The Story of My “Second Life”

The PacRimX Team … DELIVERS

Originally uploaded by kjarrett

Last night’s event started out smoothly nearly 12 hours before start time. Little did anyone know that Mr. Murphy (and his “law”) would be attending. Nonetheless, it was one of our best ISTE Speaker Series events in recent weeks, with upwards of 45 avatars in attendance. Everyone was excited to learn about the Pacific Rim Exchange, one of the teen grid’s oldest and most successful projects.

I was online around 6:00 am getting the slides loaded for the team when I met one of the presenters, Chris Flesuras, English Instructor and Foreign Affairs Officer for Kyoto Gakuen High School in Kyoto, Japan. Chris had just created a main grid avatar for the talk and was walking around in his white-tshirt-and-jeans newbie glory. He said something about shopping for clothes but noted his Linden $ transfer hadn’t come through yet, so, I flipped him $1,000L so he could go shopping. (It’s was the virtual equivalent of buying him a cheap lunch, and the least I could do to help him get ready.)

We didn’t hear from the team again until about 5:30 PM SLT when Chris rezzed on stage and was joined by Brad Cornwell, Business/Technology Instructor, Johansen High School in Modesto, California. With crystal-clear audio (from Japan!) and solid connections, we thought we were in the clear, and we proceeded to get to know each other as the auditorium filled up.

Soon it was a few minutes before the event start and we still hadn’t seen the lead presenter, Stan Trevena, Director, Information and Technology Services, Modesto City Schools. Chris or Brad called his cell phone, knowing full well Stan likely wouldn’t answer because both of his hands were embedded in his scalp with handfuls of hair. We all know what it’s like to have technical problems before a big presentation, and this was a huge one, the project’s first on the Main Grid in Second Life.

Stan fought with connection problems, finally resolving them by using a wireless network at school. Apparently Modesto City Schools hired Mr. Murphy as a Network Engineer because something changed in the schools’ wired LAN configuration and Stan could not get a solid connection to SL.

Fortunately, Chris and Brad were more than up to the task, gracefully leading the way while Stan and the fourth member of the team, Kathy Soares, Business/ROP Instructor, Modesto High School tried to get in as well.

Kathy had even worse luck. She actually went home to avoid problems (quite prescient of her) but hardly fared better. She managed to rez sporadically throughout the talk, but when she did connect, was unable to use her microphone for some reason. We missed you, Kathy! But this is SL, and these things happen, we’ve all been there!

Since the show had to go on, Chris and Brad shared the Pacific Rim Exchange story, how the teens from two cultures used (and use) SL along with videoconferencing technology to establish relationships prior to actually meeting in real life. Stan’s vision and leadership of the project was evident throughout, and thanks to the excellent visuals it was easy for the others to pick up the slack.

Stan did eventually make the presentation about midway through, and was able to use voice to add his perspective and answer some questions from the audience, many of whom were from other parts of the world.

All in all it was a wonderfully successful event, one of the most popular Speaker Series talks in a while (in terms of attendance) and a great time was had by all.

The folks from Pacific Rim Exchange did a wonderful job and were thrilled to provide them with a venue to share about their amazing work in SL! Bravo!

-kj-