I think therefore I am real

Well, after a few weeks away from SL, I finally managed an hour In World last night, & had an interesting time meeting the "thinkers" to discuss matters of Life, The Universe, Everything...... well, actually to discuss what is "reality".

Before I get onto reality, I think it worth looking at the meeting itself. I actually gatecrashed the session (I IM'd an old friend who invited me over to the think tank!). When I arrived, there were about a dozen or so avatars deep in conversation. I actually found this to be quite hard going, as many people were trying to speak at the same time - which made unscrambling the discussion threads a bit of a challenge. Once the numbers dwindled to about half a dozen, we were able to have far more meaningful chats. Which makes me wonder just what is the optimum size for a group discussion in SL?

As for the discussion itself, we ranged from (not) hearing trees falling in a deserted forest, to the idea that we were, in fact, all sharing the same illusion. We even touched on one of my old favourites of What does your avatar do when you are off-line. All quite stimulating stuff.

Unfortunately I didn't get any photos, and the roll-call was too long to mention!

Perhaps I'll make it to their next thinker's meeting.... if it REALLY takes place that is!

SLeek is fixed! and improved

Well, following my last blog entry bemoaning the fact that SLeek had been broken by the recent changes to SecondLife, I am pleased to say that the latest version has fixed the problems and is better than ever!

You can find details of the update and download here

As I have said before, using SLeek is a bit like being blind - you can "hear" the people around you, and you are aware that they are there - but you have no idea what they look like, or where they are relative to yourself. You also don't know where you are or what your avatar is doing. In my case, when I used SLeek earlier this evening, apparently I'd been "Ruthed", so instead of being an "elder geek" - a man with long white hair and a beard, I looked like this....



(Team is the one with the short hair in the foreground... demonstrating that it is important to make sure your avatar is always wearing clean underwear!)

Thanks to my friend Aleister Kronos for taking the photo (though I think he was just enjoying letting me know how daft I looked!)

Back to SLeek though.....
The interface works... though I made the mistake of forgetting to select "use last location" rather than "use Home location" when I logged in. This meant I materialised in one of the welcome islands rather than in the nice safe place I left my avatar the last time I logged out! However, fortunately the teleport works, & I was able to spirit myself away to meet Aleister and his friends on the Comcast island.

I was also pleased to see that it is now possible to pull down the user profile of the people around you... so at least (when people had put their photo in their profiles) I was able to get a idea of who I was speaking to!

There is also a neat map viewer.... give it the name of a location and it will bring up the thumbnail map. Unfortunately there's a bug in the libsecondlife library, so it always reports that there are no people in every area!

Still, the interface works - chat works; IM works; teleporting works. It also has the option of connecting to the beta and teen grids (though I haven't tried these out).

I can certainly recommend SLeek to anyone who would like a chat/im interface into SL and doesn't quite have the graphics horsepower to run the full interface (in my case, my home PC will run SL with no problem, but my "company laptop" doesn't stand a chance with full-blown SL). Thanks again to to Delta for updating the code.

So much for SLeek! :-(

Well, you may have noticed that I've not been doing much blogging recently.... that's because I've been finding it hard to find time to visit Second Life (thanks to an assignment at work that takes me to France for 2-3 days a week) However - now that I'm getting my act together on the foreign travel front, I've started to make the most of free wi-fi in hotels.... so tonight I am availing myself of the wifi access provided by Campanile in their "bed in a box" outside Annecy, France (so much for the name-drops).

All WOULD be going well (apart from Liverpool having just lost the Champion's League final..... sorry Aleister!) but first the network link is a bit flakey (despite claiming to be anything from "weak" to "Strong";) THEN I find that Blogger has got too smart for its own good, and is now displaying everything in French; and finally, (as I was about to try to get a chat session going with Aleister Kronos) I Find that my SLeek stripped-down SL interface doesn't work.

A quick delve into the SLeek blog reveals that it has been broken for the last 6 weeks or so - thanks to an upgrade by Linden Labs... and the "fixed" version does not appear to be available as a compiled bit of code.

So - if anyone is considering trying SLeek right now, the bad news is that it doesn't work anymore :-(

New source code is availablle here but you'll have to compile it yourself! Perhaps if enough people ask, a new compiled version will appear!

Through the Keyhole

After a bit of a break, I finally found my way back into SL, and hence have something to blog about.

Today we go "Through the Keyhole" of one of SL's rising stars.......

But who can it be?

First, we find this person's back-yard is full of scripted sculptures and a strange temple... could this be a clue to their identity? Clearly we have someone who is interested in the art of SL, and, perhaps has a spiritual side.




The scripting theme continues as we get to the beach house, where we find volumes 1 and 2 of the scripter's handbook. Clearly this person likes to dabble, and is not afraid of reading the manual when they get stuck!



Next to the beach-house (which, by the way, has ambient bird sounds and the gentle crashing of waves) we find a meeting area with a camp fire and a couple of comfy chairs (though take care when you sit down.... the scripting has been put to use, and you find yourself doing a somersault as you sit!). So this person has a sense of humour, and likes cosy chats by the camp-fire.



So, we have a beach house, a temple, a meeting place and some scupltures.... just how far does this person's estate extend? A quick flight up to 200ft reveals a rather odd collection of buildings across the site....




For as well as the beach property and garden (which are all rather nice and tasteful) there is a second plot, behind the hedge, containing a rather odd collection of buildings and artefacts......

Let's zoom down and take a look....

We have the building with the inca pyramids on top.... which turns out to be a bit of an art gallery - so our celebrity has a taste for abstract paintings..... not surprising when you consder ther sculptures outside.




And then outside on the patio, we find a giant cofee cup - or is it a hot-tub? Clearly this person spends far too many late nights in SL, so needs vast quantities of Cafeine to stay awake!


Behind the building, there is a road to nowhere, and a giant bird, or thingamyjig, just staring out into space....



I wonder what it is looking for.... keeping watch for new islands appearing in SL perhaps?

And finally, to the last seating area by the sea..... our celebrity has spared no expense in buying some rugs and cushions to furnish yet another cozy meeting area.



So there we have it... let's recap the clues... this celebrity has an eye for art, yet is also geeky enough to write his own scripts. He has a beady eye on Second Life, to spot any newcommers in-world. He's always ready to chat to anyone that might have some interesting SL gossip, and has set up a number of areas around his plot to hold cozy chats by firelight. These chats are likely to go on through the night, requiring vast quantities of coffee to keep everyone awake.

And if you haven't guessed already, our guest celebrity visited "through the keyhole" tonight is the SL blogger and spotter of new islands, Aleister Kronos, famous for his SLambling blog of new islands in SL.

(Sorry, Al, but as you critique just about everyone else's builds in SL, I thought it fair game to blog your own back yard!)

Innovation in SL no 2 - Play2Train

This may not be massively innovative, but I think it is a good example of where Second Life provides a useful toolset for a real application.

Play2Train is a disaster simulation area, used by the Idaho Bioterrorism Awareness and Preparedness Program, (IBAPP) to rehearse and refine their disaster planning.

The idea is that an island (well, two islands, actually) has been set up in SL to re-create a town centre, complete with schools and other public buildings, and a virtual hospital. Disasters are created in the town, and the RL response teams have to play out their action plan within the SecondLife environment. Now simulating disasters is nothing new.... response teams or other groups have simulated disasters in classroom or model situations for quite a while. The benefit of using an environment like SL, however, is that they can play out the simulation in real-time; and have a realistic view of what is happening around them. Compare this with a simulation on a model - the participants can easily communicate with one another; they can see the whole picture of the "disaster" in the simulation. Within SL, however, participants can only "see" what they could see in RL - they cannot suddenly switch to a "helicopter view" of the whole situation (well, OK, they COULD fly, but that's cheating!). Resources will not suddenly materialise out of the blue; transportation pinch-points become apparent.

Full details of Play2train can be found at Play2Train


So, from a simple concept, SL is able to provide a rich simulation that would require a significant software effort to create from scratch. Disaster plans can be worked through and refined with a minimum of effort. Hence, my vote for Play2Train as an innovation that supports the real world.

More on Meetings

As mentinoned in my previous post, I've just been involved in a discussion group over at PA Consulting, so I seemed a good time to note down some more observations on meetings in SL.

I've always been a champion of virutal meetings, and consider the avatar a key component in the meeting's success..... something about making the session seem more "real".

Today, perhaps, I could have managed without my avatar... but then it was good for introductions; and it was also clear that there was someone else sat in the room (not necessarily taking part in any discussions) who was taking notes.... so the avatars were useful after all!



(Here we were in the meeting.... note the person sat at the other side of the room just listening!)

The chat log was essential.... I was sitting at home for the meeting, and true to form, the rest of the household came up with 101 things for me to do immediately - so I rather rudely left my avatar to hold the fort in the meeting, whilst I rushed round solving domestic problems! When I came back to the keyboard, I was quickly able to look back at what had been said in my absence, and catch up on the discussion thread. I have since been able to refer to the chat log to refresh my memory of what was said.

IM proved useful - re-establishing old relationships with participants, without distracting everyone else.

There was a slight problem with people "speaking" at once, but it was soon possible to unscramble the conversation threads from the log. At least we didn't have to deal with thick foreign or regional accents... all the discussion was in chat.

So, overall, the meeting was a success. I don't think it would have been quite so easy had we had voice to play with, but that's for another discussion!!!

I said MEDIATE not MEDITATE!

I took part in a group discussion earlier today about the use of virtual worlds for conflict reolution, negotiation and mediation.

As I have already noted several times, SL provides a medium which promotes communication. There seem to be many reasons for this..... not least the immersive environment; the use of avatars to give "presence"; and the annonymity afforded by the keyboard and screen interface. There are also key differences between a meeting in SL and a "Real" meeting - the lack of facial expression; the physical separation of the protagonists; the use of Chat and IM vs speech to name but a few.



Team sat in the discussion

Today's discussion got me thinking about how these characteristics could actually be an advantage in conflict resolution or negotiaion. Let's consider some of them.....

First of all, the participants in a virtual meeting are actually in different places. So even if they can't stand to be in the same room as one another, they can share the same virtual space. There is no threat of physical violence - after all, you hit my avatar & I don't feel a thing! No one has to lose face by condecending to meet the opposition; all 3D ground can be considered "neutral".

Next, particularly if CHAT is used, rather than a voice system, discourse takes place at a slow pace - with participants having the opportunity to review what they are about to say before hitting the "send" button. This gives the opportunity to put the brain into gear before setting the mouth in motion. Furthermore, it gives a full audit trail of what has been "said", providing an opportunity to review the discussion to date. There is no chance of missing something that was said (thanks to the audit trail) and in Chat, no-one has a strong regional or foreign accent to be misunderstood!

The limited gestures and lack of facial expression simplifies discussion - it means that the written text has to convey all the information, without the nuances of intonation or expression. It also means that there is less chance of a "knee jerk" response to something the other side has said..... it takes a conscious decision to START SHOUTING AT SOMEONE!!!!

With a 3D virtual environment, however, the protagonists have the chance to move around in physical space (relative to one another); so as a discussion progresses, the avatars can physically as well as emotionally get closer together or move further apart. The environment also gives the opportunity for all sorts of meeting venues - from sitting around a camp-fire to floating 300ft up in mid air!

So with all these points to consider, it would be interesting to see what a "professional medator" thinks of SL as a medium for negotiation. I think there could be some mileage in it.....what are YOUR views?