Well it all started on time, DNA Prototype took to the decks at the Aloft hotel party area.
The invited guests gathered, danced and talked whilst the music streamed in.
All Pictures from Snapzilla

I dont usually do nightclubs anymore, so it was good to let epredator potato throw some shapes.
A few of us synched with Satchmo Prototype, he had a dance machine installed in his head, so a simple click of the green noggin and away went your avatar dancing.
We had quite a range of invited guests at the event, some new faces and some of the usual crowd.
Algernon Spackler was there to, as was Juiceof Prunes, though strangely, and this is one to watch out for, JuiceOf just happened to be at the hotel when the event got locked down. So she was not on the group list but still had access to the island. It felt cool to have someone accidently gate crash. I am guessing the access control is checked on entry?

Anyway lots of people and of course a Smurf were there

Ben folds turned up, in SL and on an audio feed. He was clearly gobsmacked by the reaction of the crowd and both the craziness and immersion. There were a few technical hitches requiring text chat “is this thinng on”, but SnoopyB and some of the Sheep were in a RL office with Ben. This added a great deal to the dynamic, and these mixed mode events bring people together more.
They were clearly enjoying themselves too.
Ben played some music from his new album which sounded great, and answered some questions.
The crowd jostled for postion, but respected the stage.


When asked about whether he was a Second Lifer Ben decided to show his technical prowess by playing some of the ringtones he had downloaded to his phone in RL.
This was hilarious and sort of set the tone (no pun intended) for the next part of the evening.
I did comment how ironic it was as when people who have not got the metaverse bug yet as “So why would anyone by virtual content” I usually use the “Why does anyone by a mobile phone ringtone”.
Anyway it was time to head over to the Sony BMG media Island for its first event. TPing a crowd over led to a little confusion but we all made it I think.
SnoopB and Ben had chairs on a stage, but the potential for amusing antics took hold and the party dynamic got a whole lot more interactive.
I think you can see from this product placement where this might then go.

Ben had his Duff beer attached, this eventually causes you to reel and fall over, in this case off the stage so it looked like crowd surfing. He is in this shot somewhere, I think he fell on Algernon.
Another person shouted that Ben had fallen on them and they would never wash this avatar again.

Next thing we know Ben has removed his shirt and dived into the audience with a lightsaber. I was laughing so much that I did not take any more pictures. Apart from Algernon decided to sit and watch from the stage. It was 3am UK time though.

Anyway, a successful and once again varied event. Another set of anecdotes to add to the “back in the early days of the metaverse” after dinner speaking material for when I retire.

A while back I had seen the Electric Sheep Media Island before it was branded to any particular media. It was at the time a huge build and one I often showed people to understand the scale and potential of SL.
Now it is the Sony BMG island, and there is a lot of content to see and experience. They have come up with some very nice ideas too.
A loft apartment and Club area

A Fan shop with tshirts, and singles to buy

A legacy area, which one of my favourite all time artists, the late great SRV, appeared as the first picture in the legacy building.

They have also created some very engaging artists rooms. From a single atrium you enter themed rooms for each of the very diverse performers. You get to listen to the track and/or sit and watch the video. It felt very good, Dna Prototype happened to be there at the time too, and it was great to be able to congratulate the crew on the build.


AudioSlave

Ben Folds

Christina

and Cheyenne Kimball all under one roof.
Having popped into the night club and loft I also bumped into Ben Folds


Once its fully open I suggest you go and take a look.

Well done everyone and good luck with the event thats about to start.

I am sitting here waiting for the 7pm EST US start time for the Ben Folds event that I was lucky enough to get an invite to.

It will be a late one, midnight until 3 am UK time, but it makes it feel more rock and roll.
It is across several sites which is all quite interesting, both the Aloft hotel and the Media Isle by the Electric Sheep

Given Yossarian had his translator featured in wired I thought I should also pop along and see the Wired office in Second Life at the MillionsOf Us island.

Its a suitably unusual build being staged as a printed circuit board and computer components.

Aside from having the obvious but fantastic content, with a rich source of Wired covers to choose from this office appeared to have an old style projector screen. A nice little change from our flat screen TV’s


The millionsofus island also had once of those quirky Toyota Scions. I have not got mine yet, but feel I need one.

A magic number has been reached on Second Life
Philip Linden has written a nice thankyou to us all on the official blog.
There are some more stats around this on New World Notes too.
Whilst people can argue over the statistics, there has been a massive growth in people and companies exploring this instance of a metaverse.
Milestones like this are something we all can feel part of, and that is why some many of us are being productive in this environment, a feeling of belonging, whilst at the same time being out there a little bit.

Last night Yossarian Seattle and I went along to the Globe Theatre build by MillionsofUs for a very interesting event.
MillionsOf Us are doing a lot of interesting things as you will have seen.
The event was an interview by Wagner Au with LongtailChris Anderson.
The pre-event gathering and chatting outside the globe was great and the audience was a veritable whos who of Second Lifers interested in this side of Second Life.
We all chatted before the event, everyone saying hi as one by one people teleported in. As I have written before these pre and post event gatherings are as important as the actual event.

We had all gathered about 30 mins before the event so there was a great deal of chatter.
We then all were ushered into the lovely build that is the globe theatre. Wagner and LongtailChris walked up and took their seat on the stage.

One of the nice things is whilst you take your seat you can still dash around moving the camera and taking snaps without distrubing the flow of the event.
Rodica Millionsofus was there to take and schedule the questions from the audience.
Wagner started the interview and Longtailchris did the elevator pitch for the concept of the long tail.
I had to laugh when Spin Martin said “So if the long tail book stays at the top of the charts for too long does the world implode” that was worth a L$25 positive rating point.
I also liked Spin’s group tag ‘Eric Rice aka’ Spin Martin.
Many of us ended up holding a virtual copy of the book by Falk Bergman. This book is cleverly able to be signed by the author as well as adding to the atmosphere of the event.
Several of us on the front row looked like right swots with our books out. As you can see with Yossarian here, its an effective look with a book.

Once again I need to restate the point that the interactivity and the sense of being there generated by this sort of event is really engaging.
With the interviewer, interviewee and audience all aware of one another just like theatre.

Anyway, we tended to sit and listen and then let Rodica introduce our questions for us. Marshalling a crowd like this is an art form in itself, and we behaved well in general.
Given the timing of this in the UK it was toddler bathtime at about 7:30pm. So as the event wrapped up I was getting RL calls to come and help.
Its a bit strange shouting, hang on I am just going to get my book signed by Longtailchris.

However, given my wife is an economist, when she realized who it was and what the event was she was very interested and supportive, and I guess the PR and marketing works as she needs to read the book now. So its not just me who is susceptable to adverts in Second Life
Anway a great event, great to see everyone there, see you at the next one.
I am sorry I could not hang around and maybe go and see Versu in Second Life. It is a pity this real life shop window build was not a few weeks ago as I would have certainly made it along to there given I was in New York.

I have known Turner Boehm in RL for a long while, so I was more than happy to see he enter Second Life with eightbar. He was straight in modelling and scripting as I would have expected. We had the dematerializing tardis a little while back, but now he has got serious as I indicated he would, not that Dr Who does not count as serious!
Anyway, he has built an modeller in Second Life that, driven by external complex system information ,produces a self organizing atomic looking structure showing how (as in this case) multiple software systems could be interconnected.
In full mode the model is able to be manipulated in realtime. I had seen the original as was impressed but after this SL update I popped to North East Hursley island and had a chat with Turner whilst sitting on this fabulous dynamically built structure.
The elements and linkages have text associated with them to indicate the nodes and links in the model.
The whole thing is very scaleable, imagine a whole sim full of 15000 nodes and links.
For the techies and architects among you I think you will get where he is coming from.
Everyone else, it looks cool too I think.

Before todays Second Life downtime for maintenance, I thought I should have my more casual look upgraded with the uber cool custom Reeboks (just search on Reebok in places)
You buy blank white shoes and then approach a booth where you custom up the colours and they are sent to the shoes you are wearing. They are a good price too.
Very nice work by Rivers Run Red

They look great, and they are certainly sweeping across SL. They will be hard to not wear even at low prim events!

So there is the non “predator” me. I do need to redo my jacket as it is getting famous too but it was a 5 minute go at clothing way back all those years I mean months ago!
There were a fair few trainers and neat shoes at the CNET follow up conference with Chris Melissinos from Sun as well. There were a lot of us from Eightbar there, and a veritable whos who of the metaverse today. So these events always serve to strengthen those social networks even if I was sitting at home trying to eat my tea without dropping pasta sauce on my keyboard.

It was nice that lots of us knew and some of us had recently met in real life.
As you may have seen some of the guys running the GreaterIBM initiative are having a get together in SL tomorrow, I get a real kick out of seeing the spread of interest and the gathering pace of change that we all seem to be part of.
So good luck to all the guys running it. Events in themselves are a valuable experience to run in this environment.

As reported in a few places (but 3pointd is where I saw it) Sun is having a press conference in SL.
Its great to see some other major tech companies come into this space. We know there are a few of them out there in various shapes and sizes, its just we have been a bit more public as IBMers over the past year blogging and experimenting with what this all means. I thought we had done the first fortune 500 press conference, but I suppose we had a more direct one to one with each of the particpants over the 2 days, though the event we were showing was real SL interaction across the world.
This is a big area and there are a lot of avenues to pursue. The important point will be, as with the web, open standards.

Well after the hectic coast to coast US trip, and coming back to some amazing pieces of news that seem to indicate that a lot more people in a lot more places are even more serious than we could have hoped for about this whole Second Life/Metaverse explosion, I finally get to write a blog entry on it all.
Its taken 9 months (or 5+ years depending what yI start counting), and there is a way to go but it is certainly is exciting times for the entire industry.
In all of this rush of potential, having bought 2 islands, planning things, seeing events, touring the SL world and blogging about it I had lost somewhere to retreat too. My public first land was a bit too small, and I am letting some friends us it as a sandpit.
I now rent a small plot from Jessica Qin on Austin island.
Its good to be the customer.
I had put a rather bad treehouse up, but tonight I started on my “organic art” project.
I decided not to terraform at all, but use what I had on my plot. So here is the start.

Its a start, going for curves and twists in prims, a nice simple pod to sit in.
Just blending in and chilling.
Next week it all gets hectic again. Off to London continuing the flow of the meetings in the US with as many of the key agencies and people in this whole new business, then lots more meetings RL and SL, calls, and somewhere in all that we get to build on our newest island (once the Alliance Navy have finished their training mission, as I lent it to them as part thanks for attending our 3d Jam )
Hi to everyone I/we met on the US trip. In keeping with the rules of customer confidentiality and business meetings not being blog fodder, it was great to meet you all, and great to meet lots of likeminded talented people.