Second Life
I recently read an article here about a conference that was held in Second Life that really sparked my interest. To recap the article, they had someone speaking at Cornell and had the video fed into Second Life where remote visitors could come and participate in the conference and the discussion. As questions were asked in SL the speaker was able to answer them in the conference.
The first thing that came to my mind was the Church IT Round Table. The big complaint I hear is that with the growing amount of people who attend, we’re headed more toward topic focused rooms, which could end up hurting the synergy that is created by having experts and “newbs” on subjects in one room.
Using Second Life we could do something pretty Innovative. Here are some potential sweet points about doing the CITRT or ANY conference in Second Life as well as Real Life
- Larger groups are able to participate and do so without the added travel costs
- Still able to interact via voice and text chatting
- A fun way for techy guys to show off their nerdiness. And by nerdiness I mean Avatars (”Ooh look! He has wings!!! SWEET!”)
- If they can do one person doing video in a room, why couldn’t we do multiple people? Then we add video chat! (I’m new at this whole Second Life thing, so this may or may not be feasible)
- Record said video(s) so that others can visit later and watch them in SL
- Anyone can build, anyone can create content. Very cool.
I like this idea. A few years ago a friend of mine got me hooked on World of Warcraft. People LOVE virtual worlds. They will spend hours and HOURS in a virtual world… why? It’s an escape, you can relax, you have anonymity… pick your reason. People like virtual worlds.
Lifechurch.tv has their entire building constructed in Second Life. You can go there Sunday Morning and watch their service. I prefer real people to virtual any day, but it’s a great way to meet new people who probably wouldn’t come to a real church. I’m impressed by that, and would like to check it out this weekend.
If you decide to give Second Life a try, add me as a friend and we can learn about this stuff together.
My name is Daureke Schmooz.
What do you think would be cool about Second Life conferences? What would suck?
