This is the fourth post from the SNCR meeting today. It is on the Panel: Online Communities & Virtual Worlds – on how to create innovative and dynamic online communities and successful Second Life initiatives from Cisco and Planet 2010.

Cisco has been working on a virtual world presence in Second Life since January 2007. Most companies who enter Second Life start big and they fall off in their participation. Cisco wanted an ongoing plan for innovation, collaboration, education, and thought leadership to reach new audiences. Many companies just mimic the real world in the virtual world. Cisco wanted to do something different. They created different groups for different aspects of Cisco. They have had around 50,000 visitors and 30 public events, sometimes with outside speakers. They have had sessions from conferences for those who could not attend. Cisco also has done Second Life shows at trade shows. Here people in the real audience can ask questions to people in the Second Life audience. There are 17 public spaces that are targeted for different products and target audiences and a number of private spaces for internal Cisco meetings. In the public spaces you can see demos of Cisco products. Over 800 Cisco employees have participated in these private Second Life events. They also use it for training for such areas as network support, and also for tech support. Cisco did a virtual recruitment fair for their partners to offer real life jobs. They also have done some social responsibility efforts to support environmental concerns, such as bringing broadcasts from a Baffin Island expedition by Richard Branson. Cisco, like many organizations, uses a third party developer to create their Second Life world.

Plant It 2010 is a program to support reforestation in South America. They wanted to establish a Second Life presence to create awareness of the program and its reforestation efforts. They also wanted to model a positive marketing effort in Second Life. In their island they wanted an comprehensive education experience and not just a place to donate a few dollars to plat a tree in South America. There you can see trees and buy one on the island and this triggers planting the same tree in South America. To support this they started Flickr and MySpace accounts and reached out to influential bloggers as well as residents of Second life. They got a lot of buzz out of the projects and recognition by an AmEx grant program. There were about 100 positive blog posts in seven days and great Google search results. The Second Life residents got engaged in the island. Some left notes dedicating new trees to loved ones. Others did bike tours of the island.

In Second Life, like the web, there are many niche communities. Companies who want a presence with these niche communities could benefit from Second Life.