More adventures in Second Life and Vizrt

It feels like a while since i've been talking face to face with classmates, so regrettably I have a lot to say...

I feel lucky because work and class have seemingly run parallel this semester. I've been on a "special topics" run where Second Life and Vizrt's Green Screen visual studio have occupied my last week and a half before the holiday of course.

On Friday, November 19th I attended the Federal Consortium on Virtual Worlds. It was an inlife and in real life meeting held in DC. We utilized the NOAA's space and their beautiful island to listen to governmental agencies collaborate on advances and usage of virtual worlds. I have some neat screen grabs from the event that I will post and met some people involved with the CDC, dept. of Agriculture, and the DoD. Amazingly, the DoD was very up on secondlife. Their avatar was pretty stylish, not quite what you think of when DoD comes to mind.

Vizrt was an interesting journey to Manhattan last monday and tuesday. I worked out of the NYSE in a virtual studio that is supplied to users of the NYSE (namely media and traders) who can broadcast market news with green screen technology controlling thte background. The easiest way to explain it is the weather person on local news. They use a green screen so in life they are presenting infront of a blue/green screen, but over the air it appears they are in front of a map giving us the cold weather predictions. I don't have any cool pictures, but before xmas, we will have scripted and filmed a movie that advertises LM. Sorry to be short, i'm in the Tampa Airport ready to board a flight...more to come tomorrow :) HOpe everyone had a great turkey day!

5 Classes Left

WOOHOOO, thought i'd start a count down. How many other people are graduating this semester??

Facilitation in Second Life

Last Thursday, I got up infront of the class and talked about my job as a facilitator. I also mentioned that we are facilitating part of an offsite in Second Life. The details keep rolling in and today I've been tasked with creating a "how to" for attending a meeting in second life. We aren't sure how many people will have microphones for Voice Chat, so we are going to rely primarily on text chat. I'm getting headset from the company so I can at least present through voice, but I can't deny that I'm pretty nervous. I'm familiar with Second Life, and feel like i'm out of the novice stage, however, to get my avatar ready for prime time with directors and a few vice presidents, i'm not that comfortable with. The things I need to prepare is our Vote box. Part of our team created a box where everyone who wants to participate must collect a ballot from teh box by clicking on the box and collecting the ballot. Any person who has a ballot can also call a vote. This happens by posting a note int he top right hand corner. It will display the question and the vote options. This isn't a sophisticated vote, but more of a "yes" or "no" or rank order type vote.

My job will be to make sure the avatars are able to communicate with my facilitating avatar and that everyone can see the presentation materials (which will be in Second Life as well). Additionally , I need to supply a CONOPS, (concept of operations) on how to attend a meeting in Second Life.

The challenge we face is that we do not allow Second Life at work. Therefore, we are relying on personal computers and people sitting either at designated lab sites, or in their homes paying attention while we bumble our way through a meeting.

Additionally, a developer on the team has created a space for happy hour. He created a pool table, a bar and darts to play in our simulated happy hour.

I have to admit, i'm not exactly thrilled at the propsect of embarrassing myself in front of a lot of potential bosses. This will take a lot more work than traditional methods, and i'm afraid of what the attendees will experience. Many of them have never been to Second Life before...I know a few of them are having their kids help them during the offsite...

More to come on my adventures on teaching second life.