You may have asked yourself what makes the economy tick and if people will always continue to earn money the way they did in the past. Daniel Pink says “no” this will not be the case in the future. He has several arguments why the economics will change in the future and work will not be like the work you are used to in the past.

He says that people in the past were working with their left half of the brain which is dedicated to logic, mathematics and organization. But nowadays we live in a world of abundance and we have too many people who can do this type of job faster and less expensive. Companies are outsourcing left-brain work to asia for example, where high-tech programmers develop software for a North American bank for a salary of not more than $15.000 a year. We are now connected to the whole world and left-brain workers (like computer programmers for example) can be hired for little money somewhere on the globe.

According to Pink, we started with the agricultural age in the 18th century, moved on to the Industrial Age in the 19th century to the Information Age in the 20th century. Now we are facing a new challenge with the Conceptual age in the 21st century. Pink’s solution seems very straightforward and logical: We must stop being left-brain workers and we need to be right-brain workers in the future.

In the second part of the book, Pink describes the six senses that we need to develop as the new right-brain workers: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play and Meaning.

Designers are usually right-brain workers and we need more people like these in the future. Look at Apple and their products. Most of them are sold so well because of their exceptional design. Design is difficult to outsource or to automate.

You have the same situation with story. Good storytellers are hard to find and good stories are key in the industries of the future. Think about advertising. Nobody buys a product because it’s ads are interrupting your favorite movie or TV-show. Only few people watch these ads in the first place and for the web browser most people have installed ad blocker software. But a good story can sell any product. Viral ads on youTube work so well because the story is good or the video is funny, so that everybody wants to pass it to their friends.

The book contains a lot of examples and explanations why we should improve our right-brain thinking and it also gives good clues how to do that. Each chapter in the second part has a special section called “portfolio” that is filled with website links and book recommendations that gives you more information and resources into each of the six senses that he describes in the chapter.

I can really recommend Daniel H. Pink’s book to everybody who wants to survive the upcoming century. So it’s especially useful for all entrepreneurs and freelancers who currently have to compete with an army of cheap service providers in lower-wage countries like Asia or Eastern Europe.

You can use this link if you want to buy it from Amazon.com:

It’s also available for the Kindle eBook Reader:

These are both affiliate links, so I will get a few cents if you buy via this link. But you can also just put the book title in the amazon search box if you don’t want to use my link. The price for the book will be the same though, as long as you buy it from amazon.

If you have any comments, if you have read the book and want to add something, feel free to contact me at heddesheimer@gmail.com or post a comment right here after this blog post.

1. Learning Environments like Moodle

2. Blog Software like WordPress

Since I want to offer to create one comprehensive tutorial/video/eBook for free, and this is a one time opportunity for all to get really what YOU want and what helps YOU most in your daily work, I have set up another survey to decide if it will be Moodle or WordPress.

Please fill out this survey and feel free to add any comments and suggestions you have. I want to make this one a really outstanding product that will be available for free, released under Creative Commons License for everybody to use for their work. So I want to make sure that it’s really the stuff that YOU need most to make your daily work more productive.

Free eBook: Introduction to PHP
Free Video: Blender – first Steps
Free Video: Gimp – first Steps
Free Video: Become a Webmaster using WordPress.com
Free Live Class: Google Calendar Demystified
Free Live Class: The Firefox Web Browser: Useful Add-Ons

Now I’m planning on writing a new eBook that I want to offer for free but I need your help with this because I want to make sure it’s something that people really need and appreciate. I have prepared a simple survey that you can fill out, so that I get an Idea what’s the most required topic for such an eBook. If several people request the same or a similar topic, I will prepare a tutorial eBook that you will be able to download for free.

Edit: Thanks for all who did participate in the survey. Please check out this blog post for a follow-up.

Edit: This attempt has failed so far. Thanks for all who responded to the first survey, unfortunately it did not work for the follow-up. Maybe I did something wrong. Still not sure what it was. See this updated post for more information.

My tutorials will still be available on XStreet SL and later in the new Linden Marketplace until I found a new place where I can offer my tutorials in world.

If you have any questions, you can contact Jim Gustafson directly in world or send me an e-mail at heddesheimer@gmail.com

http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-250/

The new Version has a completely reworked user interface and lots of improvements under the hood. It’s definitely worth to check it out. There is also a video to see what’s new in this version:

http://vimeo.com/7169913

I’m organizing a christmas advent hunt from Dec 1st. to Dec 24. using my proven and improved Ultimate Hunt Script. The Hunt will be organized by Second Presentation and all merchants who want to participate are welcome.

Sponsors for this hunt:

Biker Parties at  Weltenville.
Jeaniesing’s Things and Animations at  Pinastri.
vMotional Animations & Poses at Sinamatic.
Daemon’s Club and Vendor area at Poolside.
Arielyn Docherty at Spiazzo (not in the hunt, special thanks for providing the artwork).

I have got 7000 Linden from our sponsors to split between the best hunters in this hunt. After Dec 25 I will do a random draw to pick the best hunters and there will be these prizes:

2000 Linden as 1st. prize (goes to Ela Lionheart)
1000 Linden as 2nd. and 3rd. prize (goes to Thanit Encore and Bar Yebut)
500 Linden as prize 4 to 11. (goes to januh Kilara, Evee Navarathna, Geniveve Boucher, Angelfire Teebrook, Zam Homebuilder, Meiou Yao, Fereshteh Rajal and Franceska Noel)

Congratulations to the winners.

German Version.

The hunt will start Dec 1st. where it will make the first hunt box visible, after this date, every day there will show up another hunt box until the 24th. On Dec. 24 at 23:59 SLT the hunt will end and the boxes will clean up themselves. There is no cost to participate in the hunt but donations will help to pay the server costs.

Any shop who wants to particpate can send me a message and I’ll put you on the list. Hunt items (one prim server and 24 scripts that you have to put into a box that you create by yourself) will be sent 2 weeks before the hunt starts. Setup is quick and easy, you just need to rez the server object, put your gifts in it and then rez and hide 24 wooden boxes where you put the scripts in the content tab. The boxes will be hidden after you put the script in, they will become visible automatically, there is nothing to do for the merchants after the setup.

There is no need to give out 24 gifts with this hunt. This hunt will work a little different from my other ultimate hunt events. You can now put a gift or a notecard into the hunt box, so if you have useful information, a poem or a recipe, you can put this into the hunt box. You can also leave the box empty. Finds will be counted again as with the other hunts that I made. I’m not sure if there will be a special prize for the best hunters but there will be a leader board available, showing the top ten hunters.

A list with the top hunters can be found here:

http://www.secondpresentation.com/sl-business/ultimate-advent/hunter.php

If you want to blog about it, you can use this image:

Jim Gustafson

What is a treasure hunt?

A treasure hunt is a sort of marketing tool that is used to generate “real” traffic (meaning not just automated bots sitting around at your place). Hunts are attracting users to come to your location and search for a specific item. In most cases, the hunt is “themed” like “Halloween”, “Christmas” or “Summer Fun”. The item to search will be one specific object like a beach ball or pumpkin.

The basic idea of getting people to your location is often circumvented by people who are using scripted radar scanners to find the hunt box, grab it and go along to the next location (that’s why I call this type a “grab-and-run” hunt). People who do that, will usually not recognize what you have to offer in your shop because they don’t stay long enough to see what you have to offer. They may come back if they like the gift that they found in the hunt box, but you are giving away a big opportunity to advertise your shop.

One thing you can do to keep people longer in your shop is to hide more items to find. That’s why some shops participate in several hunts. This might not work as expected since most hunters are just looking for “their” specific hunt item. That’s why the concept of “race-and-hunt” systems have been invited. This system will not hide just one item to find for the hunter, but they have to find several of these boxes. Now, most shop owners don’t want to give away more than one free item, so that the hunters may need another incentive for searching multiple objects.

Most of the race-and-hunt type systems have an online counter that counts who has found how many hunt boxes. This has been done with the Hope-Rose hunt that was organized by the American cancer society and with the back-to-school hunt that was developed and organized by myself. The basic idea with this type of hunt: people touch the hunt boxes and get counted by a centralized database. With this approach, the finds can be counted and winners can be found depending on the number of boxes they have found. This sort of hunt is much more effective if you award cash prizes for the best hunters.

How to generate more traffic?

A well organized treasure hunt is a big traffic magnet, but how do you get most out of if? First of all, if you use the hunt-and-race type of hunt it will give you more valuable traffic than the regular grab-and-run hunt. This is only true if you have more than one hunt box hidden though. You can say: the more hidden boxes, the longer the avatar will stay at your place. In my “Ultimate Hunt” system, merchants can set how the gifts will be delivered. If you set the system to “cruel”, the avatar have to find all boxes in your shop to get the gift, if you set it to “generous” they will get the gift right after they have found the first box. There are other settings like “random” or “average” for less extreme give-out methods. There is no need to award more than one gift because the finds will be counted and the avatars all have a chance to win the grand prize just by finding enough boxes. Anyway, if you want to give out more than one gift from your shop, you can do it. This will even encourage them more to find all your boxes.

How to generate more sales?

You see, generating traffic is easy if you set up a hunt in your shop (as long as the prize will be attractive). But what about sales? Will each hunter also buy something in your shop? This is not very likely because hunters do like to hunt for free stuff. Some of them just do it for the fun of finding all the boxes. But your shop will get seen by every hunter and if you have something that may attract one of them, you may get a new customer that you would not have gotten otherwise.
Also be careful what you give away as gifts for the hunters. They will unpack their gifts after the hunt, some of them do it even weeks later and so you have to take care what you give out and how you do it.
First of all: Choose a name for you gift that will remind them about the hunt. Don’t just name it “blue jeans”, name it “back to school hunt blue jeans” instead, so if they will search for their back-to-school hunt gifts, they will find it.
Use Landmarks: It is also very important that you put a landmark in the box with the gift, so they will come back to your shop if they like the gift. Some shops just forget to put the landmark in, so the hunter have to inspect the gift, find the creator and check the pics for their shop. This is not convenient for the customer, so most of them won’t do it.
Use high quality: Don’t give out crappy freebies to hunters. They will unpack the stuff, look at it and throw it away along with your landmark. Some of them may even remember your store and  avoid visiting it again. This is your opportunity to make a good first impression to people who don’t already know your store. You don’t need to give away products that you sell for thousands of Lindens, but it’s always good to give something in the range of 250-500 Linden. If you have time to make something special, produce a special edition related to the hunt theme (for example a “back-to-school outfit”) that is exclusive for the hunt only.

How to advertise?

A well organized hunt is also a great advertising tool. If you spend hundreds of Lindens to renew your classified ads in your profile, you should consider to participate in hunts. Hunts are usually advertised in world as well as in weblogs on the Internet. If there is an order in which the shops are chained together, it’s always best to be on the top of this list. Hunters usually start at the starting location and make their way through to the last shop on the list. But if there are too many shops, most people does not make it until the end. So if you have a chance to get up the list, you should do that.

How to organize a hunt?

Organizing hunts have been a difficult and annoying task. This is how you did it the classic way:
1. Create a set of hunt boxes, one for each shop.
2. In each hunt box, put in a landmark to the next shop in the list.
3. Send each hunt box to the appropriate shop with instructions.
4. Each shop will now add their gift in the hunt box and hide the box in the store.
5. Go to each shop and check if they did place the box correctly and set them to buy for 0L.
6. Contact each shop owner that did not follow the instructions and make sure they put out the boxes.
7. Check all the boxes again (you may still find some missing).
8. Contact the shop owners with hunt boxes that have landmarks to shops who did not put out the boxes yet. Ask them to replace the landmark in their box to the correct one.
9. Go around and check if they did make the changes.
10. During the hunt, keep checking if shops dropped out of the hunt. If shops dropped out, continue with step 8.
You see, his is quite a bit of work, especially if you have 100 shops or more participating in the hunt.

The web based hunt

Now let’s have a look at a web based hunt like my “Ultimate Hunt” system:
1. Rez a hunt server, touch it and choose “set landmark”. This will be the location where hunters will appear for the hunt.
2. Put one gift (or more) into the server, touch it and choose “update inventory”.
3. Rez and hide the hunt box (or as many additional boxes you want to hide in your shop).
4. touch the server and choose “start”.
That’s all for small shops who don’t want to spend much time for the setup. The hunt organizer just need to send out the hunt server and hunt boxes to each participating shop. Setting up the chain of shops will be done automatically on the Internet and can be managed by an admin page with a web browser.
For shop owners who want to have more control over their hunt items they can check them on a web page and even add hints here.
5. touch the server and choose “get login”. You’ll get a URL to your setup page on the web.
6. on the page you will see each hunt box and you can add a hint for each of them. You can also see detailed statistics about the hunt:

• number of avatars hunting in the shop
• number of found hunt boxes
• names of avatars who found boxes in the shop
• number and name of the gifts received by hunters

The hunt also limits the give-out of the gifts so that each gift can only be received once for each avatar. So you can give out your gift certificates or items that have transfer permission. In the usual grab-and-run hunts you can’t control this without using a web database, so in these hunts an avatar can come several times and pick up another copy of the gift. With the web-based system, the database already knows who have received which gift from your shop and will refuse to give-out another one.

Another advantage is the automatic cleanup. For a regular hunt you have to delete the hunt items manually after the hunt is finished, the web based system makes it possible to communicate with the objects so that they can clean up themselves if they are no longer needed.

How to get a hunt like this?

Now you may ask, how can you YOU organize a hunt like the “Ultimate Hunt” that I have developed. I decided that I will rent out my system for people who want to organize their own grid-wide hunt and don’t want all the hassle with setting up a classic hunt. I’ll charge a basic fee of 10.000 Linden for the web setup. The organizer will get an admin access to check if a shop has dropped out or if there are problems with the hunt items. I also offer this as a full-service for another 20.000 Linden where I keep a list of participating shops and send out the setup pack for the hunt (this offer is limited to 100 participating shops maximum and a hunt duration of 2 weeks).
If you are interested, please contact Jim Gustafson in world to book a time frame for your hunt. This is a limited introductory price, so make sure to book it fast.

Update: The hunt is now finished. We had 3293 hunters looking for the hunt boxes. They have found 51163 boxes in total.

(Dieser Text ist auch in Deutsch verfügbar)

Some statistics for this hunt (Sept. 20):

Number of active avatars: 2234

Number of items found so far: 35100

It seems that there are more avatars hunting in this hunt than in the last one (was 1224 in the Zindra hunt) but people seem not to find so many items (was 73600 in the Zindra hunt). Anyway it looks like a great success so far.

Anybody who owns a shop in SL and is interested in paticipating in the hunt can send me a message. I’ll send you group invites and more information when the new script enhancements are ready (monday Sept. 6). The hunt will be easy to set up and it will have some special features like repositioning the items automatically to make it harder to find them.

Thanks to all the sponsors who have donated a total of 10,000 Linden in cash and 10,000 Linden in gift certificates for the hunt:

Yoshi Zhangsun – Mindshift

Siss Truss – Perfect Prefabs Coral

Sin Toshi – vMotional

Madddyyy Schnook – slguides

Jeaniesing Trilling – Custom Animations

Quilla Quinnell – Devil Girl Designs

Constanza Amsterdam – slapt.me

SDWears Honi – SD Wears

Liznwiz Wei – Liz’s Independent Marketplace

and a special thanks for designing the hunt objects to:
Arielyn Docherty/Mickey Heaney  – Feather my nest

There are 47 shops pre-registered for the hunt until now, I hope we will get up to 100, so please contact me in world if you are interested.

According to the back-to-school theme, I will also invite SL-schools and educational institutions into the hunt. If you run a school in SL and if you are interested in participating, please let me know.

Some shops may be on adult rated sims, so please make sure you are age verified in order to be able to enter these regions of Second Life. That’s Linden Lab’s rules, not mine.

The technical background will be my “Ultimative Hunt” system that I have tested successfully in the “Happy Smiley” hunt with 32 Shops and 144 items to find. I really hope that there will be much more shops and items to find in the zindra hunt, which will give me a good chance to test the database application under full stress conditions.

Checkout the details here: Mark of Zindra Hunt

Here are the winners from the leaderboard (snapshot taken Sept 6 at 23:59:00):

1st. place with 442 finds:

Mike Flagon
Katman Landar
Ayako Kaligawa
Dariana Violet
Darkmoon Milev
Alina777 Demina
Polenth Yue
sTwo Acker
Taka Menges
Aryna Markova
nanami Juliesse
SweetNSexy Haystack
Kat Messioptra
Scarlett Osumi
Silarce Woodrunner
Tropo Chrome
Thraxis Epsilon

2nd. place with 441 finds:

69 Sugarplum
Ceilidh Arbenlow
Techwolf Lupindo
Bulldog Blackbart

3rd. place with 440 finds:

Vette Sweetwater
Krell Karu
Reesa Rieko

Place #4 with 439 finds:

Shelby Loudwater

Place #69 with 219 finds:

Alania Darkwatch

unfortunately some of the merchants did not have the patience to keep their boxes out until the official end of the hunt. Therefore all finds from removed boxes/shops has been corrected to the actual available boxes to avoid confusion or unfair advantages for those who would not have a chance to increase their score because of the vanished boxes. The final result should still be fine for the top 4 places though.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/ZoHa%20Islands%20N/236/51/27