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.

Last Presentation Update

Two more seniors presented their research results last night. They conducted an online survey about Facebook and students reactions to it, including whether they'd be willing to pay for it (less than 2% said they'd pay!)

Since Sarah Naylor and Ekta Batra aren't skilled SecondLife users, we streamed their presentation in world. It was a good test for me too - turns out we need microphones and a more powerful computer than my poor little laptop to run these presentations.

They were a little nervous at first - talking to the camera is new for them. But they got progressively more confident. They answered questions from the small but interested audience. One person encouraged them to consider publishing their article.

Another Student Presentation

Mike Palumbo, known in SL as Shmapple Patrono, presented the results of his independent study project on intellectual property and other legal issues in virtual worlds on the Park Communication island on Tuesday. The topic seems to be very popoular; his talk attracted a lively crowd. Mike dealt with a variety of tough questions. Some he could answer, and others he'll have to take to law school (which he starts in the fall).

Mike identified a variety of issues that residents of virtual worlds need to consider. He interviewed lawyers in world and visited a variety of law related spots.

We've gotten some local television attention

Two tv stations from Syracuse came down to Ithaca last week to film class and talk to students in my qualitative reserach class. The students thought it was neat to be interviewed and to get to show off what they've learned about SL.

Here is a page from CH9 with 2 stories - a general story about the qualitative research class using SecondLife and a second story about how political candidates are using SecondLife, featuring some research and quotes from students in the class. Not sure how long the link will work.
http://www.9wsyr.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=81957841-8eab-41ad-8a4d-96d2f9a8ae5f

Here's a link to the story from CH5 Syracuse - it's just the text of the story.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18488491/
They came down and interviewed several students about their experiences.

Research Presentation in World

Austra and I presented the results of our research on religion in SL tonight. We had a few people attend. They asked good questions and gave us lots of encouraging feedback. It was really stressful tho - whew. You don't get clues about pacing that you might get in RL - like polite coughing and foot shuffling. Everyone looks attentive (and young and beautiful) in SecondLife.

Austra - a senior about ready to graduate - is getting to be an old hand at conference presentations. She presented her own research at a state level conference, this research at the annual meeting of the Popular Culture Association, and now this in world presentation. She answers tough questions well. She dressed up the area with a slide show of pictures of churches, and a collection of items she's collected at churches through out SecondLife. We put together a landmark laden notecard and a notecard dispenser. We need to add some text to the notecard for people who come to the display when we're not around.

I hope to get the students to do more of these presentations next year - and not wait till the end of the semester when everyone is stressed. I think the students in qualitative research could do presentations about their observations. And in audience research - it would be interesting to get them to present about their companies in world or about the pros and cons of different media - and invite folks from different marketing companies.

We have 2 more presentations on Tuesday. I'll post about them Wednesday and put up more photos.



And - the last picture is one i took of Austra's avatar buried in the dirt - it should be labeled "when terraforming goes horribly wrong" - ha ha! Our benches kept sliding down a little hill. I was trying to raise the land up just a little and smooth it out. Poof - I buried Austra up to her neck when she was away from her computer!

Dr Dobbs Life2.0 Conference

I got to go to the conference a couple of days last week - I do love live events in SL - chance to hang out with people from all kind of companies and backgrounds. This one had great speakers too - Mitch Kapor (creator of Lotus 123) and Philip Rosedale were keynoteres. There were tours of interesting builds, sessions with scrpters and builders. All designed to give people a better understanding of what's going on in world.

Check out my Slide Show!

Another live event

We streamed a talk onto the island today from the RL auditorium. David Macauley was there. What a great speaker. He is famous for his architecture books like Castle and Cathedral. He's working on a book about the human body. He held everyone's attention for over an hour.

A few people came by the Park Communication island to watch part of the talk. We wanted to see if the stream would stay up - and it did. One thing we need is at least 2 computers - one for the broadcasting software and one to use to run SL to interact with visitors and help them get hte video stream going. If we every got a lot of visitors it would be nice to have someone greet them, give them a welcome pack with notecard about the event and maybe an event tshirt. The greeter could offer people Teleport links if needed and just generally answer questions.

We're learning a little more with each presentation. We reached out to a few groups - we'll do more of that in the future. I need to get things on the schedule early enough we can try for some blog coverage - like being in New World Notes and their calendar post each week. I know that's where I find neat stuff to do.

Streamed a presentation live

Saturday morning, David Spiegelman from New Line Cinema gave apresentation to about 25 students on campus in Ithaca. We also streamed it live on the internet and into Secondlife. Here are a couple of pictures. It went pretty good. We had 4 or 5 people come by, including one from Australia (it was 1:30 Sunday morning there).

Thursday 4/26 at 7:30pm EDT (4:30 SLT) we're going to stream author David Macauley. Stay tuned for more details about that.

Do these people think they're funny?

I was trying to explain SL to someone the other day (grown up, academic) and they're first comment was - oh i already have too much to do in my first life. FOllowed by the equally weird comment - but it's not real, why would you do that?

This happens all the time. I point out that movies, music, tv, books - not real. And we pay for those - - for the experience, for hte mental pleasure. And that SL is the same way except instead of following someone else's story, you get to make your own. You control what happens, you build stuff to suit you and your interests.

DOes anyone else get this type of comments? Any ideas how to address them - short of snorting in disgust and walking away (my first instinct)

Cool stuff coming up

I figured out how to make water - and made 2 fountains. (pictures will be here the next time I"m on SL) I didn't add any sound yet. There are scripts for making a texture move to simulate moving water. I used it on an umbrella I built too - very trippy. One of hte fountains has a waterfall. I want to make a creek too - just to see if I can.

We're going to have a lot of stuff going on in sl over the next 3 or 4 weeks. We have a couple of guest speakers, the students will be presenting the results of their research, and we're having a reception for faculty to show them SL. I hope to get our experimental film festival into sl too - to show their movies if nothing else but to get them in to talk about their work and hopefully meet sl people about their movies.

Went to a conference to present our religion research - which still needs a lot of work - and quite a few people were interested in SL. I hope to hear from some of them soon - see about getting projects going. I'm also talking to folks from Mansfield University about projects. They were into podcasts to promote their school early on - I think they will be good to work with.

Virtual Worlds Conference

I got to go to the 1st annual virtual worlds conference in Manhattan in 3/28-29. The coolest part was seeing people in rl that I'd met in sl. I got to meet Greeter Dan from CNET and Adam Reuters from Reuters. I met a couple of LIndens, a couple of folks from Electric Sheep, saw Aimee Weber. Exciting!

Then there were a ton of panels - some got repetitive (maybe a one day deal?) maybe it will take a bit of time for the market to grow to include more companies, more builders,more folks with cool projects that they're willing to talk about (that was an issue this time - companies were like we have this cool projects but we can't tell ya how much it cost or the traffic - talk about aggravating!)

One thing to consider is the variety of virtual worlds - they have different target audiences, different concepts of openness, different economic models. Gotta understand the range better before recommending any one to a client (that was one big take away message)

I'll be writing up my notes - trying to make some sense out of all the talking and projects.

first griefer attack

on our island. What a jerk.

He built way way up - like over 500 meters. The only way i could get up there was with my jetpack. THen he was throwing out self-replicating items. That made a really awful noise.

I had to call for linden help. They showed me how to ban him from all the estates (property) I own. And how to return all his crap. Good to know for future disturbances.

To be on the safe side I turned off building and scripting for awhile. Hopefully he will get bored and go elsewhere (he = male avatar)

This is why I love SL

SXSW (a conference about music and new media down in Austin Texas) has a track this year on videogames and virtual worlds. I can't go in person. But I can go in SL. The folks over at Electric Sheep Company are streaming it live on their island. So i get to sit in a comfy auditorium, talk to other interesting folks, and watch the panels. I've taken a lot of notes to bring the info into class. The only thing we don't get to do is to ask questions - but it's so crowded at hte real world panel that the odds of getting to ask a question are pretty slim too.

Check out the big sheep - that's the log for Electric Sheep Company - look at hte feet. It's such a cool logo.

Here are a couple of pictures:

classes in sl

my audience research class had a guest speaker today - in SL. It went very well - took folks about 15 minutes to find the amphitheatre and get seated but considering that was their first time as a group on the island, that wasn't too bad.

Smiddy Smalls from Text100 was our speaker. The company works with many technology companies such as IBM adn Xerox. They help the customers know where their customers are and where they're having conversations by looking at peer to peer media. Text100 sees SecondLife as the next big thing in peer to peer platforms - they've been in world since August 2006. He sees companies using SL to solicit feedback on new products. It's good for education and thinking/communicating in 3D. It's even good for group meetings. He mentioned that the Rochester office met in SL when they were all trapped at home in a recent snow storm.

Companies are in SL for a variety of reasons. One is to get included in press coverage of SL. ANother is to connect with their customers. Text 100 wants to help their customers get into SL for hte long haul - planning events, not just one shot deals.

He offered some advice to the students as they think about their futures. He encouraged the studnets to become well-versed in new media and consumer generated content. he said it was vital to know about wiki's and blogs and lots of social networks.

Here are some pictures of the event. We are sitting in the outdoor amphitheatre on the Park island.

Our Island is coming along

We streamed video from a live event into SL from our auditorium. It worked pretty good - we used my little consumer camera for the live stream and picked up audio from the speakers in the booth. We also taped the event to post later to test on demand streaming. So lots of audio/video fun times.

Students are building - some up in the sky.

My avie is healthy - no flu or colds or bronchitis in SL. Man i wish that was true in the real world.

we've gone international

Check out http://www.rawlsandme.blogspot.com/

A guy from Sweden visited the Park Communication Island while the qualitaitve class was online - we were trying to take some pictures of us in our Ithaca tshirts - so he posed with us for the photos. And then blogged about it on his blog.

Small world

Tshirt in SecondLife

Jeff Tatanus (Jeff Waldman in SL) put together a great Ithaca tshirt for us to give out on the Park School island. He says it's not hard to do - but he did a great job and took time to get the details just right.

here's a pic:

new home for the Park School

Ok - not in real life, but in SecondLife.

We've moved the Park School building up to the top of the mountain on our island. There are two small amphitheatres and a good sized lobby for mingling.

We're still working on the textures and colors inside. But the basic building is looking great!

Here are some pictures:

Hmm - the edges of the SL future are fuzzy right now

Theyjust announced a new access policy. If hte network starts to be overloaded (like it's been doing on the weekends lately) they're going to restrict logins to people who have premium accounts, or have some other financial relationship with the company (like accounts that have purchased money through the linden exchange.

Lots of discussion on the SL Educators list. What if you have a class meeting in SL and all of a sudden they kick in the restrictions and half of your class can't get online? Is SL less atrractive if you have to pay to use it (buy a premium account)?

Interesting questions. One of the coolest things about SL is that students can get started with no monetary investment. Whatever money they want to spend they can give to buy things in world; money would go to designers and builders and artists rather than to the folks at Linden Lab.

We'll have to see how the access problems work out. In the long run - Linden lab needs to figure out how to scale up - it may require a rewrite of the basic structure of the world. That will not be an easy task.

I'm still a big supporter of this virtual world. The opportunities still seem to outweigh the problems. Students can be media creators, and own the things they create. People get recognized for skills in SL that might not be recognized in their real world lives. There are concerts, ballets, lectures, live music - - and lots and lots of conversation. You just have to find what you like or start something on your own. To me - this is something worth pursuing.

I'm worried (heck - i just spent almost $4k of the school's money on SL) but not ready to cut and run yet. It's a limitation we'll have to deal with int he future. Like building restrictions, and figuring out who can schedule events - we'll just have to figure out how best to set up new accounts and how to communicate possible shut downs to new users. right now i think the problem is the unknown - we don't know how often it's going to happen or how long hte shutdowns will last. Exhale folks. Keep your fingers crossed. And enjoy SL.

Really really the park school in SL

One of the students involved on the island, Matt SeGall, decided to start building a model of the Park school. Here are some pictures of his work so far. The textures aren't final - he just threw some in (especially in the auditorium) to mark off different areas.

Some cool events in SL

I'm amazed these days when I go into the Search -> Events list. there's so much to do these days.

On wednesday 2/14 I went to a ballet performance in SL - with custom animations and original music and gorgeous sets.

On the Roma sim on Thursday (and I think friday) there's a big celebration with some big event each night at 9pm (est). Definitely sounds worth checking out.

On Saturday at 7pm (EST) there's a basic machinima class

And - this is the coolest - on Tuesday night at 11pm (est) there's a talk at the International SL Space Museum by an astronomer who was part of the team that found evidence that the universe is expanding. COuld be very cool.

SL - It's not just sex and shopping anymore

More scenery

Here's some shots of sunset on the park island




These views are one reason I picked the island design with the mountain - there are magnificent 360 degree views of the water, of the sky - we just need to get some hot air balloons!

Our second island is here!

It's for the Center for Independent Media - a new center being set up at the Roy H. Park School of Communication. It will be run through the Journalism Department.

Here are some pictures. We're thinking log houses, forest views. Nice lake boating. Quiet and peaceful. That should be an environment that stimulates a lot of discussion of the ways individual people can and are creating media - blogs, wikis, websites, podcasts, video podcasts, channels on youtube, and so on.




And here's a picture that shows how close together the two islands owned by the Park School are. We want to build bridges between departments - and between the islands.

The Roy H. Park School island

Our first island was delivered a couple of days before the semester started. Big dilemma - finish class prep or tour hte island; read one more chapter in the textbook or scatter some houses i built around the island to play with. I did both - but let me tell you - i wanted to play a lot more in SL than i did in those first days.

And I still don't get to play as much as I'd like - 4 different classes, 2 brand new. And a bunch of independent studies with kids that want to do stuff in SL. Gotta get them motivated and moving before the semester gets too far along.

Here are some pictures of our island when we first got it:




We bought an island with a mountain. Why? WHy not. Actually tho, the top of the mountain has a great 360 view of the ocean - well so far of the water. There will soon be 2 other islands visible - one of ours and one from another college. The possibilities for a drive in movie - ok - you can't actually drive in, it's on a mountain top. But it will be a great presentation space. We may put a welcome area up there too. And we hope to build an open air amphiteatre into the side.

So far we've just been trying stuff out, trying to set permissions so the independent study students can build and leave things on the island, trying to convince other profs they want to try it out.

But right now - we're waiting for SL to come back online. Darned ol biweekly updates.

Lots more to do these days in SL

One of the happy by-products of the increase in SL residents is the huge jump in the number of things to do. There's still yardsales and show us your skin nights at strip clubs of course. But there are a lot of other fun things to do.

I've just recently noticed art galleries in SL. They have gallery walks - guided tours with one of the featured artists or the arg gallery owner providing information about the pictures on display.

This week I went to the opening of a new island owned by a university in New Zealand. They had a submarine (forgot to take a picture - I"ll have to go back) where you could look out under the water and see fish (well - i saw a fish). THey had a camp fire, beaches, swimming pools - lots of spaces for small group discussion and just hanging out. At their opening they had incredible fireworks displays. Here are a couple of pictures.


The conversation was going on down on the ground, up in the air, on the mountain tops. IN SL you can use camera controls to move your point of view around while you stand in the crowd.

I also went to a brief interview of Howard Rheingold (big name in the study of virtual communities from way back) by GreeterDan over at CNET. They have a cool auditorium for the interviews, comfy seats. And great guests - in the past they had Esther Dyson, Anshe CHung, and now Howard Rheingold. There's always a chance to ask a few audience questions at the end. Here's a pic of that space. It's a bit of a closeup - i'll try to get a pic of the crowd next time.


I also went to a tour of the iVillage loft sponsored by a new group of PR people in SL, to a discussion on how to combine the real world and the world of SecondLife, a discussion about how public libraries in the real world are using social networks (their example was MySpace because it is a huge issue with librarians right now). I visited a giant art museum called the SL Louvre with paintings and sculpture. I went to classes on building in SecondLife, how to shop efficiently (including what to look for in a good skin), and Sunday there's a talk by the StarFleet Academy on the Universal Translator.

Something for everybody - real, fantasy, skills, news, talk, information. I'm overwhelmed.

Building more

I built a 2 story house - but small to fit my little plot of land. no room for stairs so i built a 2 story column to fly up to get to the 2nd story. Not too slick but it worked. Kind of like a fireman's pole(g)

I've been playing iwth textures too. I went to a class to make a trampoline and it was all done with textures. Very cool. The legs were one texture that was mostly transparent iwth a slanted line for hte legs. The top was another texture with a colorable middle and a black edget like a trampoline. Very cool. We got a sound and script to make us bounce too. I am going to try putting that script in a chair(g)

Here's a picture of an earlier house - the one with the curved class atrium. That's me in my fancy party dress sitting up in the air. I was trying to build a dome (for an observation dome on the top of a house but that didn't work out yet)


And here's a second picture - me standing on the wall in my party dress. Do houses really need roofs? or floors?(g) I bought this holiday dress because of the skirt and train. They're huge and they move - it's almost like they're alive. Very cool. And very unlike how I normally dress in SL - leather pants and jacket, tshirt and boots. Wait till the students get a few of me in my party clothes!

I've started building

I started out just building big twisted pieces of art. Now i'm into buildings. Multi-prim builidngs. Here's a pic of one of my first one's - i love the window textures



On my little plot of land - i can get one building at a time. So i build, put it in my inventory, build again.
Next I made a big gallery type space with 10 prims including a window wall and a frosted glass bump out room.
Here are some pictures of the glass bump out room - I put in a little rock garden with pink flamingos. I built a couple of chairs and put them there too.




One of the IC students came by to check out my work - and noticed that my house had no floor - whoops It doesn't have a door yet either but that's ok because it doesn't have a roof so you can just (literally) drop in. I'm going to build a dome to go on the roof. So i have got to figure out doors - they involve scripting. I'm thinking of making a flexi cloth door - i think you could just walk thru it.

bought the island

well - placed the order anyway - for the school of communication. We hope to involve lots of folks around campus.

I thought 16 acres was huge - but it is NOT. Oh man. I wonder how big our real campus is? Anyway - i think there's room for a couple of buildings, sandbox. We can build things in the air - that will be cool.

So i thought of hte first thing I want students to play with - what's the meaning of classroom in a world like SL where you can fly, you don't have to sit in front of each other to "hear" and where text is mostly delivered by text.

I've been playing on my own land too - i upgraded to a premium membership so i could own just the smallest chunk 512 sq meters. Talk about tiny. But i can build and leave stuff around. I found a beach house that fits on my land - turns out my land isn't flat so part of hte house is buried in the ground and part is hanging in the air. I like having part of the floor buried - the grass shows. If i can find a small tree and some plants i'm going to make an indoor garden.

I created 2 groups - IC Students and IC Faculty. I didn't make them open - so people need an invite - there has to be a better way but i wanted to be sure the people were actually from IC. We will use the lists to control access to the island while we play around and terraform.

ok - now I"ve done it

I admit - I"m fixated on SL right now. And i'm probably driving folks around me a little batty talking about it.

So what's my reward/punishment? The school is going to buy an island and we get to play on it. I may get time off to play on it - free toys and paid play time. Man I'm in heaven.

I'm also terrified. I have to convince people from across the campus to play and to put in time to stage events and build cool stuff. And to work it into their classes. I went to Middletown - a build for a class at Ball State - I was so jealous. They did a great job! And I have to convince students they want to do stuff in SL - I hope they take to it as excitedly as the folks at Ball State.

What was I thinking??!@!

The island orders are way backlogged - so we have a little time. I'm going to buy some land with another little grant I got to play on - we can use that for some early projects. And we can leave stuff there - like a dispenser of notecards about upcoming projects or art that students build. My dream is to build an opaque ball wiht a door. Inside are images/movie screens. You can walk around, move the ball, and the pictures move. So you could walk one way and be standing on the movie screen - move a little the other way and the movie screen is on top of hte ball. Like a private screening room. Or we take the opague balls - make little transparent slits - and use them to play bumper ball(G)

I've got to get my hands on a server too for streaming media. We get lots of great speakers - i would love to have a SL spot for presnetations - stream video from the real world, have avatars for the speakers, take questions from the SL audience, port the SL view back into the real world. Not anything different than a lot of conferences has done - but a way to shae some of the really cool speakers from the real world wiht the secondlife world. Maybe alumni could come to the SL home and keep in touch.

Down the road it would be nice to take some of the stuff we learn about sl to the teen grid - it would be a great place to recruit prospective freshmen who are into technology. But that's down the road.

I can't wait!!!

lots of events

Maybe it's because there's so many more people in secondlife - or maybe i've just been more diligent at looking at the events list in hte Search Menut - - but....

there have been just tons of events and there have even been a lot of educational events in SL recently.

i think events are a good way to introduce new people to secondlife - lots of people to talk with and something to talk about (other than the typical intros). Like going to a movie on a first date (ha)

the big drawback to events tho - if ya have a good one and do good promotions - you get so many people that lag attacks and no one has a good time (like some recent Townsquare presentations by Linden Labs and the new shows at the SL Planetarium). Or you attract griefers (like at the recent big brother opening). So - now that i think/write a bit - - maybe events aren't a good way to introduce people to secondlife.

either way - i'm excigted about all the new fun things to do and see in the world - i'm not the most social person on the planet so thinking of SL as just a 3d chat room was never very appealing. As a destination tho - i think it has a lot of appeal.

spent more time in the world lately

I haven't had time to play till recently. I just decided to make time and not do other things like grade papers

I started tgoing to classes to learn how to build things - i made a picture frame, a box that gives out notecards, and flowers. It's really cool - you can put scripts in objects to make them do things. Turns out there are tutorials on building and scripting at hte Ivory Tower so I'll be spenidng more time there this weekend.

The flowers were fun - but hte ideas carry over to making other things. You make a transparent very thin box, put the texture on first hte front and hten the back (not hte sides). Then ya copy that shape, rotate it, copy the new shape and rotate it so you end up with 4 copies of hte original flower all interlocked. When you wlak around it it looks 3D and solid. I wonder if that would work with other things. I"m going to try it with some other images

I also made a clear glass ball - actually i made it transparent and put stained glass on it as a texture. I dimpled it to make an entrance. I wanted ot make like a gerbil/hamster ball so i could run around the world inside it. But it is really amazing to stand inside looking out. I made a box with a transparent side, hollowed it out and got to stand inside it too - i floew up and then down the hollowed out spot - with boxes it hollows out fromt eh side, with the ball it hollowed out from the inside. Weird different. I'm going to keep working on the gerbil ball idea - that would be a lot of fun - could make it like a diving bell to go under the water! That's my goal.

Like a dummy i didn't take any pictures. But i put stuff in my inventory - so look for photos really soon.

Spent a lot of time in the world yesterday

Longer than normal for me. I went to a lecture about a project called Global Kids. They have an island on the teen grid. THis summer they held an inworld summer camp to teach leadership and political activism. The kids looked at the issue of other children being sold into the sex trade. They created a maze to teach kids on the teen grid about the plight of these slaves. It was an impressive presentation and an even more impressive project. I learned a lot about the Teen Grid - and realized there's a lot more to find out. Adults can't go there and wander around. If you have an island you have to stay there and kids come to you.

If we were thinking of having an island in the world to reach out to prospective freshmen - we'd need to have regular events, things for them to do, reasons for htem to come and to come back. I think the only way it will owrk is if we get some freshmen who are not 18 yet to join and sort of act as ambassadors - to help other students organize events on our space. SO it's not just grownups talking at them. SOunds like the kids on the teen grid want to DO - build, talk, organize. They want to learn things. They also want to be violent and provocative - play acting maybe?

And serious lag - I could hear the talk fine. The audio stream was a neat addition tohte talk. At one point tho - when we were all supposed to get up and do something - my screen froze. more literally my avatar froze - i could turn the camera left and right but i couldn't walk or fly. I quit SL and came back in. The lag was bad for a couple of minutes and then i was ok but all the people that had been there before were gone (I"m talking just a couple of minutes) or their avatars didn't draw.

Then i went to the TeaZers Island looking for a class on how to make an apple. I could see a whole bunch of people on the mini-map. I just knew that was the class. But when i went to that location - loiterally walked over the people on the map - no one was there. SOmeone else looking around suggested i fly up to look over hte roofs - maybe the class was in one of the other buildings. As I flew up i noticed a lot of things int he air - buildings and green areas. I kept flying - and hovering above the land I had just been walking on was a grey cube with a big green open area and a class full of people eating their apples. Rats. I had missed the class but found hte classroom. I waited around awhile for hte next class. We learned how to make Devo hats. I realized i don't know how to do the camera controls right. The layers of hte hat were small (my head is small - duh) and when I linked my layers I missed the top one. Arggh. I eventually got them together and attached them to my hand (I didn't want to mess up my pretty hair) Whew.

The students in my class are supposed to be going to classes this week. I realize now I want to go to more because building stuff in the world is a lot of fun. It also makes me really really appreciate all the work that goes into some of these huge builds. I realize they're probably making htem in graphics packages and importing htem but they have to assemble the pieces and test them and get them just so on the property. Man oh man. A lot of work.

If we get a piece of land for this project with Rachel W. and Austra we'll need to do a little building for the presentation. it would be cool to have some chairs in a semicircle. And even cooler to plan something for people to get up and do - not a straight lecture but some activity. Even a poll. Gotta look around at what kinds of things are available to buy to add to our presentation. I bought a cool whiteboard - gonna try it in class next week - you supposedly just drag textures (pictures) on to it for everyone to see. I'd like to have easels with pictures on them of cool things we've seen. And you touch the picture to get a notecard of information about the project.

More later

I went to a talk in world about space tourism. Good slides and i'm getting used to the text lecture style. Good comments from the crowd too.

playing along

So we're playing the game - people don't seem as excited as last semester. I wonder if it's because I'm not discovering new stuff along with them like last semester when it was all new and shiny. there's still plenty i don't know of course but the basics aren't as exciting as before. And right away we had the big security hack and some folks (me included) lost our avatars. that was kind of off putting. And the game isn't giving them money like last semester so they aren't buying stuff. I think we'll have to require putting some money into the game next semester - if they do it when hthey sign up they get free money. They're kind of frustrated by not having clothes.

The in world small group discussion worked pretty good. Small groups went to one of 4 places I found and discussed some questions i gave them. They weren't good questions however - didn't take people long. I mostly just wanted people to get used to talking which they did but it didn't take as long as i thought it would.

I need to post some pics of my new character. CHanging to a guy is tough - i miss my old male character from before the security hack. Oh well - i'll get over it - ha ha.

So many changes over the summer

Over the summer secondlife changed - a lot. There are a lot more people with accounts and a lot more people logged on simultaneously. Still not as many as World of Warcraft - but it's growing.

A lot of real world brands are moving into the game. A PR firm, Toyota Scion, tennis shoes, a hotel chain - and that's just what I remember. The projects are giving inworld designers a lot of visibility which is cool.

Another thing that happened this summer is that some big names from other parts of the internet established a presence in the game. Robert Scoble. Adam Curry. and Joe Jaffe.

The last thing I noticed over the summer is all the conferences and meetings that were held simultaneously in world. It was very strange to see my avatar sit (they sway ever so slightly in their seats) and watch a live video stream on an inworld screen in a room full of other swaying avatars. We could chat and have side conversations while we watched without disturbing others. The people on the screen could ask and answer questions from the inworld crowd too.

There was more media coverage of the game too - including a podcast from Business Week.

How will that affect our experience inthe game? I'm not sure yet. There is more to do . There are more brand names that students will recognize. The new developments may make the game seem more legitimate. It might also seem less wild and wooly and so students will be less willing to play around. I will be interested in watching their reactions.