real world job simulations in a “try before you buy”-type setting. Never before has job recruitment been so interactive and interesting! Contact us today for a hands-on tour.

Last But Not Least….
Two important links we’d love you to see, as we embrace social media!
1) Our Flickr Account, which is constantly being updated with new shots from things we’re working on in Second Life: http://www.flickr.com/photos/knuwkidd/
2) If you missed any past newsletters, you can find them here.

From the entire team at TheSLAgency, we wish you a wonderful summer, and we look forward to hearing from you regarding how we can make virtual world and real world success a reality for you and your business!

TheSLAgency’s parent company, Moderne Promotions, is proud to announce that it has been chosen as one of the Top 100 Global Event agencies by Event Marketer Magazine. This is particularly exciting for TheSLAgency, as the magazine included us because of our mixed-reality events capability. Read more about the accolade here at Event Marketer Magazine or via our Press Release.

Recently, we launched a few new Second Life/virtual world B2B and Government-focused services. Based on our successful work with clients like the World Bank and the Ontario Public Service, we saw a need for SL programs catering to the public sector. See more about these programs and how they might be able to help your business by visiting: http://www.theslagency.com/b2b.html

We’d love for you to visit us this month in Second Life. Here are some Upcoming Events in Second Life:

• Ontario Public Service Interactive Recruitment Island - TheSLAgency is proud to show off one of its latest and greatest. Our work with the OPS recruitment initiative in Second Life has been a fun, interactive, fire-fighting (what?! YES! you can fight a virtual fire!) success. Visit the following page, or email us, to sign up for a one-on-one tour of this virtual recruitment space at http://www.theslagency.com/tour_invite.html

• Harlequin Books presents Gena Showalter’s “Dark Kiss” Second Life Event - June 21 @ ACTIV8 Island - email me for a VIP invite! - nick@theslagency.com

If you’d like to see your company listed amongst these events, or if you’d like to create your own presence and interaction in Second Life, email us and let’s start talking.

We hope you enjoyed this version of TheSLAgency’s Newsletter - stay tuned, as there’s more coming!

All the best,

Nick

Nick Vitale
Director of Interactive Media

An Event Marketer Magazine Top 100 Event Agency for 2008!

P: 516.694.1231
F. 516.694.1302
www.TheSLAgency.com
nick@TheSLAgency.com

gtalk: knuwkidd@gmail.com
flickr: knuwkidd
Second Life Avatar: Knuw Kidd

PS - As promised, we don’t send a lot of emails, but if you need to unsubscribe, it is pretty easy (but it breaks our heart!). Simply email me back with the subject “Unsubscribe,” and though we’ll be sad to see you go, we won’t send you any official Newsletters anymore.