Friday, April 27, 2007

Another live event

We streamed a talk onto the island today from the RL auditorium. David Macauley was there. What a great speaker. He is famous for his architecture books like Castle and Cathedral. He's working on a book about the human body. He held everyone's attention for over an hour.

A few people came by the Park Communication island to watch part of the talk. We wanted to see if the stream would stay up - and it did. One thing we need is at least 2 computers - one for the broadcasting software and one to use to run SL to interact with visitors and help them get hte video stream going. If we every got a lot of visitors it would be nice to have someone greet them, give them a welcome pack with notecard about the event and maybe an event tshirt. The greeter could offer people Teleport links if needed and just generally answer questions.

We're learning a little more with each presentation. We reached out to a few groups - we'll do more of that in the future. I need to get things on the schedule early enough we can try for some blog coverage - like being in New World Notes and their calendar post each week. I know that's where I find neat stuff to do.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Streamed a presentation live



Saturday morning, David Spiegelman from New Line Cinema gave apresentation to about 25 students on campus in Ithaca. We also streamed it live on the internet and into Secondlife. Here are a couple of pictures. It went pretty good. We had 4 or 5 people come by, including one from Australia (it was 1:30 Sunday morning there).

Thursday 4/26 at 7:30pm EDT (4:30 SLT) we're going to stream author David Macauley. Stay tuned for more details about that.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Do these people think they're funny?

I was trying to explain SL to someone the other day (grown up, academic) and they're first comment was - oh i already have too much to do in my first life. FOllowed by the equally weird comment - but it's not real, why would you do that?

This happens all the time. I point out that movies, music, tv, books - not real. And we pay for those - - for the experience, for hte mental pleasure. And that SL is the same way except instead of following someone else's story, you get to make your own. You control what happens, you build stuff to suit you and your interests.

DOes anyone else get this type of comments? Any ideas how to address them - short of snorting in disgust and walking away (my first instinct)

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Cool stuff coming up

I figured out how to make water - and made 2 fountains. (pictures will be here the next time I"m on SL) I didn't add any sound yet. There are scripts for making a texture move to simulate moving water. I used it on an umbrella I built too - very trippy. One of hte fountains has a waterfall. I want to make a creek too - just to see if I can.

We're going to have a lot of stuff going on in sl over the next 3 or 4 weeks. We have a couple of guest speakers, the students will be presenting the results of their research, and we're having a reception for faculty to show them SL. I hope to get our experimental film festival into sl too - to show their movies if nothing else but to get them in to talk about their work and hopefully meet sl people about their movies.

Went to a conference to present our religion research - which still needs a lot of work - and quite a few people were interested in SL. I hope to hear from some of them soon - see about getting projects going. I'm also talking to folks from Mansfield University about projects. They were into podcasts to promote their school early on - I think they will be good to work with.