I enjoyed the day and there were vibrant twitter backchannel conversations.

I’ve embedded below the slidecast (slides plus audio) as a nice lofi alternative to the videos, which are also good and enjoyable.

I’ve also included James Clay’s talk, which was the stand out talk of the day for me: hopeful, fun, inspiring.

(Also definitely worth checking out is Peter Robinson from Oxford University’s comprehensive account of setting up iTunesU, which was very interesting too.)

My thanks to Tim Bush and Frank Steiner from ULCC for inviting and looking after me on the day: they put on an event to be proud of.

As a kind of precursor to the Develop games conference in Brighton in a couple of weeks time, The Guardian Gamesblog’s Aleks Krotoski and Keith Stuart are hosting a games-themed pub quiz at the Caroline of Brunswick, just down the road from here (and well within stumbling home distance too, which is always good).

I’m certain there are enough games geeks here to take on the already mighty (and slightly intimidating) list of attendees from Black Rock Interactive, Linden Lab, NCSoft, Zoe Mode, GamesIndustry.biz, Eurogamer, Pocket Gamer and Future Publishing.

More details over at the Gamesblog.

Bring it!

I had an enjoyable visit to Habbo Hotel’s colourful real life European HQ in East London today and I thought I’d share a few things that I learnt. Please do ask questions in the comment section – I’m sure the friendly guys from Habbo Hotel will be pleased to answer.

First up, a few facts and figures for Habbo Hotel’s UK service:

• 700,000 active users.
• Up to 10,000 concurrent users during busy periods.
• Most uses have had a dabble with spending money in the world, with 10% of users being regular spenders.
• 80% of users are in the 13-16 age bracket.
• Campaign costs for a brand entering Habbo Hotel from £25,000

Habbo Hotel allows users to create their own rooms within the hotel for free and then they can purchase credits to buy furniture, objects, and other bling to kit it out. This is different from ‘grown-up’ virtual world Second Life, where users pay for virtual land, upon which they can build whatever they like for free. Overall, Habbo Hotel is a relatively closed and controlled environment, but this keeps it clean, simple and safe for kids.

Brands looking to reach out to teens can engage Habbo Hotel to build their own attractions within the hotel. For example, for the launch of EMI’s Now 69 compilation album, a party room was created, complete with a virtual dance floor, and the ability to click a banner which then streams music from the album. This was a brand awareness exercise only which seems like a bit of a missed opportunity to me. There was no direct monetisation (e.g. linking off to purchase the album online,) but the guys from Habbo tell me that this kind of thing can be done. Because it’s a closed shop, Habbo Hotel have a monopoly for building a presence for a brand within the world, so there’s no ecosystem of companies who can build things for you. But there are advantages of using the world’s creators to do the work in terms of quality and knowing that what you produce will be in the appropriate style.

Treasure Hunt or ‘quest’ style marketing campaigns work well in Habbo Hotel. For the launch of the Silver Surfer film ‘The Dark is Rising’, a quest was created where users followed clues and completed tasks, with a dozen winners receiving a prize of a limited edition virtual badge for their avatar which has since become a very desirable and respect-winning artefact. Users were also challenged to create new rooms in the hotel in the style of space stations. All of this creates a lasting legacy for the film within the world.

Brands entering virtual worlds – particularly Second Life – are notorious for having big PR launches, then precious few actual visitors. Since Habbo Hotel makes most of its revenue from selling artefacts to users, the world is not too cluttered with commercial activity with typically just a handful of events going on at any one time. This makes it relatively easy to get attention. As an additional bonus, the Habbo folks tell me that when they enter the world themselves (with Habbo Hotel ‘staff’ badges, of course!) they are treated a bit like rock stars, and if they turn up to your event then the crowds will follow.

Campaigns including custom design and build of feature rooms typically cost from £25,000, up to £50,000 for a heavyweight campaign. If you really want to go large, you can spend six-figure sums per year for a large scale permanent brand presence in the world. This is very roughly around twice as expensive as a Second Life build if you were to hire an established agency. However we should be careful about making direct comparisons – they are different offerings to different markets, and whilst Habbo Hotel is smaller, it is easier for a brand to get attention.

The important thing is results. I’m told that they have had campaigns attracting a couple of hundred thousand users, with a cost per visitor to the attraction of around 10 pence. This is fairly good value, considering the level of engagement that a user can have with a brand in a purpose-built attraction, especially if you can monetise that attention in some way.

As with all virtual worlds and social networks, the best approach is to understand the complete landscape of which networks your target audience engage with, and then incorporate these networks into your strategy, by figuring out how you can get involved in a way that’s useful to the users (not just looking for an opportunity to wade in and ram your brand down everyone’s throat!) In an entertainment-focussed network like Habbo Hotel, the most successful marketing campaigns are ones that are a fun and interesting addition to the hotel. Not surprising really.