Last night, before the Thursday night social at ISTE Island, CDB Barkley (the New Media Consortium’s Alan Levine in RL) stopped by for a brief visit as part of a conference where he was presenting about virtual worlds. He had asked to spend a few minutes at ISTE island and since I was already planning a meeting with my friends Victoria Gloucester (Catherine Parsons in RL) and Ken Greer (Dr. Ken Hartman in RL) about an upcoming conference presentation, I obliged.
We met on an overhead platform above the campfire area at ISTE Island, just a few minutes before things got hopping down below. After an eloquent prelude by Victoria about the theoretical underpinnings of 3D worlds, identity theory, and current M.U.V.E. research, I started to talk about about Second Life as a professional learning community before derailing my own train of thought (don’t you hate it when that happens?) If I’d had my wits about me I would have offered Alan a link to the K-12 Online Conference Voicethread on Second Life I helped put together recently. It would have been more helpful to his audience than I was! :(
Alan was gracious (as always) and was on his way shortly thereafter (he told us from the outset he’d only have a few minutes) but I wish I had been better prepared mentally! Curse you, old age! :)
-kj-
2 responses so far ↓
1 Alan Levine // Oct 26, 2007 at 7:58 am
Ahh, don’t be so hard on yourself. The purpose of the demo was for the audience to see first hand how we interact in Second Life, and you covered it all, including multitasking and back channeling. And the audio here was crystal clear, people were amazed (remember, mostly SL newbies here).
I should tell you that Victoria’s avatar had a HUGE impression the audience. They were amazed at the wings and her outfit. In fact, at our reception that evening, every woman I talked to (including one who teaches fashion design) wanted to say how fascinated they were by her avatar. They were curious to know who she was in real life (“I was hoping to hear she was 60, like me!” said one woman).
You really cannot know where the impact is for people, so dont be so hard on yourself! We appreciate the time.
2 Virtual Worlds from Brisbane « CogDogRoo // Oct 26, 2007 at 10:04 am
[...] We got to hear as well from Victoria Gloucester (Catherine Parsons in RL) and and Ken Greer (Dr. Ken Hartman in RL). My audience was most intrigued by Victoria’s avatar, in fact, they were still talking about her wings, dress, and wondering who she was when we met 6 hours later for a reception — see Kevin’s writeup Hello Brisbane, I Must be Going. [...]
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