NMC Campus Observer

Symposium on Creativity Opened Today!

CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) : Aug 13, 2007 12:15am

After months of planning, and watching the fabulous builds unfold created by the NMC Virtual Worlds team, it was exciting to see all the activity, enthusiasm for todays opening of the week-long Symposium on Creativity in Second Life.

That’s not to say it was perfect (This is Second Life after all, where your world just may crash on you- 5 times) — right at the opening of the Studio Sessions, no one was able to teleport anywhere, so folks could not get into the NMC Conference Center, nor could participants get to the Studio Sessions held on another sim (a few intrepid, experienced folks flew the distance).

But our mentors for the Studio Sessions, pros that they are, rolled with the hiccups, and got their groups going. We are excited about these- they are rather “unconference-like” in that they are extended sessions, and consist of very little instructor led training. In areas such as Machinima, Photography, Fashion Design, Modeling, and Teaching in SL, participants are going to sopend the bulk of their time working on their own projects, with some basic guidance, and help from some of the leading mentors in these areas- folks like Kirk Kirkorian, Torley Linden, Shukran Fahid, Solivar Scarbourough, CJ Carnot, Stella Costello, Desideria Stockton, Ravenelle Zugzwang, and Eloise Pasteur (to name drop a bit).

Machinima Studio Class

After these sessions opened, the main NMC Conference Session opened for a reception in the Grace Murray Hopper Exposition Center, the central location featuring a number of exhibits for participants to visit, and get some great give aways.

Let’s “talk” about voice- after a lot of deliberation, we decided not to rely on voice chat for the breakout sessions, since it was so new to the main client, and people are still learning how to activate (and maybe how not to when there is background noise), and the social conventions this new feature introduces.

That said, an overwhelming number of participants (informal estimate suggests 80-85%) did have voice chat activated and where using it! It was noisy.

During the opening reception, Larry Pixel provided a few brief remarks, and then, as an NMC typical icebreaker, we had some fun with our every 10 minutes Find and NMC staff member and offer friendship– with some Linden cash going to the first five who did so. People caught on to this activity fast!

We also had prize drawings from a new device we have that flashes names of all avatars registered for the conference, and allows us to pick one at random. Two winners won gift certificates of $L1000 at Szabo Horn’s store, and we gace a way a nice grand prize of L$2500.

This was mostly fun and social today as people learn to find their way around the conference center, meet each other, and do the important networking that happens at good conferences.

Given the availability of audio, I took the opportunity to do some avatar on the street interviews, which you can listen to below, along with the welcome from Larry Pixel, and a short excerpt frrom Kirk Kirkorian’s teaching during the Machinima Studio Session.

Sounds of the Symposium

And for folks there– remember to tag all of your photos, web sites, videos with out conference tag of slcreativity, e.g. see the current photos from flickr at
http://flickr.com/photos/tags/slcreativity

Tomorrow is a full day of breakout sessions, a keynote, and much more interactions.

Story filed under: Audio / Video, Campus Headlines, What's Happening
Tags: slcreativity
See all stories by CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine)