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.

Can Virtual Reality Provide the Future of Education?

As if there isn't enough going on, my brain's moving at top warp trying to imagine the possibilities of ways in which new technology - especially those that foster community - will evolve in my lifetime.

The latest kickstart my brain got is an invitation fromRissa Maidstone to attend an Information Week event at World2worlds today, August 4, at 5:00 PM PDT/8:00 PM EST

The buz surrounds the students in Texas State’s new, fully accredited Digital Media certificate and associates degree program who can attend classes using Second Life as its primary delivery method. 

Is this the future of education?

Will people from all over the world be able to earn degrees virtually?

Guests who will talk about this with us today are Chris Gibson, Vice President of Educational Technology and Janyth Ussery, Director of Web Education for Texas State College West Texas.

To attend, click http://slurl.com/secondlife/World2Worlds/132/188/35 and if you don’t have Second life already running you can download it. It’s always smart to get up to speed on how to walk and communicate before the event but now is as good time as any to learn!

Can Barack Obama Fix Twitter?

   

The blogosphere loves Barack Obama. But apparently in America at least, blog readers and writers and commenters and flamers aren't always totally reflective of everyone.

In fact Carol Marin wrote in The Chicago Sun-Times that "The Lanky One is like an Alice Waters organic chicken — 'sleek, elegant, beautifully prepared. Too cool' — when what many working-class women are craving is mac and cheese."

But I'm a meat and potatoes kind of woman. I want a guy who will put steak and baked potato on the grill and throw together a salad after he walks the dog and harvests a nice melon he grew in our organic garden. But fearing no candidate will be all things to all people, I still keep hearing Obama say "Yes we can" every day.

And now the smart people in the land of web 2.0 where I've been known to I hang out give me web pages that claim OBAMA can do all this and more.

They've put together a fun website that jabs kindly - but with a hint of truth behind it - both poking fun at the candidate and the electorate who want our leaders to be able to play hardball with dictators, Mother Theresa to the underprivledged, and understanding friend to the folks who put him in office while being a good spouse and tweeting from his blackberry while importing oil without making deals we wouldn't approve of.

What each candidate brings to the table, like each of us, are strengths and weaknesses of a lifetime. We have to ask ourselves what exactly do we want? Is it someone who is so driven that they can do everything include, no doubt, win "dancing with the Stars"?

Maureen Dowd note insightfully in the New York Times that although many women say they will not vote for him:

"The odd thing is that Obama bears a distinct resemblance to the most cherished hero in chick-lit history. The senator is a modern incarnation of the clever, haughty, reserved and fastidious Mr. Darcy."

"Like the leading man of Jane Austen and Bridget Jones, Obama can, as Austen wrote, draw “the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien. ...he was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud, to be above his company, and above being pleased.”

Ouch. That hurts. Hero of chick-lit or not.

But maybe there's a way around this. For example if Obama can solve Twitter's problems, I don't care if he's haughty. If the Twitter magic happens before November and the tweet guys give him a shoutout for the help, I'm so there pulling the Obama lever, no matter how 'way too cool' he is.

And I'm trying to remember what a help for my offspring it would be since  . .

But What Do I Do When I GET to Second Life?

Post Publication Note: This was first published in late November 2007 and one thing that I'm aware of that has changed since that date is that my island home and office were a BC - before cancer - thing.

After December 7 I was recovering from the shock of sudden diagnosis of invasive cancer, then surgery, and by spring 2008 the time and money seemed better directed towards other things than virtual land ownership. Although I hope to change that as I pick up energy and consulting work, right now there's not a place to visit me in Second Life

- - -

What can we do in Second Life?

I've put some ideas together below and also added them to a download text file that you can save for when you need it.

Or just enjoy reading about the highlights here. You'll find more shopping information in the download but the essentials are the same.

All these places are free to visit. And enjoy. 

Remember however that businesses listed are trying to generate a - usually small - income for themselves.  Since I believe in adding to the SL economy I also support spending some money - maybe $20 or so - to create an avatar that really does represent "you" in the virtual world,

Yes, you'll find plenty of people to give you lists of places you can get freebies.

And I'm not against freebies. But I think that if you want to show a serious interest in anything - including virtual worlds - investing a couple of dollars isn't too much to ask.You'd spend $20 on a videogame and almost that on a CD. So I encourage you to buy

Download thingstodo.txt was created in a simple notepad format that should be easily readable for most of you.

--------------------

HELP

You can always use a pointer or two. And although we may not be able to redo orientation, going through Help Island is an option, and what's dubed a "Public orientation" island can be helpful too

Public Orientation
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Orientation%20Island%20Public/100/171/33

HELP Island
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Help%20Island%20Public/124/135/27

---------------
DO Something - Learn Something

***** You'll find Business and Networking Events with real world people who for the most part don't try to hide their identities and are -generally- who they say they are at: *****

Doctor Dobbs Island - holds Events every Tues at 8AM SLT & every Fri at 1PM SLT

Intel Conference Center - Drop by and see the boards for event listings & feel free to just walk around

Sun Microsystems - Pavillion

IBM - vast vast complex and some fun too!

Dell Island Complex - Conference Center & Lots more to wander around, get advice, and more

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Wearables - the stuff that gives you identity

Skin - yes I said skin. This is a great place to buy some that looks great on you

ETD - has a great bargain room - and nice hair and clothing besides that

They have great hair at Naughty but the lag is hellacious and most of the clientele look like hookers so be prepared

Randy Pausch's Death and Our Own Last Lecture

Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon professor whose "last lecture" made him famous died today, almost a year after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer,

When he gave this Carnegie Mellon commencement address in May, he had lived three months longer than the three to six months doctors had predicted, leading a friend to say he was “beating the Reaper.”

“We don’t beat the Reaper by living longer,” Pausch said. “We beat the Reaper by living well.”

It's difficult - at least for me - to see people with cancer deteriorate and die - even those I do not know. Randy looked good in the video above, in contrast with Tony Snow's last appearance before he died earlier this month of colon cancer that had spread to first his liver and then elsewhere. Tony was gaunt and had aged twenty years in my eyes. Even NPR's always insightful and frank Leroy Seivers now considers the pros and cons of hospice, and has a home health aide four times a week.

But Randy was upbeat and seemed unfazed by what the rest of us are overwhelmed by. And that gives us all something to consider.

My message in reflection: Please love others and live well while you can. Give generously of yourself and your spirit. Adopt a cause or two. Be present to what's happening around you and not distracted by the latest shiny thing of the blogosphere.

It's easy to be engaged by internet popularity, blog stats, being included in lists and invited to functions. Things are nice to own. But will that really matter when you face the end of the road?

Like Randy Paush who was only 47, or others we know who were suddenly stricken and died much earlier, we never know when an unexpected diagnosis - or a bus - will mark the end of our time here.

Let's make today even - simply this day - one that we'd be proud to call our last.

And then tomorrow.

Second Life, ooVoo and Connecting Around the World

Chatting with Phillip at ooVoo yesterday I was telling him that my husband Bill was impresed with the technology and the people when he experienced ooVoo day with me in February - in fact so much so that he had already used ooVoo to hold a voice and video meeting involving participants in three of his offices.

Phillip said that some new goodies will soon be released that may make these conferences even better, and I passed this on to Bill who, though not the IT guy in the firm, feels that his department can be served by some new looks at the way they approach communication across multiple states and different offices.

This conversation came to mind later when I was catching up with virtual worlds expert and futurist Tao Takashi's blog (mr topf in Second Life)

In talking with Jeanette Gibson, Director of New Media Communications at Cisco they cover options for interacting with employees around the world

 Jeanette: ... In Second Life for example, I can meet with teams in Europe and feel more connected to them.

mrtopf: How does that compare to e.g. video conferencing, phone conferences etc.?
Jeanette: I’d say that Second Life is better than a phone call or webcast. You get the sense of physical proximity. But it’s not as good as our Telepresence technology that is virtual meetings, you can see the real person. With globalisation this is so critical, having many ways to reach people.

mrtopf: Telepresence though is a bit too expensive for many right now but it looks impressive.
Jeanette: yes, it’s for large businesses now, companies that have many branch offices and need to connect, it’s $100,000 -$300,000. But someday we’ll have telepresence in our homes.

You know, I'm not the tech guru here so I have to ask about the difference between the video conferencing via computer that ooVoo does and the teleconferencing that Jeanette and Tao are talking about. Sounds like one primary difference is lots of dollar signs.

Beyond the dollar signs people have fun meeting in Second Life and also via ooVoo - will video conferencing ever be the same?

And ooVoo is putting their dollar signs in a pretty important place, donating to the frozen Pea Fund, which counts for something as far as building community.

In the end, with ooVoo, as with Second Life, the fun is in the process of participation- no matter where we chose to have the conversation. The most important thing is to take part.

Sheep Produce Sleek Sophisticated Out of the Box WebFlock

With SHOWTIME’s The L Word® signing up as a first customer, The Electric Sheep Company today announced WebFlock™, a new private-label virtual world application for individual clients wanting "improved online social interaction, media consumption and multi-player casual game-play" for their followers.

The Sheep created and has staffed the wildly popular "L Word in Second Life" online space since 2007 and although the virtual experience won rave reviews and brought significant fan participation there remained the inherent Second Life - ahem - challenges.

Second Life can be a hard platform to master for the un-geek crowd and that was a barrier to entry that the Sheep thought they could solve with WebFlock. Apparently Showtime shared the faith they can do so with this web-based application that runs on Flash which is already installed on 98% of the world’s Web browsers.

As the Sheep put it "Mainstream users are reluctant to download software, whether desktop applications or custom browser plug-ins." Thus basing WebFlock on Flash - something already resident on most computers - makes for smooth of entry, at least in theory.

The look of the WebFlock application is sleek and sophisticated and includes chat filtering and muting to screen out the rabble. Avatars and 3D spaces can be unique to each client as can       interactivity such as casual games.

In short, WebFlock is an option for companies wanting a private branding for their customer base and afraid of the geek factor and sometimes misunderstanding press that Second Life brings.

Their timing might be good or bad, coming on the heels of the announcement of a new virtual world called Lively, created by Google and which has opened to a less than warm welcome by some, and optimism by others. Google's first boos came from Mac and Linux users whose systems do not run Lively, period.

In my book Lively is cartoonish and juvenile in contrast with the very adult sophistication of WebFlock, but to compare them head to head is like comparing apples and oranges and not fair to either.

Look for both to get more of my attention however as I continue to contend that the future of the 3-d web will play a big part in all our connectivity in the future.

Reciprocal Roasting With Scott Monty

Scott Monty, the Bostonian Crayonista  representing ooVoo when they became the first corporate sponsor of my beloved Frozen Pea Fund is leaving Crayon to become the Director of Social Media for Ford Motors.  This seems like a big time move to me, even if Crayon is a cutting edge company and Ford is, well, Ford.

(KIDDING, Scott!)

Scott is one of the nicest guys you'd want to meet, which I found out during My ooVoo Day which happened shortly after my surgery for breast cancer. I was still very sick on the first day, February 10, 2008 but it was the day that kicked off more than a week of six way video conversations via internet thanks to ooVoo technology. Since we were raising money to fight cancer, I was there sick or not, and Scott was there to suppport me no matter what I needed.

Who knew that just five months later, Scott would be leaving Crayon to take on the prestigious spot at Ford?

In the world of social media everyone's a kidder and we do feel that we have a connection that overrides the fact that it's harder maybe to know people that we've never run into in the grocery store. It's an odd kind of connection, but a sincere feeling nonetheless so when I learned about Scott's new job I knew I'd miss his being a Crayonista I could ask for special ooVoo perks.

Hey! but he might be able to help me get a deal on a miata. When I told him this he suggested a Pea Green model for himself. That's the way our conversations go. I tell him how clueles I am about some tech issue and make pea jokes while he shows me his kids artwork. Yup, I'm the perennial social media nana and Scott has me pegged.

So although going to Boston for the Roast for Scott wasn't in the cards for me, I sent my regrets and asked everyone to give Scott a hug for me. It turned out to be a good thing. It was the only way I missed the barbs sent in the direction of the participants. I contented myself to watch the tweet-stream related to the quips and jokes coming out of the assembled geeks, notably those from another nice-guy young enough to be my son - almost - Doug Haslam

Of course I should have known we could count on video by Len Edgerly via Vimeo who documents every event from reading his Kindle on the beach to what his character's doing in Second Life. Here Scott Roasts the Roasters who got together to give him a good natured Social Media sendoff on his way to Detroit.

Scott Monty Roasts the Roasters from Len Edgerly on Vimeo.

twitter, plurk, swurl: Distraction or Opportunity

Paul Graham observes that "Procrastination feeds on distractions. Most people find it uncomfortable just to sit and do nothing; you avoid work by doing something else."

Are we avoiding doing something else via friendfeed, twitter, plurk?

The answer is: probably - or sometimes. Heck, for some people it might be all the time.

But for others the attention given to these new formats of the old telephone "party line", which you could pick up and hear your next door neighbor getting duped by her boyfriend or grandma Buford telling he daughter what was on sale at Kroger's, is in keeping wiht their goals.

Some of us use microblogging to inform ourselves; some to inform others

We network, soothe and sympathize, learn, tease, trash-talk, do good, find others with whom we have things in common, locate a new service or today's bargain, and yes, even take a water-cooler break.

It's a round the clock, drop-in when you want, equal opportunity to show the side of yourself you'd like others to see. Or a place to be anonymous if need be. For me it's a place to be myself even at 2AM when I can't sleep and my brain's still at work.

If it's a distraction, it's one that's done good for many, even if the only thing one counts is the grassroots founding of the Frozen Pea Fund. And close to $40,000 later, raising money to do good in large and small ways based on an impulse decision to show a cleavage shot soothed with frozen peas after a biopsy - well, it's an amazing thing.

Scrolling and dipping in

I use twhirl in a side window and let the incoming messages scroll by as I so other things because truthfully keeping the twitter homepage open all day is something that I could not do and accomplish anything else. Unless I was a shut-in with no other interests I couldn't use twitter as my window on the world all day every day.

But what if that were the case? Bingo - introduce twitter in homes for the aged or infirm, Introduce it to people suffereing from chronic illness. Introduce it to people who are less mobile than they used to be, for whatever reason, It serves as an excellent distraction, an escape from loneliness or pain or lack of purpose. And plurk might serve this purpose as well.

And the way it's set up, leaving plurk open in a tab is the only way to go, so it could obviously work for shut-ins and others. And the set-up truthfully - that one must view plurk on the website and the lack of a client in which to view plurk - is why it's never taken off for me, While others adore the threaded conversations, since going to the homepage and looking through messages is obligatory I just can't see the advantage.

So to me Plurk seems little more than a fancy graphic incarnation of a message board with pull-down tabs to see the message thread. In the end after giving it a shot, it's not a distraction for me, it's more an annoyance, though some social media types love it and swear it's the future when twitter dies a horrible death.

And that brings us to the future - and the past

We're safe because even when - if - twitter dies, some of it will live on in an aggregator I'm liking a lot: swurl. You can leave replies to stuff there and that can be interesting in its own way. And there's even a timeline tab. Gotta check that out. Very informative and goes back TEN years!

In any case, in the meantime I'm distracted and maybe procrastinating. Oh - and networking and doing good and reaching out and all that other stuff I rationalize that I'm doing in the meantime.

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.