The author's avatar enjoying a virtual sit.

Have you ever had a glimpse of an idea, told it to your boss who tells you to run with it, and then it turns into a life of its own. This is my case with Second Life. I tried to impress my boss at the time by showing him that I read Business Week, so I brought in an article on this futuristic video-game/alternate reality/buzz creator called Second Life. Not only was my boss not impressed, but he told me not to work on it. I did it anyway.

What is Second Life? According to its site……..

Second Life® is a 3-D virtual world created by its Residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by millions of Residents from around the globe.

Fast Company magazine recently wrote an article on the resurgence of Second Life and how to more effectively market in this virtual world. It is a well written article discussing some of the marketing failures in Second Life and what the most effective way to market is today. From the article:

“Second Life is not a place to make sales. It’s also a venue where large companies don’t have to spend $3 million to build an elaborate island when $10,000 to $100,000, usedjudiciously, can have a much larger impact. Linden Labs concurs. “New marketers often try to imitate another medium,” says Ginsu Yoon, Linden’s VP of business affairs. “Second Life isn’t TV or radio or even the Internet, all of which push information out one way.” “

Our original goal in Second Life was to create buzz. We found a partner and created a small little showroom in Second Life. However, nobody ever showed up, mostly because nobody knew we were there. So obviously Second Life is not place where “if you build it, they will come.” So we changed our strategy and decided to become part of the community. One of the lessons we learned is the Second Life community doesn’t want to be bombarded with your product. The inhabitants of Second Life are wary of traditional advertising; they are creative and want to be treated as the contributor to society that they are. So we ended up upgrading our space and creating a beautiful space and then we invited the community to participate in a critical thought process of our products and how we can best interact with the Second Life Community. We even had a Design Exhibition where many designers showed off their design skills in our promenade. We culminated this Design Exhibition with a 2 hour town hall meeting where designers, marketers, and a whole host of people from Steelcase interacted with people all over the globe in Second Life. It was a wonderful event, providing an opportunity for the citizens of Second Life to learn more about Steelcase and vice versa.

Get your avatar free and check it out…..click here to have your eyes opened to the new reality.

Credit Crunch for Small Business?

We’ve all been bombarded by news reports of the world-wide credit crunch. Rather than focus on the doom and gloom articles, I wanted to share a recent article in the Wall Street Journal that piqued my interest. The article profiles a company called On Deck that processes loans for the small business world, with a few twists.

First, On Deck has created an algorithm that allows them to assess the overall health of a company instead of merely taking a snapshot like most lenders do. They look at a company’s daily business activity including number of customers, sags and surges, and (get this) number of complaints a company has. Compare this to the average lender which basically looks at last year’s tax returns.

Second, instead of sending an invoice out every month (like my mortgage statement) saying that Joe’s Pizza owes $300 this month and has an outstanding balance of $40,000 and is paying an interest rate of 30%, On Deck basically takes $100 out of your bank account EVERY DAY. That is pretty out of the box. I think everyone could take this as a lesson in life. If Morgan Stanley would just take $10 out of my checking account every day, I’d probably save a lot more money than I do now when I have to scratch a $300 check every month. This approach means that On Deck’s loans will be paid back in about a year.

Third, the interest rate of 18% to 36% got an initial reaction from me of “wow, my credit card interest rate is less than that.” As I progressed in my research however, I found the article saying that the interest rate for small businesses can be up to 200%. So 18% to 36% looks pretty good. It must be…so far On deck has lent out over $10 Million since it began in May and is growing at a 35% clip.

Also of note….in the article, some of the ‘big name players’ voice that this takes away from the experience of loans because you miss out on the ‘personal banking experience.’ I’m thinking that most people I know don’t have much good to say regarding that experience of loans and they are fine interfacing with a computer who will at least evaluate them fairly.

You used to hear that 95% of businesses fail within the first five years. Despite more recent statistics that reveal the odds aren’t quite that bad, every startup still needs to be smart about how they spend their money. In fact, in economic times like these, all businesses could benefit from some money saving tips.

Early this year, Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo.com (a human powered search engine startup), wrote a blog post titled: How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips). I’ll give you the quick list below (the list now numbers 18 after he added an additinal tip ) but you may want to read the full post for the explanation and context of some of the tips. The list is definitely more geared towards the Silicon Valley “tech” start-up but every business should find elements of the list relevant.

1. Buy Macintosh computers.
2. Buy second monitors for everyone.
3. Buy everyone lunch four days a week and establish a no-meetings policy.
4. Buy cheap tables and expensive chairs.
5. Don’t buy a phone system.
6. Rent out your extra space.
7.Outsource accounting and HR.
8. Don’t buy everyone Microsoft Office.
9. Use Google hosted email.
10. Buy your hardest working folks computers for home.
11. Fire people who don’t lover their work.
12. Get an expensive, automatic espresso machine at the office.
13. Stock the fridge with sodas.
14. Allow folks to work off hours.
15. Go to each of your vendors every 6-9 months and ask for 10-30% off.
16. Don’t waste money on recruiters.
17. Really think about if you need that $15,000 a month PR firm.
18. Outsource to middle America.

Notice number 4 … the chair part … not the table part . It’s probably tempting to try and save money by buying cheap office chairs but most businesses quickly realize that it’s not a wise investment. That’s especially true if you work at a Silicon Valley startup where you’re behind a computer 10-12 hours a day. If you don’t believe us and prefer to try out that looks and feels like leather $79.99 chair …. go right ahead. Sometimes it takes sitting in a bad chair to know what you’re missing in a good chair.

Dress up a phone book with contact paper to lift your monitor to help fend off back pain.

Yet another DIY tip from our friends at Apartment Therapy. This one has special relevance to us as it directly relates to your comfort at the workplace. How many of you end up with tense shoulders and a cramp in your neck by the end of the day (or if you’re like me, by lunch)?

It goes without saying that reducing your stress levels will help reduce neck and back pain (easier said than done, eh?,), but a great ergonomic office chair will help too (don’t worry, we can help with that). If that still does not work, you must make sure that you are not slouching too much. A chair with a pneumatic height adjustment will help, but it may not do the trick entirely. You must also ensure that your computer monitor is the proper height and is not causing you to slump.

A quick easy fix to raise your computer monitor can be accomplished with a phone book (yep, that’s right…a phone book), craft paper, scissors and tape. That’s it! Check out the article for complete step-by-step instructions, but it’s pretty self explanatory.

I’m going to try it out. I’ll let you know if it helps cut down on the number of neck rolls I do in a day.

Blog author contemplating how good he looks....

I am not sure about how people dress where you work, but I have seen a marked change over the last 3-5 years from an environment where jeans were unacceptable to one where people wear pajamas to work to be cool. Now, I’m pretty old school and would prefer we have uniforms at work, but that is largely due to the fact that I am a middle-aged male with zero fashion sense and no ability to pull off what the world says is cool (as an example, a lot of the younger men I see have white belts and shoes). Now comes an article on Career Builder that exposes some of the issues with the casual dress movement. The article even gives some tips to your co-workers who are making you uncomfortable by wearing their underwear on the outside, etc.

My point of view on this is that I can’t get too casual because I usually work according to how I dress. If I’m at home in my PJ’s and bunny slippers (no picture – sorry) sitting on my bed, I find that I’m not very professional and am easily distracted. When I am dressed more professionally, I usually have more confidence and often am more productive.

Not to toot our own horn, but furniture can play a big part in this too. I was at a car dealer yesterday and the gentleman working there had a ripped $49 office chair, a very messy desk and had jeans on. His attitude was very unprofessional (similar to his furniture and dress). He was very casual in his conversation and didn’t even look at me when he was talking to me about my purchasing something from him.

So at Steelcase Store we might not be able to have any impact on the clothes you wear, but we can help in the area of making you feel more professional by helping you with your office surroundings. Check out our gear.

So gear up, dress up, and get working…..