The Story of My “Second Life”

Sorry, can’t resist …

• Hotel room in Boston: $162
• Gas and tolls (~672 miles round trip): $102
• Parking: $32
• Presenting on Second Life with two amazing colleagues (one via Skype) in a packed auditorium with over 200 conference attendees, then having a post-talk crowd including Pathfinder Linden (John Lester) and C|Net correspondent Candace Lombardi come up to say ‘nice job’: PRICELESS

Before I begin, I would like to thank everyone at the conference for enduring our technical difficulties. Catherine’s Skype connection was troublesome, and although I love my MacBook Pro, I found myself wishing I’d brought my Thinkpad instead (but that’s a story for another day). No excuses, though – at a conference of this level, you have every right to expect world-class content AND delivery. Please accept my apologies on behalf of my co-presenters, Dr. Ken Hartman and Catherine Parsons. It won’t happen again.

Also, you can find our main presentation on Slideshare here, and Ken’s here. And again, the Flickr stream is here.

Now, on with the post. ;-)

WELCOME BACK MY FRIENDS TO THE SHOW THAT NEVER ENDS

The room was buzzing, people were scrambling for seats anywhere there was room, including on the floor … David Jakes walks up to wish me luck … how cool is that?

Dr. Ken got things rolling amidst the chaos of me trying to get everything connected by asking the question, “How many people here use Second Life?”

Every hand in the room went up. Ok, maybe not EVERY hand, but it had to be 90-95% of the attendees.

How could this be? We’d talked at length about our expected audience. I had a hunch it would be heavy with SL users, but maybe 30%. Catherine and Ken disagreed. But it’s Boston, I said, and, it’s the Blackboard World User Conference, this area is techno-heaven, and these people are techs among techies. In the end, I acquiesced, and we aimed the presentation at SL newbies.

Big mistake.

Good presenters know how to change their talks on the fly, and I like to think I am a good presenter … but I was powerless to make changes now. The last time this happened was back in March, when I presented with Ken and Don Bain & Dan Krueger from The Electric Sheep Company. The Sheep went first – I had not seen their presentation in advance – and immediately realized mine had to change. Fortunately, I used this amazing non-linear presentation tool called Splashr for my slides, and I was able to completely redo my presentation off the top of my head, reusing most of my existing content. That wasn’t possible yesterday, Ken and Catherine all had input on our talk, we had to run with what we had.

WHO INVITED MR. MURPHY AND HIS LAW TO OUR PRESENTATION?

Between the YouTube video that would not run (try it now), Skype dropping Catherine’s connection, and the poor audio quality when it WAS connected, we got off to a rocky start. I heard every word Catherine spoke, because I knew what she was going to say before she said it, but the audience probably missed half of it. It was such a shame. All I could think of was how AMAZING it would have been if she were with us on stage. But it was not to be, and we did the best we could. She even managed to answer questions from the audience. In the end, I think everyone got terribly short-changed. :(

We managed to make several key points, including that M.U.V.E.s are coming at us from the least expected places (just ask your child about Webkinz or Club Penguin), that foward-thinking organizations are already embracing Second Life for recruitment, that affinity groups and social networking are IMMENSELY POWERFUL in Second Life (and have quite literally changed my real-life first-life), that institutions of higher learning are also flocking to Second Life to reach a variety of stakeholder groups, that the environment is completely user-created, and more. It was a whirlwhind…

By the time we moved to Q&A, Dr. Ken, undoubtedly sensing restlessness in the crowd, was chomping at the bit to get onto SL, and he managed to do so on his laptop. He took the audience through Drexel’s island (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Drexel/94/142/27), which was good in that it showed how Drexel is putting SL to good use (unrelated trivia: I received my M.B.A. from Drexel in ’91.) I am however NOT a member of the “let’s fly around Second Life in our presentation” fan club and actually would have rather gone in a different direction, but I applaud Ken for being responsive to what he felt the audience wanted.

ALEX, I’LL TAKE “THINGS ONLY I KNOW” FOR $1,000

Questions from the audience were excellent and probably the best part of the talk (no offense intended, Ken & Catherine). We got questions involving the teaching of Chemistry in Second Life (n.b.: Google is your friend); the Second Life learning curve (many nodded their heads in agreement when we talked about how uncomfortable we all were when first exploring Orientation Island); and the possibility of an education-only grid. The latter gave me the opportunity to weigh-in on this issue (blogged about it here, fifth paragraph from the bottom) – little did I know that Pathfinder Linden himself was in the audience! Don’t get me wrong, I’d be the first to enthusiastically support and use an education-only grid if Linden Lab decided to build one. It’s just that I don’t see it happening; as a business person myself (I spent almost 20 years in Corporate America before becoming a teacher, thankyouverymuch) I have to agree with the people who point out that Linden Lab is a business operating Second Life as a commercial, profit-making product. The costs to create and maintain a completely separate educational grid – a 50% increase in their “world” presences – have got to be astronomical. Where is the business case? If you were a shareholder (or investor) in Linden Lab would you support such an investment? To be sure, arguments could be made in both directions, but given the current state of the metaverse, I’d place my money on the recently announced Virtual World Campus, a joint effort between the wonderful folks over at Global Kids and Firesabre Consulting as the surest bet to spark transformational change in the way Second Life is used in Education. And it’s coming soon to a computer near you!

THE PODIUM RUSH … WHAT A RUSH!

So we’re all done (ran several minutes over, sorry) and people are starting to head for the doors, a crowd forms at the dais, and we’re answering questions from interested attendees … a guy asks me for a business card, so I hand him my spiffy Moo Second Life card, he laughs, and hands me his, mentioning that his company just standardized on them. I look on the back, see the Second Life logo, and think, gee that’s neat, I wonder how they got permission from Linden Lab to do that. Then I see his name, John Lester. Still not getting it. Then I see his email address, pathfinder@lindenlab.com. At that point, Catherine, who is still on Skype, overheard me say, “You’re Pathfinder Linden?” We immediately switched on the Skype video again and had a mini-conference with Catherine from her office. The conversation was wide ranging, covering the new voice client, the role of voice in terms of the SL communication dynamic, technical underpinnings that make it superior to Skype, Linden Lab’s Boston operation, and more. I also got to meet Mauri (Menody Collas in SL), a member of our SLolar Central Google Group, and we talked about her years of experience with M.U.V.E.s dating back to the 1990s. Finally, C|Net correspondent Candace Lombardi comes up to ask me about Second Life in education for a piece she’s working on. Someone a while back (Catherine?) lamented that NECC was across the street from CNN World Headquarters in Atlanta but didn’t make the news. All I can say is … today, C|Net … tomorrow, CNN!

THERE’S A REASON THEY CALL IT HINDSIGHT

This event surpassed even my wildest expectations. I was kicking myself nearly the entire five-plus hour drive home though, reviewing what went well, what could have been better, missed opportunities, poorly worded phrases, etc. All in all, it was a great experience but also a painful lesson. Any time I am in front of an audience my goal is to give A Presentation That Does Not Suck. I have incredibly high expectations as a conference attendee and virtually no patience whatsoever with regards to unprepared, unmotivated, unprofessional speakers. I have even higher standards for myself, which is what makes yesterday’s snafu’s all the more painful. I think the event would be considered a success, but largely because of our great audience and the topic at hand. I finished the day with five and a half hours of my favorite (and only) leisure activity, driving. (Honestly, it’s the only thing I miss from my past life in the corporate world.)

Now, I’m gearing up for my presentation at the Conference on Social Change in Minneapolis on July 20th. I have a lot to think about, and more to do. My objective: deliver A Presentation That Does Not Suck. I think I’m up for it…

-kj-