NMC Campus Observer

NMC Symposium on the Future

CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) : Oct 26, 2009 06:55am

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!

Story filed under: What's Happening

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