Customer Case - Polish Community

The Polish Community in Second Life® is a member of the Community Gateway Program, established by Linden Lab® to engage new residents within the world of Second Life® in their own language and culture. The Polish Community has two regions, called Polish Community WyspaStartowa and Polish Community where new polish residents can learn how to use the Second Life user interface as well as find opportunities to participate within digital world of Second Life® in wider spectrum. The most important feature about this community is the multimodal communication and interaction with Polish speaking residents. In other words, the Polish Community is focusing on establishing the highest possible level of accommodation and familiarity within Second Life's® world in the Polish language.

In order to achieve this, the Polish Community has created the Polish Orientation Island (officially approved by Linden Lab®). The region is divided into two parts - a basic part which can be accessed only by new residents with an active account less than 30 days, and an advanced part which is open for residents who seek long - term opportunities in Second Life's® participation culture like for example a Building School or a Discussion Club.

It is a very large community. The Polish Community has already more than 5000 members and it still grows. On its regions, Polish Community organizes events at regular basis, which actually increases the number of community members itself. Additionally, these events increase the likelihood to have frequent returns of visitors to Polish Community regions.

At last, through their community they were involved in the localization of the official, Second Life® Viewer into the Polish language as well as translation of the Torley Linden Video Tutorials (also officially recognized by Torley Linden).

Photo by Villemo Inglewood

To get better insight into the community dynamics and to make significant decisions about the future of community, Magnus Balczo and Malwina Dollinger, the CEOs of the Polish Community, have been searching for more precise information about the number of visitors on the regions as well as ways to meet and understand expectations of the residents. Taking into consideration the popularity of the Second Life® platform in Poland, especially with local media attention, the numbers of new Polish residents are increasing. These moments create challenges and therefore it is crucial to continuously measure the effectiveness and logistic organization of the Polish Community regions.

To monitor visitors on a complete region Magnus Balczo and Malwina Dollinger decided to use the Region Array Counter on both regions. This visitor counter captured information from visitors on a full region.

They also bought an extended subscription to get access to all reports on the Metaverse Business website.

The reports gave them insight in the usage of the of the region using the heatmaps. Also the user profile reports gave them information about the type of visitors they get on their regions on how these visitors are different from the overal SL population.

• Engagement counters to monitor the usage of different edutional presentations and
• The event analysis tool to have more information about the participants in their events.

> Better understanding of the dynamics of their community.

> Improved decision making process based on facts and group management.

> Insight in which places on the island are the most popular and the impact of large peaks of visitors on sim performance.

Photo by Villemo Inglewood