Yesterday (Saturday, March 8), I went to the ‘Virtual Worlds: Libraries, Education and Museums Conference’ in SL. It was held at the beautiful ‘NMC Conference Center’ sim (owned by the New Media Consortium).
Now that a day has passed, some of the things that stand out for me are:
- The talk by Desideria Stockton and Eloise Pasteur, about how they got English Literature students to make Web-based videos and SL structures to interpret a poem by Maya Angelou. In the second half hour, they had us (the audience) record some poetry (audio), upload it, and make a trigger to play it in SL!
- JJ Drinkwater and Aldo Stern led a great discussion about how to build thriving learning communities in SL, based on their involvement with projects like Caledon and Renaissance Island.
- Doug Mandelbrot (from IBM) and Violet Portola (from Sun Microsystems) talked a bit about what their respective companies are doing in SL, and their views on the future. Note: Both IBM and Sun were sponsors, and have a lot going on in the virtual worlds space. Microsoft, on the other hand, was noticeable by their absence.
- In virtual worlds, where all the ‘content’ is digital, what’s the difference between libraries and museums?
I gave a presentation titled ‘An Overview of Science-Related Stuff in Second Life.’
Overall, I thought the conference was very well-run, with lots of information beforehand and plenty of help for people new to SL.
Troy McConaghy 