Second Life Teachmeet 2010

May 7th 2010 - the first ever Second Life 'Vital' Teachmeet event took place in the theatre on the Learn 4 Life island.

At midnight we were still partying:-) It was a fun night, very experimental and, in my opinion pretty successful.

Leading up to the event all of the preparations had been easy but inevitably about 7.45 as a larger group than expected started to gather on the island a few problems occurred. Suddenly and without warning one of the party was totally ruthed, another could not see anything except water and steam, a couple did not have sound then as we started we had a black avatar and anyone who has seen that knows it is not fun for the person it happens to. So a few minutes were spent solving these problems but we were still online for an 8pm start.

The few minutes lost to sorting those problems meant that even though I tried to set up the twitterfall and the fruit machine to give presentation order neither worked in-world and I had no time left to sort those problems. But... who needs a fruit machine and twitterfall? We carried on without!

There were five presentations, all made in the theatre, we did not go to the sandbox, where at least one of the presos, a sound workshop, should have been. The reason that we did not move out was because it took us a few minutes to round up the delegates and get them in the main presentation area we did not want to risk losing them again.

During the session we managed to play videos full screen for all to see, play multiple presentations and talk – pretty much what we would have been doing in any room in real life but also we were able to do a workshop on sound – making animals speak – not easy in the physical world teachmeet – one up for SL :-)

What did we learn?

•    There is lots more work for me or with colleagues Nic Byron and Eyebeams Electricteeth  to do to try to get the fruit machine and twitterfall working – these were not things we thought of until the last minute so as they did not instantly work we gave up so as not to impede the whole event.
•    Eyebeams (aka Leon Cych) used his iphone to time the event – we need an in-world timer, again we never thought of that! However on the point of timing any teachmeet visitor know the role of the camel;  he worked well and was used to very good effect, not only during the meeting but also at the party :-)
•    One good decision made on the night was not to move to the sandbox for a session, I think we would have lost too many people and also many people wandered in and out as we were where we had advertised the event for the duration of it.
•    I had planned to do a virtual visit – for the same reasons as the last point they are not really viable and we did not do that session, I will re-plan that as a session for the next event.

So is it viable?

You will all soon be able to judge for yourself.  Two people videoed the whole event and Eyebeams will release footage very soon, I will add the url here when it is available. I really enjoyed it, the people there enjoyed it, I asked one or two if it had been worth attending and they thought it had. We can do the same in-world as in the physical world and more but as all things in Second Life or any virtual world there is a leap of faith and some orientation work needed before one can benefit. For some that may be a step too far but I would recommend trying it!

Sadly I was too involved to even think about sitting back and taking photographs  or twittering :-)

Post script - just received an e-mail from Osnacantab who took loads of photos, see http://www.flickr.com/photos/42691103@N00/ .

Added on Sunday - Leon's video of Cyber 360's presentation at the event http://blip.tv/file/3597497 .

Also - remembered when looking at the video - tell people who want help with their presentation upload etc to ask early :-) No last minute rush.