Today I attended the public launch of Manchester Business School’s Second Life island.

We’ve been working in close partnership with the Second Life Stakeholder Group at the School developing the island and its associated web microsite and until now the island has been closed to public access and the microsite, which allows you to register an MBS avatar and book a virtual meeting room, has been sat on our development servers. Now, 18 months after we first began working with the School, the island is open for all to see.

At the launch Professor Linda Macaulay gave an overview of the island and its uses whilst Dr Kathleen Keeling described some of the international research projects MBS are undertaking in Second Life. Dr Cliff Mitchell outlined the very successful virtual graduation ceremony we delivered for BP Project Managers and Andrew Wilson, e-learning support officer, demonstrated how the microsite works.

For me it was a proud moment and felt a bit like sending your first born out in to the big wide world. We’ve really enjoyed working with the business school and guiding them through the in and outs of creating content and managing virtual real estate. Now they have all the tools and knowledge in place to move the island forward themselves and use it across all departments in the business school. Like anxious parents we’re here if they need us but we’re proud to see them take control of the future of the island.

We’re very excited to announce the launch today (fittingly on National Poetry Day) of a new website for Streetspeak. Funded by the Football Foundation, Arts Council and National Football Museum, Streetspeak is a three-year initiative that harnesses youngsters’ interest in football to engage them in writing poetry.

Central to the new site is a bespoke interactive game, Poem Builder, which enables visitors to compose poetry from either an 11 or five-a-side team. Words represent each player and the aim is to compose a poem including five or 11 randomly generated football related words. Players can customise their character using a selection of hairstyles, facial features and football kits, representing themselves or their favourite player. The site also features an image, poem and video gallery, teaching resources and an ‘ask a poet’ area where visitors can interact directly with poets.

Lesley Parkinson, project co-ordinator for Streetspeak says: “Corporation Pop has exceeded our expectations. The style and tone is spot-on and we’re sure the Poem Builder will capture the imagination of our audience, promoting engagement with the site.”

We won the contract in July this year following a four way pitch.

www.streetspeak.org.uk

We’re currently looking for a Head of Digital to join our fast growing team. This is a very exciting position which offers the chance to join our senior management team and help shape the future of the company. For more details go to the work with us section of this site.

Every so often we all down tools and take a day out of the studio with the aim of being inspired. We call this our ‘cultural day out’ and the brief is that we visit someone or something that is creatively stimulating but not directly connected with what we do. Previous ‘days out’ have included David Mellor’s cutlery factory in Hathersage and limited edition book publishers Incline Press in Oldham – both hard acts to follow. But our most recent excursion didn’t disappoint!

Yesterday we hooked up with Nick Roberson of Roberson Stone Carving. He arranged for us to have a behind-the-scenes tour of the fabulous John Rylands Library, a little known Mancunian gem which took ten years to build but apparently only two weeks to design! Nick’s knowledge and enthusiasm was enthralling – it was the incredible quality of the stonework here that first inspired Nick to become a stonemason. After our fascinating tour we all piled in to a minibus which took us back to Nick’s workshop. Here we learnt about the materials and techniques that Nick uses in his work and witnessed some of the beautiful projects that he’s working on at present.

In our computer focused world its very easy to loose sight of ‘craft’. Yesterday (and our other days out) serve to remind us why we were first inspired to become designers and keep us in touch with the true master craftsmen. Its their singularity of purpose and devotion to their craft that enables them to produce truly remarkable work.

Here’s Nick carving a Trajan letter ‘R’ for us. You can see the rest of our photos from the day here.