Today I attended my first event wherein I would meet face to face others who partake in the mysteries of Second Life. I tweeted as best I could being something of a tweet neophyte (a tweetophyte, a neotweet?) I am http://twitter.com/serenejewell
Today was the first day of the Second Life Community Convention at the St. Francis in San Francisco. Here's what I learned:
• SLCC is VERY laid back....
For example, registration was "postponed" for a day. In other words, if you just showed up - you walked in, no charge. Also, a printed program was briefly flashed, but then quickly hidden under the counter. The schedule was eventually written on a whiteboard. I'm not complaining, I like laid-back as a general vibe.
• Educators are more interested in implementation than in theory...
I confess I have heckled Phelan Corimal in Second Life once or twice myself. Purely out of love and admiration. But at the opening workshop in the educators track, the educators seems antsy. They wanted to "move up a level." My sense was they wanted to hear about the HOW rather than the WOW. They want to implement something and don't know exactly where to start. I left the educators track for the nonprofit track, so I'm not sure how the rest of the day went, but that was a fine start.
• There is a lot going on with Healthcare organizations and Second Life. Brian Perry showed a fabulous video tour of 30 healthcare builds in second life. Great use of machinima for show AND tell. The in-world links to the sites are at: http://bit.ly/12ZxaP I won't give the link for the videos because I don't know his bandwidth situation, but I will say I think they should be on YouTube. Great work, Brian.
• Mixed Reality streaming events are just as complex as you think they are.
In Kenzo, Rhiannon Chatnoir and crew gave a rolicking demo/presentation/howto event on how to stream a live event into - and from - Second Life. I've attended quite a few of these types of events in Second Life, but had never been one of the people in the "real life" room. It was odd. I kept feeling the need to connect with the in-world folks, but the presentation was zooming along so fast, I sometimes forgot they were there. LizaJune Stoop did a great job of keeping the in-world folks updated via IM until the audio and video could kick in. The most amazing part was that they did all this with a wireless connection! I would have never imagined you could make it happen with wireless. What a great display of life on the bleeding edge. With two macs and a video camera and a mic and a little software, you too can broadcast into Second life and interact with the virtual folks. It makes me dizzy and happy. Now I just need to get my hands on the elusive handout that explains it all! Big multimedia fun!
• Just say Hi.
Last thing I learned/remembered is that it always pays to walk up to people and say hi. The Second Life peeps are very friendly and approachable. It pays to break out of my shy bubble and babble on.
I can't believe I didn't meet the people I've been TRYING to meet for a year now, Glitteractica Cookie and Penguin. I vow to track them down and meet them tomorrow!
* Obscure reference to a Grateful Dead song. You figure out which one.
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