Second Life Future Salon

Cincinnati Real Estate and Virtual Spaces

Cincinnati Real Estate agents are going to see a new kind of engagement within virtual worlds relatively soon. Combining web 2.0 and social media with real estate promotions will change the dynamics of marketing property in the city. For both Buyers and Sellers virtual real estate previews could be the next step in marketing a property.

Serrious Games go to Congress

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) will present the latest research-based uses of advanced digital technologies for teaching, workforce training and lifelong learning. The demonstration of three sophisticated games will be showcased as part of House "Innovation Week." Three current games will be displayed for the attendees. They include:
Immune Attack -- an advanced educational video game that teaches human immunology for 9th grade – college level students.
Discover Babylon – a cultural game that incorporates artifacts from exhibits at the Walters Museum of Art in Baltimore, MD, and transports the player to a virtual reality of ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq).
Multi Casualty Incident Responder – a high-stress, real-time training simulation for firefighters to serve as a national model for first-responder training.

All of this is well and good as long as it promotes the Federal Government to begin considering these virtual spaces as legitimate communities and adapt or adopt rules for economic activities there.

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) will present the latest research-based uses of advanced digital technologies for teaching, workforce training and lifelong learning. The demonstration of three sophisticated games will be showcased as part of House "Innovation Week." Three current games will be displayed for the attendees. They include:
Immune Attack -- an advanced educational video game that teaches human immunology for 9th grade – college level students.
Discover Babylon – a cultural game that incorporates artifacts from exhibits at the Walters Museum of Art in Baltimore, MD, and transports the player to a virtual reality of ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq).
Multi Casualty Incident Responder – a high-stress, real-time training simulation for firefighters to serve as a national model for first-responder training.

All of this is well and good as long as it promotes the Federal Government to begin considering these virtual spaces as legitimate communities and adapt or adopt rules for economic activities there.

Second Life to Help Catalyze Broad Change

Here's a far-out spur-of-the-moment post I wrote that places Second Life in a broader evolutionary context.  Hope it's not too whacked out, that it's at least a little useful and that y'all enjoy it.  Any feedback would be greatly appreciated as I plan to pursue this line of writing/thinking for a little while.

Net Squared Presentation - Second Life Relay For Life

Early last week I had the opportunity to present the Second Life Relay For Life as a case study to the Net Squared conference in San Jose, CA. In conjunction with Linden Lab, Jeska Linden and I pieced together a overview of SL and then proceeded to explain the details of community development in a virtual world. We covered some of the advantages, and challenges and used the SLRFL as a case study of success. We highlighted the metrics and participation levels as well as focused on effective virtual community engagement methodology.

The participants were all from a non profit background and were receptive - and skeptical - of the use and importance of virtual communities such as SL.  Particular questions focused on scale of reach as well as scale of donations compared with real world events. The frank reality is that in some cases it is valuable, and some organizations may be to niche or small to make this kind of activity worthwhile. I enjoyed the conference and hope that we opened a few peoples minds in furthering virtual world philanthropy.