The World According to Jennyfur

• Sat 10:00 AM in Seminar A—Virtual Worlds 101: Introduction to the Metaverse (281)

  The Street in Snow Crash has inspired creation of online spaces where you can interact with others in a virtual reality. From games to virtual platforms, learn about these spaces and join us in interacting with one of them live.

• Sat 11:00 AM in Seminar A—Evolution of Virtual Worlds (277)

  From forums to chat rooms to 3D worlds, the methods of interacting online have grown. What are the roots, where are we going, and when will we see the Metaverse?

• Sat 12:00 PM in Seminar A—Content Creation in Virtual Worlds (293)

  Come find out how developers create the content of virtual worlds, from the clothing to the buildings to the interactive environment. What’s more difficult, recreating existing real-world objects or fantastic items that have never been seen before?

• Sat 1:00 PM in Seminar A—Virtual Reality, Real Problems (288)

  Through security breaches, flame fests, and other problems, when reality intrudes on our virtual worlds, how does it impact us?

• Sat 2:00 PM in Seminar A—All that glitters… Economies of virtual worlds (275)

  From MUDs to MMOs, money makes the world go round. Today we are seeing virtual gold sold on eBay and millions of dollars paid for forms of currency that are little more than 1s and 0s on a protected server. Panelists will discuss what effects online games have had on the world economy, from innovative to exploitative.

• Sat 3:00 PM in Seminar A—Educational Institutions In Virtual Worlds (292)

• Sat 4:00 PM in Seminar A—Virtual Worlds As A Therapeutic Tool (290)

• Sat 5:00 PM in Seminar A—Office Meltdown: Real Business In A Virtual World (294)

  With the growth of Internet technologies and speed, more and more business is being done online. Some businesses are completely online, and others have taken it a step further by selling virtual goods to a virtual consumer. What are the challenges when business is no longer constrained by four walls?

• Sat 6:00 PM in Seminar A—Governing the Metaverse (284)

  As virtual worlds are created more and more by their residents, who should control them? Are we better off with autocratic organizations controlling the complete ecosystem or is it time for democracy online?

• Sat 7:00 PM in Seminar A—Mixed Realities — Virtual and Real Worlds Collide (289)

  This is truly the meta panel. Join us in a mixed reality panel (both in the real world and in Second Life) as we discuss the issues with mixing the two. Some want complete anonymity and others desire a complete blending of the two. How do we cope with this and other issues?

• Sat 8:00 PM in Seminar A—Computer Gaming As A Social Tool (273)

  Games like EVE Online, Second Life, and World of Warcraft have become less of a way to vicariously live out your hack and slash fantasies and have become avenues for social commentary and gathering of like-minded people. People have been known to login just so they can chat with their friends and guildmembers, or push their own social agendas rather than level up and mine for fish. On many platforms, this is seen as an unexpected side effect of MMORPGs. Panelists will talk about this growing trend and how online platforms are dealing with the issue.

• Sat 10:00 PM in Seminar A—Gender & Sexuality Issues In Virtual Reality (291)

  Come explore the potentials for personal exploration and discuss the potential positives and negatives of being able to create yourself as any gender in an anonymous 3D interactive environment.

  ————————————————————————————-

  The virtual panel space will be at the Sci Fi Geeks Theater and Museum and the PostHuman Theater in Chaos.

I seem to be one of the only content creators not in a hysteria about the copybot controversy.

Copying and reverse engineering are an inevitablity in Second Life. The means were always there. Would you rather them not be made public? Now people know about the copybot and and it is a TOS violation to use them. But you know what, Textures can be stolen without a copybot or glintercept. As long as screenshots can be obtained and in-world snapshots taken anything can be ripped off. Any object can be reverse engineered to exact proportions through very simple means without fancy buzz words like copybot or glintercept. Of course, this sucks and is unfair, but what can you do about it?

Thats the tricky question isn’t it – what can you do about it? If you really feel that strongly about your merchandise or creations that you sell for less than or equal to a couple of bucks per item, then register a copyright and trademark, get a good attorney and DMCA people who rip you off. If you can’t be bothered to protect your creations when you own the full IP rights to them then why should Linden Lab? Its a big world and growing exponentially day by day. The total population is nearing 1.5 million. At this rate, the population will probably be at 2 million by new years.

I had an interesting conversation with someone from Linden Lab awhile back about DMCA claims and copyright infringement issues. While there is much discussion on the forums and in blogs and numerous public claims of people ripping off other peoples work the amount of actual DMCA /copyright infringement claims Linden Lab receives from its residents is very very low. So, what does this tell you? These major issues that people get all up in arms about often lack in any actual actions from the injured parties. How many times have we seen posts on the forums “So and So ripped off this designers work and I demand compensation”? The majority of those claims never get brought to LL’s attention in any formal means. So really if they are that important, why is no one doing anything about them?

Do I care if I get ripped off by a copybot or glintercept? Well, to be honest it would depend on the situation. Its the chance any artist takes when they release their creations publically. If I felt that I was majorly ripped off rest assured we have one of the best IT lawyers in the country so if it comes down to that I am not concerned in the least bit. Would I ever rip someone off by a copybot or glintercept? Nope because I know that it is wrong.

Thats my two cents and now I shall return to ignoring the copybot saga as I have done for the past two days.

The Second Life Community Convention now has its own blog with multiple contributors. The organizers are still working on formatting and whatnot, but its a start. So, mark your links and feeds with the link if you would like to be kept abreast of what is going on in the SLCC universe.

http://slcc2007.wordpress.com/

The 70th Annual Philadelphia Science Fiction Convention (Philcon) is happening this weekend November 17th – 19th at the Sheraton Philadelphia Center City Hotel.

The Virtual Worlds track will be a “mixed reality” event — simultaneously presented in the in Second Life and at Philcon. The panelists will be able to interact with both audiences. Some of Second Life’s talented regional residents will be participating on the panels including myself, FlipperPA Peregrine, Surreal Farber, Misty Rhodes, Nexeus Fatale, Crucial Armitage, Sidra Stern and more!

The panel topics encompass a variety of subjects from content creation, to businesses in SL, to relationships and beyond. All virtual reality panels will take place on Saturday, November 18th.
The mixed reality portion will begin Saturday morning at the Sci Fi Museum in Indigo and then later in the day, the SL events will be move to the theater in Chaos.

For more information on Philcon, please visit http://www.philcon.org/2006/

SLCC Videos

After what seems like eons, but in reality only a couple of months of waiting Flipper received some of the SLCC footage, which he has had to edit a bit. So here are the first two videos up on Google Video’s. Enjoy!

Flipper and I will be speaking at the Philadelphia Future Salon this evening on the topic of virtual economies and entepreneurship along with our esteemed attorney Frank from Buchanan Ingersoll in Philadelphia.

See details below from their website:

Wednesday, November 8, 2006
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
WhereScience Center
3701 Market Street, 3rd FloorPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania 19104

FUTURE SALON TOPIC:
Live interactive Second Life presentation on virtual worlds design and entrepreneurship with Tim Allen and Jennifer Vatza from www.SLBoutique.com. Slboutique.com is the largest developer and provider of goods in Second Life and was acquired by WA DC-based 3D web developer Electric Sheep Company earlier this year.

FUTURE SALON SPEAKERS:
Tim “Flipper Peregrine” Allen Jennifer “Jennyfur Peregrine” Vatza

Second Life is a 3-D virtual world started in 2003 by San Francisco-based Linden Lab. Users can sign up for free and create avatars to represent themselves. Second Life just surpassed 1,000,000 resident accounts, about a third of which have been active in the last 60 days. $7m USD worth of transactions has been occurring in-world each month since July.

I figured that before the usual suspects start pointing their fingers to call Flipper and myself liars pointing to the many times we said that we weren’t going to be involved with the SLCC 2007 as lead organizers that I would sum up our involvement thusfar.

Over the past two years the many organizers and volunteers for the Second Life Community Convention helped to have two successful events. Last year, The Future United Group was created as the non-profit owner of the SLCC event so that we could get better convention rates so that we could continue to keep the SLCC affordable.

After having both conventions dominate our Second lives for the better part of a year we decided that we didn’t want to be lead organizers anymore. In other words, we don’t want to be the ones responsible for doing everything. To some, this apparently means that we just walk away without any resolve and wash our hands of any and all involvement. It is not that easy to just say (insert eric cartman voice) “Screw you guys I’m going home” and just be done with it. The proverbial torch needs to be passed and we are in the process of doing that. There is no need to screw over the people we have worked closely with in the past two so that we can make a hasty withdrawl to avoid public scrutiny.

We have been actively recruiting new organizers for the SLCC over the past couple months and have brought on such amazing talent as RC Mars from the Relay for Life / American Cancer Society and not to mention Daniel & Jeremy from the Educators group who did an amazing job coordinating the Sunday Educators Event at the SLCC 2006. We’ve spoken to the glorious Moo Money about doing some official SLCC Machinima events. Some of the past organizers and volunteers are sticking around for the SLCC 2007 and some have retired after their respective tours of duty. Many people have contacted us about being involved on varying levels and we are doing our best to address our needs and bring on people who will be amazing assets to the SLCC organization process.

In the meantime, I’ve been trying to wade through all of the responses to the survey we released after the convention. We received so many wonderful suggestions to make the SLCC better. We have a lot to think over and mull when it comes to sustainability given the massive growth spurt this year. We’ve listened to the criticisms and compliments and have worked towards making the right decisions. We are taking the results very seriously and trying to do our best to make the necessary changes.

Stay tuned…. you might be surprised as to how the SLCC 2007 turns out.

So, how do I see myself being involved going forward? In a perfect world, I would like to shift more towards an advisor role than a direct hands-on organization role. I think Flipper feels the same way. We don’t mind lending assistance where needed, but neither of us want to have it overwhelm yet another year of our lives. The only way I can see this changing is if for some reason Philadelphia becomes a viable option for the SLCC 2007, but even then I think we would just be regional coordinators (doing walk throughs at the event site, catering stuff, etc.) Its a longshot as Las Vegas, Chicago, Toronto were also strong contenders for the SLCC 2007. The location selection is going to come down to cost and availability of regional coordinators to do some footwork.

(crossposted from Second Citizen by FlipperPA Peregrine)
Greetings!

The SLCC team has processed quite a bit of feedback. Thank you to everyone who responded to the survey. If you haven’t seen the results to the survey, Jennyfur did a great job summarizing the key points here: http://jennyfursblogshite.blogspot.com/

Choosing a location is always the most polarizing part of our yearly tasks in running the SLCC. Everyone wants to have it as close to them as possible, and that is understandable and just part of human nature. However, we must consider many factors when choosing a location:

(1) Popular demand. How many people will attend at a given location? Which locations are voted the most popular? What demographics are there to support the location choice?

(2) Ground support. It is crucial to have key volunteers in the destination city who are willing to put in quite a bit of work; several hours per week from now until the event itself, and many hours in the weeks leading up to the event. The week before the event, a good thirty hours will be required from several people who are present in the city itself.

(3) Cost of event, cost to attendee. Hotels, food, airfare, entry: it all adds up. Certain cities (San Francisco, Philadelphia) have much more affordable hotels than others (New York, Boston). Other factors weigh in as well; for example, we were able to use the space in the New York Law School for a very good rate as part of State of Play, however, our cost for convention space last year at Fort Mason was much higher. All of these factor in.

There are many other smaller factors, but these are the big three.

That said, with Las Vegas and Chicago as the two leading vote getters, we need to now reach out to people from either city who would be willing to be volunteers. This is not a casual position; it is a lot of hard work, a lot of commitment, and not paid.

Our goal for this year is to find a single location to host the event instead of throughout a city. What we’re hoping to do is find a hotel that will give us the space we need for the convention itself in return for guaranteeing a number of rooms. Then, if you book a room, your convention entry is covered. Of course, you’ll still be able to pay to enter if you don’t want to stay at the hotel.

So to the community: it is up to you! Please get in touch with us if you’re truly interested in sponsoring as a volunteer in one of these two cities, or we’ll have to look into other posibilities.

Thanks again for your support and continued interest.

We are off tomorrow morning for the Machinima Festival at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, NY. It will be nice to see some of our SL compadres and LL friends again. I’m sure that I will have more to report when we return on Sunday.