The second session of the Metanomics Conference was held in Second Life today (see our previous coverage here) and I had the pleasure of attending.
Guest speaker for today’s session was Sandra Kearney, IBM’s head of 3D Development. Kearney spoke from Sage Hall, Cornell in front of live audience, with a live stream being delivered to both Second Life and IBM’s Active Worlds chat platform.
One of the inherent problems with Second Life today is the limitations on attendance; an entire island or sim (Second Life for server) can only handle a maximum of approximately 78 users at one time. Conference attendees could participate at two locations in Second Life, but it was a first in, best dressed affair, so to attend I had to teleport in 45 minutes before the conference session started. 30 minutes prior to start and the main conference facility of Metaversed Island was at capacity, and unlike a TechCrunch 40 conference, you couldn’t sneak into the back of the room and stand against a wall; once full users simply couldn’t teleport into the facility.
The conference location itself mimicked a real life conference: chairs, lectern, stage and video screen.
The discussion itself was interesting to those following the virtual world space as it focused on the evolving role of virtual worlds and covered the move towards open source and interoperable virtual worlds. Metaplace, a TechCrunch 40 presenter has launched a product that is promising to provide interoperability, and Chinese Second Life clone HipiHo is currently attempting to form an industry working group to work on standards to allow this. Linden Lab has also been making noises in this direction for some time.
From a viewing perspective, it was not unlike a regular conference; the video quality on the live stream from Cornell was watchable and participating in the session live provides a superior experience to watching the recorded video of the event later.
The first question from the audience came from me and I asked Kearney what she thought of Paul Twomey’s suggestion that the future of global commerce is in virtual worlds. She didn’t agree, saying that ultimately nothing will replace face to face, however there was scope for virtual worlds to provide an alternative when face to face isn’t an option.
Overall I think the format works. IBM is already holding meetings and doing other staff/ communications activities in Second Life, and others are including Cisco and Amazon are also using Second Life for business meetings. It won’t replace a top end teleconference setup, but it works as a more affordable alternative.
A short video clip below show the layout of the conference. I couldn’t voice over it and run the audio from the presentation at the same time, so there was some one speaking during the clip, even if it’s not recorded.
So Duncan – inquiring minds want to know – were the cupcakes better at tc40 or in second life
To answer your question: nope!
It depends; will I be the keynote speaker?
If I were I can guarantee you at least 4,500 attendees, and that’s just my staff!
You guys dissed me at Techcrunch! However, I got Duncan and Allan’s 4-page letter of apology and I accept. Never let it be said that I hold a grudge. Just never let it happen again
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
so this is it, lol…
this is the future, duncan – the future of the internet;
as the head of icann said it’d be(virtual worlds)?
good god
Of course! Just take a look at this: http://sciencer...eos-in-science/
cross-world compatibility will be really important, for sure. it’s good to see them all working together on it. people knock the capability of SL to create real relationships, but since i’ve started in there a couple years ago, i’ve met dozens of people to network with in real life… from great musicians all the way on up to the VP of a major telecom. it won’t ever replace real life, no, but for those of us who can’t regularly be at a valley event, it’s really one of the next best things.
also, for what it’s worth, an island in SL can hold up to about 100 avatars, though, once you hit about 60 or 70, you won’t be able to walk anymore. plenty of venue owners get around this now by building on a sim border and playing the same audio stream on both sides. if you want to be VERY enterprising, you could build a venue where four sims meet, but it will be costly.
nice to see some SL news that isn’t about hookers and casinos. up next should be one about their upcoming identity verification tactics and what kind of impact they might have on other sites carrying adult content.
I’m surprised some naked avatar (with unnatural features) did not coming flying into the room.
Duncan, interesting comments because we at Praxis are about to launch our series of virtual roundtables (in SecondLife) next Tuesday (9/25), after test driving the idea with some private sessions. We won’t have the bells and whistles of IBM (which is doing an exceptional job “in-world’) but it should be useful. You are right that roundtables (or seminars) suffer from technical limitations–which are a huge problem with the scalability of SL, sufficiently difficult that pressure should be put on Linden Labs to improve matters, among them, encouraging business PC sellers (especially laptops) to include graphics cards with a minimum capacity for SL (or else a deal with Apple to sell MacBooks).
lovely gimmick, doing a conference in SL. But honestly – the future of the internet?? Horses for courses, as we say downunder. 3d is really good for gaming and even just running around exploring a virtual environment – and as a heavy virtual world user, I know how good it is in building and maintaining relationships…when there is actually something in the world to do together (standing around waving and dancing is not ’something to do’). But if I want to buy something online, do I really want the overhead of getting into a 3d world? Sure, I might want to see a 3d representation of the product, but I can get that today on the web without a virtual world. This is the point where some will say “that’s just what people said about the internet.” Sure – but that does not mean the same result will happen. It is about using the right tool for the right job, and the internet is a great tool. But when you start putting flat web pages of text in 3d worlds, you are just using a tool because you like playing with it, not because it is the best one for the job.
Caveat on previous statement: Once the user number limit is solved, doing conferences in virtual worlds is a good use of tools, because what you lose in the flat web – where you can have the video and interactive elements of a conference better presented than in a 3d world today – is the sense of attendee presence. You can have a list of other people in the web ‘room’, but it is powerful to see the other avatars.
It would just be refreshing if we didn’t drink so much hype juice that we discredit the whole virtual world movement by claiming it is good for things it just plain isn’t good for. That’s part of what causes the strong downward phase of the hype curve, and we know how unpleasant that is.
Sorry, SecondLife is such an overhyped thing that its amazing.
I would like to make a comment in response to enkaedu’s post about shopping. In the interest of full disclosure, my company has recently completed a project for London based etailer IWOOT, in Second Life. We sell real world products in SL for the SL currency, and they are shipped to the customer in RL. So I am completely biased in my post. My only comment, is that in a virtual environment, enkaedu would be able to go shopping with a friend, something the current 2D web doesn’t allow.
The second point is that in a virtual world, a retailer is able to staff the store with real people (as avatars) and offer customer service. We are all use to being able to ask the sales clerk a question, when we shop in brick and mortar stores, but don’t expect to have that level of service on the current internet. It just seems logical to me, that when the 3D internet becomes more main stream, people will expect to have the same level of service, and when they are choosing between buying a book at the Amazon store in the virtual world, or the ‘flat’ 2D website, many will choose to browse through the virtual stacks.
It is my belief, albeit a biased one, that people will one day prefer to go shopping with their sister who lives in Atlanta, while they live in DC, to purchase a Christmas present for their father, in a virtual world, where they can browse together. Shopping for a gift is fun, but doing it with one’s sister is always more fun…but then again…my sister is really fun (Not a bias, but a fact!).
That was a really thoughtful post, Ecocandle. Thanks!
I think the point about shopping together is a very good one, and I agree that in this case the 3d virtual world is a good use of the right tool.
On customer service, I notice that there is a proliferation of chat-based live service and support on flat web sites, and that this is a better tool for two reasons: 1) the agents can handle multiple people at the same time (as any skype or msn user knows); 2) As the consumer (or at least as a consumer who is used to chat) I prefer chat over a live call, because I can do other things while waiting for an answer…really, I think phone-based support is going to be – in the fullness of time – less attractive for people.
On buying a book, though, I really believe that 2d can be much, much better. Finding something by walking through stacks of books? Maybe – as you said – as a specific “fun” activity with friends, but in general I think this is a notion that assumes people won’t evolve from their current state of being forced to walk aisles in the real world. When people no longer have to walk all over a store to find what they want, imo, they stop doing that and use the most efficient method. I’m sure there are cases where shopping might be best in 3d, but especially for books, it is far, far more straight-forward to buy on a well-designed web site. (And this is coming from a guy who also is in the business of 3d virtual worlds, so my bias should be toward 3d…but there is a limit to what I believe our 3d tools are best used for, and I’m hoping that the hype curve crash in our case can be just a little less brutal if people make sensible claims about what humans will do with us.)
I’ve never played around with Second Life, but I’m pretty sure it’s got a place in things.
There’s enough people wanting it to succeed, so I’m sure it will.
The question is, in what form? Maybe things will change…
Duncan: Although I enjoy your insight and humor–such as with the Prius vid–please favor whoever is speaking next time.
I wouldnt listen
Once again a great event, sad I had to depart early. Cya at the next one, and Duncan thanks again for taking an interest in this.
Sean
One solution to the capacity problem is to stream a Second Life event in Ustream.
You don’t have the interactivity, and you’re basically limited to a single avatar’s point of view, but an unlimited number of people can watch, and if the “cameraavatar” operator is willing to pass along questions from the chat room, they can even interact a bit.
We’ve already seen a number of Second Life events show up on Ustream, and we welcome virtual broadcasting just as we do First Life broadcasting!
We have a little post about another initative trying to tackle the interoperability issue: Metaverse 1.0, a consortium including the likes of Siemens, Alcatel, Philips and IBM:
http://www.lost....com/blog/?p=43
Just a little mention – LL is very aware of this limitation of the number of people in one region and is actively working to increase it.
It’s all a factor of the class of CPU the simulator is running on – there are several classes of CPU’s out there, the more recent ones obviously having more capacity to hold more people – as well as how many prims the region is supporting. Doing havok collision against 20k objects (primitives- think of small discrete ‘parts’ an object might be made up against) is much more time consuming that doing it against 5k objects – this is more a factor of how the region is built than it is anything else, and is somewhat beyond LL’s ability to control currently. It’s a factor of the region owner.
There are many many variables in simulator performance, but those that are with in the LL control LL is doing it’s bit to improve – the impending Havok 4 upgrade from Havok 1 should help there (Havok 4 being faster) as well as the usage of the MONO scripting system to replace the current LSL script parsing implementation, which was never designed to do the quantity of script parsing it is being asked to do. Current tests show that Mono runs between 300 and 500 times faster than the current LSL script parser, so that’s a bit of a win and should increase the numbers of avatars able to be on a region without it starting to grind, although how many remains to be seen, depending on tests.
The point is that you are quite correct, SL can’t really make grandiose statements about virtual conferences without expanding out the ability of regions to hold more people without grinding. LL knows this and is implementing initiatives to aid this.
No – an even dumber idea than Second Life in and of itself.
Sounds like it was a worthwhile conference. I’ve also had some experience with conferences in Second Life — I gave a keynote talk at CMP’s Life 2.0 conference earlier this week. I don’t think the big questions anymore are whether anyone will come to virtual conferences, or whether anyone will listen, or how well the format works. Linden Lab has proved the model; Second Life is a workable and worthwhile venue for group meetings, especially if the topic is the Metaverse itself. It’s now a question of working out the technical bugs in the process, such as the limitations on the number of attendees who can fit into a sim — and the annoying fact that your avatar falls asleep if you don’t nudge it every few minutes! I blogged a bit about my narcoleptic avatar at http://www.xcon...in-second-life/)
brilliant
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com/
The coming gaff!
There’s a lot of behavior going on in Second Life (prostitution, sexually explicit acts, pornography, non-professional attire) that is going to embarrass IBM and other major corporations as well as people who attend these conferences.
These people need to get “A LIFE” to begin with. Buy Vista be happy.
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
I like the Ustream conferences I’ve watched MUCH better than SL. SL was “novel”, but not practical. A microbroadcasting site like Ustream has a much better chance of delivering conferences to mainstream.
I saw Intel’s Founder Gordon Moore this past week on Ustream and it was very cool.
If a conference was held at a garbage dump would anyone go? Lots of interesting stuff there too…
Second Life: Land of the WEAK home of the BROKEN
First of all, I have been there, have done that. Had clubs, owned land, made friends, money, and fell in love. Second life on the surface, especially for the newbie and Entrepreneur/artist is a fun and cool place to make some friends, and make some money. It is looked at as a supercharged chat room, a video game. But the nature of its name is where the insidiousness is. As much of a second life (SL) as it might be, in order to operate you still have to use your Real Life (RL) abilities. You do not follow a different thought and emotional pattern when in SL. You can only use what you know in RL. But kidding yourself is one of the appeals of SL. You eventually get lost in it.
At first it is new and exciting. Like a new video game. Learning the functions that move your avatar around, visiting places and socializing with the natives. You are perfect, and you can fly. No sickness, no need for money (well not as much) and people don’t have bad breath and, as a “normal”, “intelligent” person, it is an interesting place to explore and learn. But it eventually becomes one of three things. 1. Boring, like a video game you have played over and over. 2. An environment to explore your creative ability to design and sell things. Or, 3 it consumes your psyche.
The first two are what they are; the third is the meat and potatoes of SL. This is the one that is more consistent. Do you really think the folks at Linden Labs are spending their free time on SL.? No, they are spending the money they are making in RL (SL is a business so it is RL for them) on RL things.
There comes a saturation point where you walk away or get sucked in. I will say this for the last time and it does not apply to you newbie’s, or the smart ones that are making money off the lonely. It is a place to hide from reality. It is a place where weak, lost souls go to escape from the depth and breadth of life. I will allow some latitude for you shut-ins. Some people have nothing else but the four walls of the room they are in. SL can provide a form of “human” entertainment that they otherwise would not be able to get. But, that just causes the shut-in to let go of their emotional self being even more. This is a hard pill to swallow, no one wants to take a good look at them selves and most do not. But the covert nature of SL allows you to cut loose. Sort of the absolute power corrupts absolutely theory. People that stay too long get lost in it. And yes, justifying all the way, that it is just a game. For the predator, and a predator is weak by nature, it is a place to be free of thought and persecution. To dominate the weak that makes SL their home. And, it is a place for the weak to not be judged, a place that they can feel and accept that who they are is ok, even if it is with the few. Some people can handle the trials and tribulations of life, some can’t and they end up in SL. You start to see a symbiotic circle of relationships in SL. For the people designing objects to sell, they may not interact totally and directly with the person/s and, their sales may come from across the board. The newbie that is playing the “game” to the obsessed, but, the obsessed is a long term customer. Theses business individuals usually get in, add new product, convert their lindens to dollars or pounds and get out.
The tragedy is the weak and broken. Don’t roll your eyes, In the Real World we are always conned with flashy marketing to get us to buy something or believe something in order to be more acceptable. Magic creams or potions. Don’t kid yourself; Second Life is about making money. Making money off of what? Our loneliness and our lack of self worth in the real world. HELLO, McFly!! It is called Second Life.
It might be simple, you build a club, people come and visit or create a group, and you solicit for members. People get together and boom, you feel wanted and needed. Building your dream home in the clouds and littering your lawn with cool things like jets and swimming pools. That can make you popular. Walking in a park with your perfect Avatar girlfriend/boyfriend, no RL issues so it is a perfect relationship. That leads to good puppet sex. Mmmm nice. All this is accomplished by tugging on your weakness, your emotional frailty. Either you are not getting it in RL or are too afraid to face the truth of how to exist in RL. You can’t handle the truth and if you are a long term SL puppet, you just can’t handle life, Real Life. Don’t get me wrong, we all like to escape from time to time.
In some places it is much darker, like I said before, predators hunting the weak. The Gorean Master and the slaves that he takes control of. This one is unusual, in that the Master has total control over the slave. The “slave” giving not only total control of their Avatar, and who can communicate to them, but also, control as to when they will or will not talk to what they can wear. Believe me this does carry over to real life. Imagine the fun of kneeling next to your Avatar Master and saying nothing. Second life being nothing more then a place to be told what to do, serving fake food and ale. You want to call it guided, or taught? Hey, what ever floats your boat? I know just a video game, right? This setup just allows the predator to get in that persons head and develop a false sense of security. Tell that to your husband, wife, girlfriend, or boyfriend. Why you are glued to the PC instead of enjoying life, REAL LIFE. And, couples also get on there too, as couples, this is a nutty one. Worked hard all week, beautiful weekend, and, you both are on a computer, every free moment, building and designing that special home, having that child you never could have. (Yes, people do play the part of the child.) I find it unhealthy when instead of developing a better real life and real relationship in RL. You take that precious time and waste it. Yes, ok… You are free to do what you want. But there are plenty of damaged people on SL. And your fantasy could be causing them to loose sense of reality, along with your lost sense of reality. Their marriages, get funky, destroyed, their children get neglected. And you get a ridiculous God complex that makes you anti social in the Real World, which just plummets yourself deeper in to SL. Cha Ching! Sweet business you got Linden People.
You have the 50+ couple that spends every “free” moment in SL being the King and Queen. Oh, and so good to their obedient subjects. At their beckons call, at their total command. Or, the sexual perverts. Ok, my opinion….. That can now live out the fantasy of doing it with a farm animal. Or, kneeling down and being the public toilet. Sex is rampant in SL. The anonymous nature of your avatar is something too. You really do not know if the man is a woman or the woman is a man, plenty of men that are living out their desire to be a Transsexual, or a woman. Plenty of women that want to love another woman, so she hides in the body of a man. I guess what you don’t know won’t hurt you. Hey, no one is getting hurt, no aids. Nicey nice. The soul is willing but the flesh is weak. So, the wall that SL provides, allows for an easier transition to experiment. Sad part is as your getting deeper and deeper; you are getting more lost in fantasy then reality and they start to blend. Actually, you probably were lost between the two to begin with. Now you go out into the real world. Take a break; meet one of your SL friends. Break the rule, cross that line; remember SL and RL are supposed to be two different places. People meet up, some get married, the rare few. But mostly it is a letdown, disappointment, and harm to others. It is a dirty little secret. Who wants to tell people that you got into that trouble because you decided to meet your “make believe” friend?
Lips stay sealed, people get hurt. And in the end, the only place they feel right, the only place that people understand is right back on Second Life. CHA CHING!