Technology convention for non-profit organizations

I attended a technology convention for non-profit organizations and they had a session about non-profits on Second Life so naturally I attended. The session was good, but the presentation was awesome. There was one presenter on site, but both she and the other two presenters we in Second Life form across the US. In addition, the presentation was geared both to the real audience sitting in our room and the virtual audience sitting around the presenting avatars. It was a situation which would take more guts than I would have to do a presentation myself.









But I think it was very worth it. This presentation was to a group of people that were mostly not Second Life literate. Probably more than half the audience had not been on to SL at all, and many of the others were at the “I signed on once” stage. The fact that the presentation was on SL communicated a feel for the world that I don’t think would have reached the same lever even with a “demo” of Second Life (“Here’s how you walk”, “here’s how you chat”, …)

It was great fun at the end where all the audience questions had been answered and the in-room presenter asked if there was anything the audience would like to see. One guy immediately asked if we could go see dancing since he couldn’t picture avatar dancing. Instead of taking us, the presenter asked the in-world audience if they’d indulge us in dancing and several of the onscreen avatars gave a great show and a great close to the presentation.

--DrawDweeb Latte-

New friend on Second Life

Had a wonderful experience today getting a good friend onto Second Life. We had talked a lot about Second Life in the past few month and he'd expressed a great interest in it. He's even joined the South Florida Second Life Group. But he was battling that ever so common syndrome of "I signed up once, but didn't do much since then". I guess now I've been in Second Life long enough that I forget how hard it is to take the first steps. After logging a few hours I think people do well. But those first few hours are oh so painful.

But it was a wonderful experience because it showed me what a difference even a casual tutor makes for this process. This was not a formal class. We just carted the laptop over to lunch. Over some great (and I'm sure fattening) Nicaraguan treats, we were able to create the account and go through several of the basic stuff like Inventory, walking, buying (freebies), and creating landmarks. Was really awesome to have him finally visit my place and see my art rather than just seeing picture of it.

I've been thinking of giving beginner classes to people as a way to make contact with future SLers. This has really made me feel even more like doing it. I look forward to the first building class!

--DrawDweeb Latte-

So I look behind my building one day and notice that the big weird roller coaster amusement park thingee is gone. Now there's just a huge expanse of land behind me and I can see the original mountain.



I fly over for a look. An I find the land is actually quite cheap. Of course it is. It's not waterfront. Anyone can build something in front of it.

BUT....

I own the two waterfront lots in front of it. So that means that for my purposes it IS waterfront. I have a good shot at keeping this view. Took some thinking, but not much, to make me buy the two lots behind the two I already own.

One of the first things I did was to climb up to the top of the mountain and sit to take a good look. Its a wonderful view!




I quickly started a project to replace the building I already had. It was a fun build, but in many way shows my inexperience. I loved the idea of having a shot from scratch.

My first attempt pretty much looked like a large fish tank...






Ah...but a fish tank with great views. I really like how the inside took advantage of the view down the mountain and out to the sea.



So the layout was cool with me. But I stated working on giving the building just a bit more character. Slope part of the roof down. Add some color on the walls. Stairs inside. A veranda leading to an outside deck.

May still be somewhat boxy, but feels much better to me now.







Can't wait to do more. My wish for my birthday is unlimited time!

-- Drawdweeb-

Virtual business very much alive

Every once in a while it seems like some of the initial buzz on Second Life has quieted. It’s great to see new interest, even in the middle of the economic downturn facing both the real and virtual worlds.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/64504.html?wlc=1221910819

--dd-

Thanks to Myrilla Vixen....

Our Lindens, who art in the Labs,
Hallowed be thy prims.
Thy Grid-dom come, thy will be done,
On sims, as it is in The Preview.

Give us this day our daily crash,
And forgive us our Spammery,
As we forgive those, who grief against us.
And lead us not, into private parcels.

Amen.

Back from Second Life Community Convention

And so I'm back from Second Life Community Convention 2008. This was one of the best geekfests I've been to in years! I'm finding of really hard to get all my impressions together and coherent.

My initial impression was just plain awe at finally meeting some of the real people on Second Life. Up to now my only contact with anyone on Second Life has been their avatar version. This was interesting, but made me feel even more isolated in the Great South Florida Tech Wasteland, without any real friends to chat with about the subject. I did campaign a lot for contacts, telling just about everyone I met to turn over any South Floridians they encouraged over to me, posting bulletins on the board, and making a general nuisance of myself. I hope it pays off at Some level.

One really great discovery was that the Second Life community was a much wider age group than I expected. Yes, many of the participants were in their early 20s. But about the same number or more appeared to be in their 40s and 50s or more. Very different from some of the other tech conventions where people all seemed very old or very young. I’m thinking this may be an outcome of the very richness of Second Life. Many different "jobs" require many different talents and personalities, and SLCC includes them all with open arms.



One of the highlights was meeting Sarah “Intellagirl” Robbins, co-author of ”Second Life For Dummies” . She looks exactly like her avatar with the trademark red streak in her hair. But she impressed me by bring eminently approachable and I found out she is the recent mother of triplets. This has astronomically raised my respect for all the work she does for the SL community now that I know they no mortal could handle her load.

--dd-

SLCC: Saturday Morning: Keynote: Philip Rosedale (Philip Linden) and Mark Kingdon (M Linden)

==Philip==

In going over the progress of Second Life from the beginning, Philip made an interesting statement that while there was much work to do in the virtual worlds, we had reached a point at which the process was really “unstoppable”, that it was here to stay even if the exact direction was still fuzzy.

The general populace looks at virtual worlds as somewhat poor representations of the real world. The graphics are not perfect, the motions are clunky. The view is that virtual worlds are getting better and better at representing real life. That they are approaching the asymptote of reality and will never quite reach it.

Philip had a differing viewpoint, that virtual worlds were headed to surpass reality, not mimic it. Second Life is already replete with examples of people doing things they simply could not do in real life. Hollywood already uses virtual reality techniques in many spots in movies because it is actually a better way to make the images. So the virtual world started with real life as the model but will go beyond it.

Another differing view is that against the general idea that virtual worlds anonomize their users. But that view is one created by a shallow experience with Second Life, where people “just try it out”. The experience of most Second Life user is the opposite, where strong bonds can be formed between virtual people.

One special area in which this shows are with language barriers. The web in fact segregates by language. The example of the Olympics in Beijing was used. Even if the main site is cross language, you’re not going to learn about China by following the Chinese links. In Second Life, by contrast, you can drop someone in virtual China and they’ll go off exploring. They understand what a road is. They can go inside an interesting building.

One of the challenges with Second Life use now is plainly the interface. 3D cams offer some interesting promise for this in the future, a gestural interface. In the meantime, Linden Labs is committed to improving the user experience.

==Mark==

Mark was very simple: He has the coolest job in the world, and Second Life was all about hair!

On more mundane matters, he stressed his obsession with improving the new user experience. The three elements Linden Labs is focused on are relevance, usability, and reliability.

Marc stressed that as far as virtual world interoperability is concerned, we are at the very earliest days. Right now there are really only baby steps of allowing avatars to move from environment to environment, The problem of transferring assets between world is a much tougher nut to crack. One of the core features of Second Life is that designers count on the fact that their creations are protected by Second Life rules. But how would other worlds honor that? Even if the rights were correctly communicated, how can you be sure other worlds will enforce them correctly. Mark made a great analogy to the real world where moving within a country is pretty free, but moving between countries requires much more control.

Other interesting things in the directions pipeline are social features like Facebook for the younger people, and more media function to allow bringing in more of the web into Second Life.

SLCC: Sarah Robbins keynote

Sarah Robbins (SL: Intellagirl Tulley, http://www.secondlife.intellagirl.com/, “Second Life for Dummies”) gave a wonderful keynote on how to –successfully- introduce Second Life into the classroom.

The key elements in here view was to clearly define the promise of the program, the tool used for the program, and the bargain between the teacher and the students.

Before using Second Life in the classroom )or any tool), the teacher introducing the tool should make clear the –promise- of the tool…what the tool adds that would not be available without the tool. For instance, if part of the class were to role-play a doctor/patient relationship, Second Life allows the participants to actually dress as doctor and patient.

The second element, the tool, should be able to fulfill that promise. Second Life is young technology and certainly had it’s share of problems, but provides a series of experiences that are unique to its environment. And right now it still seems to be the most accepted tool in its niche.

The third element, the bargain, is critical. Many of the failures of Second Life as a teaching tool come from the student expecting to be told what to do rather than expecting to be participatory (the “is it going to be on the test” syndrome).

She was really and excellent speaker, one of those that makes you feel as though you’re just having a chat.

--dd-

SLCC: Case Study: Crossing the Second Life/Real Life Divide – Rockcliffe

http://www.urockcliffe.com/

In real life, educational institutions are bound by laws and accreditations. What happens when instructions teach in Second Life. Can they call themselves Universities. Eventually many educational institutions in Second Life may have to face this.

On the plus side, the Second Life environment levels the student/teacher playing field, with the teachers seen more as peers and friends rather than “founts of knowledge”. Many of the personal biases brought into real life classrooms disappear in the SL environment, where the people are their avatars.

The accreditation process if it ever comes will be challenging. The way information is transferred in SL is a bit different form RL. Much more of it is tacit, making it hard to develop a “checklist” of items which are “taught” in a class.

Rockcliffe also found that socially organizing around the same lines as a formal university simply did not work. The nature of the environment is much more dynamic. People may join and simply disappear after a few months. The virtual community requires a larger level of effort for the same level of commitment. People are committed to their home life and they are committed to their work life. But the virtual worlds, laong with the entire set of virtual-only experiences elicit a different level of commitment. This is not necessarily bad, but needs to be recognized.

There are even more challenges ahead for Second Life educators. Yes, even the biggies of taxation and employment compensation. The fact that the environment provides a low barrier of entry to startup institution still makes it very interesting.

SLCC Friday Morning

The first day (Friday) is all about education in SL (SLED/SLEDcc). Pathfinder Linden and Claudia Linden gave the keynote speaker talking about how the education community was one of the first to adopt Second Life way back in the Alpha dark days.

First session I attended was about using games for education. Be a group for Ohio University. The games are designed to allow students to learn pretty much by playing the games rather than feeling like they are participating in a “learning session”. For instance, one of the games is a mystery game but the questions that the student answers to solve the mystery help the students learn the different between observation and inference.

The games are designed to provide a formal learning environment even as they present the game feel. For instance, in-world chat is logged to make sure the student stay on task rather than being distracted by other facets of Second Life. Prizes are offered for successfully winning the game (learning the lesson).

The games allow the teacher to customize the questions and some facets of the game via a web interface. Much of the student interface is well designed HUDs which the student attaches as they start the session.

The fruit fly game was impressive, leading students through the feel of doing an experiment in a lab. Rather than just showing slides of information, or even showing virtual fruit flies, the student is treated to a lab where they can sit at a lab bench, “do” and experiment, and then answer lab questions about the experiment results. The lab has several benches to allow multiple students to each have their own independent session in the lab. While the students are doing the experiments, the teacher can actually walk around the room seeing what the students are doing and helping out those who are stuck.

The student can set up their own experiments where they create fruit flies by selecting form a series of dominant and recessive traits. They actually see two small jars of the fruit flies they created. They can then move them to breeding bottles. At the end of experiments, the flies are “knocked out” and put in a Petri dish where the student can very interactively count the resulting attributes of the offspring flies, down to zooming in to see eye color.

--dd-

SLCC starts!

At the Second Life Community Conference now meeting the great real life people behind Second Life. Yes, there are others interested!

--dd-

More art in the gallery

I felt like doing a bit of building and so decided to populate the gallery a bit more. All of these items are picture of my RL art. Kinda fun to display them here. I feel an opening party coming on!

--DD-

New Ning group for South Florida

I’m registered to go to the Second Life Convention in Tampa at the beginning of September. That got me frustrated at how unsuccessful I’d been in finding others in the South Florida area that are also interested. So that got me re-energized to trying to meet people doing stuff on it down here.

I think I’ve giving up searching per se and am trying to set up stuff so that people doing like searches can find me. I’m setting up a Ning network for South Florida Second Life(ers). Not much but a place for people to find others and make contact. You can join at http://southfloridasl.ning.com/. By all means feel free to invite anyone else who has any level of interest/experience and would like to find out more.

--DD-

The convention

Just registered for the convention!


Lawmakers hold first hearing in Second Life

Why would Congress hold a hearing in real life when it could do so in Second Life?

Read the story.

--DD-

Palomar West Hospital build

A new publicly financed hospital is due to open in San Diego in 2011. What's a good way to let the public see what they're getting for the money? Build it in Second Life and open it visitors. Palomar Pomerado Health and its technology partner Cisco Systems have done just that with the simulated version of the real-life Palomar West Medical Campus.

Read the story at http://www.informationweek.com/software/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206801783&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_News and then go visit the hspotial at http://slurl.com/secondlife/PalomarWest%20Hospital/36/125/34/

--DD-

Living areas

Not happy with the living areas yet. Not even sure I wanted a living area, but seems if you're building in Second Life you should have a place to call Home.

I wanted something "warmer" and less funky than the ClubHouse and art gellery. So the wood floors are a nice touch. But kind of unhappy about putting the living area at the bottom of the building since the top floors arguably have better views. At the time that seemed agood idea because (a) I didn't need much living space and the lower floors were smaller and (b) the lower floors gave more natural access to walk around outside and to the water.

Maybe still good and just need to work it a bit

--DD-

The art gallery

The art gallery was my favorite interior are to work on. It's right above the ClubHouse and has wide open interior balcony looking down over the clubhouse.

The interior balcony gives it one of the best views from inside the building.

And if you're going to have art, you've got to have good lighting, right? I had a fun time making the ceiling spotlight. Went trhough several and ended on these. Simple, elegant, and only one prim!

I love the effect of the light on the brick wall and the art...

...and on the building at night.

--DD-

The building stands

And something that looks like a building is finally up. I added big balconies which made a big difference for views out

--DD-

And now building starts for real

So now to the brass tacks of building it. I relaced the blocks with slabs and windows. I found I had even more space than I anticiapted so removed the top layer of blocks. I like the lower look.



Here's the interior of the clubhouse for meetings.






--DD-

Terraforming a bit

So now I got to play with the land a bit. It had been "flattened" by the previous owner, an euphimism for a process that tends not to produce really flat land but manages to destroy a lot of natural beauty. So my first task was to revert the land back to its original state.

After that I thought it would be fun to build a little inlet and a pier.

This was the original land after adding the pier and a couple of tall rocks. Notice how straight the shoreline is



Now bending the land a bit to encase the pier.





Then a little tidal pool and path





And here's the finished shoreline




--DD-

"Sketching out" the building

I was having a hard time visualizing the "weight" of the building. I wanted the bulding to be large, but to keep as much green area and water as possible. So one of my first steps was to take large green 10m blocks and lay them out.

This will give an idea of the size of the blocks compared to me to get a feel for the scale.



The building hugs the back wall to leave the land are near the water open





The building goes up rather than out. The individual interior areas still spacious.



And the height makes for a great view from the roof!



--DD-

New Land - the search ends

So now I had these four lots to choose from I suspected I was leaning to a high slope in a region called Riverchapel. But that was the cheapest and I know I have a tendency to convince myself that the cheapest is attractive. I needed help.


I asked a friend who has great "space sense" to view the lots with me. He's one of those people that everyone goes to for advice on re-arranging furniture. It only took about 10 minutes and two cycles though the four properties. When he said he liked the Riverchapel one best it really helped galvanize me into action. The property was bought less than half an hour later.


Below are the views of the land, of the shore, and from the top of the hill


--DD-

New Land - the search continues

I had now gone around the continents and felt like I had seen it all. But indecision was high. How to make the perfect choice. Then I was jarred two weeks later when one of two lots I had been scoping was sold. I decided I needed to make the move at some time.

So I set off to cruise the continental coastlines again. But this time with more fervor. I created an inventory folder for the search. If a lot looked at all like I might be interested I put a landmark in the folder.

When I was done I hopped through all the landmarks a couple of times, looking at the lots a bit more critically. Is this really a good view? Would I really pay that much? That gave me twelve possibles.

I looked at these twelve even more critically. One of the big factors was looking at the more expensive lots and seeing if they did or did not have something special that merited the extra Lindens.

Out of this came four lots. All were 4096m. All had some water with a reasonable expectation that the water would be accessible in future. All were plus-minus 200$US (I'm sorry...that still sounds like a lot for an electronic rendering!). And I felt I'd be happy with any one of them.

Now came the hard part. Narrowing those four down to just one...

--DD-

New Land - the search starts

So a while back I finally hit that point where 512m was not enough. I think this started when I realized I could not put two 10-meter prims side by side on my lot. I wanted more space. I wanted more prims. And I wanted water!

Shopping for land in Second Life is worse than in real. I can't say how many ugly places I visited from the classifieds. I decided that if I was going to find the place I liked I had to change my strategy.

So what was I looking for?

1. Waterfront: Didn't need to be a lot of water. But did not want to be next to someones' house and to have some interesting area.
2. Not stuffy: Did not want to live in some hyper-restricted area where all the houses were the same and all the people were the same.
3. Not scrungy. While I wanted variety, I didn't want a slum.
4. Reasonably Priced: Sigh. Can't ever leave this one out.

So how was I going to find it? It sounds crazy, but I finally decided that I was going to "fly" around the coastlines of the six continents. It would take forever to actually "fly" it, but scrolling though the map with the land sales highlighted was doable.Took several days to do, but was actually fun to do and good learning. It showed me lots of things that people were doing in SL, helped me refine my idea of what I really liked, and it helped me look for things to avoid (like water where a shopping mall can sprout up).

--DD-

The Presentation

Had the long awaited Second Life presentation with the group, which went great. It was even hard to proceed with all the questions being asked. It was both exciting and fun.

I feel a bit lost now. I've been working like crazy to get the presentation ready and hadn't really thought beyond that. Have to come up with some new stuff to keep it going.

It was fun to hold off any questions as to whether I had bought more land since the ending of the presentation was going to be showing the new waterfront land and clubhouse. It's great that now I can blog about it so look for upcoming posts.

--DD-

What if Real Life used the Second Life Client?

This Youtube Vid is a must-see.

Enjoy!

--DD-

NCI “Newbie ‘Show and Tell’” class

I’m really loving taking that classes on Second Life. But this week I found an unexpected tidbit. NCI (New Citizens Incorporated) offers “Show and Tell” classes. These are not so much classes as get-togethers where beginning Second Life builders can demo what they’ve been working on.

I was thinking “I’m definitely not ready for showing my stuff to strangers”. But as I often do, I said “Ahhhhhh, why not?” They one that was coming up was for Newbies. So I decided to enter a large sculpted fountain I was working on the clubhouse.

The class was very well run, a nice balance of solemnity or frivolity. There were over 20 people in all attending, with 6 of us actually presenting. Each presenter in turn was called up on the stage to rez their item, talk about it, and demo as required.

When they called me up, I felt like the first time I ever did a music recital. But once I got going, I forgot that I was on stage and really enjoyed it. Everyone gets lots of positive support and constructive suggestions about improvements.

Once you present, a picture is taken of your entry and mounted on a voting board. At the end of all the presentations the voting board is opened and everyone pressed gets to vote for their choice of first, second, and third place. Votes are counted and winners announced. I won 100 linden dollars! I know that’s only like 35 cents, but it was a huge rush. I’m definitely addicted.

The contest is open only to residents that have been around 90 days or less. But I’m already eyeing the other version NCI offers… The “’Oldbie’ Show and Tell”!

--DD-

A virtual world in a virtual world?

I ran across this while reading the Metaverse Messnger (http://www.metaversemessenger.com/), so I guess advertising does work.

You go into Second Life. You become virtual and leave RL trappings behind. You are divorced from the physical you. And you’re bored.

So what do you do? Go into a holodeck and become virtual once removed. This sounded bizarre at first. But reading on, the possibilities caught my imagination.

It can get boring shoppoing for furniture in SL malls, with pictures on the walls or nicely organized but sterile floor models. Why not shop in a holodeck where you can dial up a room and see what a roomful of fucrniture would look like including lamplight hitting the wall and artwork.

Have a single meeting space that could be for serious business today, and for an artsy get-together tomorrow. And a zen garden for quiet contemplation at the touch of a button.

Renting properties? Put a holodec instead of ads in an SL mall. Let visitors “try out” the dwellings without having to teleport.

Hmmm…maybe I need to get one!

http://www.insidethisworld.com/the-holodeck.html#free


--DD-

The "Show Me" state goes virtual for recruiting

Here’s a cool video of State of Missouri putting some of it’s IT recruiting resources in Second Life and the reasoning behind it. A bit long, but worth viewing. This is not a bunch of geeks, but as serious large IT organizations deciding to actively test the waters.

See video

--DD-