Looking back on Friday

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.