Yesterday on Twitter, Alan Levine (cogdog) started tweeting about a Stephen Downes talk in Second Life.
"Stephen Downes is speaking Second Life"
"Stephen Downes hammering SL "like Star Trek… with casinos"
"The guy secretly loves second life …"
Crap, I’d love to listen to that session live, but I had a few deadlines. Luckily, Cogdog left some good markings so I could find the url and return later.
What a great example of leaving breadcrumbs across social media sites to enhance findability. But wait it gets better …
I left a tweet (or was a it a treat) for CogDog
@cogdog you need to use the flickr fdtoys and add something [on the flickr photo]
Cogdog responded with:
@kanter you had to ask … [see flickr photo]
So, not only do we have the findability, but we increase the potential for adhoc collaboration.
So, I was waiting for the blog posts about the session to filter out to the blogosphere, but I had not time to track them down. So, was glad that Stephen Downes provided pointers to a few and some reflections:
Good summary of the proceedings from yesterday’s Eduserv conference on Second Life. My only quibble is that the advice, "Second Life is here, now – use it," does not recognize the existence of various alternatives, a number of which were mentioned by several panelists. See also this summary by Shirley Williams. And Kathryn Greenhill offers a really nice detailed summary. Jo Kay stayed up ’til one a.m. to watch my talk and then was disappointed, not because she disagreed with me, but because the wanted to see more emphasis on the projects and the potential. Fine – and that’s what the other five speakers provided. And if I hadn’t raised the issues (which are genuine) nobody would have. Is that a fair way to treat people who are trying to learn about the technology? Angela Thomas, meanwhile, posted a summary of the sessions as seen through Second Life. Andrew Stewart‘s longish commentary, to which I’ve added a comment clarifying part of my argument. Barbara Dieu also commented, saying that my criticisms should not prevent people from experimenting with Second Life. I don’t think I ever said that – but I would certainly recommend caution before making a large financial investment.
I think I’ll watch the 3D space a bit more closely in the future, with an eye to mapping out a strategy, the outlines of which I stated in my talk yesterday.
Some of the reflections and criticisms are similar in the nonprofit space. What do you think?
Written by: kanter