UgoTrade

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

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, Second Life Open Source, Second Life Virtuool Orphanage, Soft Linden, Virtual Princeton, Virtual Reality, Virtual Worlds, Virtuool, War Bot Competition Xerox innovation Island

Cyrus Huffhines of blueair.tv interviewed Long Now Executive Director Alexander Rose,Wednesday, bringing yet another dimension to the global creative context of Second Life. Alexander Rose, is deep into the production of the new Eno piece, 77 Million Paintings, in San Francisco. Also, he is known for pioneering Rosetta and Long Server, the Long Now 10,000 Year Clock and prototypes. (See blog.longnow.org for more!) Cyrus Huffines of blueair.tv, a member of Long Now for ten years, is instrumental in bringing The Long Now Foundation to Second Life.

(more…)

Today, I had what felt to me like a ground breaking meeting with Alanagh Recreant on Second Life (a.k.a. Dorette Steenkamp in Real Life). Dorette Steenkamp is Executive Director of Uthango Social Investments, Cape Town, South Africa. Uthango is the first African-based NGO with a presence in Second Life.

You can visit Uthango’s newly established offices on Second Life here! SLurl: Uthango in Second Life.

Ginsu Linden, Linden Lab, told me earlier this month there was interest from Africa in the Linden Lab Global Provider Program. So, I was very excited to meet Alanagh in person, or rather in the pixels, and hear that an initiative to create an access portal and community for Africans on Second Life was actually underway.

“Not exclusively [for Africans] but with the exclusive aim to promote access to virtual reality.”

Uthango have just begun establishing their presence in Second Life. Their current offices are a first base from which to address the digital divide. But, please watch for more news about Uthango projects on Second Life to be announced shortly!

Uthango is an investment company specializing in finding and creating sustainable programs - connecting corporate/government with communities through collecting local intelligence and translating it to the business sector. But, “we only work at the invitation of communities. We are a relationship broker and bridge-builder between diverse interest groups to create mutual benefit.”

Uthango is serious about access for all. They will be working in parallel at establishing internet hubs in communities. And, they are seeking partnerships with mobile telecoms on mobile applications for Virtual Africa, and to develop links between mobile space and Second Life.,

They are putting together an Uthango Global Advisory Board that will be an innovation team both socially and commercially - to put out and receive ideas concerning producing a viable Virtual Africa Platform.

It is so exciting to see the first steps towards realizing a vision for a Virtual Africa being taken by Uthango. This group is deeply experienced at working on the ground with rural communities on sustainable development and poverty relief. And, they are expert at creating commercial partnerships with social value.

Uthango won the Centennial Award from Rotary International for Sustainable Projects in Communities in 2005, for District 9350, and The National Impumelelo Innovations Awards in the same year for Innovation in Private/Public Projects for their micro-enterprise project affecting a community of 45000.

I am especially impressed with how Alanagh, while very committed to expanding the possibilities for mobile technologies in sustainable development, is equally committed to the idea that Africans should not be excluded from high quality internet connectivity, access, and the potential that Second Life, as an immersive virtual world, has for Africa.

These are exciting times for African innovation!

Tags: Second Life | Virtual Africa | Africa on Second Life | Uthango Social Investments | Web 3.D | Linden Lab | Linden Lab Global Provider Program | Sustainable Development | Digital Divides | Poverty Relief | African Innovation | Africa Sustainable Development | Ginsu Linden | Alanagh Recreant | Web 2.0 | Dorette Steenkamp | mobile phones in Africa | mobile phones and sustainable development | mobile space and Virtual Worlds | Mobile Phones and Second Life | Metaverse | Virtual Reality | Virtual Worlds | World 2.o | virtual realities |

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.) The tireless crew of USC Center On Public Diplomacy (see my previous post for more on Anna Annenberg and Sitearm Madonna) did an amazing job of hosting this event that used four sims to bring so many people together (perhaps up to 250 at peak).

A recording of the event can be found at the MacArthur site for Digital Media and Learning here , a great post from Rik Riel here, and a call from Prokofky Neva for a new philanthropy here. But, the high point for me was the emphasis Jonathan Fanton put on Africa - developing access, connectivity, and bringing Second Life there.

In response to a question about using the combined energies of Linden Lab and The MacArthur Foundation to help Second Life to bring opportunities and training to communities in isolation - cutting out the middle man so to speak, Philip Linden said:

while they had nothing planned yet, this question was a fabulous example of the kind of barrier reduction that Second Life enables………cutting the costs of collaborating with people to close to zero sometimes.

And, Philip added:

I would love to work on ways, with the MacArthur foundation, to enable that.

Jonathan Fanton responded:

That question is a great example of what I hoped would come out of this conversation which is a series of concrete ideas that we could look at and develop into a program or two.

One of the challenges we face is being sure that places in the world that are remote, where people are desperately poor, that some of those people have access to the technology that enables them to come in and be part of Second Life. The MacArthur Foundation along with other foundations has a partnership for higher education in Africa working now in a dozen countries. One of the principle pieces of that initiative is to expand bandwidth at a lower cost and to get high quality internet connectivity through the continent of Africa.

Also, Jonathan Fanton described “being in the Google office and looking at the map of the world,” and :

how he remembered where inquiries were coming in ….and it is shocking to see that Africa was totally dark, just one or two places where Europe and the United States and places in Asia were bursting with activity. So, we have a real challenge in this world to get to the places where people most need us.

This project of developing high quality internet access and the opportunity to access virtual worlds like Second Life for all, especially people from remote and isolated communities, has been a prime motivation for much of my writing on Ugotrade.

The Magic of Second Life - talking one on one with Jonathan Fanton and Philip Linden

Both Philip Linden (above) and Jonathan Fanton stayed after the event to chat one on one with people (although Philip L. had to leave for the office fairly quickly).

I sent an IM to Jonathan Fanton about an African initiated Virtual Africa portal to Second Life (see next post!). And, I got an instant response. Not only did Jonathan Fanton himself want to stay in touch with project. He immediately sent contact information for the person most involved with Africa at The MacArthur Foundation.

“Africa Open For and In Business:” TED Global 2007

Soyapi Mumba writes about the mood at TED Global 2007 that convened in Arusha, Tanzania in early June:

everyone I met was determined to solve Africa’s problems without waiting for governments or donors. So I’ve come back energized and connected to the right community that will hopefully keep me motivated.

The picture above shows William Kamkwamba. His presentation was a highlight of TED Global 2007. Ethan Zuckerman who blogged every session of TED Global, and summarized in his post, “A New Wind Blowing In Africa.” Also, he noted the debut of William Kamkwamba’s Malawi’s Windmill Blog. William has begun blogging with the help of someone he met at TED.

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Second Life is the global creative context for key debates about the future of virtual worlds. Chris Renaud, notes the China and Entropia deal could be a game-changer. But, this evolving role of Second Life as a global virtual institute of the future may be a game-changer too.

Second Life is creating the kind of linking back from virtual to real worlds that will drive virtual worlds to be even more highly valued, and “people to find and create more value because of this linking” (see the manifesto for Flickr).

There has been a lot of excellent high powered commentary on the future of Second Life and Virtual Worlds in general recently, see Chris Renaud’s Weblog, Mark Wallace on 3pointD, and IBM vice president of standards and open source Bob Sutor who has done a series of posts. So, it takes a little audacity to pipe up with some more commentary!

But, Second Life seems to have become the de facto Virtual Institute For The Future regardless of the scaling challenges supernova growth has caused in recent months. And, I think this has a lot of significance. A dizzying array of world class conferences, meetups, and opportunities to interact with metathinkers, futurists, leaders in art, architecture, technology, law, education, politics, and culture are scheduled on a daily basis, often concurrently.

Gwyneth Llewelyn has just written a post that looks at the history of governance on Second Life and Linden Lab’s changing role re Second Life. But, what I am noting, and this is not just Linden Lab but organizations, corps and individuals in Second Life as well, is a growing movement to transform Second Life into a “global creative context” of the future.

Friday, I found myself in the hallowed halls of Columbia University, New York City in Real Life, attending, “The Economics and Business of Second Life and Virtual Worlds.” And, while I listened to John Lester of Linden Lab giving his presentation, “Virtual World, Real People,” I participated in the Second Life component of the iCommons Summit 2007, Dubrovnik, Croatia, which was being streamed into Second Life, on my laptop. Cory Ondrejka (also of Linden Labs) was speaking at the time.

To interact with all four levels of these two conferences being held continents apart - the two real life conferences and their virtual components - was an extremely valuable experience.

These conferences looked at two of the major forces shaping virtual worlds at the moment. Columbia focused on business and economics (law/governance, marketing, applications and national interests). And the iCommons Summit, 2007, in Dubrovnik, Croatia, is the forum developing new contexts for creativity (a global ecology of free culture). Recordings and presentations for the Columbia can be found here, and from iCommons Summit here.

“Creative Commons and Peer Production” - Second Life and Dubrovnik, Croatia

Below is the “Creative Commons and Peer Production in Second Life,” panel with Anna Berthold - USC Center on Public Diplomacy (Anna Annenberg), and Jean Miller (Jean Linden in Second Life where she and Anna have been available for interviews and questions for much of the conference), Cory Ondrejka (Linden Labs), and Chinese artist, Cao Fei (China Tracy in Second Life) is in frame in the picture at the beginning of this post. Cao Fei talked about how Second Life was a place for artistic expression that gave Chinese artists unrestricted access to an international audience. See more about China Tracy in New World Notes. NWN reviewed and posted all three parts of China Tracy’s awesome machinima art project i.Mirror here. Also see China Tracy’s blog.

Of course, there were questions on when SL will open source server side. But Cory Ondrejka was clear that with 520 new sims per week Linden Lab needs other people to host as quickly as possible. And, he commented re questions on the transaction system of Linden Dollars that while having this transaction system has been a very important part of the growth of Second Life, Linden Lab doesn’t want to be a bank. And, they are looking to partner on this.

Cory also mentioned one of the areas I have been talking about a lot on Ugotrade: How communities who have been cut off from the global economy up to this point, with recent break-throughs in broadband access, particularly wireless, are seeing the possibility of connecting to an economy that they have never had the chance to be connected to before.

The building housing the event in Croatia was a world away from The Columbia Business School (screen grab).

I will go into how peer production, creative commons, and public diplomacy (all key areas to understanding global creative contexts) are evolving with, and integral to, Second Life later in this post.

The scene at Columbia University - photo courtesy of my digital camera.

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On Wednesday, I met with Ginsu Linden (a.k.a. Ginsu Yoon - photo on the the left from Joi’s Flickr stream) to talk about Second Life’s global role.

Ginsu Linden is Linden Lab’s vice president, business affairs - generally overseeing international market development, business and corporate development, and developer programs.

Ginsu was in Asia when we met on the pontoon at Aleister Kronos’s quiet seaside retreat on Second Life, where sculpted prim icebergs sparkle among the palms. Aleister is a well known Second Life blogger and Senior Enterprise Architect in Real Life. He is also a Second Life artist. He spends some of his time quietly pottering around in his lovely sculpture garden, fine tuning his creations.

Once seated opposite Ginsu in this quiet corner of the metaverse, the sound of the waves lapping in the background, the continents between us seemed to vanish.

I know that those of you already familiar with immersive worlds already understand how compelling they are in ways that are very personal and hard to quantify. But, it is a very difficult to transmit this to people who haven’t experienced it.

The social/immersive qualities of virtual worlds tap into ranges of human experience and modes of expression beyond text and speech. This is one of the key contributions virtual realities make to new forms of global communication.

The only immersive virtual space (for the moment at least) that allows for the full user created expression of entire cultures or personal identities is Second Life.

“Second Life is so immersive that it can transmit more than just text. It can transmit entire cultures” (Ginsu Linden)

I asked Ginsu a number of questions on several topics including: When are Linden Lab’s open sourcing the servers and/or setting up server farms outside the US? What were his thoughts about the intersection of virtual worlds and mobile space? How would virtual worlds create new channels of global commerce? But, it was the clear to me, the most important understanding I took from the interview was not just answers to questions on issues of scaling, open sourcing, virtual commerce and the guiding principles behind Linden Lab’s global provider program. Rather, I gained a better overall sense of how virtual worlds could come of age as a truly positive global phenomena. While commerce may well be the driving force in the development of virtual worlds and Second Life, it is the non-commerce related experience of virtual worlds that is really something to write home about. Ginsu made the point clearly:

I think that there’s a good argument to be made for the value of non-commerce related experience in SL.

It’s really interesting to watch digital cultures spread in SL, and this is not something that is closely tied to a virtual economy…. it’s great to watch people in different countries interact in SL.

People always make the comparison of SL to a 3D web, but one of the things that is quite different is that on websites today, you do not see people from different countries interacting much.

People on the Internet tend to stay within their own cultures, because websites are still primarily a text-based medium.

But SL is so immersive that it can transmit more than just text, it can transmit entire cultures. So you see this very interesting effect where people from other countries are quite eager to interact with each other, similar to the way people are quite keen to travel if they have the opportunity.

Argentonia

Ginsu’s remarks resonated strongly with an experience I had doing a little tourism on Second Life just recently. I met, and spent some time with Dmian (pictured above), who showed me around the new Argentonia sim. I had come to find out about the virtual elections to be held there. They were blogged by Pablo Mancini. But, after meeting Dmian, not only did I get an insider view on the elections both in Real Life and Second Life, but I experienced a taste of the Buenos Aires music scene. Dmian Munro has started a virtual band in Second Life. Please check out his video blog and myspace.

There is much more to say about this experience and Argentonia, so I will return soon. But, please see the Argentonia blog and this video to get the flavor of a mixed reality event Argentonia style. I mentioned Argentonia to Ginsu. And, he said he had not heard about this sim yet. Second Life is expanding so fast no-one, not even a God can keep up!

Linden Lab’s Global Provider Program

I asked Ginsu what he thought it was about Second Life that makes SL more pervasive, or even Web 3D.

Ginsu replied:

This is just my opinion - in each country, the best efforts will really be made by local providers who will build locale-appropriate content on the Second Life grid. I would not say that SL has to be “more” or a “replacement” for anything. People are always obsessed with declaring something else dead. But look at the media landscape today - oral tradition, books, plays, radio, TV, movies, Internet - each of these things was supposed to be the “death” of something else - and yet we still enjoy all of them.

I asked Ginsu whether when he said local provider he meant the Kaizen model. Kaizen has recently launched Second Life Brasil:

Yes, Kaizen is the first to launch in the global provider program.

I continued: “And, what has made them successful?”

First of all, they are very committed to the effort and willing to move quickly and flexibly. They have spent a lot of time understanding their goals in SL, and have built their own tools to manage their efforts.

I have always believed that it is folly for anyone to believe that a company in SF is going to know what everyone around the world wants. The likeliest source for local product is local providers.

“How do you feel Linden Labs are giving Global Providers maximum autonomy and the benefits of being on the Second Life grid? Are there lag problems from the server farms being so far away?”

I think the point of SL as a service platform is that it should be maximally configurable to the needs of the local provider. There can be several local providers in a single market, they can compete on their services and configurations, let the market decide what works. Yes, local servers would improve some aspects of performance. That’s a frequent request and one which we’d like to satisfy. Like anything, it takes some work to accomplish.

“And you can satisfy that before LL goes open source right? The two are not mutually dependent?” I asked.

I don’t think the two are mutually dependent.

Right at the beginning of our conversation, I asked Ginsu when Second Life would go open source server side. I sort of blurted the question out the minute I saw him hoping, of course, for a major Ugotrade scoop! And, he said:

We have generally announced our ambition to open source server code. However, this is in the speculative stages and I can’t commit to any time-line yet.

Certainly we think open sourcing server code would be a very compelling way to spread SL.

There are many people who said we would never open source the client. I suppose if you look at our track record, it sometimes takes us quite a while to deliver on our ambitions. However, I think it would be unfair to say that we don’t try to achieve what we’ve promised.

Oh well, I was a little disappointed not to rock the blogosphere with some big news. But, maybe next time!

Since the interview I have spent some time thinking about the global provider program and trying to understand more about it. It is clear that even key Second Life movers and shakers find it less than self evident.

Second Life Portugal?

Gwyneth Llewelyn, important metathinker on Second Life, and Business Manager of Beta Technologies had a number of comments when I asked her about the global provider program:

Well… the issue that we ask is: why a “global provider program” at all? The client can be tweaked easily (it already supports Portuguese by default) The registration API already allows you to create whatever accounts you wish, from your own website, and you can have avatars dropping on “your” island. So… what this program gives you, is mostly a discount on islands (negligible — people like Anshe Chung get better) and being allowed to use LL’s “Second Life” logo, with some restrictions, on the site. As for how successful Kaizen is, I have no idea, but they surely have a HUGE continent!! …… That’s why we’re being careful ourselves… we don’t want to be “SL Portugal” unless we understand what that means (it’s not our core business, although we have the means to do that if we think it’s worth it )

What this will allow is providing added value ie. customer support and targeted content towards specific communities. In essence, what Anshe (and so many others) have been doing for years now.

This is only a tiny snippet of what Gwyn had to say on this issue. She made many astute observations on this and other key debates re the growth of Second Life, including the hot issue of the interpretation statistics. If Gwyn doesn’t write up the rest of these observations herself, I will in a later post! Gwyn has a fascinating post up at the moment on the growth of Second Life in Portugal and the recent conference on Second Life held locally, at the University of Aveiro, 1º Workshop on Communication, Education and Teaching. This is a must read for all interested in education, culture, and commerce on Second Life. Gwyn notes:

people [in Portugal] are getting their master’s thesis and doctorates in Second Life. Very surprising for a country which practically just had one representative (Eggy Lippmann) for a couple of years and still has only 50.000 users on SL today — many of which quite recent, as the Portuguese media just “woke up” to Second Life less than half a year ago.

Here’s Jorge Lima a.k.a. Eggy Lippmann.

I also chatted with Aleister Kronos and Veejay Burns about the Global Provider program. And, Aleister did have some thoughts. Veejay was exhausted after a long day in Real Life and retired early. I will let him break the interesting news about what he accomplished in RL! Aleister blogged Kaizen for 3pointD.

The three of us could see some special features that Kaizen offered Brasilian Second Lifers. For starters, you can’t buy L$ thru Linden Lab using Brazillian Reals, but you can through Kaizen. Although there has been some concern in the blogosphere about this. Meta Bronca wrote: “Many users felt wronged by the potential currency exchange monopoly established by the partnership IG-Kaizen.”

The blogosphere seems well overdue for a post (is there already one I don’t know about?) on the state of virtual currencies, and the global implications of their development.

Al pointed out that Kaizen actually gives IT support to a Second Life viewer also. Anshe Chung, The Electric Sheep Company and others have created portals, but do not supply a modified viewer. If there is a bug in the viewer a Brasilian reports it to Kaizen. So Kaizen is an IT service too.

The Linden Lab Global Provider program is just starting out, so I am sure we will be hearing more about it in the future.

Second Life Africa?

Ginsu Linden mentioned that Linden Lab has interest from several countries in Europe and Asia. I was disappointed not to hear Africa on the list yet. But, after reading this post Ginsu sent this encouraging message:

We actually have gotten inquiries from Africa as well. It’s been busy here.

I picked up a story on Ugotrade from Mutumwa Mawere in a previous post. Mawere writes in his column in Zim Daily about the benefits virtual worlds in general, and Second Life in particular, might bring to Africa. And, I recently read an interesting post on African Computer Game Development. In particular, Africa the MMORPG a project reportedly in limbo seems very interesting.

Some Cool Upcoming Second Life and Mixed Reality Events.

From Keystone Bouchard:

June 14, 10AM PST Chris Luebkeman : Future Challenges: Global Creative Contexts

Population shifts, increasing scarcity, and the wanton consumption of arable land and natural (renewable and nonrenewable) resources amount to what could prove to be a significant global dilemma - a dilemma of disastrous proportion. Yet trends in design and an ever-increasing focus on conservation and environmental issues suggest that we are headed for a collective change. This program considers the impact of global drivers of change on sustainable creative contexts, explores potential implications, and provides attendees with examples of design work that is already responding to the challenges.

Attend this event on Autodesk Island HERE (SLurl).

Also see the Autodesk press release.

Sergio Palleroni and Phil Bernstein on Architectural Sustainability last Thursday on Autodesk Island.

Check out Clear Night Sky for the discussion Sergio Palleroni and Phil Bernstein gave on Autodesk Island.

And in New York City!

For more see The Cruxy Blog.

I spent some time hanging out in the Cruxy Sky Box on Second Life yesterday. It was a lot of fun. And, I saw how Second Life may well be becoming THE happening place for hip bands to express themselves. I have to admit I haven’t been paying enough attention on this front. And, just a few of the things that Nat Mandelbrot mentioned in my short visit re creating experiences around the music in Second Life, e.g., fan made music video and reinventing “album art,” got my imagination firing. I will post more on this.

These pictures are taken by Yanahin Wauja, the indigenous photographer and filmmaker who is featured at the beginning of my previous post Virtual Amazon and Metaverse Evangelism. He has a real eye for both the artistic and social relevance of photography. The women are throwing Manioc paste at the men, a very daring and provocative act at the entrance of the men’s house, a place that is usually restricted for women.

Yanahin does not have a Flickr page and shoots on an SLR camera as getting prints downloaded to CD is expensive in the nearest town. And, he does not have a way to easily share them once they are on CD or DVD.

He is co-directing a project with Marcelo Fortaleza Flores about the Wauja mask dance and its representation in Western cultures.

Yanahin and other Xingu media makers, and Xingu technorati, who got their own digital cameras with their own resources, like Yukai Wauja and Akari Wauja (pictured below in a photo taken by Marcelo Fortaleza Flores), or like Adalberto and Paulo Wakalitesu (the man in the picture who climbed a tree to get better cell phone coverage - see my previous post), and many other indigenous folks who own equipment, take many, many photographs. But, their work has few channels to the world beyond their community. They say, “Why is it foreigners are the only ones capable of distributing the photographs they take of our culture when there are ways we could do it ourselves?”

If nobody thinks that what you are doing is dangerous you are doing something with no power to change the world. Bruce Sterling

Since I have been blogging on Ugotrade, it has been suggested to me more than a few times that the possibility of indigenous communities being involved with the internet in general, and Second Life in particular, is “dangerous” for them.

“Won’t the communities become over-run with pornography?” was the concern voiced.

“But, I suppose 68% internet use in the UK is connected to pornography,” the questioner continued (I have no idea where they got this stat from?).

I haven’t heard many credible voices for preventing internet use in the UK lately on those grounds though.

No More Silent Things, Things That Don’t Blog, Things That Don’t Link!

If no-one is discussing you as hype. you are not being loud enough. Bruce Sterling

This picture is from the prize winning Virtuool Design for Reperes (for more go to SLAmbling.) And, for an amazing view inside the (reputedly) 3000 - something prim head go to Torley Linden’s flickr page and another gorgeous night view.

Bruce Sterling imagines how computers can help us find a way out of an industrial society that is not sustainable and is thoroughly inequitable. But, he acknowledges, “it is hard to dream up something that will actually work.”

Bruce Sterling imagines a time when the biosphere is no longer full of silent “dead things” - i.e. things that do not evoke any knowledge. These are “non spiming dead things.” The secret to sustainable development is to bring the “dead, non spiming” things of our biosphere to life.

To see “some kind of Spime theme song” - Royksopp’s “Remind Me,” go to Bruce Sterling’s blog.

Thing Links

Sterling’s “internet of things,” “geospatial web,” “ecology of things” - we must try and find the words along the way - may take thirty years to come to fruition. But, a working model, is beginning to emerge from virtual real world mash-ups.
If you want to see some examples, go to eightbar and get an insider’s view on how IBM Hursley’s Distinguished Engineers (DE) work on dreaming up the internet of things at every opportunity they get! Also, see TimeFrame in Second Life.

Web 2.o and Virtual/Real World mashups

I took the picture on the right of Buddahead performing for the Virtualive.tv event Canal Room, NYC, Friday, May 11th. I left a little early so I could go back home and see the the same event on Second Life. But, I arrived just as the show was ending! Fortunately, I met Earth Primbee who kindly sent me the picture on the left taken in Second Life and other great pictures.

Virtual and Real mixed mode events are the new frontier on Second Life. Morpheus Media is revolutionizing music marketing and liberating bands from record label bondage with simultaneous stagings of virtual and life concerts.

True hyper-linking has yet to come to Second Life and other virtual worlds. But, go to Metaversed to find Five Ways To Integrate Your Second Life Into The Web.

Metaverse Evangelist, Roo Reynolds in his presentation at the Eduserv Foundation Symposium in Second Life and Real Life pointed out that virtual worlds are set in the context of Web 2.o, and that Web 2.0 is not a standard you can adhere to. It is in the words of Ian Davis, an “attitude not a technology,”

Web 2.0 is a social world of social networking, user generated content, and people connected and connecting - “everyone wants to be loved.” see Roo’s brief notes from the event.

“Real” Dreams in “Virtual” Worlds

I took this picture when I visited the awesome and inspiring new sim by Virtuool for Amazon. For the full story on the soft-launch of this 2-sim Amazon Developer island, targeted at developers using Amazon Web Services, go to SLAmbling where there a number of great photos that give a feel for the overall design.

This is the conference center for Amazon Developer island. It is an amazing piece of virtual architecture that like the rest of Virtuool’s work really does live up to their trademark:

“gravity free builders”

When you walk through a Virtuool build it is like walking through a painting of light and space.

This picture seems to show what I was thinking, at the time. I was giving the, “What You Want Machine” a whirl and imagining all the dreams that could be built on Second Life!

A good way to get a feel for this gorgeous sim is to go to a rezzing kiosk and rez a tour boat to navigate along the river as this gives you a nice point of view of the island. Here I am taking a boat tour.

Second Life - Where Creation is Never Split From Experience

The Virtuool sim Celestial Isle is not only set up to show case their work, it is a collaborative design environment where they develop new projects.

Jim Purbrick of Linden Labs opened the Eduserv Foundation Symposium with a brilliant talk (Eduserve will be posting all the presentations soon) on how people have used the unique collaborative learning environment of Second Life to create business success out of ingenuity and a PC (also see Forbes story).

Purbrick brought up a number of stories of successful Second Life entrepreneurs who eventually quit their day jobs to live their entrepreneurial dreams on Second Life. Purbrick listed some of the unique qualities of Second Life that enabled people to leave often very successful, but not always interesting, Real Life jobs to build much more interesting, and more fulfilling, careers on Second Life.

Collaborative, On-demand, Situated Learning

Purbrick elaborated in detail giving many wonderful examples of how the collaborative, on-demand, situated learning environment of Second Life, where creation is never split from experience, created the conditions for so many virtual world success stories.

One of the amazing things about the learning environment of Second Life is there is always someone there to help you learn. And, in a world where to get started on building a dream you just point at the ground - dreams are being built everywhere you go. When I asked Joshua Culdesac to talk to me about Virtuool, not only did he show me around their fascinating builds. He and Virtuool’s other principal Piper Pitney (who dreamed up the head idea), also showed me how they created their builds.

Here we are in the sandbox on Amazon Developer Island.