reported by NMC Virtual Worlds November 9th, 2009
What is art in a world made of art? Our next NMC Virtual World Expeditions will be exploring this concept on November 12th at 10:00 AM PST(check local time). This week we will be exploring NMC’s art museum, the Kristi Aho Museum of Art.
SLURL: Aho Museum of Art
From its earliest beginnings in Second Life, the NMC and the Aho have been committed to supporting the arts and artists in Second Life, and do so through purchases of art, art-focused events and programs, alliances with leading artists and arts organizations in Second Life, and fellowships to promising artists who need studio space or other forms of assistance.
The Aho Museum aspires to showcase the finest examples of art that can be found in Second Life. The resources of the museum include the museum and the gardens surrounding it on the NMC Campus as well as the satellite museums, performance spaces, and exterior galleries on the island of Ars Simulacra. The museum’s curator and guiding force is Tayzia Abattoir, a long-standing and much admired patron of the arts in Second Life. Tayzia will be joining us as a guest speaker on Thursday to talk generally about art in Second Life as well as to discuss the collection, which strives to provide an encyclopedic showcase of virtual art forms and includes sculptures, interactives, recreations of real life art, computer-mediated drawings and paintings, scripted and computer-generated art, virtual photography, and machinima.
The museum’s current structure, designed and created by our very own NMC architect Chris Holden, is the second home of the Aho Museum, and was built on the same spot within the NMC Campus as the museum’s first home. The museum’s new building features a one-of-a-kind design intended to provide a fitting setting for the artworks which fill and surround it. The galleries in the museum are supremely flexible, and provide a variety of ways in which to display, light, and experience the art of Second Life. The building itself is an interactive piece of art, and over time, the exterior walls slowly change in response to their environment.
We hope that you will join us and add to the discussion on what defines art in a virtual space like Second Life, as well to to share your own thoughts on the art community in Second Life.
Also, please keep in mind the following helpful tips:
- You’ll need a Second Life avatar account to join us. If you do not have one already, please feel free to use our customized registration portal at http://sl.nmc.org/join/. Once you register, you’ll log in at our NMC Orientation sim which will have lots of information to get you started.
- Make sure that you have voice chat enabled and are able to hear before the event starts. Voice will be the preferred method for our speakers, though you are more than welcome to discuss and ask questions directly in the chat channel. If you are new to SL voice, please see these handy guides to get you started.
- Be an early bird! The expedition “sets sail” promptly at 10:00 AM Pacific Time (check local time) and we’d hate to have anyone miss the boat due to avoidable technical issues.
- Share your photos! If you are planning to take pictures, tag them in flickr with “VWEx” so that we can all find them easily!
- It is a shame to end the discussion simply because time runs out! Please feel free to continue sharing, learning, and teaching via the comments on this blog entry and the follow-up summary, in case you miss the session.
Originally published at NMC Virtual Worlds
published November 9th, 2009 at 10:36am
Department(s): Resources & Information
reported by NMC Campus Calendar November 8th, 2009
The University of Delaware invites you to join us!
What: Public Opinion One Year Later - Assessing Obama’s First Year
When: Wednesday, 4:30 SLT, (7:30 ET)
Where: http://slurl.com/secondlife/University%20of%20Delaware/56/150/26
This is a live simulcast of a presentation by UD faculty, David Wilson, assistant professor of political science and international relations.
Questions will be taken from the SL audience.
The University of Delaware fall public affairs lecture series [...]
more…
published November 8th, 2009 at 07:00pm
Department(s): What's Happening
reported by Metanomics November 5th, 2009
NMC Campus Observer Note… You can watch this Metanomics show live at Outreach (87, 125, 34) on NMC Campus
Discussions of the pros and cons are filling the various channels of Second Life chat today, after the launch on yesterday’s Metanomics program of the new Second Life Enterprise™ product. But adoption of this environment and how to drive it is clearly on everyone’s mind.
Jenaia and Marty have been frequent guests of Second Life media in recent weeks thanks to the very successful premiere of their Virtual Worlds Story Quest project and their rich backgrounds in education and content delivery. So when they mentioned that they would like to discuss the implications of the Story Quests for advertising and business I moved quickly to sign them up for the MCF. “The era of advertising by ambush is over,” they said, “and not just because of TIVO…Advertising needs to reach eyeballs, and the most important, educated, dual-income eyeballs are watching and engaged with new media in general and social media in particular.”
Join us November 5, 2009 at 12 p.m. SLT in the Metanomics Studio to discuss how their Story Quest projects are “vehicles for branded content” and highly “sticky” content at that. Or, you can view and participate live from the Web.
Martin J. Keltz
Emmy award winning producer, Martin J. Keltz has been involved in education and children’s media throughout his career. As the co-founder and president of Scholastic Productions, Inc. His vision for Scholastic Productions was to create quality programming for children and families for all forms of broadcast television, cable, home video and theatrical motion pictures.
He pioneered production of original films and programs for ABC, CBS, HBO, PBS, and syndication based on Scholastic book properties. From The Baby-Sitters Club and Goosebumps to The Indian in the Cupboard and The Magic School Bus, the top-rated Emmy and Annenberg award-winning animated series, Scholastic was at the forefront of developing innovative media content for children and families in traditional and new media during his tenure.
Currently Keltz is the co-founder of The Virtual Worlds Story Project which focuses on using 3D virtual environments to develop and produce immersive and interactive Story Quests designed to entertain and encourage audiences to step through the looking glass and co-create living stories.
Jenaia Morane
Jenaia Morane is a freelance writer, educator, and syndicated columnist in her first life where she specializes in penning personal essays designed to tell thought provoking and engaging stories. Her publishing credits include features for national publications such as Mother Earth News, Backpacker, and House Beautiful. She has also written and teaches online classes on Nature, Food, Adventure, and Memoir writing.
In Second Life Morane has focused her energies on creating immersive and engaging Story Quests designed to bring participants into and help co-create personal stories. Her work as the Coordinator of the HIV/AIDS sim, Karuna, was the basis of TVWSP’s groundbreaking new film and Story Quest, “The Life and Times of Uncle D,” which takes audiences into the life of an HIV-positive person known simply as Uncle D.
read story on Metanomics web site
Watch all Metanomics shows live on Outreach on NMC Campus!
published November 5th, 2009 at 08:21am
Department(s): Campus Headlines& What's Happening
reported by Metanomics November 4th, 2009
NMC Campus Observer Note… You can watch this Metanomics show live at Outreach (87, 125, 34) on NMC Campus
Are virtual worlds ‘ready for enterprise’? How is immersive media being used for training, communication and collaboration? Are there advantages to having virtual world platforms deployed behind enterprise firewalls? What are the lessons learned from leading companies and organizations?
Join us for a very special Metanomics as we broadcast live from the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in San Francisco during a mixed reality event. Please note that the event is at a special time: November 4, 2009, 11:00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time.
Mark Kingdon, CEO of Linden Lab, will unveil “Nebraska”, a stand-alone solution based on the technology that runs the popular Second Life virtual world. “Nebraska” is the much-anticipated behind-the-firewall solution which will allow enterprise to host their own virtual world environments within their organizations. Mark will talk about the benefits of the platform, the intended audience, and how it fits into the broader challenges and opportunities of “enterprise 2.0”.
Mark will be joined by a number of customers who have used Nebraska during the closed beta phase of development. The panel will explore the benefits, lessons learned, barriers and opportunities which arise from integrating virtual world solutions into the enterprise.
The event will include panelists appearing live in San Francisco and others who will join from the Metanomics Main Stage in Second Life.
Robert Bloomfield will kick off the event from the Metanomics main stage, and will be joined by Doug Thompson (Dusan Writer) who will moderate from San Francisco.
Event Details:
Following is the event listing from the Enterprise 2.0 Conference:
“We all feel it. Today’s economic, environmental, and business climate is putting tremendous pressure on enterprises to cut costs, innovate faster, and work in a more eco-friendly way. And, these business imperatives are driving forward-thinking organizations to explore emerging technologies that enable teams distributed around the globe to communicate, collaborate, learn, and create more effectively.
Second Life, developed and launched by Linden Lab in 2003, is the world’s leading 3D virtual world environment and solves many of the challenges that we collectively face and offers unique benefits that complement other enterprise collaboration tools. Second Life Residents, including enterprises, have logged more than one billion user hours, generated more than USD1 billion in user-to-user transactions, and over 18 billion minutes of voice.
Join Mark Kingdon, the CEO of Linden Lab/Second Life, to learn more about how hundreds of enterprises and governments are working both in Second Life and find out how they are saving money while taking giant leaps in creativity, innovation, and productivity. Kingdon will also unveil and demo the much anticipated “behind the firewall’ product (code named “Nebraska”). A few enterprise customers will join him to discuss the product and future outlook of immersive, virtual workspaces in a mixed-reality event at the Moscone Center and in Second Life.”“
Join Us
Produced in partnership with Linden Lab and TREET.TV, you will be able to participate in this mixed reality event in three ways: live at the conference in San Francisco, in-world at the Metanomics Main Stage or one of our Event Partners, and on the Web (broadcast live from this page).
read story on Metanomics web site
Watch all Metanomics shows live on Outreach on NMC Campus!
published November 4th, 2009 at 09:45am
Department(s): Campus Headlines& What's Happening
reported by Metanomics October 30th, 2009
NMC Campus Observer Note… You can watch this Metanomics show live at Outreach (87, 125, 34) on NMC Campus
Metanomics is proudly hosting a mixed-reality event during the Enterprise 2.0 conference in San Francisco on November 4, 2009. The event will take place from 11am PST to 12pm PST.
Host Robert Bloomfield will be joined by:
Neil Katz, an IBM distinguished engineer who will be discussing IBM’s role in the development of virtual world technologies.
Mark Kingdon, CEO of Linden Labs, who will be introducing their new Enterprise platform, code-named Nebraska.
Steven Aguiar and Douglas Maxwell, project and technical leads at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center.
3DTLC has been covering the Metanomics-hosted launch with a number of articles:
As we wrote yesterday, Metanomics will broadcast the launch of Linden Lab’s much-anticipated Nebraska platform on November 4. Metanomics is now turning the launch into its latest mixed reality event which will open with the launch announcement, followed by a discussion of virtual worlds, enterprise, immersive media and enterprise firewalls, under the title “The Virtual Enterprise: The Future of Work.”
They also have a great little interview with Amanda Van Nuys, aka Amanda Linden as she discusses Nebraska and what Enterprise services Linden Labs will be offering.
“On the first point, we’re working on a whole host of things to improve the experience for the enterprise customer – for example, from the Second Life work Web site, we’ll have an enterprise registration and an enterprise work-related orientation place. It will be a ten minute orientation which gives people the time to learn the basic functions, the basic things you need to know to attend a meeting or whatever else in-world.”
Virtualworldnews has also written about the event:
The presentation is slated for a mixed-reality event at the Moscone Center and in Second Life. Second Life and Linden Lab observers expect the demo to offer nuts-and-bolts into Nebraska specs, packages, and what ever Linden plans on calling the new stand-alone virtual world package.
read story on Metanomics web site
Watch all Metanomics shows live on Outreach on NMC Campus!
published October 30th, 2009 at 11:54am
Department(s): Campus Headlines& What's Happening
reported by CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) October 30th, 2009
If only perhaps were under a virtual rock, you may have missed the big announcement a few weeks back about the University of Texas statewide project in Second Life- a centrally funded/supported initiative that involves all campuses in the system.
Back on the Real Life Grid, we are hosting a free Connect@NMC webinar with Project Director Bluewave Ogee (aka Leslie Jarmon) to learn more about this important project and how things have progressed in the first months.
This will take place Tuesday, November 3rd at 10am Pacific (check local time) in the NMC Adobe Connect seminar room http://go.nmc.org/connect-nmc. Tell all your avatar friends to join us for this free event where we will have a conversation with Leslie about the project and what it might mean for education and virtual worlds.
cc licensed flickr photo shared by NMC Second Life
Leslie has been a part of NMC activities going back to the days of the Teachers Buzz meetups and she presented at our 2007 Symposium on Creativity.
For more about this project, you can watch the archive of her recent appearance on the Metanomics show
and see the official UT project web site “Building Immersive Instructional Experiences and Learning Communities in Second Life” http://www.tuelearningcommunity.com/
published October 30th, 2009 at 10:51am
Department(s): Campus Headlines
reported by Metanomics October 29th, 2009
NMC Campus Observer Note… You can watch this Metanomics show live at Outreach (87, 125, 34) on NMC Campus
Can substance abuse be treated online? What do virtual worlds have to offer people diagnosed with autism and schizophrenia? Does anonymity allow people to share their stories in a way free from judgement? Will playing back a virtual conversation over and over help people with schizophrenia become more socially active?
Host Robert Bloomfield met on October 28, 2009 at 12pm PST with Dick Dillon of Preferred Family Healthcare, Inc. to discuss substance abuse treatment within Second Life. The conversation continued with faculty from the Center for Vital Brain Aging at the University of Texas at Dallas.
read story on Metanomics web site
Watch all Metanomics shows live on Outreach on NMC Campus!
published October 29th, 2009 at 10:22am
Department(s): Campus Headlines& What's Happening
reported by Metanomics October 26th, 2009
NMC Campus Observer Note… You can watch this Metanomics show live at Outreach (87, 125, 34) on NMC Campus
by Robert Bloomfield
If you are an educator, or have kids in school, you are probably hearing a lot about h1n1, otherwise known as swine flu. Here at Cornell, where we have had hundreds of cases so far, and one death already, we are positively swimming in hand sanitizer, instructions on how and when to wash our hands, how to cover up when we sneeze, and any number of techniques that will curtail the spread of this flu.
But there is one bit of advice I am not hearing, but wish I were: use virtual worlds.
Enterprises and educators are already using virtual worlds because they allow a high degree of engagement without the travel costs that are so much a part of face-to-face contact. Well, h1n1 raises the cost of face-to-face contact even if the travel consists only of leaving your office, walking down the hall and taking a seat. In fact, the US government has taken a very close look at proposals to close down schools to lower the peak attack rates—the greatest number of people sick at any one time. Peak attack rates are a key concern because they potentially overwhelm the health care system.
But as the Brookings institute has reported, school closures are controversial because of the high cost. School closings costs school systems money when they make up the missed time later. Even if the time is made up, school closings harm educational outcomes. Kids skills don’t just stand still during interruption, they actually go backwards. The biggest cost of school closings comes in the form of worker absenteeism as parents stay home with their kids, rather than going to work, even when they are healthy. The Brookings Institute reports that absenteeism is likely to cost the US economy about $142 per child per week that a school is closed.
Widespread school closings still seem pretty unlikely this year, and even if they occurred, virtual worlds aren’t yet in a position to provide a large scale solution. But next time, they had better be. Virtual worlds allow education to continue through the epidemic, and by allowing parents to telecommute more effectively, reduce the costs of worker absenteeism. More generally, virtual worlds provide a cheap way to collaborate, whether in schools or other enterprises, without the risk of spreading illness.
Maybe I’ve missed it, but I haven’t seen anyone talking publicly about the role virtual worlds can play in epidemics. No one wants to sound like they are rooting for disasters because it is good for business. But someone really needs to. After all, it might be fun to think about what wonderful things virtual worlds might be able to do in the future, but isn’t just as important to think about what terrible outcomes virtual worlds might prevent.
In fact, let’s broaden our focus. What about other disasters? The Federal Emergency Management Administration, FEMA, helpfully provides a list of the ones under their jurisdiction. So here we go, in alphabetical order:
• Chemical Emergencies
• Dam Failure
• Earthquake
• Fire
• Flood
• Hazardous Material
• Heat
• Hurricane
• Landslide
• Nuclear Power Plant Emergency
• Terrorism
• Thunderstorm
• Tornado
• Tsunami
• Volcano
• Wildfire
• Winter Storm
Note that FEMA doesn’t include pandemic, perhaps because that is under the jurisdiction of the Center for Disease Control. And they don’t include nuclear war, perhaps because no one want to even think about it. But someone needs to think about these issues, and determine what role virtual worlds can play.
To get you started, I’d just like to note two key dimensions we need to consider. First, to what extent does the disaster create a need for virtual communication with the high level of engagement virtual worlds can provide? Even if you think getting together in a virtual world provides only a little more personal connection than a phone call, every little bit counts a lot when you are worried about your friends and family.
Second, to what extent does the disaster damage the infrastructure virtual worlds would rely on? Virtual worlds are not a great solution to nationwide blackouts.
If you look at it this way, epidemics provide something of a ‘perfect storm’ for virtual worlds. They generate a strong demand for high-engagement distance collaboration (especially education for children and telecommuting for parents), and cause little damage to our infrastructure. So they are the right place to start.
read story on Metanomics web site
Watch all Metanomics shows live on Outreach on NMC Campus!
published October 26th, 2009 at 12:40pm
Department(s): Campus Headlines& What's Happening
reported by Metanomics October 26th, 2009
NMC Campus Observer Note… You can watch this Metanomics show live at Outreach (87, 125, 34) on NMC Campus
by Robert Bloomfield
If you are an educator, or have kids in school, you are probably hearing a lot about h1n1, otherwise known as swine flu. Here at Cornell, where we have had hundreds of cases so far, and one death already, we are positively swimming in hand sanitizer, instructions on how and when to wash our hands, how to cover up when we sneeze, and any number of techniques that will curtail the spread of this flu.
But there is one bit of advice I am not hearing, but wish I were: use virtual worlds.
Enterprises and educators are already using virtual worlds because they allow a high degree of engagement without the travel costs that are so much a part of face-to-face contact. Well, h1n1 raises the cost of face-to-face contact even if the travel consists only of leaving your office, walking down the hall and taking a seat. In fact, the US government has taken a very close look at proposals to close down schools to lower the peak attack rates—the greatest number of people sick at any one time. Peak attack rates are a key concern because they potentially overwhelm the health care system.
But as the Brookings institute has reported, school closures are controversial because of the high cost. School closings costs school systems money when they make up the missed time later. Even if the time is made up, school closings harm educational outcomes. Kids skills don’t just stand still during interruption, they actually go backwards. The biggest cost of school closings comes in the form of worker absenteeism as parents stay home with their kids, rather than going to work, even when they are healthy. The Brookings Institute reports that absenteeism is likely to cost the US economy about $142 per child per week that a school is closed.
Widespread school closings still seem pretty unlikely this year, and even if they occurred, virtual worlds aren’t yet in a position to provide a large scale solution. But next time, they had better be. Virtual worlds allow education to continue through the epidemic, and by allowing parents to telecommute more effectively, reduce the costs of worker absenteeism. More generally, virtual worlds provide a cheap way to collaborate, whether in schools or other enterprises, without the risk of spreading illness.
Maybe I’ve missed it, but I haven’t seen anyone talking publicly about the role virtual worlds can play in epidemics. No one wants to sound like they are rooting for disasters because it is good for business. But someone really needs to. After all, it might be fun to think about what wonderful things virtual worlds might be able to do in the future, but isn’t just as important to think about what terrible outcomes virtual worlds might prevent.
In fact, let’s broaden our focus. What about other disasters? The Federal Emergency Management Administration, FEMA, helpfully provides a list of the ones under their jurisdiction. So here we go, in alphabetical order:
• Chemical Emergencies
• Dam Failure
• Earthquake
• Fire
• Flood
• Hazardous Material
• Heat
• Hurricane
• Landslide
• Nuclear Power Plant Emergency
• Terrorism
• Thunderstorm
• Tornado
• Tsunami
• Volcano
• Wildfire
• Winter Storm
Note that FEMA doesn’t include pandemic, perhaps because that is under the jurisdiction of the Center for Disease Control. And they don’t include nuclear war, perhaps because no one want to even think about it. But someone needs to think about these issues, and determine what role virtual worlds can play.
To get you started, I’d just like to note two key dimensions we need to consider. First, to what extent does the disaster create a need for virtual communication with the high level of engagement virtual worlds can provide? Even if you think getting together in a virtual world provides only a little more personal connection than a phone call, every little bit counts a lot when you are worried about your friends and family.
Second, to what extent does the disaster damage the infrastructure virtual worlds would rely on? Virtual worlds are not a great solution to nationwide blackouts.
If you look at it this way, epidemics provide something of a ‘perfect storm’ for virtual worlds. They generate a strong demand for high-engagement distance collaboration (especially education for children and telecommuting for parents), and cause little damage to our infrastructure. So they are the right place to start.
read story on Metanomics web site
Watch all Metanomics shows live on Outreach on NMC Campus!
published October 26th, 2009 at 12:40pm
Department(s): Campus Headlines& What's Happening
reported by CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) October 26th, 2009
This week brings the NMC’s 14th online conference– the 2009 Symposium for the Future, taking place October 27-29.
Since 2007, we have hosted these symposia at the Conference Center on NMC Campus in Second Life, but as part of our continual process of re-inventing the format, we are hosting this in a new similar, but different environment we call Hakone, which is the Second Life server running on our own server behind a firewall.
While our symposia take place in a virtual world space, they are not completely about virtual worlds. We have had great success with our Second Life based events, but our mission at the NMC is not to do just what we know works, but to experiment all the time with the new. So it will be interesting to see how the engagement factor is in a place where your avatar bears your real life name. We’ve already gotten some concern from our SL veterans about this, but the private virtual world space is less about maintaining a persistent identity one spends years crafting in a place like Second Life.
What we will gain is a space where the lag is much less (since it is not tracking tens of thousands of in world residents), and where we are not as constrained by the number of individuals who can be on a sim- we expect to easily be able to accommodate hundreds in our large venue.
Once more- this symposia is not about the technology, but meant as a probe into a broad range of future issues:
As its name suggests, the Symposium looks toward the future: what might the world look like in five years? Ten? Further out? Technologies and practices that are just beginning to show promise in an educational or social context may well be commonplace in that time frame. The applicability of technology — whether established or emerging — to the social, environmental, and educational challenges we face today is a central theme of the Symposium. Projects that test the applicability of new ideas, research into new solutions for global problems, and demonstrations of cutting-edge tools are all part of this exploration of the future.
We have a stellar lineup, including keynotes by Gardner Campbell (Baylor University) on Two Painters, One Poet, and Some Sweet Soul Music and Beth Kanter (social media guru) on The Networked Nonprofit. Both of them have prepared some extraordinary presentations with…. shall I say, futuristic and perhaps “explosive” 3D sets?
There is much more in the other general sessions (check out the online schedule) including:
- “Catching the Future Before It Catches You ” by Bryan Alexander (NITLE)
- “Media for Inspiring People to Understand and Care About the Planet” by Anne Haywood and Ford Cochran (National Geographic)
- “Whatever Happened to the Politics of Tomorrow?” by Ruben Puentedura (Hippasus)
- “The Future Holds No Dignity: The Death of Ethics in the Digital Age” by Jared Bendis (Case Western Regional University)
- “A Visit from the Future: Uncanny Learning” by Jim Groom (University of Mary Washington), Tom Woodward (University of Richmond), and Brian Lamb (University of British Columbia).
- “The Futurists: Teaching Futuring and Innovation with Emerging Media” by Cynthia Calongne (Colorado Technical University)
And quite a bit more, including a virtual worlds co-presenter appearance by Marc Canter, founder of Macromedia. Plus we have our Tuesday opening reception featuring games and interactives created for us by Cynthia Calongne, one of the premiere presenters in any world, virtual or real.
There is still time to register online for the Symposium on the Future. If you work for an NMC member organization, look up their profile and find your Campus Liaison as most members get a number of comp registrations to share.
An done more thing- in the past we usually had some video archives as we were having run video streams to overflow sims, but for this symposium– you gotta be there LIVE. There will not be any recordings. So register now!
So be part of this exciting event about the future- it is after all, what we make it!
published October 26th, 2009 at 06:55am
Department(s): What's Happening
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