Second Life Future Salon

SL Relay For Life Post On Terra Nova :: The Relay Will Be One Topic of Discussion at Thursday's Future Salon

Betsy Book has a thoughtful new post on Terra Nova about the upcoming Relay For Life fundraiser in Second Life. We'll discuss the Relay and how to get involved (volunteering, donating $L, participating in the walk/fly) at this Thursday's SL Future Salon, along with planning for the first Second Life Users Conference in New York this October, Richard Bartle's upcoming salon appearance on August 14th, salon improvement on the Web and inworld (including asking who you'd like to present at upcoming salons), and other topics of interest to Second Lifers and saloners. Lots of good stuff to cover and plan.

Randal Moss Wins Award for Tech Innovation, Bringing the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life into Second Life

Giving him back the top post after his announcement earlier today, super-ultra-mega-congratulations to Randy Moss on winning the National Human Service Assembly award for Excellence in Technology Innovation for his leadership role in the American Cancer Society's upcoming Relay for Life fundraiser in Second Life. You totally deserve it, man (and this is ACS's great return for being foresighted enough to support you guys at their Futuring and Innovation Center :-)!

Randy spoke at length about this breakthrough project (translating a decades-old event and organization into a cutting-edge virtual environment) at the first SL Future Salon (click here for a write-up and here for audio). The actual event will take place late in August, and a dedicated website is coming soon the website is now up at http://www.cancer.org/slrfl! (Congratulations also to Jade Lily for having and pushing the vision that's making this happen. You guys both rock.)

Here's to a bright future for mixed-reality innovation!

SL Relay for Life mixed-reality pic by Sven Johnson (click to enlarge)

SL Future Salon Location for Thursday, July 28th: The Courtyard In Indigo (Please RSVP If You Plan to Attend)

Next Second Life Future Salon: Thursday, July 28th at the scenic Courtyard in Indigo (pictured above; Indigo (100,90)) from 3:30 PM PDT until approx. 5:00 PM PDT. Thanks to FlipperPA Perregrine for generous use of the space and the open bar ;-).

Following-up from the first announcement, this salon will be an open meeting and brainstorm session to discuss the planned Second Life users conference in New York this October (plus the possibility of annual SL conferences to discuss issues around the platform and push the metaverse), and opportunities for Future Salon participation, growth and refinement in Second Life and on the Web. We'll also debrief the communication mechanics of Cory Doctorow's SL appearance (happening this Sunday) and look forward to Richard Bartle's upcoming salon appearance (August 14th).

Please take a moment to RSVP your attendance to me at jerrypaffendorf(at)accelerating(dot)org or IM me in SL as SNOOPYbrown Zamboni. Last month we maxed the sim with 50-some simultaneous avatars (w00t!), so even if you RSVP please try coming a few seconds early this month. Once the salon starts, madness may take over...

Hope to see a lot of you there!

Technology Innovation Award

I am please to let you all know that I was nominated for, and won the National Human Service Assembly award for Excellence in Technology Innovation. Jerry Paffendorf was nice enough to nominate me for our work on the Second Life Relay For Life. I am especially excited that I will have an opportunity to address the assembly, which is made up of the nation's largest human services centered non-profits, and I plan on drawing their attention to the possibilities that the virtual space and virtual communities hold. More importantly I gives me an opportunity to promote the SL Relay to a whole new community. 

My one fear is a deluge of charity events in a community that may not want them.  That is what I think is so special about the Relay For Life, it is a community driven event.  So long as there is grass roots support I fell events like these will be welcome and well supported.

I am please to let you all know that I was nominated for, and won the National Human Service Assembly award for Excellence in Technology Innovation. Jerry Paffendorf was nice enough to nominate me for our work on the Second Life Relay For Life. I am especially excited that I will have an opportunity to address the assembly, which is made up of the nation's largest human services centered non-profits, and I plan on drawing their attention to the possibilities that the virtual space and virtual communities hold. More importantly I gives me an opportunity to promote the SL Relay to a whole new community. 

My one fear is a deluge of charity events in a community that may not want them.  That is what I think is so special about the Relay For Life, it is a community driven event.  So long as there is grass roots support I fell events like these will be welcome and well supported.

Future Salon Field Trip On Sunday to Hang w/ Cory Doctorow

Blogger, author, and tech activist Cory Doctorow will be coming to Second Life this Sunday July 24th at 2 PM PDT to discuss his new book, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. Organized by Hamlet Linden, you'll find the full post here. Both the content and the communication set-up will be interesting to saloners and I hope to see a bunch of you there. Oh, and join the Cory Doctorow book club in SL for a better chance of getting close up to the action.

If you want to do your homework, grab a free Second Life version of Someone Comes to Town (designed by usual salon suspect Falk Bergman) in the welcome area of the Bonifacio sim, and check out audio of Cory's recent interview on the Voices in Your Head show, courtesy of IT Conversations.

Next Salon: Salon Jam Session and Teleporting to the New York Region

The next Second Life Future Salon will happen on Thursday, July 28th at 3:30 PM PDT. More specific info soon, but the thrust of this one will be two-fold:

1. Exploring opportunities to improve and get more people involved in salon planning, building, and content on the blog

2. Discussing plans for a small, in-person Second Life conference in New York this October! Yep, that's right. After several conversations with man-about-SL, Hiro Pendragon, we've decided to move forward with a real world Second Life gathering, most likely to partially coincide with this year's State of Play conference on virtual worlds at the New York Law School, October 6-8. Maybe some of you will make plans to attend both.

So this will be a nice, relaxed BYOI (bring your own ideas) salon as we gear up for Richard Bartle's appearance on August 14th and another salon later in that month. I will drop these^three^hints as to who I'm trying to round up for that one. No promises yet, but it looks promising ;-).

My new paper/Bartle

Today, on SSRN, I posted a draft of my new paper on simulation theory, entitled "The Simulagenic Universe". I am circulating it for comments prior to publication so any input would be welcome.

I am looking forward to the Salon with Richard Bartle. I had an excellent exchange with him on Terra Nova after my paper on freedom of speech in virtual worlds came out last year. We ended up debating how freedom of speech rights could be reconciled with a MMOG that was based on a POW or Gulag theme. Obviously, freedom of speech would not work there if someone took advantage of it to blurt out the escape plans to the jailers. (In a parallel universe, Richard was obviously Roger Bartlett - lol!) Certainly, any ultra-realistic, non-comedic MMOG involving a prison camp or Gulag (Jack Balkin's example) may have to screen prospective players for psychological sensitivities or abnormalities prior to admitting them as players to avoid the problems associated with the Stanford prison experiment (referred to by Mike Sellers in a recent Terra Nova discussion). This screening would tend to make the world a members-only "gated community" rather than a company town, so freedom of speech would not apply. In terms of a comedic version, e.g. a MMOG based on the TV series, Hogan's Heroes, perhaps some fool blurting out the escape plans would enhance the humor!

August Special Event: Richard Bartle In Open Q&A at the Second Life Future Salon

Virtual Worlds legend Richard Bartle (shown above accepting his 2005 Game Developers Choice Award) is coming to Second Life on August 14th for text-based Q&A and discussion on anything and everything regarding virtual worlds! Check back here soon for more details and background on the first visit to SL from the author of Designing Virtual Worlds, co-creator of MUD1, and frequent team Terra Nova contributer. You can check out Richard's homepage here.

I told Richard we'd try and have the recording of him saying, "If anyone samples this for a hardcore techno dance track I shall expect a royalty" (found here) sampled into, well, a hardcore techno dance track. It would be awesome to play it as a welcoming tune and toss him a few Linden dollars as a royalty ;-). Any takers on whipping that one up?

[Edit 7/14] Wow. Awesome response to the track request. See the comments where Jim Purbrick chimes in with a track called Hardcore and Komuso Tokugawa gives us Expectations. Those two tracks made me smile until my face hurt. But please don't stop there, music makers. By my count we're still looking for Anyone, Royalty, Sampled Royalty, Expecting Royalty, and of course Hardcore Expectations, etc. And maybe with enough tracks we can start the Live 8artle concert... Nah. But we will play 'em in Second Life at a pre- or post-salon dance party!

Second Life Relay For Life update

I have had a few requests from some bloggers to update the sphere about the progress of the Second Life Relay For Life.  I am happy to say that our volunteer work group is churning out tremendous things as we speak.  We are very excited about crossing the digital divide and incorporating both the material and the digital worlds into a single event. 

We have run into a number of technical challenges that one can expect from taking on a project like this. At the moment we are in the design phase of the event.  Our volunteers are creating vending machines, ATMs, track signs, t-shirts, and information booths.  Soon we will have a full fundrasing page on the American Cancer Society Home page. We are lucky to have some of Second Life's most talented designers volunteering their time to create the environment.  Like the real world RFL this one would not be possible without the volunteer effort! A special thank you to resident Sven Johnson of Rebang for the amazing image below.

Maturing the Salons: Increasing Blog/Salon Integration and Depth

Last Thursday's Future Salon was streamed live in audio and video on www.secondlife.com (screenshot above taken just before the end...what the heck were we talking about? ;-). This was our third event and the first to "sell out" (we maxed out the number of simultaneous avatars we could have in our location, which I think was set at 50). Along the way I've gotten great feedback about what works well, what to drop, and how to navigate it all towards becoming a more valuable creative foresight resource.

Looking back at the topics we've covered so far, I see that we really are beginning to paint a big picture of the future of the internet, digital media, interactive simulation technologies, and their feedback with real world systems, with some incredible people having showed up on our stage and in our audience. General themes covered so far include (most of which can be found in the archive, more coming soon):

•User-created 3D spaces and prototyping as an accelerant for overall digital world innovation (Jim Purbrick)
•Philanthropic applications of virtual worlds and the challenges of extending real world organizations into public virtual spaces, with the American Cancer Society as an ongoing case study (Randal Moss)
•Educational simulations and interactive learning (Clark Aldrich)
•The post-browser internet as envisioned by the Croquet Project (Julian Lombardi)
•Creating and branding businesses in virtual worlds (Betsy Book)
•Reality video gaming and episodic interactive entertainment and advertising (Keith Halper)
•Video blogging and the first-person experience of DIY online video culture, (Amanda Congdon)
•Virtual world journalism, reporting on the highs and lows of online world formation (Peter Ludlow)

That's an exciting and valuable list of topics we've explored, with many, many connections between them. One of the greatest challenges in curating the salon events and blog is aiming the focus of it all, and in that light I've devised a new structure for this blog and how it will integrate with the salons. It's pretty simple, but well worth announcing, breaking down like this:

I'll line up each set of speakers as early in the month as possible, and for the rest of the month posts here will explore each of their general areas almost exclusively (so, for example, if we had a speaker who does 3D printing, you'd see a lot of posts in that area). This will turn salon presentations into culminations of month-long investigations, hopefully leaving behind very unique and useful public trails of posts, comments, audio, transcripts, and follow-ups, and creating more of an incentive to be active in the community.

Speakers for the July salon are just now being invited, and I will announce them here as soon as I can. From then on we'll explore their areas until the big show (AKA the salon itself). This should take the events and blog to the next level by adding more structure to the content and deepening the learning and creative discussions around our themes. If interested, consider joining our Yahoo! group to stay up on announcements and discussion.

Whether you just surfed in or have been following us since April, thanks for reading, and many thanks to those who've come out and/or presented at the first three events. Please let me know if you have further suggestions for improving the experience and the usefullness of the Second Life Future Salons. We are, like so much else, a work in progress :-) !!!