Case-Notes from the Artsy Asylum

Nov 14, 2007: Vietnam Veteran's Wall Creators and Cisco Luminaries

You just can't say there's nothing interesting to do in Second Life, or no interesting people to meet, ideas to discuss and more

For example, here are just two that I'm looking forward to today.

You couldn't go wrong attending, listening, asking questions, having a conversation or two at either one. It would ne next to impossible to come out with something you didn't go in with.

Nov 14: at Noon PST/SLT

Second Life's Vietnam Wall

The Creators will visit with us in the Amphitheater area of Dr Dobbs Island and talk about how they came up with the idea, and managed the process of bringing DC's famed Vietnam Veterans' Memorial Wall to Second Life with dignity and honor

Location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dr%20Dobbs%20Island/215/117/27  Amphitheater

To visit The Wall in SL before or after this event, teleport to this location

Download the wall welcome note.txt which will be helpful to you

Nov 14: also at Noon PST/SLT

Cisco Luminaries will be Talking Tech:

Alan Cohen, VP Enterprise and Midmarket Solutions, and Joe Burton, CTO, Unified Communications will discuss layered architectures, security, on-premises versus hosted collaboration services, and operational tools.

Location: cisco systems http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cisco%20Systems%204/66/28/22

References:

Cisco Virtual Environments Blog or Cisco Live at Networkers! Technical Sessions Online:

 

20071114 20071114 Vietnam Wall Creators

20071115 20071115 Virtual Worlds/ Social Gaming

 

Networking into 2018

What if putting on glasses that allowed you to access directions, information and virtual worlds was as normal as getting up in the morning? What if they were also available as contact lenses?

And what if you could ask questions of the man who dreamed up the world in which this happened, which is something Information Week's Mitch Wagner, in his Ziggy Figaro persona, gets to do, and wearing cool shoes like these. (click for the way out detail)

It's Easy

Each Tuesday at 8 a.m, Second Life time ([Pacific) Mitch meets with a guest, or a couple of them, at the amphitheater at Dr Dobbs Island in Second Life for Grid Talk.

The best part of this for me - besides getting to see cool stuff people find to wear - is that the open audience format is very casual and the company is put at ease.

Asking questions during the presentation is encouraged, chat is far from stifled, and all are welcome to stay after the event to interact with whoever is available.

Networking and networked

The future, networked technologies and their effect on out daily lives was on tap this morning in an open meeting with author Charles Stross,  focusing primarily on the world of 2018 he created for his sci fi novel Halting State.

Mitch admitted his prejudice about this particular novel before the event when he wrote

"Halting State is a well-realized and intelligent treatise about near-future effects of networked technology.

It's also an extremely entertaining, thrilling, and funny crime caper novel."

Informed opinion

Stross has published 14 novels, including Accelerando,the Merchant Family series,
Singularity Sky, and The Atrocity Archive

Thus alone may seemed to qualify him to opine on effects of artificial intelligence on human society by way of his research for writing,

This morning I was delayed by a sick spouse so was late getting to the event, which makes it even better that for those who missed the discussion in Second Life there will be a downloadable
audio file or a podcast.

The details I have are that it will be available at the Information Week site within a short time of the presentation.

Group Photo: the sci-fiesque audience was colorful, complete with horns and little green men

Next week? I don't know what's on the schedule, but I'll try to be prompt because it's never, ever boring.

Social Media - Opening Doors to More Connections

I've written about my online friend Suzy Miller with whom I've been sharing ideas about community and connecting. She's pulled some of her own thoughts into an article that was published by a major UK parenting magazine.

Who out there doesn't identify when she writes

"I am a grown-up with young children and a business. I can’t possibly have time to ‘socialise’ or network online. So why is it I find myself interacting with people I have never met from all round the world, into the early hours, ‘poking’ on Facebook and ‘nudging’ on Twitter? "

Enjoy the rest of her article

Invasion of the Blogger Mums here and the rest of her blog but don't dare miss my favorite part. . . in which she points to me!

"My favourite recent example of social networking being used creatively is by the artist Susan Reynolds, who blogged in Case-Notes from the Artsy Asylum about her recent mild stroke. I had ‘followed’ her messages via Twitter during her hospital stay"

Aw shucks, Suzy. It was nothing.

But on the other hand social media IS something special.

How else would I actually feel I know a mum of three from the UK, University professors, mommies, marines, venture capitalists, cops, nurses, writers, techies, musicians and geologists?

What Yahoo and Google groups - and even usenet before that - gave us were people who shared a common interest in knitting or RVs or scrapbooks. That tended to sift people out. And not many had the stamina to sift through hundreds of messages sent to groups each day to really know the people in the groups.

Opening the door instead of sifting those who enter

Social Media (twitter, facebook, utterz, seesmic for example) on the other hand make possible for us to share tidbits of our lives in short format so that we can make those connections, and expand, not narrow, the people that we're exposed to.

Thus opening the doors to me knowing Suzy. And now I hope you know her too.

Who would you never have met if it weren't for Social Media?

Listing just some of them and understanding why you'd never have met them otherwise is as good an exercise as you could do to "get" the power of Social / Relationship Media.

..

If you missed the stroke story, some of it is here

Link Love for Socialmeter

Tip: Try the socialmeter tool to determine what kind of love you're getting from social media hot spots.

They didn't tell me I'm a Social Media rock star - or much I didn't suspect already. But it did give me some indication about where I'm doing well - and not so well.

Not a bad investment of sixty seconds or so.

Twitter is My Virtual Office

Instead of feeling disconnected I tweet.

It could be about the virtual island @conniereece and I bought or a link to photos of the new crocs inspired by @preppydude @fireton and egged on by @pistachio,

Next might come thanks for the so sweet care package from @wickedstepmom, or grousing about my scrabble score against brainiac @geosteph and twitter-star @AnnOhio just like I'd chat in the elevator . . . if I had an office.

Although twitter began as a way to answer the question "what are you doing" it's now become something else for many of us who do not have traditional coworkers.

We may be involved in projects with a veritable carousel of people from all over the world, but since we don't see them in the hallways or at meetings we miss being able to toss a casual "what's happening" their way.

What would normally be natural, short office chit chat and observation can take endless hours to cultivate by email. We wind up choosing whether to be overwhelmed with email or put up with feeling disconnected.

When I no longer had time or inclination to send updates on what was indeed going on with me to dozens of contacts I gave up. After multiple threats I finally just sent out an email saying that I was going to abandon email, going as cold turkey as I could manage, relying on facebook updates and messages.

Fate smiled on me because shortly thereafter I found twitter.

Although popularly tagged as the food choice of media snackers, twitter can also function as pregnancy reporting, flirtation, business pitches, sports smack, restaurant reviews, trip updates, inside geek tech news, medical reports, social climbing, encouragement, job finding and connection making.

Twitter allowed me to follow Mike and Britt's move across the country, eagerly await news about Ashley delivering, show my concern about Sage's cat, applaud Laura's walk for breast cancer, regularly give Aaron a hard time, laugh at Mitch, cheer FOR Ohio State and against the teams of those LSU and Florida fans, and work on a project to send goodies to troops in Kandahar.

In other words - I'm just being like you - or myself. But in 140 characters at a time.

Other twitter users are enthusiastic, as Twitter user, Leisa Riechelt,told New York Times she thinks the microblog experience is valuable for those listening in on personal details, sharing in what she calls “ambient intimacy.”

She writes that while others may ask: “Who cares? Who wants this level of detail? Isn’t this all just annoying noise?” she counts herself among those “who find great value in this ongoing noise.”

She added, “It helps us get to know people who would otherwise be just acquaintances.”

Will you become one of my virtual office mates by following me at twitter?

 

Twitter - A Place Where People Know Your Name

If you've heard about twitter and are thinking about dipping your toes in the stream to learn what people are talking - or twittering - about there's no better time than now.

You've heard it's for geeks? OK, and moms, writers, students, freelancers - anyone with a computer and a brain.

It's about people and what people might talk about if they had a few minutes on and off during the day - as they were passing at the copy machine or the water cooler.

Those mini comments - limited by twitter to a perfect snack size bite of 140 characters - are as likely to be about cookies for guys in Kandahar as the next new thing in tech. Whatever your interest, there are people who can toss a couple lines to you every day and make your life a little more interesting in the process.

Jerimiah Owyang offers to be your twitter friend and point you in the direction of others, saying

"I hope to see you on Twitter, if you follow me, I’ll follow you back. Looking for other people to connect with? Twitterposter shows some of the top members in this graphical dashboard, a good starting point."

Following his good example, if you leave a comment below letting me know what name you use on twitter, then follow me there by clicking "follow" on my twitter page, I'll add you to those I follow as well.

To make it easy to find me I use  susanreynolds uniformly there and elsewhere.

Next, find some other people to follow. When you' look at the Twitterposter site  you will find a US version of twitterposter and a world version. Each shows the relative influence of individual tweeters. The larger their image is - the larger the group of people who follow them on twitter. 

After all with 100,000 tweeters and limited space on a chart, following anyone who made the cut-off here will give you at least some idea what it's all about. Simon Collister writes that Twitter is about people, not technology. And I think you'll find he's right

Although there is not enough time in a day to listen to every voice in the conversation, I'm doing my best. I hope you'll check it out. Sometimes the connections you make to people in a few minutes interspersed in your week can be invaluable.

For more about Jeremiah see Spending time on Twitter, join us

Scrabbulous - it's More than Idle Chatter

If you've been around me lately you know that I play scrabble via a facebook application that I've enthused about before. In the example at the right I'm the master scrabbler who makes words like NUT and SIT.

Suffice it to say that most opponents have nothing to worry about unless I get a lucky rack of letters. I'm not there to prove my spelling prowess.

Like most of the facebook applications I use, the idea behind it is connecting in some way not normally available to me.

And luckily enough for me, it turns out that tweaks in this game make for improved interaction during the game - beyond just moving letters around on a board and finding out who's got a great vocabulary and who's ruthless.

Before the changes I could send a little message to other players but it wasn't obvious if they didn't know it was there.

Now there's a scrolling screen at the right side of the playing board above the letter tiles I'm playing. Hard to miss it even though the type is still minuscule. The comments go back and forth, from the serious to the mundane.

So how does this address connectedness, outreach, community?

Imagine you want to chat about a possible collaboration, but in a way that feels like having drinks. Less focused on the project and more focused on interacting and making a connection. Bingo.

Or you know someone from twitter just well enough to respond back and forth a bit.

Playing scrabble with them and chatting on and off during the course of the game - which generally takes several days, with some players not making a move as often as others - could be just the way to make the move to being more than passing tweeters.

Might work for you. Game playing isn't always a bad thing.

Building Community in First and Second Life

The title's more than a rhetorical question. Some well known people* take what they have learned in Second Life and turn it into real life careers, designing spaces and experiences, organizing events, creating clothing and other objects to be used in the virtual world.

But now something new is evolving, Others are taking what they've done  in their first lives and moving to segue that into a Second life presence.

Writers,  designers, publicists, artists, musicians, podcasters, educators, marketers, therapists and the vast array of people who are interested in Social Media don't want to be left behind as the virtual universe spins on ahead without them.

For every IBM, or Sun that joins Second Life hundreds of people just like me are making the same decision.

But we face challenges

• We don't all know if this experiment called the 3-d web is really for us

• Many of us don't have the time to learn enough to put together a house much less an office that looks and is functional and reflecting well on them

• As small businesses and one wo/man bands we don't need the same kinds of things the big guy need - at least not regularly.

• We not only don't know what we don't know - but think of all that stuff we wouldn't need to know if we had a network of people to fall back on.

• Research where to build, what to build, who to trust? It can take months and we don't have a "department" that does that for us

• We don't need skyscrapers, asphalt parking lots, security systems, billboards, flashing lights, paid staff or glitz but we do need good neighbors and adjacent no drama zone islands

• We don't all have thousands of dollars to develop a space at which to get together with a friend, hold a more formal meeting, show something we've created, give a class, meet a potential client, stream some videos or just feel like we belong.

• We might need a casual room to work in and more formal areas too. We need room for six at a table every so often but other times deck chairs for three of us could be just the thing.

Which is where my shared office space idea comes in.

By a stream, under a tree, beside the sea, up in the clouds, in a low glass and stone building, or away from it all in a modern steel skybox. We can use all the options we can get.

First set up in September, Reynolds Clary and Associates offices have been on a shakedown cruise even since.

But Wait . . . Who's Reynolds Clary and since when are there Associates?

I'm doing double duty as Reynolds and my Second Life avatar who has been learning the ropes during the past year along with me is Tynan Clary.

Then there are the associates; namely the community of people who twitter along with me every day and with whom I'm glad to share not only a name but spaces, ideas, resources, challenges and all that entails.

Although I put up the initial money for the land, outfitted the offices and keep tweaking things, if we need some staff, some backup, or some cross marketing we'll be counting on  who? Each other.

My job is to keep thinking about the concept, the big picture, and especially the associates.

The associates use the office as just another part of their own small businesses. Their job is to help me know what they need.

Their other roles include sharing their knowledge for the good of the others. To let it happen gladly when good fortune and thus the job overflow come knocking. To contribute towards monthly fees I pay to Linden Labs. To be good stewards of community.

And to evolve and help us do so, or move on with our support and good wishes.

And then there are the little things -

It seemed important to me to add the touches that make the spaces un-corporate. So I started accumulating - and casually placing - fireplaces, footbridges, the odd lamp or throw rug, pumpkins, a newspaper and glasses on a table.

Oh - and the essential red Swingline stapler. Because we're not a big corporation. We're just people.

But more about that next time.

As always: It's all about community. And I personally welcome your visit.

Psst: I swear anyone in Second Life longer than a couple weeks will tell you this. We all need a private place too - not a public park or some woods where the wild things are - to adjust our hair, try on the new jacket we got, and see if new shoes make us look like a hoochie-mamma or a head honcho.

* Aimee Webber

 

Multiple Platforms of Social Networking Sharing

You cant say enough good stuff about Social Networking. But when the topic hit the Daily Show I knew it had really arrived.

See how hip I am? I'm sharing a video on my blog AND - dude - it's about Social networking.

On the other hand I used the word hip, which totally tanks my cred.

The video's in my blog though and I'm also sharing it on my facebook page, so I'm covered in coolness.

Anyhow, it's important to share in Social Networking, New Media, or whatever they're calling relationships these days. So share this video, and this blog, with someone you know. You too can be a Social Networking pro in no time.

Now if they'd just profile twitter,on the daily Show. Geez, I use twitter to blather on about just about everything. Voila: I could be an expert. That would be sweet

Climbing Up and Down the Social User Ladder

It's a great new world. But not a hard and fast one. Some people find that comfortable. Some get antsy and want to define roles.

But one of the problems is that the roles are being made up along the way.

From where I sit, I feel luckily to be around to help make our own rules, carve our own niches, and help others get ideas for their own places and roles.

On the Forrester Social User Ladder shown here (click to enlarge), I wind up being a creator. Sometimes I'm simply a joiner who is carried along more or less passively. I like to observe. To gauge what's happening.

The thing is - I'm not sure the rungs are ever really so well defined nor that we stay on one to the exclusivity of the others. And I'd likely add some rungs in between that blur the distinctions.

But then again, you knew that blurring the lines thing about me probably?

Where do you see yourself on the ladder? What encourages you and people around you to change rungs?