“…and goodnight, Mr. Rosedale, wherever you are!”

SciEye, SPNNews, Spindrift, Second Life

“…And goodnight, Mr. Rosedale, wherever you are!” is the famous tagline that ends each of the first one hundred episodes of Pooky Amsterdam’s Second Life weekly science-themed panel show, the  First Question!  Produced and broadcast from her PookyMedia Studios high above Spindrift sim/region in SL’s science continent, the SciLands, the fast-paced comedy game show has run for 2 1/2 years so far.  With a live viewership of 40 to 80 avatars on Spindrift, a treet.tv broadcast audience of hundreds to thousands, and over 30,000 views on most episodes in the treet.tv archives, 1st Q! has found a loyal and growing audience.

When 1st Q!, then known as 2nd Q! before they realized they were even better than that*,  started on April 10th, 2008, Philip Rosedale, known as Philip Linden in SL, was still CEO of the company he co-founded, Linden Lab [often misspelled as Linden Labs].  He left not long afterwards, and has recently returned to that position, giving a third level of poignancy to that closing signoff phrase, which riffs off of Jimmy Durante’s “…and goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are!” show signoff tagline.

At the last SLCC conference, held August 2010 in Boston, US, Pooky actually found out where Mr. Rosedale was that night!

2010 SLCC Creators Pooky Amsterdam & Philip Linden

 

 Photo credit by Arminasx Saimen.

*Actually, the lawyers told everyone inSL that they could no longer use ‘Second’ in a business name inSL, but instead could use the logo ‘inSL.’

[Update Oct 21st – Philip Rosedale stepped down as interim CEO 2 days ago.]

Rep. Ed Markey’s office talks to SciEye: SL hearing, Congressional reactions, & VW future plans

SPNN, Spindrift, the SciLands, Second Life – April 2nd, 2008

 

Your SciEye correspondent previously covered the House Subcommittee on Telecommunication & Internet hearing in SL April 2008 in my initial story yesterday.

Today, Rep. Ed Markey’s [D-MA] office responded to my followup questions about response to the SL hearing:
Is Rep. Markey the 1st legislator into SL and/or any VW [virtual world] in an official capacity at a real-world event? Can u give me old boilerplate about him at Bali, and what that event was? The reaction from Congresspeople to your office about this event’s usefulness as a technology demonstrator to them? His future VW plans? His thoughts about VWs and their utility to Congress? Has he stopped doing [semantically loaded phrase about Bad Things]? :)

Jessica Schafer, Communications Director, replied to me:  Answers to your follow up questions:

Is Rep. Markey the 1st legislator into SL and/or any VW [virtual world] in an official capacity at a real-world event?
Rep. Markey isn’t the first legislator in SL — Rep. George Miller made an address from the Virtual Capitol floor and former Governor Mark Warner (as a presidential candidate) did a SL interview — but this was the first Congressional hearing simulcast in SL. Links: George Miller: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6N-6lQw7BU, Mark Warner: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgpDms-GYk4

Congressman Markey’s SL hearing was held Tuesday, April 1st, 9:30 a.m. (6:30SLT)

 

SPNN, Rayburn island overflow room, Second Life – April 1st, 2008

Rep Ed Markey [D-Mass] asking questions.  [latest updates: linked to apparent resolution to LL video misattribution, added links to SL tour vid shown at the hearing and continue to update my notes of other coverage, posted my ten pics of SL side of the hearings at flickr, a ref to Rep Markey’s previous inworld appearance coverage by Kat LeMieux, noted Musgrove’s WashPost coverage – Apr 10th, 7 pm EST]

Susan Tenby of TechSoup testifying.

Listening to remarks by Colin J. Parris, Ph.D., VP, Digital Convergence, IBM Research, IBM Corp.

We were viewing at the overflow Rayburn isle in SL.  Video link will be released soon  is here with pdfs of witness testimony.  Thanks to Troy McLuhan for spotting that at NMC‘s [New Media Consortium] Campus Observer.

*Philip Rosedale said one good use of this sort of networking tool would be to fill gaps of all kinds – geographical, cultural, from differing languages, or lack of information.

*SciLands space and science islands featured heavily in Linden Lab’s [LL] 7 minute SL video from Machinama by Silver & Goldie.  ISM(the International Spaceflight Museum)’s Spaceport Alpha island and NASA’s CoLab, a collaborative RL/SL [real life/second life] effort, as well as NOAA’s Meteroa got screen time as examples of the best that has been done in Second Life up until now.  See the video Second Life^®: Making the Real World a Better Place.  ISM footage was misattributed to NASA CoLab, but Linden Lab and ISM are resolving the mistake, according to Kat Lemieux’s update.  Goldie of Goldie & Silver just informed me that the copy with the corrected soundtrack is now up at their site. 

*This is Congressman Markey’s second official appearance in SL; he attended the UN carbon conference on Bali last Dec, possibly becoming the first US legislator to hold a mixed-reality press conference in SL or any other VW.  Kat LeMieux, who now blogs “about the developing metaverse” & tools for it in her NewMedia On the Go blog, captured the technical newness of last year’s event at her travel blog.

My followup interview with Representative Markey’s office made it clear he wasn’t the first legislator to hold a VW press conference, but is the first to hold a simulcast Congressional hearing in a Virtual World [VW].

Other coverage:

*Benjamin Duranske has a thoughtful analysis at the vr legal site Virtually Blind, and points out in a comment at TerraNova that Philip Rosedale’s prepared remarks were cut short [not allowing for LL vid time].  Be sure to read the pdf of Rosedale’s prepared remarks for the full version.

*Rik Riel posted pics from the SL Congressional room.

*Mike Musgrove’s Post I.T. technology column, Washington Post, April 2nd – Congress Goes Virtual in Online World Hearing

*Representative Ed Markey’s own website coverage

John Zhaoying talks to SciEye: carbon, future trends, & advantages of running VR conferences

This is how a high-attendance area slowly rezzes for a new arrival.

John Zhaoying low-rezzed in my viewer at 106 person Mitch Kapor conf.

And rezzing in …

SciEye at UBM/CMP’s Life 2.0 Spring’08 conference – low-carb(on) diet!

UBM/CMP’s Life 2.0 Spring’08 conference was held last week, starting with Mitch Kapor’s keynote opener on Monday.

Weaving parts of the six days of the 3rd Life 2.0 conference into my free time, around attending group meetings for the three isles & orgs that I help manage (ISM Spaceport Alpha, NASA CoLab, and Spindrift, all in the SciLands), gave me a great week of peering into the near-future of mixed reality events and the now of virtual-only events and conferences.

During one of the last day’s presentations, the speaker was asked about the carbon footprint of the event; the organizer, John Zhaoying of UBM World2World, part of ThinkServices division of United Business Media (formerly CMP Metaverse), had the audited numbers he had commissioned for the Fall ’07 event available.  He told the audience that CarbonNeutral.com’s figures showed that the estimated 1200 tons of carbon produced if it had been a realworld six day meeting was replaced by 4 tons of carbon – total.  (This is roughly equivalent to six MWh, megawatt-hours of electricity, or to my personal yearly electric consumption of 500 KiloWatt hours a month).

CMP islands 1-4

We expand on this with SciEye’s upcoming exclusive interview with John Zhaoying, John Jainschigg in real life: carbon, future trends, and the advantages and disadvantages of running VR conferences.

“Exclusive interview!?!”  “Yes, it’s the only one he gave at 4am, March 26th.”