Second Life Future Salon

A slightly refreshed look for 2024...

Huh. What is this, microblogging?
Interesting...

Weird that my winking photo works only with the tiniest version of the Typepad avatar...

Virtual Worlds play a part in Knowledge workspace

As reported on Community Mobilization, a recent Forester Research report states that virtual worlds and spaces a re a key component of the knowledge workspace. The report identifies several Web 2.0 technologies that companies should adopt for stronger information connections: RSS, blogs, rich Internet applications (RIAs), tagging, wikis, and virtual worlds. The article goes forward and suggests that to get these current technologies integrated companies should look inward before they turn to consultant. Virtual Worlds Weekly catalogs the Seven Tenets of the Knowledge Workplace as:

The seven tenets are that:
1. Work should be contextual: Forrester envisions RSS feeds pushing information to workers in their portals instead of forcing them to go to multiple applications to catch up on work. Forrester sees virtual worlds as a bonus here, where workers can interact in a 3D environment and access files in the same way they would in the real world.

2. Portals should be individualized, allowing users to customize their space in a wiki, RSS, or virtual world.

3. Work should be seamless. Virtual worlds aren't mentioned specifically here, but the idea is that instead of clicking between applications or folders, information should be tagged in one location. A virtual space makes for an interesting way to browse. See, for example, projects the intelligence community is working on for a virtual work space.

4. Information should be presented visually, which seems like a pretty clear tie-in to the previous tenet for virtual worlds.

5. Technology should be multi-modal. I.e., it should allow for mashups.

6. Information should be social. Again, this has been one of the major arguments for a 3D virtual work environment that allows users to collaboratively access and edit information in real time.

7. Information should be quick. Instead of working with local software, businesses should focus on Service-Oriented Architecture.

The seven tenets are that:
1. Work should be contextual: Forrester envisions RSS feeds pushing information to workers in their portals instead of forcing them to go to multiple applications to catch up on work. Forrester sees virtual worlds as a bonus here, where workers can interact in a 3D environment and access files in the same way they would in the real world.

2. Portals should be individualized, allowing users to customize their space in a wiki, RSS, or virtual world.

3. Work should be seamless. Virtual worlds aren't mentioned specifically here, but the idea is that instead of clicking between applications or folders, information should be tagged in one location. A virtual space makes for an interesting way to browse. See, for example, projects the intelligence community is working on for a virtual work space.

4. Information should be presented visually, which seems like a pretty clear tie-in to the previous tenet for virtual worlds.

5. Technology should be multi-modal. I.e., it should allow for mashups.

6. Information should be social. Again, this has been one of the major arguments for a 3D virtual work environment that allows users to collaboratively access and edit information in real time.

7. Information should be quick. Instead of working with local software, businesses should focus on Service-Oriented Architecture.

ACS Office News

I wanted to make a few announcements here about the ACS Second Life Office. We have decided to add a few volunteer positions to help us manage all of the activity that is going on. I am very pleased to announce that Fayandria Foley will continue as our Relay For Life Chair, and Poppy Zebelin will continue as our Survivorship Chair. As of this week we now are so lucky to have Xandi Mars as our Office Manager and Synergy Devonshire as our new Marking Strides Against Breast Cancer Chair.

As we continue to extend the resources offered to the SL community we are lucky to have dedicated volunteers willing to put in the time and the effort to bring our vision to a reality. These women have dedicated so much of themselves and they are truly represent the best of volunteer and community leadership.

Stanley Milgram experiment comes to a Virtual World

The electric-shock obedience experiment sent Stanley Milgram into infamy. It also was the catalyst for American Psychological Association to adopt ethical considerations when performing psychological experiments on people. Plus One reports that a group in London re-ran the same experiment in a virtual world and the results were eerily similar. The participants showed comparable stress and anxiety levels. Their conclusions?

Our results show that in spite of the fact that all participants knew for sure that neither the stranger nor the shocks were real, the participants who saw and heard her tended to respond to the situation at the subjective, behavioral and physiological levels as if it were real. This result reopens the door to direct empirical studies of obedience and related extreme social situations, an area of research that is otherwise not open to experimental study for ethical reasons, through the employment of virtual environments

My conclusion?  I am not all that concerned with the world of obedience studies but what I am concerned with is the empirical proof that a virtual world can have a comparable emotional impact on is residents as real world activities. This being said it lends additional support to engaging in psycho-significant research and therapeutic activities in the medium. For the human service sector it provides further credence to the Asperger's therapy work that is currently experiencing success in virtual worlds such as Second Life.

SL Future Salon on ARGs *Tonight* Friday, Nov. 27th at 4 PM PST

Aaaaaaaarg, it's the future salon on ARGs. Theater with your software and stories gone wild:

Come to the 5th floor auditorium of Sheep Tower on Sheep island (<--SLURL) at 4 PM PST *tonight* 11/27 for the Second Life Future Salon meeting and podcast on alternate reality games (ARGs). Tonight's guests are:

*Tony Walsh, Clickable Culture

*Elan Lee, 42 Entertainment

*Dan Hon, Mind Candy

*hosted by Jerry Paffendorf, The Electric Sheep Company

If we fill the sim (likely since we often do and this one got picked up on Boing Boing), overflow access will kindly be provided on the web by DestroyTV.com -- the hardest working avatar in show business -- where you'll see and hear streaming video and audio of the salon, and can even chat with everyone from the comfort of your browser.

For those new to the salon meetings you can subscribe to this blog for future updates (please let me know if you're interested in helping on some light, credited design work on the SLFS blog--we've been between looks for a while), join the "SL Future Salon" group in SL for inworld announcements, and the Yahoo! group for emails. Last month we began posting SLFS podcasts to metaversesessions.com, so you can check there for audio archives.

For some background and scope of what's fair game at the salon, here are some links ranging from ARGs to just plain AR that influenced my prep:

ReGenesis (one of Tony's ARGs, via Clickable Culture)

I Love Bees (one of Elan's ARGs, via Wikipedia)

Perplex City (one of Dan's ARGs, via Wikipedia)

ARGNet

"Lisa the Skeptic" episode of The Simpsons

ARG influence on the Lost TV series (via Clickable Culture)

lonelygirl15.com (I really liked this month's Wired cover article, but there's no link yet)
Borat

Infocult on ARGs in Second Life

Gary Hayes on ARGs in SL and virtual spaces

Andy Havens questions for the salon (in a comment on this blog)

Chris Carella/Satchmo Prototype on Software Theater

Nick Yee on The Blurring of Work and Play

The Yes Men

Ze Frank

Incident at Loch Ness by Werner Herzog

The Idiots by Lars von Trier

Four Eyed Monsters

Cory Edo's response (and follow-up here and here) to the SLLA's bounty for attacks on Electric Sheep, Millions of Us, and Rivers Run Red

Who Killed Miss Norway?

Zombo.com

As you can see from the links, I'm drawing this pretty widely, not minding dropping the G in ARG, like SL drops the G in MOG. I'm really interested in exploring the possibilities of all imagined stories and characters that mix with reality as usual (are purported to be true or real -- or in the case of events in a virtual world, are technically very true and real with the caveat that they take place in cyberspace); alternate/reality generated content (like Sasha Cohen interacting with people that don't know Borat is a character, and recording the encounters -- which has it's ethical and legal issues); co-created storylines that take on a life of their own; community and culture that grows up around ARG stories and challenges and how widespread and sustainable it can be (I think of the characters in The Idiots, as a kind of obscure example for anyone who's seen that, who try to take their idiot behavior home to their families as a test of how committed they are and find themselves completely shunned); ARGs as a more efficient platform for celebrity for their participants (so the best contributors to the stories are more fully recognized for their talents and further incented to participate); ARG business models and how they can reward their participants; real work and ARGs (ARGsourcing, ha -- couple of wild ideas here), and anything that a big fat, unfolding interactive story that spreads across many kinds of media would just make more interesting. Which is pretty much everything, and a lot more things in virtual worlds like Second Life.

As the poet Muriel Rukeyser put it, from the human side: "The universe is made of stories, not of atoms." I'm looking forward to hearing from everyone how the future of unchained interactive stories might meet with the future of work and production of media. Lots to noodle on, and hopefully some very cool creative ideas for people to run with. Definitely some theater with your software, or your new media. Send me any questions for tonght. It's all fair game.

SL Future Salon on Alternate Reality Games, Monday, November 27th at 4 PM PST

Update: More posted here. The SL Future Salon on ARGs will meet in the 5th floor auditorium of Sheep Tower (<--SLURL) at 4 PM PST, Monday, November 27th (if all goes well the tower will be talking to us ;)). Destroy Television will be present so you can watch, listen, and chat from the web, and the audio URL will be made available for overflow. IM SNOOPYbrown Zamboni/Jerry Paffendorf with any questions. And heya, Boing Boing readers, come on inworld.

Thanks to those on the SL Future Salon Yahoo! group who chipped in with thoughts on this one: On Monday, November 27th from 4-5 PM PST the Second Life Future Salon will meet on the topic of alternate reality games or ARGs with Clickable Culturist and ARG designer man Tony Walsh; I Love Bees-making 42 Entertaiment creative Elan Lee; Adrian Hon and/or Dan Hon from Mind Candy, the creators of Purplex City, and me on the 1s and 2s. Please send any ideas for questions or topics for these guys to jerry[at]electricsheepcompany[dot]com, and I’ll post an outline and location later this week.

From Wikipedia:

An alternate reality game (ARG) is a type of game that overlaps the game world with reality, by utilizing real world media, in order to deliver an interactive narrative experience to the players — a kind of surrealism.

ARGs are typified by involving the players with the story and its characters, by encouraging them to explore the story, solve plot based challenges, and interact with game characters. ARGs can be delivered via websites, email, telephones, or any other means of communication which is readily available to the players.

ARGs are growing in popularity, with new games appearing regularly. They tend to be free to play, with costs absorbed either through supporting products (collectable puzzle cards in the case of Perplex City) or because they support or promote an existing product (Halo 2 in the case of I Love Bees).

Tony points me to some thoughts by Bryan Alexander that popped up on the Infocult blog yesterday, who’s riffing with Andy Havens (probably my favorite commentor on Terra Nova) about ARGs in virtual worlds like Second Life. Since Destroy TV came on the scene (she’s now streaming video after the big move to Chris and Becky’s place) I’ve thought about ARGs and involving people in co-creating massive stories quite a lot (how can something like DTV take on a life of its own?), and the recent Wired cover article on lonelygirl15 and how it came about completely pushed me over the edge. I’m completely hooked on ideas for stories that are platforms for people’s creativity and involvement. More on that later in the week as we approach the salon, and of course nothing but that stuff at the salon. I’m psyched.

Virtual Laguna Beach Field Trip Rescheduled Again

Ack, sorry to have to reschedule on such short notice and for a second time, but we're going to have to postpone the field trip to Virtual Laguna Beach for another week. I'd planned for guests from MTV, There.com, and Electric Sheep to join us on Skype tonight, but last week a virtual event wth the band Open Air Stereo came up for tonight that conflicted and required the guests attention. I was thinking we might still hop in and have a look at the event and the new episode of Laguna Beach which is airing in VLB tonight a day before it goes on TV, but I've decided it's better to postpone the official future salon meeting until we can get some people on the podcast. Apologies. We shall persevere!

For everyone raring to go, at 6 PM PST you can watch the new episode of Laguna Beach in VLB, directly followed by an appearance from Open Air Stereo.

Change Is Afoot!

The SL Future Salon now has its own podcast channel on MetaverseSessions.com compliments of John Swords AKA Johnny Ming. Our first podcast on the network--a conversation about transparency and lifelogging with Justin Hall and Mark Barrett--is up for listening. Some other cool updates to the SL Future Salon blog, group, and meetings coming soon.