In each story circle, each teller will prompt the next teller the American Indian way, by handing him/her a talking stick.

• Organize a group! Make sure at least one member has the talking stick, which anyone can get by visiting the SL Campusfor the Center for Digital Storytelling at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Teaching%202/209/109/23 and opening the pink box in front of the screen by the dome.
• There should be one talking stick per circle. Circles should have 10 people or less. If more folks show up, they initiate a new story circle
• The topic is a ‘miracle story’, no religious meaning implied: a story centered by what, by its impact on your life and/or surprise, felt like a ‘miracle’ to the teller - quoting Joe Lambert - “from ‘life’s little miracles’ as in the way a Buddhist might say if you pay attention every moment is a miracle, to those truly metaphysical and inexplicable events in our lives that suggest transcendent power or possibility”.

Your group should do this activity at noon, Friday May 16 for about 20 minutes.

On Saturday, May 17, the Center for Digital Storytelling is organizing a panel discussion at their home in Second Life. Join the activities at 10:00 AM PDT at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Teaching%202/209/109/23

The Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS) and the Museum of the Person are celebrating the International Day for Sharing Life Stories on May 16. The following day – May 17 – the CDS is proposing a reflection on storytelling in virtual environments in the form of a panel in Second Life. The approaches to this theme will be very different as a result of the panelists’ distinct academic backgrounds.

Panelists include:

• Jen Friedberg, Multimedia Producer, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
• Dale Jarvis - Storyteller, folklorist, and performer
• Adriene Jenik - Telecommunications media artist & Assoc. Professor, UCSD
• Joan Llobera - PhD candidate, Starlab, Barcelona, Spain
• Joe Sanchez - PhD student, School of Information, UT Austin
• Vicki Smith - Visual Artist, Aotearoa, New Zealand

Moderators are Joe Lambert (Center for Digital Storytelling) and Ana Boa-Ventura (UT Austin).

As part of an event atClever Zebra’s vBusiness Expo, in this interview, Metanomics host Robert Bloomfield asked Larry about the NMC’s Virtual worlds programs and then discussed more on Larry’s recent experience testifying before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet of the US Congress.

You can find
audio recording

and

video recording

of this interview plus soon a transcript, at http://metanomics.net/larry-johnson

Robert Bloomfield and Metanomics will host a special event as part of Clever Zebra’s vBusiness Expo. Rob will interview Dr. Larry Johnson, CEO of New Media Consortium, who recently testified to the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet of the US Congress.

Here is some recommended reading for this week:

1. Read about NMC’s four major initiatives and international projects.
2. Read about Johnson’s testimony, or watch the webcast.
3. Learn more about Clever Zebra’s 4-day vBusiness Expo, which will hold events on virtual workplace, virtual education, virtual marketing, and virtual commerce.

• When: Friday, April 25 at 11:00am PST (check local time)
• Where: Amphitheater on Outreach (87, 125, 34) (no group membership is required to teleport)

You will want to join the Metanomics group in SL so you can participate in the group IM that goes on during the live sessions.

For past events, see the Metanomics video archive from SLCN.tv.

Some 25 avatars showed up to meet and talking about mashups- assembling at the Muriel Cooper Coliseum on thre NMC Conference Center sim:

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So get over now to Buckaroo Store (Ileina Cove, 216/88/22)

You will have to buy the devices at their current prices:

• SimpleSlider - 100L
• Slider - 300L
• VideoPoster - 100L
• VidMon - 300L
• WebMon - 300L

Then contact Bucky and he will re-imburse you…

Go into my store between now and 11:59 pm SL time Sunday Night (March 23rd, 2008). Buy whatever at the usual price, and then send me a notecard or an email asking for a reimbursement. You have until noon Friday (March 28th) to ask for a reimbursement. I have to be able to confirm purchases on the transaction log from the SecondLife.com web site before I will send reimbursements.

There is a 2000L limit to the reimbursement, per person. I dont want anyone stocking up for free and reselling — that’s not the point of this …

If things get crazy I reserve the right to pull the plug on this

So you might ask, why i Buck giving away his tools? I asked him, and…

Why am I doing this? Simple - to get the word of my store out there! Basically to see if a word of mouth approach will work.

Open Virtual Worlds video announcement

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“Metanomics” refers to the study of the business and policy aspects of the “metaverse” of virtual worlds. Metanomics can focus on issues arising within virtual worlds, such as how developers manage the economy of a game world (like World of Warcraft), or how residents of virtual worlds manage and regulate business. Metanomics also includes the study of how real-world businesses can use virtual worlds as part of their strategy, and how real-world law and regulation might apply to virtual-world activities. Finally, metanomics includes the use of virtual worlds as laboratories in which to study real-world business or policy issues.

The series to date has had an impressive range of topics and speakers (see the summary of topics covered (MS Word file)

Series speakers will include game developers; executives managing real-world and virtual-world businesses; regulators and politicians; and scholars of business, economics, law and sociology.

For more info on the series, see the trailer video:

Now Metanomics is coming to NMC…

So now you can join us starting Monday, January 28, at 11:00am PST (check local time) in the amphitheater on Outreach, on the the NMC Campus Educational Community sims. The exact location is Outreach (87, 125, 34) and no group membership is required to teleport here.

The Metanomics events take place at various locations in SL (and we hope to be an originating site soon), and the activity on the main location is live streamed as video to other sims by the folks at SLCN. While watching the live stream, anyone can send questions or comments to all participants via the Metanomics group IM, so please make sure you join this group in Second Life so you can be part of the channel.

Coming this Monday to Metanomics is a conversation with David Wortley, Director of the Serious Games Institute (SGI). Future events have been put on the NMC Campus Observer calendar and are also available on the Metanomics site.

We look forward to these events and drawing a good group of educators to be engaged with these sessions on NMC Campus.

On entering PARSEC (a giant seeming infiinite white dome), each of seven avatars dons a collection of gestures, each set is different. Apparently our use of voice chat generates musical tones and animates certain objects.

Certain balls begin to float in the air in response to our individual forces, and there is a mysterious combination of events that trigger a rather intense result:

Somehow, our group managed to trigger the sequence in a few minutes, but we could not figure exactly what actions made this happen.

And this is the “game”. We tried all kinds of approaches, scientific, process of elimination, total guessing, and in what passed as a fast hour, we felt we got close, but never nailed the sequence (even with googling parsec for clues).

We were told groups have spent hours in this space.

Its engaging because it is a mystery; the outcomes are not tied simply to action, and it depends on a group process. The use of voice chat as a stimulus to generating audio is a nice nod to the work of Robbie Dingo’s whisper box, but this is all together different.

There is a teleport to PARSEC but according to the signs, there has been a huge demand so they are hosting it now by arranged tours. Look for more images from the flickr photo group.

It is an amazing concept… and I still feel that gnawing frustration of not being able to figure out the solution!

While we have a good pile of tagged media and stories on the main NMC web site, we goofed and completely forgot to share a fabulous summary video, created by our own resident artist and videographer, Stello Costello:

Remember again that we have a lot of conference material capture for you at:
http://www.nmc.org/keyword/slcreativity