As has been reported in a number of places politicians are starting to come to the metaverse. I will be politically neutral here. However it does bring up something that a few of us were discussing the other day.
We met with Asif Noorani from Epiphany Productions, to discuss how we work in Second Life and show some of our other projetcs off in the Real World. Asif mentioned he was a big fan of the West Wing and one way and another that led us to a mad idea. Many of the meetings in Second Life tend to be people gathering in spaces and staying still.
Now in West Wing much of the interaction happens in fast bursts as the characters walk down the coridoors.
So what if we just replicated a coridoor/conveyor belt for a specific type of meeting. i.e. rather than those with a fixed place, or the ad hoc instant messaging across places. When you want someone’s full attention for 30 seconds to 1 minute then both teleport to the West Wing coridoor.
You are giving one another the ability to have full attention, and indicating that by your presence but you are also indicating that this will be fleeting, yet you still have avatar expressions and non verbal exchanges whilst walking.
It very easy to build in Second Life, but what other new meeting metaphors are there out there?

Its about 30 mins until the u2 in sl event. Being at 4pm SLT it’s a bit late, even in a holiday weekend for a uk visit. However I am a bit of fan and like to support things like this. I have done the tourist thing…..

I have also had a little play at being in the band

The crazy thing people may not understand is that their presence and way of arriving at these event puts load on the server

Normal webservers each person connecting puts on an equal amount of load. But here you can arrive and exhibit your personality with bling and prims attached to you that add processing load to the server.

UPDATE: It was a great event, they kept it initmate to 70 people, so the lag was minimal. The crowd certainly got into it. Another great event

Yossarian Seattle one of eightbar’s prominent builders and scripters will be off the grid for a few weeks as he is getting married today. In Real Life I might add.
Over at new world notes there is a great article about Yossarian’s language HUD on New World Notes. This recognition is a great wedding present for him, and I am sure Second Life will feature in his best mans speech.
Whilst very active on Hursley private Island Yossarian has gone out and explored and worked with the rest of Second Life too.
As a keen photgrapher and flickr user has has created a very nice gallery located next to the superb newbie centre of New Citizens Inc at Kuula. This is landmark I send everyone starting to get to grip with Second Life as they join eightbar.
Anyway, congratulations for Mr & Mrs Seattle to be.

In this excellant write up on 3dpoint.com Mitch Kapor’s speech at the Second Life Community Conference gets an airing.
The short term and long term impacts are discussed, but it is clear that Mitch Kapor knows a disruptive technology when he sees one.
Also on his own blog

Some more people have joined eightbar in Second Life and a diverse set of skills has emerged.
Judge Hocho showed me his design skills in the clothing department yesterday. He has made some great Eightbar tshirts and hats.

Meanwhile a newer resident has dived into building some clever things too.
Turner Boehm has a fantastic Tardis that appears and dissapears with sound effects. Now I know Turner is a boffin, and some of the recent conversations indicate he has some exciting things on the horizon.

As per usual all the shots can be seen on snapzillaI just need to get around to tagging them !

Idz Ni of eightbar pinged me to say he had found something interesting and amusing in Second Life today. So I popped over to have a look for 5 minutes.
He had found a cannon, with cannon balls that lets you climb in and be shot out of the cannon, and you go further if you are carrying a heavy cannon ball! This cannon is by Abramelin Wolfe
No this may seem frivolous, and in a way it is. However Idz and I then collaborated in order to get a good picture of the device in operation. It is very difficult to take the picture as you are being fired out yourself so it was a two avatar job.
It involved timing, and patience but it acted as both a demonstration of collaboration and is a great energizer to any brainstorm session.

Ok, if you know what I am talking about you will smirk. Snowcrash, albeit a mini version has made its way to Second Life.

We have a lot of meetings. It’s what companies do. They are required and there are always ways to make them more productive. However I noticed something in a Second Life meeting a few days ago that really made for an engaging reason to use avatars and presence in a multi user environment as part of a meeting.
How many conference calls, phone, video, chat varieties have you had the meeting, the call ends, then directly on to the next one. Sometimes someone running a call may ask someone else to hang on to chat about another topic. If you are not that person it feels rude to hang around, and equally you may feel excluded. In real life you tend to have to leave the meeting room with people, even if you are going to a new meeting. During those last few minutes human bonding interactions happen. People take off their meeting face and tend to be themselves, even if only their work persona. Idle chit chat, or off topic conversations spring up.
Hanging up a phone does not let you experience this bonding. So it could be we are losing something productive and effective when it comes to organizations and people?
In a recent eightbar and ‘friends of eightbar’ meeting in Second Life you can clearly see from the positions of everyone in the pictures below who is presenting and who is listening. We did this as both a telephone and Second Life chat meeting to mix things up a little.

When the meeting finsihed we quite naturally stood up and assembled into familar groups to chat. Not to waste time, but to exchange hello’s with people we knew, or wanted to know. Those few moments talking, openly in a room but ‘near’ our friends avatars meant the meeting completed properly. I could see the social groups around me, old collegues meeting again, people from Wimbledon past and present etc. There was a little buzz of chat and then we all went our seperate ways.

This seems an obvious thing? However like all good obvious things its not until its staring you in the face that you really know its right.

So many people at that meeting have commented on how it ‘felt’ better. That must make it more effective?

You can find a very good article here from Jeff on Hugo’s Second Life Amazon shop and his plans for a toolkit.

It never ceases to amaze the whirls and loops that things like Second Life seem to do around me and the rest of Eightbar. I was only today talking to someone from text 100 as PR agency who are lining up some interviews about Second Life and what we have been up to as IBMers when I come across this on the as usual, and very prompt 3dpoint.com.
Text 100, rated 9 in the top 50 PR firms has opened a presence, or an office in Second Life. I look forward to my next call as, as well as evangelizing, I can point them to their own island.
Yes I do have PR representation, albeit not my own personal one (yet).