Case-Notes from the Artsy Asylum

Just Leap In: A Virtual World of Potentials

You've heard jokes about "empty islands" - and granted that is true for some in Second Life, while at the other end of the spectrum it's difficult to give a presentation with more than 30 people in attendance given the design of the SL system. And if Gartner's new report, Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2008 is right, we're in trough on the virtual worlds front.

But that doesn't seem to be bothering developers of separate worlds for everything from McDonald's to the more sophisticated offerings like webflock from the Electric Sheep.

Now comes Just Leap In a newcomer from Canada which, at first blush, sounds like none of the others and could beat Google's Lively in everything except name recognition. The first clue? You don't have to search through Google's annoying database-like setup of questions and answers to figure out how to move around. That alone makes Just Leap In worth a second look.

Obviously multitudes of people and organizations seem ready to leap in and ride a coming wave that follows a downturn in new technology, ways of working, or clamor about the latest shiny thing.

When it comes to virtual spaces, the question that naturally comes up is who will be THERE to interact with? Will Second Life and WOW be the places to be just because - in spite of glitches and things we wish were different - we can overlook the flaws because of what they allow us to do? Will they thrive, like twitter because that's where the people we know ARE?

Or do we care? Will it be something else that lures us to use a virtual space?

How about future virtual worlds as a conduit to interact with ideas, information, entertainment and things we create or bring in from elsewhere on the web?

As an option for education, presentations, networking and meeting with colleagues and friends from around the globe without conferences, travel, time and expense, it's my feeling that virtual worlds will continue to shine. And that's the least of the potential.

Meta Challenges Bring Meta Rewards

In my work with Cornell's Metanomics last year through the now defunct Metaversed (now changed it's stripes with a Zebra incarnation which is not so uncommon in Second Life)  it was easy to see the glitches that presented themselves when mixed reality presentations happened - or didn't happen.

As time went on, with participation in events at Doctor Dobb's Island, particularly hosted by Mitch Wagner in his Ziggy Figaro incarnation, then Metaverse events based at Stanford including fascinating evenings hosted by smart and personable Henrik Bennetsen, one including Jamais Cascio, one the authors of the Metaverse Roadmap, the glitches got less pronounced at each meeting but still one had to be prepared for the technology to just fall apart at any time.

Oh sure it usually came back online eventually but we've learned that not everything in Mixed Reality can be scheduled. And all we can count on is that there WILL be some sort of glitch at some point.

But looking back through Beth Kanter's Blog where she recalls a mixed reality event in 2006 I'm reminded that in these things we are really pioneers and have to see ourselves as that, accepting the challenges as opportunities.

Beth says:

"Second Life requires a significant time investment to appreciate the potential. A time investment of more than a few hours .... And, it helps to be guided or you will ask what's the point? As Jeska Linden, Community Manager, for Linden Labs, said in her recent interview with me, "This isn't for all nonprofits."

No kidding. It's not for all people period, not just organizations. Putting in the time to learn the technology is tough unless you see the payout at the end.

And it's tough to see the payout when you can't get your hair on straight and continue to walk into walls.

Beth points out accurately that what we're doing "is experimentation to understand the possibilities and potential of virtual worlds as an educational, instructional, therapeutic, marketing, and/or collaboration medium."

When she wrote her piece there were 320 individuals on the Second World Education list and 20 universities that had built virtual campuses and were offering educational activities in world. At this date, two years later that list has grown exponentially.

Once the initial hurdle of learning the system is overcome it's not that much effort to work in an immersive 3-d environment IF one takes as a given that there will be glitches. So Jeska is so right when she says this is not for everyone.

If we have the ability to think of ourselves as explorers, we may be half way to winning the battle of being able successfully teach, hold seminars, run group meetings, and provide services in Second Life that are helpful to people in their physical lives.

That's my hope at least. To provide a meaningful way to help others and be of service while doing what I can with the rest of the life I've been given.

Real People Feel Pained as Virtual Drawbridge Goes Up

The 3-d web and Virtual Worlds are - I contend - the future of communication and a big part of community as we connect with wider and wider diverse groups of people. But there are glitches.

If truth be told there's more than one glitch.

The Disney folks have discovered that.

Or should have.

The Wall Street Journal sums the situation up neatly when it points out that "For Walt Disney Co., the task of opening a virtual version of Disneyland on the Web was relatively easy. Closing it, though, is proving to be quite a bit more difficult, thanks to the wrath of obsessive fans of Disney's theme parks."

It started with the launch, in 2005, of the free online game Virtual Magic Kingdom, based on the design and feel of the real world Disneyland park.

Fans wanting to visit Tomorrowland or princesses in catles were able to do just that in virtual reality through avatars they created. Plus the Kingdom gave visitors - or did until tomorrow - lots of opportunity to interact with others who share an interest in Disney and online virtual reality games.Players, participants, or those who WSJ calls "Disney's notoriously obsessive fans" were quickly hooked and Disney bragged that over a million avatars had been created.

What Do You Do With Links?

What do Gartner, Social Networks, Twitter, New Media, Soup.io and Friendfeed share?

The answer is that they share room here and on my radar for today but throwing a list of links at you is not my style. Beyond this idea not being on my radar it's more like I hope that there are better ways of dealing with links I might want to suggest to someone.

Instead of sticking random lists of links in this - or other - blogs, mainly I

• Write something about the item, then post it to this blog or the cancer-related Boobs on Ice depending on the topic

• Use friend-feed to share stuff that passes through my line of sight and catches my eye

• Tweet why I'm dropping the link in the tweetstream

• Rely on soup to collect my own non-twitter content and then add bits and pieces I'd like to keep on my own radar to look at later

But today the call of these two screamed out at me and I don't want to opine at length. Thus random links:

• Analysts Highlight 10 Things Retailers Should Know About Social Networks,  Gartner Says Social Networks Are Attracting Too Much Traffic for Retailers to Igno

• Reuters sees Twitter as a breaking news tool: New Media File

Did it save me time? No - because I wound up writing about what I do with links. Typical.

Walled Communications: Who Am I Here?

After writing here and on twitter about my granddaughter who was in the hospital in Pediatric Intensive Care. I got wonderful feedback and very supportive comments.

Following up, the diagnosis is that Emma has Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome which causes her heart to beat erratically from time to time. She has been stabilized on beta blockers and will be closely monitored. Thanks for asking and for caring.

There's a lot in life that's not easily classifiable

The reason I touch on this again is that we're people after all, and we - not to mention life - do not fit easily into nice little cubbyholes. At least my life never has.

In the late fifties I was asking neighborhood kids to find out whose mom would pay a quarter a week for me to teach them some basic baton lessons in my side yard. Was I having neighborhood conversations, kid conversations, business conversations?

I didn't pay any attention. I was helping someone else, helping myself, learning abut life, having fun, getting to know someone better and exploring, Communicating. Creating. Dreaming.

It was all about people and interacting and life.

Later I sold art to and created logos for people I knew. Then they would tell other people and I'd often meet and network with or do work for them. Or I'd meet someone at my date's golf tournament, my son's soccer game, on a PTA Board, and make a new contact.

Were these business connections? Friendships? Mom-connections? Consulting connections? Art connections?

I didn't know and I still don't.

In my world the topics of people and interaction and connecting and community do not have barriers between then. It seems artificial to act as if there are.

Yes, I hear the grumbling. "she tweets about her cancer treatments, not information we need," "there are thousands of babies sick right now."

Fact is though that not talking about new baby issues in a blog that is after all about life and the connections and relationships we make - and whatever else this blog is about - seems as artificial as only interacting with Second Life people in Second Life, or not mentioning my cat or my artwork or whatever else affects mine - or someone else's life.

And I think we learn something about business through learning about living, and learn something about community by caring about our neighbors' babies. And the list could go on.

The aspects of many of our lives are as permeable as those membranes we did experiments on in biology class.

Hard wiring, life-view, whatever you want to call it, that's how it works for me to function effectively in the world. I can't dissect myself into multiple little pieces.

Starting Boobs on Ice was an attempt to deal with my cancer experience but even that spills over in spite of my efforts. Magpie Genes is specifically as an outlet for my art pieces but there's some osmosis there too.

So it's OK for other people to have different guidelines for themselves and their blogs? Are they better compartmentalizers?

Totally! But I'm just too all over the place interest and life-wise to manage it myself. Let's face it. I couldn't if I wanted to.

I'm glad you're willing to put up with it.

ooVoo Means Community, Connection, Conversation, Comedy and Cause

It started on February 10th, which happened to be my sixtieth birthday and about sixty days since my cancer diagnosis. It was a hard time. But it was also My ooVoo Day which actually turned out to be ooVoo Week

I spent six hours interacting in six way on-screen conversations with the great people who read my blogs and tweets and it was more fun than a barrel of monkeys even before I ooVooed with Joe Jaffe who entertains while conversing.

What can I possibly write about what ooVoo, Crayon, Scott Monty, and their Big Idea meant to me? I can say: Community, Connection, Conversation, Comedy, and Commitment to a Cause. But the video says the rest.

During that week bloggers ooVooed with friends and fans. It was amazing. Then as if we hadn't already had enough fun, to thank bloggers hosting chats ooVoo donated an unbelievable $30,000 to the Frozen Pea Fund Fund established to support Cancer awareness, research and education.

This donation was made in honor of blogger and cancer patient who happened to be...me! . Although I could not be there, my husband and our daughter Bill and Kate Reynolds were part of a check presentation ceremony to the Frozen Pea Fund at Blogger Social in New York in April.

And not to sit on their laurels, ooVoo is right there in the community, making connections and planning more opportunities to connect. As we find ourself in election year, next up in June is a Political Edition of My ooVoo Day With.

I can't wait to see the momocrats in action.And who will take them on? Is there an opening for a new group called republidads in the making? Trust ooVoo to provide a forum for them if there is. 

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Dont want to miss it? Go to http://www.oovoo.com/ to download ooVoo

MEStream - A Question Of Interaction

Although it's supposed to be about conversation - or that's my view at least - sometimes web 2.0 becomes a MEstream. Millions of people around the world use twitter, flickr, viddler, youtube, soup.io, tumbler to broadcast the latest of me me me-ism.

It's no longer limited to our multiple blogs which can turn into our own version of CNN's constant loopy stream of what they consider to be information we need to know - or more likely their opinion about what's happening and what we should think about it, but don't get me started on CNN because we all have our filters after all.

Its not all one way streaming though.

In an interesting quirk of timing, just as Kristin Forbriger's tweet brought to my attention that the Philadelphia Inquirer was not only tweeting but was  being interactive I saw a tweet from Julia Roy that she was flip - filming us.

Julia's deadpan photos aways make me grin, so I had to go look. And then I got to thinking,

Julia's looking at us. Kristin's looking at us. The Inquirer is looking at us.

Are we looking back or just streaming US?

Lately my own stream of broadcasting updates gave way to our good new baby news, And who could miss the Frozen Pea Fund that started as two women tweeting ideas about how to show support for me when I got my cancer diagnosis in December?

There's an innate curiosity hard wired into me offset by a deep frustration that there's not time for everything. Not as social as some, I hope that's offset with placing being interactive high on my priority list.

Truthfully, I miss a lot. Commenting on blogs or videos gets little of my time in the past six months, though I do a little better sending conversational @ messages on twitter and looking through, talking back and marking other's flickr photos as favorites. (some of those pictured here)

But for many of us these are surprising and mind expanding times full of opportunity. We started small (thus say my tweetstats), learned about others in the interactive web community, got more involved and didn't try to become anything but participants. Sometimes we talk more about us and sometimes more about others. 

Steady - and genuine - interaction matters

And I think that's what the Inquirer is attempting. It's early for them in their experiment with twitter, following and being followed by less than 100 others as I write this.

It's not just because I went to school in Philly that I'm in their corner. It's because I believe in the potential of the very interactive, personally engaged Jim Long @NewMediaJim and Andy Carvin's NPR twitter model

It will be interesting to see how they develop their tweet presence and I'm rooting heavily for them to help show the other news outlets how it can be done.. . interaction by interaction; engagement by engagement; relationship to relationship.

Upscoop Sifts Your Contacts

When writing about how you let your friends know what  social networks you participate in I could only tell you so much in one article. But there's more.

Including - upscoop - a service which identifies which friends are part of what network.

This puts the burden of finding you on your friends.

They - if they know about upscoop and are willing to give the program access to their friends lists - just let upscoop sift through their lists from various sources. Then upscoop provides an alphabetized list of friends links to their pages on whatever social networking sites they are registered with

Nifty? Yes. A little on the privacy-invading side?

Probably, There's a lot I don't know but it may go too far.

I think I'll stay with my practice of just showing icons with links to all my social sites for the time being, and I'll keep  a couple of aggregators running for the really nosy out there just in case.

That way you won't have to find upscoop to find me.  . . . But it was kinda nifty watching upscoop work.

Peas Hit the ParTay

From that Internet TV guru Jonny Goldstein comes an announcement about my scheduled appearance on his show on Wed, Feb 13, 9PM EST

"We will talk about Susan’s Journey so far, how by sharing her own story she has set off a groundswell of support around the world to help battle cancer."

I was flattered to be asked and am pleased that through the miracles of technology my dear friend Connie Reece will be joining us from Austin for the show Jonny calls the Par-Tay.

I'll see if I can convince him that for one night it can be the PEA-Tay, and I promised to bring leftover birthday cake - because of course my dream is to be filmed stuffing cake in my mouth.

Hosts: Jonny Goldstein & Scott Stead,

How to watch: Just go to jonnygoldstein.com.
Interactivity: Interact via the live chatroom and if you have a webcam and a blogtv.com account, we can maybe even put you on via video.

When: 9PM EST, Weds, Feb 13

..

To read more about my sudden Breast Cancer diagnosis and how I'm treating it with community support please visit Boobs on Ice

Who Are You Here? Who Are You There?

Are you willing to verify your identity? Geoff Livingston blogs about it in Opening Identity

"Now more than ever companies, marketers and consumers are concerned about demonstrating identity.

Several recent events have driven that home:

• Second Life and IBM’s initiative to open Second Life avatars so they can be used in a wide variety of virtual worlds"

Geoff also did this great video I've added below to get you thinking.

Since he brings up those two little words "Second Life" - you new this was coming - I have a question.

Are you willing to verify your identity with a trusted third party to assure that those you do virtual business with that you are who you say you are?

Laura Thomas of Dell, Jeff Barr of Amazon, Mitch Wagner of Information Week, writer Aliza Sherman, and dozens of others who take part in the vibrant business community of Second Life have adopted transparent identities that say: "I'm here and I'm who I say I am".

Others aren't so nuts about the idea

Asking a question related to being transparent about who we really are, and even where you can contact us, was met with a notable lack of enthusiasm when I brought it up in - of all places - a discussion about “Persona and Identity Transparency” in Second Life last Friday.

The reaction to my question showed a rather overwhelming opinion favoring “in world” reputation as far outranking any need for transparency of identity in what we might call the real world. Granted, parts of the Second life community are insular and many longtime residents resent suggestions that things might be done differently by a fresh wave of users.

It’s probably safe to predict much ado and an uphill battle to make sure we’re all reading from the same ethics book no matter what world we're dealing with.

And that's not even opening the can of worms about allowing pseudonyms on facebook.

So what's your stance? You know where you can find me. I'm Tynan Clary on Second Life - but that's only because they wouldn't let me be Susan Reynolds.

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