Tag: Second Life

Stephanie's October Conference Tour: <head> [en]

[fr] A la conférence en ligne , je parlerai de mon expérience d'indépendante et d'organisatrice d'événements. Lessons apprises. Je vous encourage vivement à vous inscrire à cette conférence, et à la suivre depuis le hub de Liip à Fribourg si vous en avez l'occasion.

After I gave my Going Solo speech at LIFT earlier this year, I was approached by Aral Balkan, who asked me if I would be willing to speak at the online conference he was organising, then named Singularity. I immediately accepted.

<head> web conference: October 24-26, 2008

<Head>, 24-26 October, everywhere

Since then, the conference was renamed <head> (following some letter from some lawyers), and the speaker roster has filled up nicely.

<head> is an online conference. That means you can attend from anywhere in the world, watch the talks through your web browser and interact with the speakers and other participants. There are offline “hubs” in various cities around the world (including Second Life) — if you live in Switzerland, I recommend you head over the Fribourg where Liip are hosting a hub.

Eight months after my Going Solo speech at LIFT, I’m going to take the opportunity to look back at what I’ve learned. Both Going Solo and SoloCamp are great concepts and were much appreciated by those who attended them. However, they both left a dent (to be polite) in my already suffering bank account, and I’m aware I made a series of mistakes I was actually warned against when I announced my project. On being human and not listening to other people’s advice…

This talk will by my story as a freelancer and an event organiser. Success, failure, and heading forward — sharing my experience, whilst knowing that the best experience is the one you earn directly.

Wherever you are, as long as you have an internet connection, you can take part in <head>. No travel or accommodation expenses, and a great conference! Plus, as it’s an online conference, the price is very reasonable. Head (!) over to the conference site to register.

Julian Bleecker: 1st Life, 2nd Life [en]

How to live in a pervasively networked world. What happens when 1st life meets second life?

What is 1st/2nd life? They’re different, but in what way?

1st: material contingencies. Digital data owes its life to material stuff. So our 2nd life has a material basis, and we should be mindful of it.
This material basis is a debt (some sort of HR, material, expended energy debt too).

Julian Bleecker

Online exists thanks to offline. An avatar consumes 1,752kWh per year. That is a bit less energy than a real person (2,436kWh) (cf. Nicolas Carr’s Blog, 05.12.06, see blog)

Also a debt to the sedentary body sitting in front of our computer screen. steph-note: yes, my upcoming post “On the Road to Being a Healthier Geek”…

There are critical externalities to our SL existence. 1st life doesn’t reboot when the system crashes.

How could we be reminded of these externalities in our 2nd Life? Bridge FL to SL, and get the best of both? Can we make SL worlds that take those material contingencies seriously? Where do we start? Playful reminders. Motion, time distance.

  • Wii: motion.
  • Animal Crossing: time.
  • Teku Teku Angel: distance.

How do you account for your second life?

Julian’s site.

Update 11.02.2007: Check out Julian’s post about this topic.

Le Matin Dimanche parle de Second Life [fr]

[en] Article in local newspaper about Second Life. Some links and pointers.

Eh oui! Ce matin, j’ai failli oublier de suivre mon propre conseil à mon entourage: acheter Le Matin Dimanche. On y trouve un article présentant brièvement Second Life, accompagné de deux interviews: Philippe Mottaz (Via Digitalis) et moi-même.

Lectures sur le même sujet:

Dommage quand même, pour un article parlant de quelque chose qui se passe en ligne, qu’il n’y ait pas un seul lien sur la page ni sur la version online! Du coup, j’ai encore plus de pauvres visiteurs qui cherchent “second life” dans Google…

Si c’est la problématique ados et internet qui vous interpelle, quelques infos sur mon site pro.

Ah oui — je sais pas vous, mais en tous cas moi je vous prédis une déferlante médiatique au sujet de Second Life, genre les blogs il y a deux ans…

Harvard Law in Second Life [en]

[fr] Un cours de la prestigieuse Harvard Law School est en train d'avoir lieu en partie à l'intérieur de Second Life. Quand je parle de Second Life comme outil/média éducatif, c'est à des choses comme ça que je pensais. Je suis allé y faire un tour, j'ai parlé avec une des instigatrices du projet, et je compte bien essayer de suivre en tous cas une partie de ce cours, qui a lieu les lundis et mardis.

By chance, I picked up a link to today’s RocketBoom in the #wordpress IRC channel (thanks, twidget). I don’t often watch RocketBoom, but the new presentator (en?) had a nice British accent, so I watched the whole thing.

A Harvard Law course in Second Life caught my attention. I watched the trailer, and decided to hop in and see for myself. I’ve been telling people around me that Second Life provides opportunities for education that we can barely yet imagine. I’m glad to see that it’s starting to happen. Watch the trailer for yourself [10.5Mb].

Inside the Second Life lecture hall (a replica of the real Harvard one, from what I understood) I chatted a while with Rebecca (one of the instigators!) and a student, LZ.

I learnt that the class was open to “public” (“at large”, they call it), and I’m very tempted to participate. I missed the first classes though, yesterday and today, but the wiki contains a lot of information and is supposed to give links to the lecture videos (haven’t found those, I’d be glad if somebody can point me to them). A lot of reading material is online. They also have a 20-minute introduction to Second Life but Flock can’t find the missing plugins I need to view it. Damn!

So, anyway, had to let you know about this. I think it’s exciting!

Second Life: c'est quoi? [fr]

[en] A brief explanation of what Second Life is. It's a graphical world you access to by signing up on the website and downloading a programme to your computer. In that world, you are represented by an "avatar" (you can see mine from the back at the bottom of the picture, in the middle).

You can interact with other people there by chatting, and you can also interact with objects in the world, or even create things. Everything you see in the photograph was created by people like me (only they have a bit more experience, obviously!)

There is money in Second Life you can use to buy and sell things. If you make things people want, like clothes, you can actually make money inside Second Life and convert it into real (First Life) currency. Second Life is free to use, though you'll need a paying account if you want to do fancy things like own land.

The difference between Second Life and online multiplayer games is that there is no goal or meaning to it other than what we put into it. You can go into Second Life because you like chatting in a graphical environment, or because you enjoy being a digital hairdresser/stylist/architect/whatever. You can organise conferences or even musical events. Basically, anything is possible.

03.12.2006: Lecteurs du Matin Dimanche, par ici!

Second Life est un monde virtuel. On y accède en ouvrant un compte (comme pour la plupart des services en ligne) et en installant un programme sur son ordinateur. Un monde virtuel, ça peut ressembler à ça:

Very confusing

Là, vous me voyez en bas au milieu de l’image, de dos. Il y a deux ou trois autres personnages dans l’image, et au fond, une série de magasins. On est représenté dans le monde virtuel par son avatar — un personnage du monde virtuel que l’on peut contrôler et façonner à sa guise.

A l’intérieur de Second Life, on peut se déplacer, chatter avec les gens que l’on rencontre, agir sur les objets du monde que l’on rencontre, et même fabriquer toutes sortes de choses. Tout ce que vous voyez dans la photo du haut a été construit par les “résidents” de Second Life (des gens comme moi, mais qui maîtrisent un peu mieux). Quand on se déplace, le champ visuel (la “caméra”) se déplace aussi automatiquement.

Si on veut, Second Life est comme un grand chatroom, mais avec un environnement graphique. Du coup, on ne va pas se contenter d’intéragir avec les personnes présentes, mais aussi avec le monde lui-même.

L’interface graphique fait penser aux jeux de rôle en réseau multi-utilisateurs comme World of Warcraft. La grande différence entre un tel jeu et Second Life est que dans Second Life, il n’y a pas de “but du jeu”: comme dans la vie réelle (First Life), c’est nous qui produisons les buts et le sens.

Second Life est gratuit. Si on veut posséder du terrain, par contre, il faut un compte payant. A l’intérieur de Second Life, il y a de l’argent. On en reçoit un peu au départ, et on peut l’utiliser pour acheter des choses. Comme dans Second Life n’importe qui peut créer des objets, on peut aussi s’improviser artisan ou artiste digital et vendre ses productions à d’autres. On peut même y gagner sa vie — en fait, toute une économie parallèle est en marche dans ce monde, et comme il y a un taux de change entre la monnaie “virtuelle” de Second Life et de vrais dollars, elle peut avoir une incidence sur la nôtre.