This Thursday we will hold the next Second Life Entrepreneurs Gather. We are going to try to channel the future and discuss SL’s economic outlook for 2008.  We will look at some recent statistical trends around Second Life, debate growth prospects for next year, and take the temperature of the attending business folks.  If you are a Second Life entrepreneur or just interested in the topic, we welcome your attendance.  The event will be at Noon Pacific Time at the OnRez Event Center.  The official event notice is here [link].

Daniel was kind enough to post the transcript from his discussion at the last SL Entrepreneurs Gather. I’m sad that I had to miss it, and looking forward to the next one on the first Thursday of November (November 1st!). If you have ideas for group topics or speakers, drop an IM on Forseti Svarog.

Thank you to Pica (who took the above picture) and Jade for helping organize.  Oh, I look forward to the day when “missing image” clothing becomes a retro style, rather than an annoying bug.

The next SL Entrepreneurs Gather is happening on the first Thursday of October (i.e. October 4th) at noon PT at the OnRez Event Center. We are lucky enough to have Daniel Terdiman join us as a guest-of-honor. Daniel has just finished writing a book on entrepreneurship in Second Life, which should be coming out in early November. During this Gather, we’ll have a chance to ask him questions about his findings and get an early glimpse into his ideas for best practices.

Daniel Terdiman is a senior writer with CNET News.com who has been covering Second Life since 2003, first for Wired and now for CNET. He writes about the culture of technology, with a special focus on virtual worlds. All told, he has been a professional journalist for 12 years, having written and reported for The New York Times, Time magazine, Wired magazine and Wired News, and many others, and he has a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. His book, “The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Second Life: Making Money in the Metaverse,” will be published in November by Wiley.

Synopsis: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Second Life will give readers an in-depth look at businesses and other economic opportunities in Second Life, explain the business operations of each, and show readers how to identify, develop, launch, and profit from their own business. Daniel has started a blog for the book here.

Because this will be text-based (thus no stream to syndicate), we’ll move the location slightly downhill from the OnRez Event Center to the sim border so that we can fit the audience in two sims instead of just one. The events listing is here.

P.S. if you want to join the in-world group for announcements, it is called “rockin to the future” and is open enrollment.

Thank you to all who joined the first SL Entrepreneurs get together. We had a good discussion and nice energy. The conversation ranged from lag issues, to how to react to copycats, to how to find good help or partners. A smaller group of us had an impromptu meeting afterwards to discuss organizing a beta tester community that many in the dev community could use. Good stuff.

I’d like the next one (First Thursday - October 4th 12pm PT) to be a little more focused and productive — but without killing the energy or fun — so we’ll ponder format. Unlike a real world networking session where you can have lots of smaller conversations, we did face the challenge of how to manage a large number of people all interacting at once.

If you are interested in joining the in-world group, it is called “rockin the future” (thanks to caLLie cLine for that wonderfully optimistic group title!) and it is open enrollment.

I was fairly busy trying to keep up with the conversation, but I did snag two pictures:

Reminder to all that we’re having the first of a series of regular get-togethers for Second Life entrepreneurs this Thursday, Sept 6th, at Noon Pacific Time. It will be hosted at the Event Center on OnRez island in Second Life (see event notice here).

The goal is to give people a chance to meet and share ideas, opportunities, frustrations, challenges, etc. There will be competitors there of course, but you never know when a competitor might turn into a business partner, or where your interests might align to try to solve a particular problem. Starting a business is hard enough, if entrepreneurs don’t support each other, no one else will.

This first gathering, running about an hour, will be experimental and we’ll see how it goes and keep the format evolving so this stays productive and useful. We’ll probably cap the meeting at 50 avatars, and sim entrance will be first come first serve. If this proves popular we can devise expansion plans for future, but one step at a time.

Right now a few of the folks who have told me they will attend include successful entrepreneurs Barnesworth Anubis, caLLie cLine, Haver Cole, hyasynth Tiramisu, Simone Stern, and even Apotheus Silverman of SLExchange.