Saturday, July 28, 2007

Running a conference - one idea (from the BlogHer Conference in SL)



Saw a cool thing at the blogher conference - a sign with help for using the multi-media. What a great idea especially if you want to do an event that will attract new SL users - like many of the students in class. People in the audience were giving advice - how to turn the video stream right side up, how to deal with lag. Then someone noticed the sign and started pointing people to it to save screen space. Everyone got better use of the media and new users didn't have to out themselves as newbies

Friday, July 27, 2007

DIane Gayeski came by the island for a few minutes. She is new to SL. Very cool that she is trying out the virtual worlds.



redecorating the welcome center - it needs signage. And I put a notecard dropbox so people could request more info. Of course - now i need a notecard giver with info on the different programs - I'll use that script from the syllabus class - that should work out great



Everybody here is Press

someone at the live event in Chicago just said that - interesting concept with a host of issues - lots of people blog anonymously - if htey don't want to be "outed" then they can't talk in a meeting? Can't have their pic taken? Kind of a new area for conference attendance.

At the conference

Here are a couple of notes from the opening - audio problems, the video stream didn't work (they originally were doing something with flash - you can't do flash in SL I think it's just qt)) but they're working on it - but things to learn for any conferences we do - test the audiovisuals before hand

Cool stuff - nice big space so easy to move around and get to the chairs and see the screen, good exhibitor space wiht interesting mix of booths - lots of neat designs for the booths themselves as well as business ideas. They gave all the participants some cash when we signed in the first morning so we could buy some stuff from the vendors. Since a lot of people are brand new to sl this was a very cool idea - they could buy some neat clothes or donate to non-profits and learn a new SL skill.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Going to BlogHer in SecondLife



I ust signed up for the SecondLife part of the BlogHer conference for next weekend. We're supposed to introduce ourselves on our blogs. So here is mine.

I teach at Ithaca College. I have students in all of my classes blog - about topics in their field, as research notes for qualitative research class, to share ideas. I blog about SecondLife since that's what I am fascinated by right now. To me blogging is a way to share cool things I find. It's also a place to get my thoughts down so i can go back to them and reconsider them, combine them. I always lost those little notebooks and diaries you were supposed to use to write down big thoughts (or shopping lists) - i can't lose the blog. The password, maybe, but not the blog. See you all in SecondLife.


blogme2007

Thursday, July 12, 2007

New features in the left hand column

In SL my avatar wears a blue bracelet on her left arm. It's from SquawkNest and it lets me type in SL and have the text show up in Twitter. I put a twitter feed widget in the left side of this blog so you can see little bits of what i'm doing inside SL as I do it. That's probably the only place I"ll twitter from. Since this is my SL blog, the twitter feed will let me share more frequently about what i'm doing in world.

I like widgets. I also added a search box for creative commons media. It's not SL related but it's an interesting widget. It may not stay around - i may move it to my homepage. On my homepage i now have a Meebo widget so folks can IM me right there. And I have a flower greenhouse widget from a new advertising project that's really pretty to look at. And here - the twitter and search widgets.

Enjoy

Starting to build on the Indy Media Center island





I started playing with BackHoe - flattened out the terrain, made a little ridge. Want to do more playing around. But man you ahve to be careful where your avatar is standing when you upload - i accidentally wiped out the Park Communication island. I had flown a few feet back to see the whole indy media center island and accidentally crossed the border. So - poof - my mountain and small hills disappeared. Linden Lab support guys are great - they had it back within the hour.

I started building a conference center space on the Indy Media Center island. I put in a space where you could give a talk and 2 halls for photo/graphics display. And then outside I have been working on a garden. I went on a tour of a knot garden and took that idea to our island. I built one garden square and then copied it to make a bigger square. and so on. Then i put a big tree in the center and some lights around the edge and paths through out. It's really formal right now. Maybe on another side i will make a less formal, more curvy garden. There are a lot of trees, shrubs, and flowers. I need a fence tho. I think i will play around with some metal textures to make a fence.