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June 8 - New Market Dynamics: Metanomics Mixed Reality Broadcast

On Tuesday, June 8th, Metanomics hosted a special mixed-reality conference on New Market Dynamics out of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Host Robert Bloomfield led a Second-Life panel including Robin Teigland, Edward Castronova and Tom Boellstorff as they discussed the purchase of virtual islands, leasing of towns, recruiting avatar employees and more. The episode included a stream from the live event in Copenhagen and the panel in Second Life.

More information from the conference organizers:

Avatars for sale, gold-farming in WoW (World of Warcraft), purchase of virtual islands, leasing of towns, recruiting avatar employees, VW (virtual world) stock exchanges and banks, exchanging WoW gold to USD – it’s just some of the new designations for commercial agencies and business which have emerged in the wake of the development of virtual worlds.

But what are the characteristics of these emerging economies?

Who are they, the entrepreneurs of VWs? Are the many small agencies of user-driven innovations the driving force of the economies of VWs? Or, is it Big Business that survives and benefits from the new market dynamics? How has the user-driven content creation of Second Life contributed to the development of new business areas and market dynamics?

This Metanomics Mixed Reality Broadcast, hosted by Robert Bloomfield, will comprise a panel discussion between Robin Teigland, Edward Castronova, Tom Boellstorff and include streaming from the RL research workshop ‘Making Sense of Virtual Worlds and User Driven Innovation” in Copenhagen comprising 40 international participants and co-hosted RL by Sisse Siggaard Jensen.

More info on workshop, participants and sessions/papers at the real life venue.

Guest Biographies

Tom Boellstorff

Tom Boellstorff (Ph.D., Anthropology, Stanford, 2000) is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, and Editor-in-Chief of American Anthropologist, the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association. His research projects have focused on questions of virtual worlds, sexuality, globalization, nationalism, language, and HIV/AIDS.

He is the author of The Gay Archipelago: Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia (Princeton University Press, 2005), winner of the 2005 Ruth Benedict Award from the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists; A Coincidence of Desires: Anthropology, Queer Studies, Indonesia (Duke University Press, 2007); and Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human (Princeton University Press, 2008).

He is also co- editor of Speaking in Queer Tongues: Globalization and Gay Language (University of Illinois Press, 2004), co-editor of a theme issue of Ethnos, “Bodies of Emotion: Rethinking Culture and Emotion through Southeast Asia” (Volume 69:4, 2004) and co-editor of a theme issue of Anthropological Forum, “East Indies/West Indies: Comparative Archipelagos” (Volume 16:3, 2006). He is the author of publications in many journals, including American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist (twice), Cultural Anthropology, Annual Review of Anthropology, Journal of Asian Studies, Law and Society Review, PoLAR: The Political and Legal Anthropology Review, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Games and Culture, and GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (three times).

He is also a Core Faculty member for the Culture and Theory Ph.D. program at Irvine, as well as a Program Faculty member for the Arts, Computation, and Engineering graduate program. He has worked as a consultant for the Intel Corporation, and sits on the advisory boards of two community-based HIV/AIDS organizations in Indonesia (Gaya Nusantara in the city of Surabaya (East Java province), and Gaya Celebes in the city of Makassar (South Sulawesi province)).

Robin Teigland

Robin Teigland is an Associate Professor at the Center for Strategy and Competitiveness at the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) and a member of the PhD in International Management program faculty at the University of Agder in Norway, as well as the caretaker of SSE’s island in Second Life.

For the past 15 years, Robin has researched the creation and diffusion of knowledge in social networks and the impact on a firm’s competitive advantage. The focus of her current research is on investigating how social media and virtual worlds enable firms to create value outside the boundaries of the firm as well as what impact these media have on the firm as we know it today.

She has published numerous articles in international books and academic journals, and in 2008 she received the “Researcher of the Year” award at the Stockholm School of Economics. In addition, she is a reviewer for the US National Science Foundation as well as a globally sought after speaker. Robin really enjoys teaching students at the Stockholm School of Economics and lecturing for executives.

In March 2010, she started a pan-Nordic project financed by the Nordic Innovation Center investigating innovation and entrepreneurship in virtual worlds (www.nordicworlds.net). If anyone is interested in participating or learning more about this project, please contact her!

Edward Castronova

Edward Castronova: Professor of Telecommunications, Indiana University. Castronova is a founder of scholarly virtual world studies and an expert on the societies of large-scale online games. Among his academic publications on these topics are two books: Synthetic Worlds (University of Chicago Press, 2005) and Exodus to the Virtual World (Palgrave, 2007).

Professor Castronova teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on the design of games, the virtual world industry, and the management of synthetic societies. He has created two virtual worlds: Arden, a small-scale example of a Shakespearean virtual world, and Greenland, a large-scale futuristic MMOG. Outside his academic work, Professor Castronova makes regular appearances in mainstream media (60 Minutes, the New York Times, and The Economist), gives keynotes at major conferences (Austin Game Conference, Digital Games Research Association Conference, Interactive Software Federation of Europe), and consults for business (McKinsey, Vivendi, Forrester).

In the longer run, Professor Castronova aims to develop virtual worlds for studying human society. That is, he is trying to design games that can serve as macro-scale Petri dishes.