popartlabslcc

Sign of the Times

2009-08-18T15:59:00.000-07:00

This the outside logo at Linden Labs office in Battery St., SF.

Battery St. Linden Lab Re-visited

2009-08-18T15:56:00.000-07:00

A snap of the signed board at Linden Labs office in Frisco. Dang got bit blurred but I put my tag top right corner

Swedish Blogpost

2009-08-18T09:23:00.000-07:00

I received an email the other day from Tina, who so wanted to be at SLCC but couldn't make it. She asked me if I could write a report for her Swedish /Scandinavian readers.... and of course I did. Tina has the most impressive Second Life blog in Scandinavia, entitled "Tina's Universum".
Thanks Tina for your excellent work there!

Links, Comments etc.

2009-08-17T08:09:00.000-07:00

One of the Saturday sessions was looking at the Future of Live Performance in SL with Colossus Linden.
The slides from the session are up although, I'm not really sure how much effort Linden will actually put into the music community in SL. Also the session was mixed reality and was happening both inworld as well as RL at SLCC. There is a solid blog post and video records of inworld sessions here

Sunday morning, Tom Hale - Linden Lab's Keynote Speaker, discussed the Second Life Roadmap which was a very interesting look into what Linden plans for the coming year in Second Life. The keynote speech was recorded and can be viewed.
After the keynote speech a few questions and concerns came up that Linden spent too many resources to improve userbility, their website, implement web 2.0 features etc. to reach a wider population and make SL easier to use for newbies instead of solving the inworld bugs most hardcore users have been frustrated by for a long time. Like group limits to 25, the lack of stability in group chat etc.

One of the most interesting pieces of information was the demo of the web prim (what I call browsable prim). In short we will soon be able to rezz a prim and texture it so we have a fully browsable screen inworld. In other words we will be able to search the web, share and participate in single documents like Google docs etc. all happening on ONE screen, real time with our friends, students etc inworld. The Sirikata platform currently developed at Stanford University has had this feature for some time now.
Anyway I went up to Tom Hale after his keynote speech to ask for specific dates, timelines when this will be available. Unfortunately, as I suspected, he wasn't able to answer other than "during 2010".

Formerly an Elevator in the 21st century

2009-08-15T22:29:00.000-07:00

Finally saw the real life TP and fell in love with header "Formerly ..." :P Inside the TP was a girl with a walkie talkie connected to rest of staff at Rasputin Record Store and o fcourse loud music.

Cool links and tweeet feed from SLCC

2009-08-15T13:32:00.000-07:00

M. and P. Linden did a keynote in SL too friday... heres some of the questions afterwards

Mark Kingdoms slides for the RL keynote up

And Dusan Writer posted what he called "more impressionistic that a transcript" of keynote here

And the very cool and constantly live twitterfeed here might need to make twitter search on SLCC too since seems to be post to both slcc09 and slcc!

Linden keynote

2009-08-15T11:09:00.000-07:00

It was absolutely fabulous to see Philip Rosedale and Mark Kingdom this morning. It was obvious they were at home and they had fun giving their presentation! Mark aka M. was much funnier than I expected. His slides were only SL pictures of places and spaces he has visited, and he used quite a lot of time in-world!

Philip talked about digitzing RL, and the little house "we" have right now in SL might be the center of virtual San Francisco or New York City in the future!

As twittered earlier, another point was the improvement we'll see in graphics and animations in times to come. Philip predicted these will be better than RL in three years!

Of note also is the fact that SL users spend more than eight times as long logged into the client than Facebook users spend online at Facebook!

A quick summary of impressions after the keynote speech was that a healthy Linden Lab will try to include social tools in SL and keep on making it easier to enter!

I am not really sure we want Facebook features and applications in SL but I guess we have to leave that up to the users. In fact, the users of SL are the major force behind Linden Lab and the reason why this virtual world will continue to increase its footprint in digital environments.

Looking back on Friday

2009-08-15T06:34:00.000-07:00

Ray Kurzweil Keynote

Ray Kurzweil's keynote speech was cool. Unfortunately he wasn't here for real speech but showed up in SL as a nooby female avatar. Anyway all technical aspects worked fine and he provided an inspiring look into the future. A few quotes "Virtual worlds will reach mass adoption within next 1-2 years". To me this quote ..."Our avatars will become more real and we will start to believe them... " is an interesting point. He showed slides refering to timelimes for incorporating other devices like cell phones, TV, computers, Internet etc.
It was cool to see Philip Rosedale (after bidding welcome) sitting front row buried in the slides all alone... guess he was thinking and liked what he heard!
Well someone said afterwards "what kind of meds did Ray goof before this keynote" but I have to say he was reliable and his 10-20 yrs of predicting of the future sounded SO true!

Give Me a (Virtual) Place to Stand and I will Move the (Real) World (Dr. Robert Bloomfield / Beyers Sellers)

I happened to meet Robert a few years back at university in Denmark and he is such a warm, nice speaker. His way of expressing the value of connecting people in business and educational institutions in real life by using virtual worlds, cant be underestimated. Well after some 10-15 mins he became very clear minded and I was left pondering what a powerful tool to connect and communicate in a way that actually will help democracy and learning worldwide across traditional borders and economy, we have access to!

The Making of Second Life: The SLCC Afterword - Hamlet Au NOW featuring Cory Ondrejka

This was supposed to be Hamlet Au solo but luckily he was joined by Cory Ondrejka co-founder of Second Life.

I finally managed to shake hands with Cory and talk briefly with him. It was so cool to meet him finally. The session was mostly about "the making of SL" with lots information and funny points along the way.

What We Learned From Blogging About Second Life - Hamlet Au (nwn.blogs.com), ArminasX Saiman (secondeffects.com), Bettina Tizzy (npirl.blogspot.com), and Dusan Writer (dusanwriter.com)

The last session was a panel of four to say... die hard bloggers. It was very interesting and I hope to get the slides soon. What kind of struck me was the mixture of making controversial blog posts against more informal ones. Not surprisingly controversial ones make lots of traffic and pageviews and make the stats boom but now I see why the last few years of blogging about Second Life has been so critical! I often wonder why do all these blogs criticize so much. I mean... man we have a great tool in worlds like Second Life, so why keep on make critical blogposts about it? Leave the Second Life if you dont like it, please. I think it's important to express and make people outside virtual worlds aware of the forces in them, NOT scare them away in geeky endless negative threads. With this said, my point of view here DOES NOT refer to the above bloggers of whom I all like and see as some of the most informal and pro bloggers in the world of the metaverse!

Thanks Dusan, Hamlet, Bettina and Armi it was a great session :)

In about two hours Philip Rosedale and Mark Kingdom open todays tracks and there will be another day of interesting events.

Robert Bloomfield+Ray Kurzweil

2009-08-14T12:05:00.000-07:00

Robert up on edu panel grand ballroom in few

Ray Kurzweil did a cool opening keynote speech at 9:00am see slides here

Caught up with Hamlet Au and Pathfinder Linden

Looking back on Thursday

2009-08-14T06:44:00.000-07:00

On Thursday I went to a Mixed Reality Workshop and heard Joyce Bettencourts and Evonne Heyning speaking about how they set up mixed reality events like Obama in Ghana . They also spoke about their work with Global Kids and The MacArthur Foundation. Very cool stuff and I totally agree with their thoughts and ideas on broadcasting in virtual worlds, and the technical issues involved in real life simultaneous broadcasting.

As posted, the Linden Luau event was so cool, we really felt Hawaiian and the food was delicious! And FINALLY the Aussie arrived, Starr Sonic :P, great to meet her after lots of Skypes. So did Dusan Writer - great to meet you in person Dusan! Add lots of other nice people ending at a club that happened to have turned into the Dublin sim in SL. Apple and Ham Rambler and lots of SL artists playing live there streamed into SL (they were at the RL club to speak! :P)

In about 2 hours Ray Kurzweil will make the opening keynote speech and there will be lots of cool stuff all day (see programme on prev. post). The battery on my laptop sucks, so I hope I'll find power and tweeet all day.

Linden Lab Luau

2009-08-13T19:45:00.000-07:00

Oh wow a great reception to the Linden Lab Luau event. Hooked up with lots of people and Phillipe Rosedale arrived.

Programme of Convention

2009-08-13T10:23:00.000-07:00

The full schedule can be seen here

Landed rezzed in San Francisco

2009-08-13T08:24:00.000-07:00

Hello and welcome to our attempt to report from the SLCC convention. I finally rezzed here, getting up very early to shop and feel the sunny West Coast atmosphere. I went out before San Francisco was really awake and took a few snaps. On the roof next to Westin Hotel this picture caught my view :P I met a cool guy from Arizona.
Now in a hurry, as always, to complete work and try and find todays programme.
Starbucks coffeee here I come......