This is an interview we did with Philip Rosedale on his relationship with Mitch Kapor when founding Linden Lab. I added in screenshots and a couple of quick machinima clips to help illustrate Philip’s story a little more. This was my first experience working with Machinima… it’s going to take a lot of practice if I want to get good 
Mitch Kapor mentored and backed Philip when Linden Lab was first started, and it really opened doors for opportunity for Philip and his company. As a result, we showed this video along with the new education video at the Opening Doors fundraiser event at the Four Seasons Silicon Valley on May 24th.
INVESTING IN THE NEXT GENERATION OF TALENT:
A conversation with Mitch Kapor
Join Linden Lab board chair and early investor Mitch Kapor in Second Life for a conversation about investing in the next generation of talent on Thursday, May 24th at 8pm PST!
The country leaves behind millions of students of color, especially in science and technology. Join us to learn more about Mitch Kapor’s approach to removing barriers in education through Level Playing Field Institute, a San Francisco-based non-profit organization.
The program will include:
- Streaming video of Philip Rosedale speaking about Second Life and Level Playing Field Institute
- Streaming video about the students of Level Playing Field Institute’s education programs
- An in-world Q&A with Mitch Kapor on his approach to philanthropy
Date & Time:
Thursday, May 24th at 8pm PST
Location:
Sheep Island Auditorium
http://slurl.com/secondlife/sheep%20island/126/124/113/
Crayon Theater
http://slurl.com/secondlife/crayon/33/101/27/
This event follows a real life fundraising event in Palo Alto, California, for Level Playing Field Institute’s education programs. Learn more about them at: http://www.lpfi.org/education
As a professional Second Life Guy, I frequently find myself trying to explain Second Life to others…
- It’s like a video game, but it’s not really a game; you can’t lose
- It’s not about winning… it’s just about… exploring?
- It’s a virtual reality, but you can also create some of it yourself
- It’s a world where you can own “land”… oh and there’s an economy too!
Suffice it to say it can be a difficult thing to describe in full. I suppose it’s just one of those “you had to be there” kind of things.
Regardless, I feel that this video by Douglas Gayeton does a good job at introducing the concept of Second Life to anyone who has not yet had the chance (or the time) to delve in to such a rich virtual world. He describes the somewhat transformative process of leaving his real life behind for the temptations of his Second Life. Check it out!
Smashcast went on a field trip Saturday to visit the Exploratorium, the museum of science, art, and human perception.
The trip was an introductory visit for the Ice Stories project that Smashcast will be doing with the Exploratoratorium this fall. The Ice Stories project is a component of a larger project the Exploratorium is doing as part of the 2007-2008 International Polar Year.
The day started out with a live webcast about Mars space rovers. The students had an opportunity to witness, first-hand, how a webcast is coordinated and produced for distribution on the Internet. The process of producing a live webcast was a nice contrast to their podcasting process, which typically consists of recording vocals and then editing everything together before broadcasting.
At the end of the webcast, the Smashcasters had an opportunity to meet with the Exploratorium’s senior scientist, Paul Doherty, and do what Smashcasters do best; ask questions. They also had the rare opportunity to touch an authentic Martian rock sample!
Continue reading ‘Exploring Science Outside of the Classroom’
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about Second Life, its present clunkiness and limitations, and if technology can evolve to overcome them. I don’t have the answer to that, but it remains a question as people try to strategize about opportunities in this growing and constantly changing virtual world. Today I was fortunate enough to find my way to a live concert in-world by Brazilian musician Julian Vesta (Ju Polimeno in RL) at Bliss Garden Center and Nature Area. As I sat back and enjoyed the beautiful sounds of his voice and acoustic guitar, both Second Life’s shortcomings and its human-driven character crystallized for me.
Having seen Gilberto Gil play an incredible live acoustic show in RL just last weekend, the unique Brazilian spirit and joy for music still lingered with me. This spirit moves people to almost involuntarily smile, clap, jump to their feet to dance, and sing along to songs they don’t know in a language they don’t know how to speak, intoxicated by the Brazilian passion for music. Like a previous concert I went to in SL, I felt the humanism there more than any other experience in SL yet. The Brazilian spirit came rushing back as Julian strummed bossa nova and samba rhythms, and sang in the beautiful Portuguese language. But something was missing.
Saturday represented a turning point for our young science and tech enthusiasts.
I walked in to class Saturday morning, expecting to find a dark and empty room devoid of laptops, microphones, and sleepy-eyed high school students. To my surprise, I was welcomed by 3 bright-eyed Smashcasters, feverishly directing my attention to a list of podcast topics they had written on the dry erase board. We typically start our sessions at 10am and it was still only 9:45.
I had sent out an email earlier in the week asking everyone to discuss potential podcast topics before our work session. I was hoping that we could spend more time producing and less time brainstorming. Apparently my email had a greater effect than I had planned.
In an attempt to get the creative juices flowing, I had everyone listen to an example of a student-produced podcast from youthradio.org. Our students responded that the youth radio podcast on natural hair sounded over-scripted and insincere. They said that student podcasts ought to reflect a more youthful perspective and not sound as much like NPR.
After a brief discussion, two groups of podcasters decided to produce their broadcasts on the California High School Exit Exams and the inevitability of our next big Earthquake.
After dancing, live music, and scripting classes, I figured it would be interesting to find something in Second Life that would be a little more casual and informal. I decided I’d attend a discussion at Tohoku titled, Fireside Chats for Creativity.
I teleported to the quaint and cozy little living room of the Bakery of the Poets.
A diverse group of avatars (including one dragon) encircled a beautiful fire pit and were having a conversation about the relationship between isolation and creativity. I had created a video about this exact same idea a few years ago so I jumped in the conversation immediately to share my opinions on the idea.
After just 2 minutes of conversation I revealed to everyone that I was so enthusiastic about this topic, because I had actually made a video about it. It was as if a record had suddenly screeched to a halt. Suddenly I had everyone’s attention. They were all intrigued to hear I had creative work that explicitly addressed this topic. Phorkyard Acropolis interjected immediately asking, “what, Blanche?” AldoManutio Abruzzo followed up on Phorkyard’s question urging me to continue explaining. Then, Phorkyard asked the inevitable question, “is it on the web so that we can see it?”
Oops! Now this was a dilemma… I was really excited to share my video with the others, but had forgotten that my video featured “me” in real life, and not Blanche Babii, my beautiful blonde avatar.
I was too excited about sharing my video to worry about my real life identity. I went ahead and pasted the YouTube link and waited for inquisitive comments on my real life identity…
Wow. No, you’re eyes are not deceiving you. The snapshot above is in fact of Bloods and Crips outfits for sale in an ‘urban’ store that feature white avatars as models. And yes, their clothes and tattoos are littered with heavy artillery and say, ‘O.G.,’ ‘Blood,’ ‘Crip,’ and ‘187‘ superfluously all over them. In exploring Second Life for clothing, hair, and skin for an obese black male avatar, I’ve seen a lot and learned a lot. I won’t get into the issues around body shape right now because that’s a whole other story, but I will get into this.
I’m fully aware of and comfortable with the fact that you don’t have to be black to be into hip hop and dress accordingly. While hip hop originated as an African American form of expression, it has now become popular in the mainstream and spread across ethnic and socio-economic lines. But this takes it a step further, taking outfits associated with two of the most notorious and violent black gangs in the U.S. and in essence, marketing them as white for a profit. In my SL wanderings, I’ve seen some things that have rubbed my raciality (yes, I make up words when the mood is right) the wrong way, but I wasn’t ready for this one.
I just came across this great Simpsons clip on YouTube about the power of video games on young minds.
Bart is having trouble in school, so an educational therapist comes to assess him. When Bart refuses to cooperate, she offers him the option to play Death Kill City II, a Grand Theft Auto spin-off. Bart happily accepts and within minutes he is fully engaged in a game where the goal is to destroy the entire city… serious problem.
At the Serious Games Summit, I attended sessions on the cognitive implications of game design and the ways that commercial games leverage cognitive theories to make video games more engaging. Especially games like Grand Theft Auto that appeal to adolescents like Bart Simpson.
 |
Who’s identity are you marketing to, was the question posed at Tony Walsh’s panel (I’m a fan!), avatar or the human behind the avatar? I thought I was going to hear about word-of-mouth strategies where the mouth was a digital approximation, the viral message conveyor, an avatar. However, here’s what I did learn:Linda Zimmer (who founded the Business Communicators of Second Life group) dropped, in passing, that Amazon would kill for the 30K or so sustained (rather than peak) concurrent users that inhabit Second Life at any point. (UPDATE: Linda clarifies in the comments) I couldn’t believe it - really? A 2D web behemoth doesn’t have a sustained 30K concurrent usage? |
I went up to her after the panel to clarify - and she confirmed, that Amazon doesn’t have 30K users logged on at any time (on a sustained basis). Of course there’s ways to break this down, for example by wondering about users of the service who are not logged in, etc. But regardless, that’s an eye-popping comparison, and even more compelling when you realize that Second Life’s concurrent usage stats have been increasing recently at a rate of about 20% per month over the last several months (mid-dec=20K; right now/mid-march=35K).
From Paul Hemp a surprisingly unstuffy senior editor at Harvard Business Review (yes, I’m revealing my own stereotypes here) - a clear example of how marketing to avatars is different from marketing to their human inspirers. If you’ve got a daring line of clothing you might get avatars to try them out even when their humans wouldn’t. As a retailer you would need to target a different demographic in Second Life than you would in Real Life, and engage your potential avatar purchasers with different branding (more adventure than sex, for eg). The humans behind the avatars may, after their experience in-world, actually go off to a shop in Real Life and purchase that high-slit dress that they may not have otherwise. Maybe it’s a prosaic idea, but this non-shopper got slightly commercially engaged with the possibilities …
Btw, that’s Reverend Tuna Oddfellow in the photograph above. When Tuna spoke about how he/the human Mathew and his avatar, Tuna, discussed approaches to his Second Life business (managing weddings) he gave real insight into the split personalities that develop from long-time SL use. I understand it - Brainy feels quite different from myself.