Below we provide some of the highlights, mainly links to the archived video of the sessions. These videos were archived from our set up that provided live video streams to our overflow sims, but required some moderate post production editing. You can find a complete list of symposium resources on the main NMC web site, including additional papers, links, presentation files shared by the presenters.

First on the list is Howard Rheingold’s keynote presentation Co-Evolution of Technology, Media and Collective Action “the big picture/long view of the way technologies, communication media, and collective action has co-evolved”.

Keynote video: (42.Mb Quicktime, 21:16)

In addition to the video of the presentation, we had Howard’s words transcribed, and we have combined both into the new publishing platform, CommentPress that allows you to attach comments at the paragraph level of the text (this was the same format we explored with the Symposium white paper). We encourage you to visit the site and contribute by posting comments to Howard’s ideas at http://web.nmc.org/coevolution.

In addition, we posted the questions that were collected from the Second Life audience (the audio for this segment was of too poor quality to include in the video).

In addition we have video or audio from all of the other presentation sessions…

We were excited to welcome back to NMC Campus Johnny99 Gumshoe, who provided live music for our opening reception. Be sure to check out the Symposium slideshow that features his music..

We can always count on an exciting presentation when it is from Cynthia Calongne, or as we know her with the billowy SL hair, Lyr Lobo.

In the opening session for the conference, she certainly set the pace with R U 1337? Exploring Changes in Internet and Virtual World Discourse where she used a fun trivia game device to lead us on a discussion on the culture of gamers and virtual worlders. This was one of the most well attended conference sessions.

Presentation video: (108 Mb QuickTime, 47:39)

Next up were Nick White and Joe Tojek from Capella University who took an interesting approach to discuss Evolutionary Theory Applied to Communication Goals and rolled in some small group activities.

Presentation video: (84 Mb Quicktime, 39:03)

The next session proved that you can conduct a great presentation in Second Life without using any screens or rezzing any objects.

In Virtual Spaces, Authentic Relationships: The Nature of Friendship Online , Kieran Cannistra and Doug McDavid from IBM Almaden Research Center led us on a fascination journey of stories and ideas on professional/personal interaction — all just by speaking to the audience.

Presentation video: (116 Mb QuickTime, 50:33)

You can always count on Jared Bendis to provide a lightning fast, visually engaging, and provocative presentation in any world, real or virtual.

In Digital Tattoos, Digital Hoarding, and Social Networking: Turning Gold into Lead, Jared took us on a rampage through a long list of web sites he has created perhaps just to push these boundaries of communication. If you could not keep track of all the wacky sites he showed, you can find the links on his web site.

Presentation Video: (99 Mb Quicktime, 44:29)

The stage was then handed over to our colleagues from Seton Hall University, Heidi Trotta, Mary Zedeck, and Mary Balken. Heidi and the two Mary’s provided a session on Critical Analysis of Literary Works Using Virtual Worlds.

The “presentation” part was just a piece of the session. They then conducted an exercise/activity having people use selections from sets of imagery to describe a piece of text from well known literature (it was Huck Finn).

Presentation Video: (44 Mb Quicktime, 20:02)

Closing out the first day of the symposium were our colleagues from way on the other side of the real world globe, Kim Flintoff from western Australia at Edith Cowan University and Alexander Hayes, Australian Flexible Learning Network located in eastern Australia.

Kim and Alex put out some powerful ideas that are on the forefront for Australian educators in terms of access to electronic networks and services, in a session they called Evolution | Revolution: Architectures for Participation that included a bit of role play.

View Presentation: (102 Mb Quicktime, 51:27)

And that was just the sessions from Day One!

Our first presenters on the second day of the Symposium, Jason Mellen and Brian King, Bowling Green State University, earned the heroic effort award. The both were presenting live from Austria, and although SL voice worked perfectly in dress rehearsal, someone at their location decided to flip on the firewall. So with some juggling, we were able to stream their audio in via a Skype conference call, for their session Bridging the Lifelong Learning Gap.

You can find many of the session resources in the Lifelong Learning Wiki.

Listen (23.9 Mb MP3, 26:04)

Similar to the historical perspective of the Rheingold keynote, David Porush led us on a journey of What the Origin of the Alphabet Teaches Us about the Future of Virtual Reality with a fascinating look at early alphabets, symbols, and communication all the way to the electric grid of the US viewed from space.

And somewhere in the middle, David managed to demonstrate that the Talmud is pretty much a wiki! If you are interested in this talk, be sure to read the papers he shared that are linked from the symposium resources web site.

View Presentation: (96 Mb Quicktime, 45:53)

Taking the center of the Muriel Cooper Coliseum next was the ever vivacious Beth Ritter-Guth, or in SL, Desideria Stockton, for a look at the critical issue of Virtual Citations: Defining and Creating Ethical Content in Virtual Worlds.

As a writing teacher, Beth has continually put a lot of focus of her teaching and SL activity on promoting god habits of reference citing. This session was part discussion of the challenges of citing resources in SL, and including some high energy small group discussions.

View Presentation: (69 Mb Quicktime, 30:22)

And making a second appearance, we welcomed back Cynthia Calongne (Lyr Lobo) to help us learn all about gestures and animations in Move Me! Interactions on Movement and Emotion in SL Course Designs .

In typical Cynthia style, we were all on our feet, active, and learning to use the resources that she provided. She models well the ideal in SL presenting, between designing active sessions to handling Q&A from multiple sources. Go Cynthia!

View Presentation: (104 Mb QuickTime, 47:36)

And fitting for the evening close of the conference, Phylis Johnson from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale took us on a tour of SL Conversations: Recreating Romance In-World in which we looked at, experienced dancing, courtship, social interaction that takes place in Second Life:

This presentation will explore how Second Life has changed the way we interact, date, and romantically engage (or not) online in virtual settings, launching off media reports and “social” research. This presentation focuses on the virtual aspect of “communication” and veers away from much more adult considerations (wink).

View Presentation: (34 Mb QuickTime, 15:21)

Finally, before wandering off to other Sl locations or just shutting off the darn computer, NMC CEO Larry Johnson (wearing his Larry Pixel avatar) provided some closing remarks on this amazing 2 days of the symposium.

View Closing Remarks: (11.9 Mb QuickTime, 5:24)

That’s quite a pile!

The theme of this year’s De Lange Conference is on Emerging Libraries:

The traditional concept of a library has been rendered obsolescent by the unprecedented confluence of the Internet, changes in scholarly publication models, increasing alliances between the humanities and the sciences, and the rise of large-scale digital library projects. The old ways of organizing and preserving knowledge to transmit our cultural and intellectual heritage have converged with the most advanced technologies of science and engineering and research methodologies. Such rapid and overwhelming changes to a millennia-old tradition pose significant challenges not only to university research libraries but to every citizen. If the traditional library is undergoing a profound metamorphosis, it is not clear what new model will take its place. More information has been produced in the last several years than in the entire previous history of humanity, and most of this has been in digital format. Libraries are not storage places any more; they are less and less a place. The critical issues now include: How can that information be efficiently accessed and used? How do we extract knowledge from such an abundance of often poorly organized information? How might these enormous digital resources affect our concept of identity, our privacy, and the way we conduct business in the new century? Insight from many disciplines and perspectives is requisite to begin to understand this phenomenon to identify ways to help chart a future course.

Testing the video stream from Rice University

If you have any questions, please try and IM in world to Philip Plante (aka Philip Montgomery, Archivist / Special Collections Librarian, Rice University). Otherwise, be sure to drop in an attend a session or two.

This month the NMC will host a 12-day symposium on the NMC Campus in Second Life focusing on the impact of digital media on all aspects of our daily lives. At the intersection of virtual 3-D space and the “flat-web” of the browser, virtual worlds like Second Life are active settings for collaboration and socialization. The Symposium on the Impact of Digital Media will explore the ways we encounter and understand digital media — inside such a setting.

This virtual symposium is informed by the MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning, a two-year project in which the NMC is helping to explore the impact of digital media on our lives in a variety of ways, and encouraging dialog among experts, visionaries, and thought leaders from around the globe. This unique event brings that dialog to the current residents of Second Life. The symposium is also a precursor to the upcoming NMC Online Conference on Digital Media (October 24-25), which will reflect on some of the same themes.

The event will run from Tuesday, October 10 through Saturday, October 21. The 12 days of activities culminate in a live presention on the NMC Campus by Howard Rheingold, author of SmartMobs, among many other books and articles, on October 21.

The singular focus of the 12-day symposium is to consider how the applications of digital media are changing our lives, and how they have impacted the ways we work, learn, collaborate, and even socialize. Recurring themes will be:

• Identity and self-image
• Credibility and the reliability of information
• Civic and social involvement
• The arts, creativity, and design
• Social networking
• Pedagogical potentials and implications

Digital media, for this event, is interpreted broadly as anything from the traditional uses of the medium for creating and sharing rich content to the explosion of blogs for self expression, and increasingly, real time interpretation of news and breaking events. Also included is the notion of shared content via sites like Flickr, YouTube, and blip.tv, social sites like FaceBook and MySpace, and more powerful content and media search tools.

A range of events and activities will take place over the twelve-day symposium, including a photo contest, panels and discussions, a running poster exhibit, and a visit from Henry VIII, just to name a few.

A complete schedule has been posted at the NMC Campus Welcome Center and is available here. Symposium Schedule

Please join us and add your voice (and avatars) to the conversation!

Symposium Schedule [104k PDF]

We are pleased to be working with the NMC library and we invite more NMC libraries to get involved with the beautiful library on the NMC campus. Please contact Lorelei Junot or Maxito Ricardo in world or by email at lbell927@gmail.com or tapinformation@yahoo.com if you would like to become involved.

We want to promote digital collections in the NMC libraries and follow through on NMC CEO Larry Johnson’s vision for the library as an intellectual place for discussion, contemplation, and knowledge. In the coming months, we plan to feature digital collections, hold programs and events, and assist faculty members with specialized collections for the courses they are teaching in Second Life.

On Wednesday, October 11 at 5 pm SLT/PST, Henry VIII will visit the NMC library to talk about his life, his loves, and how he has been villified by his biographers. Come and heckle Henry as he talks about his first and second lives.

On Monday, October 16 at 7 pm SLT/PST, Lorelei Junot and Maxito Ricardo will host an informal discussion in the NMC library on “Digital Media and how it is Affecting Libraries.” There are now downloadable audio books, ebooks, and video. Libraries are stretching their budgets on new media to keep students engaged. Lorelei and Maxito will discuss current trends and open up the topic for discussion. The program will last approximately one hour and will be held at the NMC library.

During the period of October 10-24, the NMC library will host a collection of materials and links on digital media, what it means to education today, and activities in Second Life. We will also have a display of the Declaraction of Independence from the Library of Congress to show how digital collections intermixed with media can enrich history for faculty and students.

We are planning additional events and programs. Watch this blog and the NMC wiki for further information. Please contact Lorelei Junot or Maxito Ricardo if you are interested in participating in the NMC library. We need people and would be excited to have you!