Case-Notes from the Artsy Asylum

Just Leap In: A Virtual World of Potentials

You've heard jokes about "empty islands" - and granted that is true for some in Second Life, while at the other end of the spectrum it's difficult to give a presentation with more than 30 people in attendance given the design of the SL system. And if Gartner's new report, Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2008 is right, we're in trough on the virtual worlds front.

But that doesn't seem to be bothering developers of separate worlds for everything from McDonald's to the more sophisticated offerings like webflock from the Electric Sheep.

Now comes Just Leap In a newcomer from Canada which, at first blush, sounds like none of the others and could beat Google's Lively in everything except name recognition. The first clue? You don't have to search through Google's annoying database-like setup of questions and answers to figure out how to move around. That alone makes Just Leap In worth a second look.

Obviously multitudes of people and organizations seem ready to leap in and ride a coming wave that follows a downturn in new technology, ways of working, or clamor about the latest shiny thing.

When it comes to virtual spaces, the question that naturally comes up is who will be THERE to interact with? Will Second Life and WOW be the places to be just because - in spite of glitches and things we wish were different - we can overlook the flaws because of what they allow us to do? Will they thrive, like twitter because that's where the people we know ARE?

Or do we care? Will it be something else that lures us to use a virtual space?

How about future virtual worlds as a conduit to interact with ideas, information, entertainment and things we create or bring in from elsewhere on the web?

As an option for education, presentations, networking and meeting with colleagues and friends from around the globe without conferences, travel, time and expense, it's my feeling that virtual worlds will continue to shine. And that's the least of the potential.

Can Virtual Reality Provide the Future of Education?

As if there isn't enough going on, my brain's moving at top warp trying to imagine the possibilities of ways in which new technology - especially those that foster community - will evolve in my lifetime.

The latest kickstart my brain got is an invitation fromRissa Maidstone to attend an Information Week event at World2worlds today, August 4, at 5:00 PM PDT/8:00 PM EST

The buz surrounds the students in Texas State’s new, fully accredited Digital Media certificate and associates degree program who can attend classes using Second Life as its primary delivery method. 

Is this the future of education?

Will people from all over the world be able to earn degrees virtually?

Guests who will talk about this with us today are Chris Gibson, Vice President of Educational Technology and Janyth Ussery, Director of Web Education for Texas State College West Texas.

To attend, click http://slurl.com/secondlife/World2Worlds/132/188/35 and if you don’t have Second life already running you can download it. It’s always smart to get up to speed on how to walk and communicate before the event but now is as good time as any to learn!

Sheep Produce Sleek Sophisticated Out of the Box WebFlock

With SHOWTIME’s The L Word® signing up as a first customer, The Electric Sheep Company today announced WebFlock™, a new private-label virtual world application for individual clients wanting "improved online social interaction, media consumption and multi-player casual game-play" for their followers.

The Sheep created and has staffed the wildly popular "L Word in Second Life" online space since 2007 and although the virtual experience won rave reviews and brought significant fan participation there remained the inherent Second Life - ahem - challenges.

Second Life can be a hard platform to master for the un-geek crowd and that was a barrier to entry that the Sheep thought they could solve with WebFlock. Apparently Showtime shared the faith they can do so with this web-based application that runs on Flash which is already installed on 98% of the world’s Web browsers.

As the Sheep put it "Mainstream users are reluctant to download software, whether desktop applications or custom browser plug-ins." Thus basing WebFlock on Flash - something already resident on most computers - makes for smooth of entry, at least in theory.

The look of the WebFlock application is sleek and sophisticated and includes chat filtering and muting to screen out the rabble. Avatars and 3D spaces can be unique to each client as can       interactivity such as casual games.

In short, WebFlock is an option for companies wanting a private branding for their customer base and afraid of the geek factor and sometimes misunderstanding press that Second Life brings.

Their timing might be good or bad, coming on the heels of the announcement of a new virtual world called Lively, created by Google and which has opened to a less than warm welcome by some, and optimism by others. Google's first boos came from Mac and Linux users whose systems do not run Lively, period.

In my book Lively is cartoonish and juvenile in contrast with the very adult sophistication of WebFlock, but to compare them head to head is like comparing apples and oranges and not fair to either.

Look for both to get more of my attention however as I continue to contend that the future of the 3-d web will play a big part in all our connectivity in the future.

Reciprocal Roasting With Scott Monty

Scott Monty, the Bostonian Crayonista  representing ooVoo when they became the first corporate sponsor of my beloved Frozen Pea Fund is leaving Crayon to become the Director of Social Media for Ford Motors.  This seems like a big time move to me, even if Crayon is a cutting edge company and Ford is, well, Ford.

(KIDDING, Scott!)

Scott is one of the nicest guys you'd want to meet, which I found out during My ooVoo Day which happened shortly after my surgery for breast cancer. I was still very sick on the first day, February 10, 2008 but it was the day that kicked off more than a week of six way video conversations via internet thanks to ooVoo technology. Since we were raising money to fight cancer, I was there sick or not, and Scott was there to suppport me no matter what I needed.

Who knew that just five months later, Scott would be leaving Crayon to take on the prestigious spot at Ford?

In the world of social media everyone's a kidder and we do feel that we have a connection that overrides the fact that it's harder maybe to know people that we've never run into in the grocery store. It's an odd kind of connection, but a sincere feeling nonetheless so when I learned about Scott's new job I knew I'd miss his being a Crayonista I could ask for special ooVoo perks.

Hey! but he might be able to help me get a deal on a miata. When I told him this he suggested a Pea Green model for himself. That's the way our conversations go. I tell him how clueles I am about some tech issue and make pea jokes while he shows me his kids artwork. Yup, I'm the perennial social media nana and Scott has me pegged.

So although going to Boston for the Roast for Scott wasn't in the cards for me, I sent my regrets and asked everyone to give Scott a hug for me. It turned out to be a good thing. It was the only way I missed the barbs sent in the direction of the participants. I contented myself to watch the tweet-stream related to the quips and jokes coming out of the assembled geeks, notably those from another nice-guy young enough to be my son - almost - Doug Haslam

Of course I should have known we could count on video by Len Edgerly via Vimeo who documents every event from reading his Kindle on the beach to what his character's doing in Second Life. Here Scott Roasts the Roasters who got together to give him a good natured Social Media sendoff on his way to Detroit.

Scott Monty Roasts the Roasters from Len Edgerly on Vimeo.

Meta Challenges Bring Meta Rewards

In my work with Cornell's Metanomics last year through the now defunct Metaversed (now changed it's stripes with a Zebra incarnation which is not so uncommon in Second Life)  it was easy to see the glitches that presented themselves when mixed reality presentations happened - or didn't happen.

As time went on, with participation in events at Doctor Dobb's Island, particularly hosted by Mitch Wagner in his Ziggy Figaro incarnation, then Metaverse events based at Stanford including fascinating evenings hosted by smart and personable Henrik Bennetsen, one including Jamais Cascio, one the authors of the Metaverse Roadmap, the glitches got less pronounced at each meeting but still one had to be prepared for the technology to just fall apart at any time.

Oh sure it usually came back online eventually but we've learned that not everything in Mixed Reality can be scheduled. And all we can count on is that there WILL be some sort of glitch at some point.

But looking back through Beth Kanter's Blog where she recalls a mixed reality event in 2006 I'm reminded that in these things we are really pioneers and have to see ourselves as that, accepting the challenges as opportunities.

Beth says:

"Second Life requires a significant time investment to appreciate the potential. A time investment of more than a few hours .... And, it helps to be guided or you will ask what's the point? As Jeska Linden, Community Manager, for Linden Labs, said in her recent interview with me, "This isn't for all nonprofits."

No kidding. It's not for all people period, not just organizations. Putting in the time to learn the technology is tough unless you see the payout at the end.

And it's tough to see the payout when you can't get your hair on straight and continue to walk into walls.

Beth points out accurately that what we're doing "is experimentation to understand the possibilities and potential of virtual worlds as an educational, instructional, therapeutic, marketing, and/or collaboration medium."

When she wrote her piece there were 320 individuals on the Second World Education list and 20 universities that had built virtual campuses and were offering educational activities in world. At this date, two years later that list has grown exponentially.

Once the initial hurdle of learning the system is overcome it's not that much effort to work in an immersive 3-d environment IF one takes as a given that there will be glitches. So Jeska is so right when she says this is not for everyone.

If we have the ability to think of ourselves as explorers, we may be half way to winning the battle of being able successfully teach, hold seminars, run group meetings, and provide services in Second Life that are helpful to people in their physical lives.

That's my hope at least. To provide a meaningful way to help others and be of service while doing what I can with the rest of the life I've been given.

Real People Feel Pained as Virtual Drawbridge Goes Up

The 3-d web and Virtual Worlds are - I contend - the future of communication and a big part of community as we connect with wider and wider diverse groups of people. But there are glitches.

If truth be told there's more than one glitch.

The Disney folks have discovered that.

Or should have.

The Wall Street Journal sums the situation up neatly when it points out that "For Walt Disney Co., the task of opening a virtual version of Disneyland on the Web was relatively easy. Closing it, though, is proving to be quite a bit more difficult, thanks to the wrath of obsessive fans of Disney's theme parks."

It started with the launch, in 2005, of the free online game Virtual Magic Kingdom, based on the design and feel of the real world Disneyland park.

Fans wanting to visit Tomorrowland or princesses in catles were able to do just that in virtual reality through avatars they created. Plus the Kingdom gave visitors - or did until tomorrow - lots of opportunity to interact with others who share an interest in Disney and online virtual reality games.Players, participants, or those who WSJ calls "Disney's notoriously obsessive fans" were quickly hooked and Disney bragged that over a million avatars had been created.

What Do You Do With Links?

What do Gartner, Social Networks, Twitter, New Media, Soup.io and Friendfeed share?

The answer is that they share room here and on my radar for today but throwing a list of links at you is not my style. Beyond this idea not being on my radar it's more like I hope that there are better ways of dealing with links I might want to suggest to someone.

Instead of sticking random lists of links in this - or other - blogs, mainly I

• Write something about the item, then post it to this blog or the cancer-related Boobs on Ice depending on the topic

• Use friend-feed to share stuff that passes through my line of sight and catches my eye

• Tweet why I'm dropping the link in the tweetstream

• Rely on soup to collect my own non-twitter content and then add bits and pieces I'd like to keep on my own radar to look at later

But today the call of these two screamed out at me and I don't want to opine at length. Thus random links:

• Analysts Highlight 10 Things Retailers Should Know About Social Networks,  Gartner Says Social Networks Are Attracting Too Much Traffic for Retailers to Igno

• Reuters sees Twitter as a breaking news tool: New Media File

Did it save me time? No - because I wound up writing about what I do with links. Typical.

ooVoo Means Community, Connection, Conversation, Comedy and Cause

It started on February 10th, which happened to be my sixtieth birthday and about sixty days since my cancer diagnosis. It was a hard time. But it was also My ooVoo Day which actually turned out to be ooVoo Week

I spent six hours interacting in six way on-screen conversations with the great people who read my blogs and tweets and it was more fun than a barrel of monkeys even before I ooVooed with Joe Jaffe who entertains while conversing.

What can I possibly write about what ooVoo, Crayon, Scott Monty, and their Big Idea meant to me? I can say: Community, Connection, Conversation, Comedy, and Commitment to a Cause. But the video says the rest.

During that week bloggers ooVooed with friends and fans. It was amazing. Then as if we hadn't already had enough fun, to thank bloggers hosting chats ooVoo donated an unbelievable $30,000 to the Frozen Pea Fund Fund established to support Cancer awareness, research and education.

This donation was made in honor of blogger and cancer patient who happened to be...me! . Although I could not be there, my husband and our daughter Bill and Kate Reynolds were part of a check presentation ceremony to the Frozen Pea Fund at Blogger Social in New York in April.

And not to sit on their laurels, ooVoo is right there in the community, making connections and planning more opportunities to connect. As we find ourself in election year, next up in June is a Political Edition of My ooVoo Day With.

I can't wait to see the momocrats in action.And who will take them on? Is there an opening for a new group called republidads in the making? Trust ooVoo to provide a forum for them if there is. 

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Dont want to miss it? Go to http://www.oovoo.com/ to download ooVoo

MEStream - A Question Of Interaction

Although it's supposed to be about conversation - or that's my view at least - sometimes web 2.0 becomes a MEstream. Millions of people around the world use twitter, flickr, viddler, youtube, soup.io, tumbler to broadcast the latest of me me me-ism.

It's no longer limited to our multiple blogs which can turn into our own version of CNN's constant loopy stream of what they consider to be information we need to know - or more likely their opinion about what's happening and what we should think about it, but don't get me started on CNN because we all have our filters after all.

Its not all one way streaming though.

In an interesting quirk of timing, just as Kristin Forbriger's tweet brought to my attention that the Philadelphia Inquirer was not only tweeting but was  being interactive I saw a tweet from Julia Roy that she was flip - filming us.

Julia's deadpan photos aways make me grin, so I had to go look. And then I got to thinking,

Julia's looking at us. Kristin's looking at us. The Inquirer is looking at us.

Are we looking back or just streaming US?

Lately my own stream of broadcasting updates gave way to our good new baby news, And who could miss the Frozen Pea Fund that started as two women tweeting ideas about how to show support for me when I got my cancer diagnosis in December?

There's an innate curiosity hard wired into me offset by a deep frustration that there's not time for everything. Not as social as some, I hope that's offset with placing being interactive high on my priority list.

Truthfully, I miss a lot. Commenting on blogs or videos gets little of my time in the past six months, though I do a little better sending conversational @ messages on twitter and looking through, talking back and marking other's flickr photos as favorites. (some of those pictured here)

But for many of us these are surprising and mind expanding times full of opportunity. We started small (thus say my tweetstats), learned about others in the interactive web community, got more involved and didn't try to become anything but participants. Sometimes we talk more about us and sometimes more about others. 

Steady - and genuine - interaction matters

And I think that's what the Inquirer is attempting. It's early for them in their experiment with twitter, following and being followed by less than 100 others as I write this.

It's not just because I went to school in Philly that I'm in their corner. It's because I believe in the potential of the very interactive, personally engaged Jim Long @NewMediaJim and Andy Carvin's NPR twitter model

It will be interesting to see how they develop their tweet presence and I'm rooting heavily for them to help show the other news outlets how it can be done.. . interaction by interaction; engagement by engagement; relationship to relationship.

Video as Bonding Tool

Not every online communication and community building moment is about connecting with potential networking buddies who will lead to clients and customers and commercial success.

Some of the most poignant times for me lately, and ones that use new media in a way I didn't expect it to be useful to me, involve the videos my elder granddaughter and I made when she and her mom were staying at the parental abode a few weeks ago.

It turned out that Kelsey liked to make videos, and the flipcam was right up her alley. The image here is from a video we jokingly call "the spoon"

She talked off camera about potential things we could discuss in future videos, including how kids feel about their families; about how cancer is scary for people of all ages; how moms having babies change things for grandmothers and children but make us worry and think about our relationships and where we'll fit in the picture after the baby comes too.

In short she had many good ideas.

There is a real potential for youtube, Viddler and flickr to develop into tools that are not simply places for showing photos and videos. They're serving - for me at least - as a tool for encouraging dialogue.

Part of my current dialogue is a video of my new granddaughter and Kelsey's baby sister, Emma. It's just another way of sharing who I am with my community. This teeny baby and her very big sister are a big part of my life, and connecting with them from the start - and then leaving something behind to document that and for them to have always is a tremendous priority.

Nana loves you, girls. . .