ORANGE -- A French telecom company seems an unlikely host for Second Life events about avatars and identity, but Orange – the brand for France Telecom Group – held The Unique Avatar Showcase to encourage residents to present their avatars and the stories behind them. The top three avatars were photographed by Callipygian Christensen and displayed at a gallery exhibition the following day during The Identity Summit on Orange Island.

“Nowadays, we talk about new ways of interacting with users and customers,” said Stephane Adamiak, business developer in the gaming department of the content division of Orange. “Web 2.0 is here to stay and becoming mainstream. Some talk about Web3d...Virtual worlds are only emerging, and we can't ignore this trend.”

Adamial said that the Orange team and their agency experts will continue to refine their in-world events program as they better understand residents expectations and needs.

“Our interest here, as weird as it might sound, is very much about research, and not about finding immediate business opportunities,” said Matthieu Poujade (Fandango Milena in Second Life), Community Manager of Orange Island and Second Life Community Manager at the telecom company. “I know it's sometimes difficult to believe a company that says "we have nothing to sell to you", but basically, that's what we are in SL.”

The summit is one way Orange is looking to understand the people and tools within Second Life. The idea of the summit began with a conversation between Adrienne Haik (Adri Saarinen in SL), Co-Founder Operations & Communications, Metaversatility and Rebecca Small, (Haver Cole in SL), community manager at Metaversatility about using avatars as a tool for communication and grew from there, according to Small. Small led the first panel about using avatars for branding.

“My AV is pretty much an incarnation of what I am working on at any given moment,” said panelist Saeya Nyanda, owner of a clothing store called Kyoot Army who was joined on the panel by Torley Linden and Celebrity Trollop. “Right now, I'm working on a sim thats all noir... so my av has been all noir. And I'm a puppet pretty much all the time.” Nyanda referred to the marionette strings and suspension unit above her head.

Linden, product manager at Linden Lab, confessed to having more than 50 avatars, most of them “watermelon-colored in all sorts of shapes, sizes, genders, philosophies, (and) forms.”

“My avatar is a reflection of my job -- she needs to be stylish and look like the magazine that she embodies,” said Celebrity Trollop, the owner, publisher and editor in chief of Second Style Magazine and the lead blogger on Second Style Fashionista. Trollop, who in real life is a male and works for Millions of Us as a Community Relations liaison, says her real world work-related alt is different from her SL business alt. “If you've never met her, (she) is buttoned down and business like. But Celebrity is a constantly changing chameleon.”

The text-only panels were frequently interrupted by chatter from the audience, and the moderators tried to rein in the discussions throughout the day.