NMC Campus Observer

NMC Symposium Opening Events

CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) : Dec 3, 2007 11:29pm

The Symposium on the Evolution of Communication opened today at the NMC Conference Center sim- we have over 170 people registered for this completely online conference held in Second Life.

Tomorrow starts the full days of the conference sessions (see the schedule). Today was devoted to orienting new SL users, or those new to our sim, where we did all we could to help people enable their voice chat. Troubleshooting a sound card issue on a PC you cannot see or touch is not easy, but we are confident that this process happening before the conference starts will help us all out. We also gave some conference center tours, showing folks how to use the various teleport devices so they know how to get to the main venues.

At 5:30PM we had a reception in the Grace Murray Hopper Exposition Center, where after a few remarks from host and NMC CEO Larry Pixel, people mingled, met, talked, etc. We had a few rounds of our warmup activity of “Making friends” where people who found and offered SL friendship to NMC staff earned a chunk of Linden $.

We then turned out the prize drawing machine, which randomly flashes names of all registered avatars, and gave out some prizes to those who were present:

• Lyr Lobo and Victor Park each won L$1000 gift certificates to shop at SZABO’s, a leading design store.
• The big prize of L$2500 went to Wakeup Tomorrowland (who ought to get another prize for a creative avatar name).

Those still hanging around then moved up to the Vint Cerf Pavilion for a live music jam by Johnny99 Gumshoe, who has a real life avatar who works at Capella University. In addition to his live music stream, Johnny added a new twist- he has an alt avatar cameraman, who’s live video becomes a dynamic backdrop to Johnny99:

even providing a Windlight sky background:

It was a lot of fun for those who stayed- see below for a sample of Johnny’s music. And see you tomorrow for the first full day of conference sessions.

Johnny99 Gumshoe Plays NMC Symposium

Story filed under: Campus Headlines, What's Happening
Tags: nmcsymposium07
See all stories by CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine)