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Last week, Philips Design presented their real life strategic philanthropy initiative, “Philanthropy By Design,” in Second Life, begging the question: What role can Second Life play in corporate and community collaborations for: “Promoting social empowerment through knowledge sharing, creativity and co-design?”

Host PhilipsDesign (picture above) presented and led a discussion on The Chulha Smokeless Stove project.

The Chulha Smokeless Stove is a low tech stove “that would tackle the respiratory problems affecting the health of millions of people (especially women and children) in the developing world who still cook indoors using biomass fuels.”

The aim was to design, develop and test an appropriate solution to local cooking habits in rural and semi-urban contexts of India. The goal was to provide a wood-burning solution that is easy to access (easy to distribute-install-use-maintain) locally produced and distributed low cost for replication and scalability able to reduce indoor pollution

Key to the concept of strategic philanthropy, and The Chulha project, is design co-creation “involving people who will benefit from the result of what is being created. ” ARTI (Appropriate Rural Technology Institute), self help groups, local entrepreneurs, and potential users joined the Philips team as “stakeholders” in a concept definition workshop.

Working with “stakeholders” - a new model for co-creation

The Rivers Run Red’s press release back in December described Philips Design’s goals in Second Life to “gain feedback on innovation concepts, engage residents in co-creation and gain a deeper understanding of potential opportunities in this virtual environment.” And, Mark Wallace 3pointD, astutely commented:

At least we’re moving from a time when companies took no outside input at all to a time in which they’re actively seeking it. It’s arguable whether they’ll need to start paying for this kind of feedback, but for the moment it makes for a very interesting experiment. I look forward to seeing results.

Well Philips Design have been paying participants for their feedback with the recently completed, “My Second Life” Research Project. Now they are looking to expand their network and have issued a call for Second Life free lancers, builders, scripters and other Second Life creatives.

But, the Philanthropy By Design initiative suggests a new approach to co-design, one that separates itself both from unequitable farming of free labor, and direct pay, by working with co-creators who are also “stakeholders.”

the program channels [Philips] design talent to develop meaningful and sustainable solutions that can contribute to a better future for all. It also opens up new perspectives in co-creating value through cooperation with public bodies and social players with complementary expertise and values.

Second Life residents input on Philanthropy By Design

The presentation on The Chulha project, a well developed real life example of “stakeholder” collaboration, drew an attentive Second Life audience (that included Pathfinder Linden) into a lively debate, and raised some interesting questions, on how a model of “stakeholder” co-creation might work both within Second Life development projects, and in projects that link Second Life to Real Life.

Alanagh Recreant of Uthango Social Investments who is an active participant in social investment projects on Second Life helped me cover the event. Alanagh is pioneering SL’s role as an enabling platform for social innovation, taking the visionary extra step of including Second Life in their strategies for poverty relief, crossing digital divides, and economic/social development in Africa (please see my previous posts here and here).

And, Sonja Finney, also from Philips, thanks for passing on the chat log and your story. Sonja is from a different department of Philips. She met the Philanthropy By Design team on Second Life. When she discovered the asimpleswitch.com initiative, she created her own way to spread their message/initiative through Second Life. Sonja explained to me:

A dear friend from Philips Design [Yel Oh] made a energy saving lamp for me, with the url attached to it. And, since July 6th I give it to people I meet and who are interested in it, a light bulb. A new way to create awareness.

Thanks Alanagh and Sonja!

Some highlights from the discussion:

First up were questions on basic concept of “strategic philanthropy” described by Host PhilipsDesign as follows:

Rather than giving money to worthy causes, an increasing number of companies are choosing to help communities by donating their products or expertise to special projects while supporting the company’s objectives to enhance brand image, strengthen employee engagement, increase trust and customers loyalty, and even develop new ways of working and innovative solutions. Known as ‘strategic philanthropy,’ this approach is driven by the desire to combine social responsibility commitments.

Llanddewi Taurog energized the debate with a series of friendly, but provocative, challenges to which Host and Yel responded:

Llanddewi Taurog: Just to play a devil’s advocate here: although strategic philanthropy sounds all very noble, it can also seem like a pretty sleazy way to penetrate new markets. what do you think about that?
Host PhilipsDesign: Of course it is nice to create new businesses but to reach this group of people you really need to design something they can afford and want to buy.
Llanddewi Taurog: Are you making money out of it?
Yel Oh: no we are not making money out of it…….. and we have given away the designs to local entrepreneurs

And, an interesting discussion was initiated by Alanagh Recreant on “the supply chain between the manufacturer and local entrepreneurs” and how local NGO’s (ARTI in this case) are actually getting involved in manufacturing and distribution. And, “How do local entrepreneurs get started without micro-finance?” Also….

Cor Laval: How do you avoid that these local entrepreneurs make more profit and not meet the primary role of the design: as cheap as possible for as many people as possible?

There was no specific answer to this question but a consensus formed on the idea that basic market forces -especially in poor areas - would determine what was viable.

Product Life Cycle management was a hot topic of discussion. But, no-one speculated much on the role that Second Life might eventually take in collaboration, design co-creation, and product life cycle management. Or, how RL/SL integrations like the EOLUS initiative might facilitate Philanthropy By Design projects in Second Life. This is an interesting topic for future discussions!

Second Life residents were enthusiastic about Philips’ real life strategic philanthropy and eager to hear more.

Llanddewi Taurog: Maybe we could work together [in Second Life] on a real life project with philanthropy by design someday?

Alanagh Recreant: It is not often that you find a company that works closely with NGOs and uses their local connections. That is what I really admire….It taps into the heart of civil society in a way that respects community linkages.

Also, Philips Design’s current plans include an impact study that will run from October 2007 to October 2008 to verify the benefits the Chulha Stoves claim to deliver as well as their limitations.

The complete Second Life meeting will be summarized by Philips Design, and transcripts of the chat distributed to members of the Philips Design Friends group and also made available at the Co-creation experience . The first Philips Design presentation, in Second Life, “Designing experiences together with people”, will also soon be made available.

Bringing Philips’ Co-creative Model to Second Life

After the presentation, I discussed the Philip Design’s goals in Second Life with HostPhilips (Wendy) - who has a background in product design and is now a full time innovation consultant with Philips Design focusing on virtual worlds, especially Second Life; and, Yel Oh, also from Philips Design, an innovation director with a background in interaction and experience design who has been running real life creative processes for over 12 years.

In Second Life the idea of global cooperation and collaboration for a sustainable future is being picked up in many quarters and the role of virtual worlds in eco-sustainability is being advocated and debated (see Earth2Tech).

Recently, Jonathan Fanton, President of the MacArthur Foundation, and Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab, appeared in Second Life to talk about the future role of philanthropy in virtual worlds (also see Jonathan Fanton’s post).

And, EOLUS One Initiative (see here and here) is initiating RL/SL integrations and energy management projects that bring Second Life into the forefront of a vision fo a sustainable future. And, Uthango Social Investments (here and here) has many exciting social investment projects in development. And, these are just some of the stories I have covered on Ugotrade. There many other initiatives taking root in Second Life.

Inspired by the audiences’ response to this presentation, Philips Design is currently considering dedicating a future co-creation session in Second Life to Philanthropy by Design. Yel Oh explained they see SL as the perfect place to develop a co-creation community with so many creative people converging in an immersive 3D environment. And, indeed, at the end of the talk a number of participants expressed interest in working on a real life product with Philips. Members of the Philips Design Friends group are automatically kept up to date of upcoming events or you can check the events and activities board at the Philips Design Co-creation experience on Virtual Holland 3.

Some of the events Tara5 Oh attended in Second Life last week!

Cube Inada at Star Base C3

Last week, I attended a SciFi Trivia contest at StarBase C3. And, I had a long chat with Cube Inada whose has been believing and working in the 3d web experience for 20 years. I hope to include some of this conversation in a future post that will look at the past, present and future of the 3D internet. Cube has a very interesting museum displaying his two decades of work on 3D experiences. Cube offers quite different perspective on the future of Web3D from the one I usually present. Second Life is my focus because its unique emphasis on user generated content offers possibilities for technosocial innovation that auteur developed virtual worlds cannot, even if such auteur or developer built virtual worlds become linked via the web.

But, please visit StarBase C3 where you will have fun in a highly developed 3D experience that Cube, a professional game developer, has ported to Second Life. You will see virtual worlds from a perspective not usually shown on Ugotrade. And, you can buy a spaceship to travel around Second Life in style.

Getting in the conversation with ESC and Millions Of Us

On July 19th, Satchmo Prototype (a.k.a Chris Carella from Electric Sheep Company) on the left in his low prim avatar discussed with panelists Beth Coleman, MIT, Robin Harper, LL, and Susan Wu, Partner at Charles River Ventures, “Togetherness: what drives the virtual human connection?”

John Swords has posted the audio stream http://sc8.spacialnet.com:17524].

And, on the same day, I caught panelists, Celebrity Millionsofus, Eric Rice (a.k.a. Spin martin), Jeska Linden and Ziggy Figaro talking about how voice will affect marketing in Second Life, at the New Globe Theater, Milions Of Us. The picture on the right is Eric Rice playing with his avatar.

Millions Of Us Offers Land for Cool Ideas

And, check out the Millions Of Us, You Have Co0l Ideas, We Have Land offer: See the Millions Of Us blog for details of the offer:

Social media is all about participation, right? In that spirit, Millions of Us will be opening up land on several of its sims in order to host the coolest projects you can come up with. We own 8 perimeter sims, clustered around the central eponymous sim — and that’s where we invite interested and motivated residents to help us fill those sims with fantastic Second Life content.

BlogHer Conference on Second Life

And, I attended the BlogHer conference on Second Life. On the left is 57 miles of metaversed on a panel about blogging from SL. He was a brave lad to talk about blogging at BlogHer.

Second Life Relay For Life

KK Jewell of arcspace (pictured here left) gave me a window into the world of architecture on SL in several wonderful chats - the topic of another post. And, we both attended the American Cancer Society’s Second Life Relay For Life.

Barnardo’s On Second Life

Please see Veejay Burn’s post on his excellent blog Mindblizzard to read more about Barnardo’s efforts of Second Life.

Through our good friend Aleister Kronos Veejay and I were tipped that BBH (Bartle, Bogle, Hegarty ) and RRR (rivers run red) are bringing another Charity 2.0 event to Second Life.

Peter Rogers from the Ad Agency BBH let us know that each year BBH is sponsoring a good cause, and this year it’s Barnardo’s, which is a charity organization that stands up for children in need.

Barnardos, barnardos on second life, BlogHer, indoor pollution, Millions Of Us, pathfinder linden, philanthrophy in virtual worlds, Philanthropy By design, Philanthropy in Second Life, Philips Design, rivers runs red, Second Life, Second Life Relay for Life, social entrepreneurship, Social Investment, stakeholder cocreation, stakeholder codesign, star base c3, Strategic Philanthropy, sustainable development, The Chulha Smokeless Stove, The Metaverse Virtual Worlds

Some of the boldest adventurers on the virtual frontier are architects. These artists of the 3D experience are the cavalry of the “Age of Inspiration.” They lead the charge to liberate the world from the ravages of the industrial age.

“Go West Young Man, and Grow Up With the Country,” John B. L. Soule, 1851

Some 114 years later, the call to “Go West” has been converted to the call to “Go Virtual.” Second Life has effectively ushered in the next great migration into a New Frontier.

And, so ctrlshift07 - a New Zealand Architectural Congress announces - their virtual land rush competition. The grand prize is an island in Second Life (including 3 months of maintenance charges).

And, the winner is Keystone Bouchard! The runner up is Theory Shaw! These pioneers, and their innovative work in Second Life, had already caught my attention before the competition. I interviewed both for Ugotrade in June (see my earlier post). Then, Keystone explained an earlier version of Architectural Jazz which is now his winning entry. And, Theory talked about his vision for participatory city planning and the Studio Wikitecture experiment he has initiated with Theory on, Architecture Island, Second Life .

But the speed of innovation is so rapid in Second Life that, in the 6 weeks since I spoke to Keystone and Theory, much has changed both in Second Life, and in their work.

One month ago, the EOLUS One initiative driven by Implenia AG, a Swiss-based construction, civil engineering and facilities management company, in collaboration with SAP, IBM, Cisco, Siemens and others had not been unveiled.

Now, EOLUS has put the spotlight on Second Life/Real Life integrations as a doorway to a sustainable future. EOLUS, in Second Life, is creating a “think tank” for city scale technology projects - energy monitoring, preventative maintenance, building automation and management, as well as community based initiatives for a better planet (e.g. SODIS). And, in my mind, this initiative brings Theory’s interest in Wikitecture for city planning, and Keystone’s commitment to virtual architecture one step closer to serious real life integrations.

Not only can real life buildings be designed in new collaborative and participatory ways in Second Life. e.g., city planning through Wikitecture. But, once built, these cities can stream back into Second Life as data that is responsive, beautiful, and delightfully habitable. In virtual worlds we do not need shelter from the elements. We need refuge from the ugly and unmanageable data of real life. If we are to work and play all day in virtual environments we must create a palace of data bliss.

Keystone Bouchard is a Real Life architect who has recently transitioned exclusively to a virtual mode as a “3D Experience Architect” with Clear Ink. Keystone is interested in the future potential of purely virtual architecture and the dynamic, reflexive relationship between avatars, data and 3D experience.

He has started to blog up some manifestos about this new language for virtual environments. He explained his ideas through a series of three diagrams on Architecture Island in Second Life.

The diagram on the left is the physical model best exemplified by Winston Churchill’s statement, ‘We shape our buildings and thereafter, they shape us.” Physical buildings are artifacts - that are difficult and expensive to change - people and program flow through them like water.

So, in virtual worlds, we tend to do the same thing - that’s described by the second diagram. So, we try to build that artifact but, our minds, our avatars, and our cameras can just flow right through it so, it isn’t as effective its trying to be solid - when it doesn’t work that way here.

So, the third diagram describes a new kind of reflexive or responsive architecture one that is capable of shifting shape and changing - and being as liquid and changing as the community and people who use it.

Click on this image to watch a machinima of Architectural Jazz.

Keystone’s winning entry to ctrlshift07, Architectural Jazz, makes the visitor an active part of both the musical and archtectural composition. Keystone observed the movement and people visiting Architecture Island for several weeks then wrote a piano score loosely based on their movement. He recorded his real life piano playing it - just the keys moving and then imported that video into Second Life. Then he added “keys” in Second Life that get larger and change colors and play a not when you approach. So by their changing and dynamic composition, the viewer becomes an active part of it - no longer passive.

 

 

I think we’ve been approaching Second Life projects - for the most part - like we do traditional architecture. We spend big on the initial concept and build, then hope it will attract crowds of people. But I think the evolution of virtual architecture should be ongoing, never ending. It should be informed by the people who use it, ’smart’ architecture. The future of virtual architecture lies in our ability to completely remove barriers between disciplines.

Theory Shaw and Collaborative Architecture

Keystone and Theory Shaw have teamed up to use virtual worlds as a tool for a collaborative approach to architecture in the Real World. Theory Shaw has outlined how virtual world can be used in the the planning of future cities.

And, the central build on Architecture Island is the Studio Wikitecture experiment - an open source approach to architecture that everyone is free to join - co-creating projects and participating in collaborative design.

Theory’s entry for the ctrlshift07 competition is explained in detail on The Arch. But the idea behind the nine floors of his Temporal Tower is collaboration across disciplines.

Since someone is able to hear conversations transmitted through walls as well cam out and view remote spaces at the same time, avatars can essentially be in two places at once. The Temporal Tower explores how this characteristic might facilitate a cross-fertilization of ideas between disciplines that rarely intermingle in the real world. The ascending floors in the Temporal Tower are dedicated to informal conversations in the following disciplines: Science, Psychology, Language, Society, History, Literature, Music, Aesthetics, and Religion. The ultimate idea being that a conversation overheard on one floor might spark a discussion on an adjacent floor and provide a new perspective to help solve an otherwise entrenched problem. To further facilitate these impromptu discussions, the building itself visually transmits an avatar’s presence to the rest of the island by changing the color and size of its ‘leafy walls’ when an avatar is near.

Wikitecture 3.0

Theory is deep into Wikitecture 3.0. He is working with scripters to make it less intmidating to the casual contributor.

One thing I want to accomplish in this next experiment is to develop a “wikitecture tree” that floats above the parcel…. where all the different iterations of a design can be saved in the different ‘leaves’ of the tree. This wikitecture tree will allow people to come by and ‘cycle’ through all the different iterations within the leaves.

Basically the idea in short is, if someone come by and ‘touches’ on of the leaves of the Wikitecture Tree, it will rez the design it ‘holds’ on to the parcel of land. They can then touch another leave and that design will unrez and another will take it’s place. As a person cycles through the designs, they can vote for their favorite design. The tree will also allow you to rez different branches and leaves, if the person wants to leave their own iteration of the design.

Arcspace comes to Second Life!

Photo: arcspace

More exciting news for architecture in SL is the arrival of arcspace. To read more about KK Jewell’s plans go to the arcspace.com. Keystone Bouchard has taken his second SL office in arcspace. Roofdog Rau, owner of Vanilla Five.com, is setting up his video (arc)space. And the legendary architecture blog, ArchNewsNow.com, is working on their space, as is ArtCatalogues.com at MOCA.

Join and get an arcspaceSL Tshirt.

Email your avatar’s name:
Kirsten Kiser - arcspace
Subject: arcspaceSL - avatar name

Or IM KK Jewell in Second Life

3D Experience Architecture, Architectural Jazz, arcspace, EOLUS One, Go Virtual, Keystone Bouchard, metaverse, reflexive architecture, responsive architecture, Second Life, Second Life/Real Life Integration, Studio Wikitecture, Theory Shaw, Virtual Architecture, Virtual Worlds Wikitecture

I met with Alanagh Recreant (a.k.a. Dorette Steenkamp) from Uthango Social Investments, on Virtual Africa in Second Life. And, while Uthango’s Virtual Africa initiative has barely begun yet - terra forming is first on the agenda - there is already a very special feeling of possibility, and great things to come. Uthango has already put out tender to all the listed developers on the Linden Lab website. And, many of Second Life’s top developers, PR companies, marketing experts, and consultants have offered services, as well as pro bono work.

The core of the USI strategy for poverty relief in Africa does not primarily revolve around Second Life. But Uthango uses Second Life as an enabling platform for social innovation. By doing this, they are taking the visionary extra step of including Second Life in their strategy to make an impact in the lives of the people they benefit.

A participatory social media convergence bringing mobile, Web 2.0 and Second Life together for community engagement, is happening now and will - in itself - make the first steps to addressing the exclusive nature of 3D-platforms. And, USI is determined not to let the digital divide that is exasperated in Africa by expensive, inadequate/non-existent broadband coverage (for now) widen any further. While significant moves are afoot to bring broadband to large swathes of Africa, often known as the “missing link,” because of the lack of connectivity, access is still a big problem for all but the most privileged.

Uthango’s concerted effort to tackle inequality and social injustice in South Africa goes beyond advocacy for connectivity to other divides - economic, educational and access to opportunities as well.

Investment is our passion - to draw attention to investment opportunities for people in Africa.

But, Uthango is pioneering the inclusion of participatory new media and advocacy for connectivity in their vision. And, while broadband remains prohibitively expensive in Africa, they are preparing the way with projects utilizing mobile connectivity. Mobile phones have become a powerful tool for creative economic development in Africa (see African Uptimist). Uthango has a participatory social media initiative in the works that will link three very diverse communities - two with 65% unemployment and lack of resources, and the other an affluent sea-side community with better infrastructure.

We plan to institute an inter-cultural and civil engagement program across these communities, using video-blogging, mobile, and upload to a central server, and link it up to Google Earth. There will be a community portal, initially linked to computers at the schools and library and ultimately with an upload facility from mobile phones - a mobile magazine linked to the portal with community events. Ultimately, this extensive and integrated social network will be linked to Second Life. Meanwhile, innovation from the more inaccessible SL will be channeled back via the more modest communication framework in real life. This RL/SL convergence for social gain will be a unique example of an integrated ICT approach to development.

Uthango are working with partners and professionals in Second Life to explore the commercial value for companies and individuals and the social benefits for institutions such as universities and schools, in their preparation for Virtual Africa. A key initiative on Virtual Africa will be a Bottom-of-the-Pyramid Innovation Center (see ‘Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid’ by C.K. Prahalad). Uthango are serious about seeking ways to bring community voices into Second Life while broadband issues are addressed.

But the plans for Virtual Africa also include creating one of the most sophisticated ecosystems on Second Life that will extend to the wildlife to ensure an exciting, educational experience: Eagles swooping, lions hunting, zebras reacting and mirroring wildlife patterns as closely as possible whilst highlighting endangered species and indigenous cultures. The vision of Second Life/Real life integrations possible for Virtual Africa goes well beyond educational and immersive goals into a vision that includes health, travel, adventure, e-commerce, environmental monitoring, and even disaster management.

Virtual Africa will be a key place for Uthango to bring attention to their Real Life work in poverty reduction, and collaborate with others on the goal of social investment in Africa. There are many initiatives already planned that will both bring in the Second Life Community to Uthango’s work, and make connections to Real Life projects - including concerts, a Second Life Bikeathon, publishing parties, and much more.

A new global market is emerging. The sellers are intelligent, energetic and pragmatic young African leaders with innovative projects in their respective fields. The buyers are equally intelligent, energetic and pragmatic young Westerners yearning to apply pragmatism to their idealism. The market place is new media, where stories are told, opportunities are elucidated, connections are made, and action is taken. (Joshua Goldstein, African Path)

From the Blogosphere, to Twitter, to Facebook, to Second Life!

I first met Yee, who is from Jinjiang, China and a recent graduate with a Business Diploma from HELP College University, in the blogosphere. Yee’s blog caught my attention and I linked to him in a post, “Bridging On Line Off Line Worlds.” And, Yee’s comments on my post re the task of bridge blogging were so wise that a connection was born.

Then we became friends on Twitter where I followed the obstacles Yee faced keeping his blog open to world despite the GFW (Great Firewall) of China. Then last night Yee joined Facebook. We instantly struck up a messaging exchange that covered everything from the role that religions played in American culture to how participatory media, blogs, social networks etc. could play and important role in intercultural communication. This is what Yee had to say on this topic.

There are many many English language learners in China. But a large number of them just take this language as a means to pass the exam or a “certification” for better job occupation, once they achieve these goals some of them will probably stop learning, in a word, they do not treat English as a tool for two-way communication. So you can see there are many many translations of English-to-Chinese blogs in China. But, there very few Chinese-to-English blogs.

To encourage participatory media in China, I think it’s important to help Chinese English learners realize that English is not only a means for graduation or better jobs. It’s a tool for communication! In addition, they must have confidence to use it properly

The obstacles: According to my experience, all Chinese people welcome the behavior of translating their posts or profiles or business documents into English. They have a strong desire to be understood by the world. However, things are not always so easy, as our logic and mind and culture are quite different from foreigners. And, culture conflict happens from time to time and sometimes conflict leads to bigger misunderstanding. Besides, on the internet, there is a Great Fire Wall which was founded by the Chinese Gov to block “sensitive info” from abroad.

I had asked Yee a little while ago if he had ever explored Second Life. I said I would love him to write about his experiences in SL for Ugotrade. Well in a matter of minutes after our Facebook exchange Yee had logged into Second Life for the first time. And so I met his avatar Yee Heron on Scope Cleaver’s sim.

It is hard to describe the excitement of meeting Yee for the first time in Second Life. The gulf of culture and geography and even the GFW of China seemed to dissolve as his avatar materialized in world.

Here is a picture of Yee, Scope Cleaver, Miko Omegamu (Scope’s right hand!), and I greeting Yee only minutes after he logged on and got his Second Life Avatar.

There were a few obstacles to getting Yee’s avatar fully rezzed. And, whether it was due to network connection issues, or the need for more memory on his lap top, chat was lagging and SL was taking a while to rez for Yee. Yee did mention that HiPiHi will not let him log in and was giving a message that he has not enough memory. Interesting that it was easier to get in SL from China than HiPiHi. But, we managed despite the technical obstacles to show Yee some of SL, including Scope Cleaver’s awesome virtual furniture store in Second Life, EOLUS One, and where to shop for cool clothes! And, here is a snippet of our chat as Yee saw Scope’s work on Second Life.

[23:29] Scope Cleaver: This is the office furniture building
[23:29] Scope Cleaver: I seel modern furniture here for Second Life residents
[23:29] Scope Cleaver: sell*
[23:29] Yee Heron: wow,so cool
[23:31] Scope Cleaver: the building looks empty but it’s only to hold all the production and hard work I’ll be doing on the coming months hehe
[23:32] You: Yee Scope is what they call a metabrand
[23:32] Scope Cleaver: in the making
[23:33] Yee Heron: IS Miko your partner, Scope??
[23:33] You: scope makes products and architecture just for the virtual world
[23:34] Scope Cleaver: Yes she is Yee
[23:34] Scope Cleaver: Been working in SL for a bit
[23:34] Yee Heron: cool, you do your business just as real
[23:34] Scope Cleaver: Yes indeed
[23:35] Scope Cleaver: You’ve been here less than half an hour and you look better than I do.
[23:35] Miko Omegamu: lol
[23:35] Yee Heron: are you a full time SL business woman?
[23:35] You: I know it is amazing Yee!
[23:35] Scope Cleaver: Should I work on my AV?

Yee stayed on Second Life for a couple of hours or more. And, we talked until the time difference meant I really had to leave to sleep. Welcome Yee to Second Life! We all look forward to seeing you again soon. And, as Scope Cleaver said:

[23:43] Scope Cleaver: Good luck Yee, and give SL a chance and it will reward you

Africa, better planet, China, Crossing Digital Divides, HiPiHi, metaverse, metbrand, participatory media, Second Life, social entrepreneurship, Social Media, social networks, Virtual Africa, Virtual China, Virtual Worlds, Web 2.0 Web 3D

Serious virtual world applications in the form of Second Life/Real Life integrations are bubbling up all over Second Life as proof of concept, and more. And, with the recent announcement of the upcoming Serious Virtual Worlds Conference at Technocenter, Coventry University, I think we are at a tipping point for the full emergence of virtual/real life integrations as the doorway to a sustainable future.

No more need to explain why Second Life is definitely not a game, and write posts dubunking the spectacular inaccuracies of traditional media reports on Second Life. And, perhaps, the recent rash of uninformed negative reporting focusing on Second Life as everything from a mere fad to a web site will fade when even the main stream press gets what is really “sexy” about Second Life. This paradigm shift to “the internet of things” is just beginning. It may take thirty years to come to full fruition. But, mercifully, it will usher out the age of industrial production that is neither sustainable nor equitable.

Recently, I have covered in detail how the EOLUS One initiative began with a plan to deliver ground-breaking solutions in efficient energy management, virtual operations centers, and integrated order management on Second Life using the IBM and SAP platform. And, how EOLUS has developed into a better planet think tank.

EOLUS One - is a close collaboration between several major corporations. But, most importantly, EOLUS goes beyond the corporate sphere to draw on the unique collaborative environment of Second Life to bring creative minds together to envision a better planet, and the emergence of the 3D internet.

Second Life’s nascent convergence with Web 2.0, and the global community in SL that includes a unique mix of business ventures (large and small), social entrepreneurs, artists, musicians, technologists, visionary architects, futurists (see Long Now in SL,) educators, and creative people of all stripes, creates an incredible opportunity to collaborate, model and create the practical day to day applications that can change our lives for better.

Meeting With An Architect Of Networked Virtual Environments

Last week, I spent some time talking with Christian Renaud from Cisco Systems. The starting point of our conversation was our shared enthusiasm for virtual worlds and their role in a sustainable future. We talked about the potential of virtual worlds to reduce the carbon footprint not only by bringing an end to geography, but by influencing all aspects of production and consumption. Christian Renaud is the Chief Architect of Networked Virtual Environments for the Cisco Technology Center. The Technology Center is Cisco’s corporate incubator chartered with identifying emerging markets and technologies and developing them into new revenue streams for the company.

Christian has written extensively on virtual worlds (see his blog).

Cisco Systems is a company with a natural interest in the emergence of Virtual Worlds or “Verses,” as Christian prefers to say. They are the expression par excellence of collaboration over IP which is something Cisco is very interested in encouraging. The picture opening this post, “Sunset on the Cisco Virtual Campus,” is of one of Cisco’s four sims on Second Life. SL Brand did all of the Cisco public builds. Below is Christian Renaud’s avatar in the Cisco offices on Second Life.

Cisco has been slowly increasing their footprint and involvement in Second Life, moving from basic marketing to mixed reality events to user group meetings. Recently, both Information Week and Metaversed commented on Cisco’s use of Second Life as a business to business tool and place to meet customers. Cisco uses the immersive collaborative environment of Second Life both for inter enterprise and intrapreneurial development, such as eliciting input from the community on potential new (real) Cisco products like the Medipod - a telepresence kiosk for doctors to remotely diagnose patients, in the Cisco Technology Center.

Marketing is not overtly on the agenda for now. Coincidently, there seems to be much enthusiasm within Cisco for Second Life, with 200 new Cisco avatars registered within the last week alone. Avatars of Cisco employees were showing up on the Cisco sims this week even before Cisco has finished the work on their own orientation area. I met a Cisco Quality Assurance engineer from Canada in the Cisco sandbox only minutes after he logged in for the first time the other day. And, although he was a little disoriented without the benefit of a proper orientation, he seemed to take to SL like a duck to water.

Cisco CEO, John Chambers, in front of the Human Network Pavillion

Creating A Virtual Networks Operation Center On Second Life

Near the end of our conversation, Christian mentioned a bounty proposal of $10,000 worth of Cisco equipment that he has offered to the Cisco user group on Second Life.

The bounty is for $10,000 worth of Cisco equipment to the user that creates the best tool that Cisco can use (perpetual royalty-free license) to provide technical support via Second Life. The tool should import dynamic, real-time network topology data and visualize it in 3D, allowing a support engineer to interact with the customer network and zoom in/out to specific routers and switches to determine the source of the concern. Each node in the 3D diagram should be a hyperlink to allow the TAC engineer to log into the router or switch(ideally) to facilitate resolution.

Christian explained to me later:

This will allow a network manager to export HPOpenView or CiscoWorks topology data, and input it into a tool such as the one created by Turner Boehm at IBM. No large back end Network Operation Center required, as this isn’t ongoing real time monitoring, rather a one-shot troubleshooting session with a network engineer.

My initial reading of the bounty proposal was that it was a brief for what amounts to a Virtual Networks Operations Center using dynamic 3D presentation and context oriented interaction, much as the EOLUS initiative does. Second Life is not yet a secure and stable environment or even quite real time for such an application. So a Network Operations Center would have to be an additional channel. But, there would be much added value even though there would still have to be a RL operations center somewhere.

I ran the bounty proposal by a few of the Second Life’s real/virtual world integration gurus or “spime wranglers” (as I prefer to call them), including Eolus Mcmillan, Algernon Spackler, Aleister Kronos, and 0tto Lane (a.k.a Mr Ugotrade) who has just come into SL. Otto spent many years as a lead member of Ericsson’s Messaging R&D Division before they moved from the US.

Cisco’s bounty proposal was not originally written for the Second Life community in general. So we all had questions for Christian about how it might be opened up to the wider community. We wondered: Who individually is going to have a use for such equipment? Members of the Cisco Users group who are constantly going for re-certifications might have a special interest in acquiring Cisco equipment, but would anyone else in the Second Life community? And, then we all asked what company or individual would want to hand over IP rights so cheaply?

And, as we had initially understood the proposal to be more involved - a Virtual Network Operations Center, we were all in agreement that a significant amount of real life development was a necessary underpinning to the project. And Otto, Al and I even speculated that this might be possibly half a million dollars worth, or even more.

Bringing Connectivity To Off The Grid Communities.

But, we did come up with a group that could put the Cisco equipment to excellent use in a community network in South Africa - Uthango Social Investments (see my earlier post, “Uthango Leads The Way To Virtual Africa,” and the Uthango Exhibition on EOLUS One). The Uthango IT team is away at a conference this week attending a very interesting international conference in Johannesburg. And, they will also visit some very rural projects with no broadband connectivity. So, there has not been an opportunity to bring Uthango together with Cisco yet!

Eolus McMillan gave Christian a tour of EOLUS One while I was there yesterday. Here is Christian seated in the control room of the EOLUS Virtual Operations Center. In the background are Randy Ciscosystems (Christian’s right hand man) and Eolus, and myself (time to go shopping for some new clothes Tara5 Oh).

This was the comment that Christian Twittered during his tour of EOLUS One.

xianrenaud People, have you seen what Eulos has done? Amazing integration! about 10 hours ago from web

SAP Joins the Second Life/Real Life Integration Community

I met Craigster Hax, SAP’s metaverse evangelist, in his rented personal office on the Second Life developer island of Silicon City, owned by The V3 Group. SAP also has three spaces on EOLUS One, and one on the next sim over in Silicon City, where a major SAP Community Office is being built. I asked Craigster why SAP has chosen to rent in SL:

It makes more sense for us to have a place that offers other interests to our community. We don’t plan to be here 24/7 and Silicon Island and Silicon City are home to many SL/RL companies that might also be of interest to our community members, so it made sense to be smack in the middle of the “action” so to speak. And, personally, I like the idea also of supporting the economic infrastructure here in SL.

I asked him about SAP’s plans for Second Life which are for the moment at least entirely “marketing free.” Craig explained:

We are here for the main reason of community interaction - and bringing more info to those who use our technologies. The SDN and BPX as well as ES Communities from SAP are 850,000 strong and made up of our customers, partners.

We are interested in seeing what interests our customers have and EOLUS One was perfect timing for us. It gave us a great idea what some are interested in doing. We are here to support. Information sharing, knowledge transfer - “connect, collaborate and contribute” basically is the idea. But, we’ve not locked into one specific thought thread or idea.

If you are interested in learning more about the vision behind this acronym-rich heart of SAP culture, Craigster said SAP will have the first formal event once the community space is finished. This “will be an interview with two of our top ABAP experts (one internal one external).” Here is a podcast in which Thomas Otter and Craig Cmehil (Craigster) are joined by SAP Guru and ABAP expert Thomas Jung (who will be one of the two) for an in depth look into the world of ABAP, it’s strengths and future role.

I asked Craigster Hax about SAP’s role in SL/RL integration:

connecting for example SL to a SAP NetWeaver server is not a complicated process (the beauty of web enabled - the whole Enterprise SOA).

And, now SAP has joined the EOLUS One initiative. Craigster has outfitted the SAP office space and floor room area on EOLUS One with information about SAP and the SAP Community Network. Here is one of the 5 “Demo Pods” with a real world presentation being run in a slide show while there.

Craigster says he has been working with Liam Kanno (SL Avatar) of The V3 Group, “it’s been his designs and advice that have helped make the SAP space on EOLUS One top notch!”

Second Life Convergence With Web 2.0

One of the more ridiculous recent mainstream media reports on Second Life was the New York Times Bits post, that describes Second Life as a fad on the way out as Twitter comes in. Obviously the person who wrote this is unfamiliar both with Second Life and Twitter! The convergence of Second Life with other Web 2.0 social media is very powerful and growing. Second Life groups on Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook, Flickr and many other Web 2.0 Social Media are important knowledge generators that link real life to Second Life. And, they are growing in influence by the day as increasingly real life/Second Life integrations like BlogHUD and Ordinal Malaprop’s Twitterbox are adopted.

Craigster is working on his own chat client (in PHP and LSL) to pull chat from SL to RL, and RL to SL. It will be made available to the whole SL community when he has it working.

I’ve a script that connects to an external bridge. It pulls the chat (channel 0) from an area and sends it out to the external website (100% working) from there it’s displayed kind of like twitter or normal chat client that’s only about 20% one LOL. Then it takes chat input from there and pulls it into the room here (or will when I have it complete). I started on it Friday and spent only about 2 hours on it so have some work to do……….. basically the idea is with a minor config. change you can set it up in any area and actually discover your “webaura presence.”

Suzanne Vega in Beta Voice on Virtual Ludlow Street

Suzanne Vega’s visit to Cruxy’s Virtual Ludlow Street was a lot of fun. It was my first experience using the Second Life voice client at a large event. And, I really enjoyed it. It turned hanging out on Virtual Ludlow Street into an interesting adventure in time, sound and space.

3D Internet, bloghud, broadband connectivity, Business to business communications on Second Life, Cisco Systems, Cisco Systems on Second Life, EOLUS One, Real Life Second Life integration, Second Life, Serious Virtual Worlds, Social Media, spime wranglers, Spime Wrangling, spimes, sustainable development, Sustainable future, twitterbox, virtual networked operations center, virtual operations center, Virtual Worlds, Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Convergence, Web 3.D Web 3D

Monday, Nat Mandelbrot of Cruxy was hard at work of preparing for Suzanne Vega’s arrival, this Friday, July 13th, on a little slice of Ludlow street in Second Life. Nat was trying out his new virtual graffiti widget, and adding more textures to bring virtual Ludlow Street to life when I arrived. The Lower East Side in the ’80s is part of the fabric of my own life. So, I was impressed by Nat’s attention to detail. He mentioned Arcadia Asylum’s “open source” Urban Blight toolkit were the source of the bus, taxi, and some other objects. They also worked with builder LocK Sydney, an amazing texture wrangler, who sells recreations of popular film cars that you find can find in Erzulie.

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American Express Members Project, Arcadia Asylum, Beauty and Crime, Converseon, Cruxy, Cruzy Player, MTVs VLES, Plant It 2020, Second Chance Trees, Second Life, Suzanne Vega, Urban Blight, Virtual World Widgets Zephyr

My conversation with Soft Linden (above) on Second Life yesterday ranged from open source as the future of SL, to parallel processing for the SL Client, and much more in between, e.g., becoming a Linden, designing the 3D experience (the stunning modernist work of 3D experience architect Scope Cleaver), and how furry avatars might be especially suited to inviting the kind of playful creative interactions that are helpful to collaboration.

Professional Development Opportunities in Second Life are Growing Fast

I have seen Soft attending the Intel Dev Zone meetings, so I asked her about Intel’s recent entry into Second Life. Soft noted how impressed she is with Intel’s approach to Second Life. She mentioned both Deevyde Maelstrom’s coding challenge (Deevyde in Second Life ) - the War Bot competition, and the work of Peretz Stine who has created Intel Software Network Zone. Peretz is both extending existing technical community efforts to Second Life (for a guided tour of some other Intel initiatives on Second Life see Web Strategy By Jeremiah ), and working on connecting the SL development community with the Intel Developer Community.

Intel are amazing. I *love* what they’ve done. I mean, the developer events are great and useful… the kinds of things you can get by watching a webcast… but then they hold these other insanely geeky events that are magnets for socializing. They had a robot war competition with people building and scripting custom ‘bots that would fight it out in an Intel arena… *tons* of people showed up to cheer on the ‘bots, but also to meet and greet, and start to know the other developers on SL.

Folks are saying Intel are crazy for holding an event like that, but in my mind it’s pure genius. Lots of good connections were made, and a lot of us started to develop a real affinity for Intel making that possible.

I really think Intel understands what we’re doing here. The robot wars made me want to get more involved with Intel myself, even.

Here is a picture also from Peretz Stine’s Flickr (a.k.a Paul F. Steinberg) of my friend Poinky Malaprop, of Xerox Innovation Island (a.k.a Jonas Karlsson Researcher for Xerox Corp.) preparing his pink bunny warrior bot for the coding challenge. Poinky told me, “It lost every battle - strategy of assuming that nobody would want to attack a cute bunny didn’t work…”

The Intel Developer community and the Second Life open source community

Intel Software Network Zone is the only Intel Sim dedicated to long-term technical discussion, and not tied to any particular promotion. They have already held several developer meetings (ZombieBob Zenovka, Kevin Pirkl -RL, on jQuery/Web 2.0 Mashup Services, JoeWolf Writer on Fortran and C++ Compilers, Nanook Taurog and Wheaton Shepherd on Science Fiction Computing; Boldly Going where no Parallel Programmer has Gone Before, Clay Breshears on strategies for Concurrent Programming), which provided residents with a wonderful opportunity to interact with Intel’s top developers.

I spoke to Peretz earlier and he described his excitement over the mix of people who are participating in this effort. “We’ve got a great selection of hard-core geeks and engineers and we’ve also got folks like Wilf and Nanook [Intel Principal Engineer Tim Mattson] interested in Second Life. These are the folks who will be defining our computing platform for the next decade.”

These pictures are from Peretz Stine’s Flickr stream. Top Intel engineers are being led through a Second Life training on scripting and object creation by Legendary SL Scripter, Francis Chung.

Wilf Pinfold, a former head of Intel Microprocessor Research Labs, and now in charge of New Business Initiatives is in the leather jacket. Peretz Stine’s Real Life manifestation Paul F. Steinberg is sitting at the back in a blue shirt.

Here’s Peretz Stine in the Zone.

Parallel Processing For The Second Life Client?

Soft is working from the LL side to connect the Intel Developer’s on Second Life up with the SL open source community:

Right now, I’m pushing to see if Intel might be interested in demonstrating some of their advanced developer tools against our open-sourced code. I’d think we could help raise visibility for their tools and their community efforts here, and our open source community would love love *love* some focus on the code, given as a presentation that invites their involvement and gives them ideas for new projects they could work on.

Intel have some very nice tools for evaluating code to find how to make it faster, more efficient. They also have some libraries and a compiler product we might be able to use in order to make Second Life take better advantage of newer processors, which can do many things in parallel… but only if the program is rewritten to take advantage of that parallelism, which is difficult work without good tools.

Since Intel have some of the tools we need already, it would be great to help Intel get more developers trained with their tools, some of whom might help to prepare the SL code to better utilize parallel processing.

There’s also a ton of work to do on the viewer, the part we’ve already open-sourced. There’s some work the viewer does to take advantage of multiple cores, but it could do much much more! Speeding up the viewer with optimization and parallelism would be an important part of getting lots more residents in a region at once, still able to dress with attachments and the likes, and to get even more realistic rendering in place.

Open Source Projects In Second Life and Open Sourcing Second Life

It’s worth noting too, that this is just one example of something we’d love to foster. I hope other companies are interested in reaching out to open source developers through our project. As far as open source projects go, Second Life is unique in quite a few ways…

For example, there aren’t many graphics-intensive open source projects, ones that interface quite so directly with the mass public. I can’t even think of another project that should be so exciting for companies who deal in consumer desktops, and who want to find a way to push new open technologies and hardware platforms to the public.

What is Second Life’s relationship to OpenSim and libsecondlife?

OpenSim is a sort of doing a fresh public implementation of some of the stuff we haven’t opened yet while we’re finding the best way to open SL completely without security problems, or throwing away our current business model without having a new one in place yet.

I don’t know where OpenSim fits in in the long run. We *do* plan to release the sim source just as we have with the viewer. So it’s weird to have a major parallel effort in a world where the Firefox and the Apache of the 3D world context will already exist. It’s possible they’ll be great for those “kernel httpd” type applications, where you need a super-specialized server to handle unique tasks where a full implementation gets in the way.

Ya asked, but we don’t really have a relationship with OpenSim. I personally find their work kind of exciting. I’ve talked to one of the OpenSim developers about the possibility of working together if they come up with benchmarking tools for testing portions of the grid, so we can compare notes and see if there are things we can learn from their approach. I got a favorable response, but no activity so far. I hope we can move that forward. (Ya listening, Adam?

OpenSim in action

libsecondlife “is an effort directed at understanding how Second Life works from a technical perspective, and extending and integrating the metaverse with the rest of the web.” Re libsecondlife Soft said:

In the long run here, we really really want SL to be a platform. We make sure people understand the protocols we use, and we get the source out there because we anticipate this kind of project. I don’t think we’re silly enough to ever think that we’d become the only 3D world developer by trying to lock up the protocols. In other ‘net projects, it’s been handily and painfully proven by dummies in bigger companies that this doesn’t work!

So toward the end, of making SL a ubiquitous platform, we -want- this kind of project to exist. Different projects have different relationships with us, and with libsl, we have a pretty good rapport with some of the developers. We even experiment with some of their work for internal tools. We like having ‘em around.

Becoming A Linden

Soft Linden, like others at Linden Lab, invents her own role to a large extent. The goal she is choosing for herself is to try and grow the pool of open source contributors to Second Life. Soft gave me an interesting glimpse into the day to day boiler room work behind the technosocial revolution of Second Life.

I have seen Soft in a number of community settings on Second Life, Gwyneth Llewellyn’s and Extropia Da Silva’s weekly “Thinkers” group, Metaversed’s Geek Meet, and Intel Developer’s meetings. In all these encounters, I couldn’t help noticing that Soft has a special kind of people magic - inviting playful, open engagement with whatever task is an hand. There has been a lot of attention recently to the use virtual worlds for learning, e.g., Robert Bloomfield’s idea of one day gaining academic certification through playing games, and their role in developing a new generation business leaders, and see IBM’s Global Innovation Outlook 2.0, and Tony O’Driscol’s posts.

I think that Soft’s experience in game development shows in her interactions that invite the kind of team work and role play that experienced gamers are adept in. After talking with Soft you really feel inspired to spend the effort that Gwyn reports it takes to download and compile the SL Client. Soft explained to me a little bit about her choice of avatar too (see here for a great post on furry avatars on SL and where to find them).

I was kind of excited to hear that Luskwood had made a real business here, and how quickly they were refining and improving things, mastering such a niche market that meant so much to a tiny population! So I loved not only finding a neat-looking new me, but also getting to wear something that represented one of the things I loved so much about SL.

It’s been fun just how -few- weird reactions I get about it. And it’s fun that I bump into other important folks like Peretz Stine who went with furry avatars too. There’s this whole great geek culture surrounding the furry community that’s a significant subset of the best things in SL. Many think the furry avatars are silly, but they’re really starting to get used to realizing that the furry is -more- likely to be interesting to talk to, not -less-.

But, Soft is also savvy to the difference between Second Life and other MMOG from a developers perspective.

Something to remember when ya compare us to games - here, yer all creating the content. And you make amazing things! But with games, ya have a team that’s constantly trained in what’s efficient, safe, and fast in the engine. Here, y’all surprise us daily with weird things you tried to do to our engine. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands of builders to imagine the painful things we go scrambling to clean up.

But ya, I guess it’s that rampant creativity and the constant surprises that made me get out of games and come here. I wanna help make this work!

This picture is the presenter’s eye view at a Linden tech presentation (click to enlarge). “We hold our meetings in-world. It’s really surreal looking at the assembled crowd. Yer talking business while sitting between a robot and a dinosaur.”

Soft is a relative newcomer to SL and to Linden Lab. And, I was interested to hear her story of becoming a Linden. Soft mentioned that as LL reaches out further for developers there may be a time soon when working with Linden Lab is a totally virtual experience. “I work at home. I’m kinda on the leading edge of developers being hired and working remotely… the more we can make this work, the more hiring choices we have. There will probably be a whole lot more!”

Soft’s advice to anyone interested in becoming a Linden developer: “The best best thing you can do is grab the source code, get it building, and try tracking down a bug or two. Good patchers get interviews -really- easily, for jobs or contracts alike. We kinda have a dream that someday we’ve got so many open source developers that we never have to talk to a recruiter again. We just hire as many of the best people that we can afford so they can get paid to do a lot of what they’re already doing a little of for fun. :)” (here for Linden office hours)

All I know is I have seen friends change here in Second Life.

I asked Soft how she came to be a resident of Second Life first and a Linden shortly thereafter.

Well, it’s sort of a funny story. I first came here more than a year ago, but I only stayed around a couple days, then didn’t come back until much more recently….. The friends who introduced me to the place were just horsing around and making giant penises in the middle of people’s yards, making griefing particle spam toys and stuff… they’d just found another place to be a menace, which wasn’t my cuppa tea.

But, they continued to talk about it pretty steadily even when I wasn’t on, and so I got to looking in again half a year later, and a bunch of the guys who were being asses were suddenly making clothing, scripting for money, opening stores, or just getting all excited about one skill or another. Even some of my most nihilistic friends were starting to take things seriously for the first time in their lives.

So that made me really excited and curious about the place. I wish I’d seen more of some of the other work when I first visited, or I might have gotten what SL was about much sooner.

I dunno what it is exactly. All I know is I’ve seen friends change here. I start to realize that having so few barriers in the way of doing and creating whatever you want, and having so little barrier to getting projects to market, or to reproducing them for people who’ll be thankful to receive them… it can do a lot of good in changing a sorta defeated person’s outlook.

It’s not just for SL goods though! If we can make SL erase the relevance of distance, then we’ve taken one more arbitrary barrier out between people and what they love, or need to thrive, whether it’s work, art, or… did you know people put on plays and make movies here? You already know philosophers get together!

I love the fact that anyone can look good and dress for success, too. It makes those factors irrelevant. Instead of standing out by being pretty or wearing a suit well here, you stand out by being creative, inspirational, intelligent, and so on. It eliminates the superficial by making the superficial fun and free.

I have heard this story of changed lives on Second Life many, many times. The future role of virtual worlds in our lives is almost unimaginably vast at this time. But, I think that the fact that this future is built on a ground made up of millions of individuals finding new opportunities for creative, economic, social and personal development is a good omen for what is to come.

Creating the 3D Experience - meeting a virtual architect

Throughout our conversation I was aware of how tuned into the 3D experience Soft is. And, as I have decided to do a series of reports on Second Life 3D Experience Architects on Ugotrade, I mentioned my admiration for the work of 3D experience architect Scope Cleaver, and his stunning modernist builds. And, as it turns out, Soft is another of Scope’s many fans on SL (see Aleister Kronos for some great write-ups of Scope’s work - here is one on Scope’s Art Gallery for Princeton).

I’m a fan of Scope’s work too. I’ve seen the Camber house, its little brother, and I looked at his own home build as well.

I love his attention to detail! I ran across one of his builds in progress floating over water on Autodesk Island, I think it was for Clear Ink? Lots of purple! He’d gone so far as to set the material types on a lot of the incidental glass pieces and the likes, so if you bumped against them, you got a proper glass collision noise. Super cool! Little surprises like that imbue the place with a sensation of it being more real. Your mind just starts to sort of expect that that detail is everywhere, even if you only encountered one or two small examples.

Even things like the sounds the doors make on his buildings. They’ve got a sort of airtight seal noise and a little bit of echo that matches what you’d expect from the room. It’s not just some generic iconic door noise, but what you’d actually think you’d hear right in the place you’re in.

And he’s kind of a fun character, too. I’ve seen him at the Thinker meetings, and one or two other events. Love the big cigar!

I asked Scope if he had a picture of himself building and ever the mystery man, this is the one he sent me! His avatar is the small reflection center frame. Scope Cleaver’s business in Second Life, is what KZero calls a purely metabrand.

‘A Metabrand is a brand that is created to exist solely in a virtual space. It lives only on servers, is powered by electricity, experienced only on a computer screen and serves to provide a service, solution or product to avatars living in a metaverse. A Metabrand satisfies a demand that exists purely on a virtual basis.’

On Ugotrade I talk a lot about how linking the Real World and Virtual Worlds can contribute to a better planet. But Scope brings a different perspective on how the metaverse can be beneficial to the Real World. Scope keeps links to the Real World to the minimum. This is not so much about privacy but to keep his work *about* and *for* Second Life. In the rare cases he needs to sign a Real Life contract he uses a proxy.

Scope uses SL tools pretty much exclusively with the usual graphical programs. But, he doesn’t spend time trying to import CAD models or anything like that. He explained to me that he is a true believer in the metaverse and in the way that values can be created out of thin air here:

I can see a future where most, if not all of what we value is uniquely in the metaverse. Other than maybe sustaining what little we would have left to keep this metaverse going. The way in which I think this is benefical for the real world is the sense in which it would remove alot of the conflicts we have in RL. Because where you find conflicts, issues, tensions is often where values are - resources and the environment being an example of that. If nobody cared anymore to buy a SUV because they enjoy buying virtual houses instead…

I predict a shift in value in that sense, I just can’t tell how quickly it will happen, but it has started. To give you an example, I don’t need a car or transportation anymore, I work at home. There will come a time when it’s not going to make as much sense value wise to buy a $5000 diamond ring in RL.

And Scope is living his own vision. He has created his own succesful metabrand out of thin air with no starting investment and no angel investor, just vision and time. Scope mentioned that his Real Life clocks are even set to SL time now!

He has recently opened a new store and office, and joined forces with Maximum Minimum. Click on the image below to see a wonderful portfolio of his work, properly photographed, without my avatar loitering in the shot, as it is here!

I also visited Scope at work on his latest project, the Art Gallery for Princeton, where I had a very interesting talk (more for another post) with Persis Trilling who “mediates between Princeton Faculty members and technology.” She is responsible for Princeton’s entry into Second Life . “This is the next thing I see coming. I try to be a year or three ahead.”

Aleister Kronos has a wonderful quote from Persis Trilling on his blog:

Persis was full of praise for the way in which Mr. Cleaver has gone about fulfilling his brief: “If Chancellor Green is about Ruskin’s seven lamps, Scope’s building has them in spades too. He is just using a different architectural vocabulary.The sense of craft; of expression of essential human qualities and the emotive use of light and space is a lot like the more modest drama of Chancellor Green.” She went on: “It’s a very nice build, and I think reflects well on the existing major buildings — each one perfectly modern in its day, in fact, forward-looking. I showed him a lot of spaces that I admired. He did not copy anyone but respected an element of each design. I told him what I liked about each — so a little Carlo Scarpa; a little Gehry; a little James Stirling.”

Some Other Really Great Things Happening In Second Life.

Thank you to Steve Nelson of Clear Ink for pointing me to this:
Second Life Virtual Orphanage and Child Sponsorship Program.

And, congratulations to the wonderful metaverse architects at Virtuool who have won the Les Halles renovation concept competition. Aleister Kronos first mentioned this competition on 3pointD. For more details see: http://reperes-secondlife.com/jardin_halle_concurrent.asp. He also mentioned on SLAmbling that he will post some pictures soon.

And, thanks Chris Carella (a.k.a. Satchmo Prototype). Chris’s post brought my attention to this very powerful video:
A Child’s War - a video made in Second Life by Global Kids

3D experience architect, A Childs War, becoming a Linden, Deevyde Maelstrom, furries on Second Life, furry, Global Kids, Global Kids on Second Life, Intel, Intel on Second Life, Intel Software Network Zone, libsecondlife, Linden Lab, metaverse, metaverse architect, Open SL, Open Source, OpenSim, Parallel Processing, Peretz Stine, Scope Cleaver, Second Life,