Archive for the 'International' Category
Coming from Australia and working for Linden Lab in our San Francisco office, I am always keeping an eye out for the activities that are happening in my home country. My focus at Linden Lab is in the enterprise space, so I generally see the great work that has come out of several Australian corporations. This week, however, my attention has been focused on the amazing Second Life community that has rallied in support of the devastating bush fires that have hit Australia.
As many of you are aware, these fires are one of the worst natural disasters to hit Australia in over 100 years. In response, Residents have created several inworld campaigns to raise funds to donate to relief efforts, from donation boxes to concerts to vendors selling clothing to support the cause. There’s already been some great coverage of these efforts from outlets including Massively, the Metaverse Journal, and New World Notes.
Seeing Residents come together like this is another powerful reminder of the breadth and strength of our global community and another great example of how Second Life is being used in ways that can really make a difference in the real world.
I’d like to thank those who have initiated fundraising efforts or given their support to this cause. Please describe/link to your inworld relief efforts in the forums.
Chris Collins (AKA Logan Linden)
Hi Everybody,
I wanted to introduce myself, Judy Wade, or Judy Linden inworld. I’m the new VP of Strategy and Emerging Business. Inworld I look a bit like a green sea fairy, which is what I always wanted to be when I was 6. Little did I know that I’d be able to carry out that wish in my professional life oh so many years later!
I’ve actually been working with Linden since last April, essentially on a borrowed basis from Kapor Enterprises, Mitch Kapor’s investment fund. I came on board to help with the CEO transition from Philip to Mark, and stayed on to help the company with strategic planning.
I started my career at Hambrecht & Quist as a semiconductor analyst, and then spent most of the rest of it at McKinsey & Company, working in New York, South Africa, and San Francisco, for a lot of different kinds of companies– from mines in Colombia to Internet start-ups in South Africa to technology behemoths here in the U.S. I’ve always tried to spend a chunk of my time working in the non-profit space, and have a passion for education and economic development, as well as for Cal specifically, where I spent my college years.
But I’ve never worked with or for a company with such passionate ‘customers’, such amazing opportunities, or one my dad would instantly fall in love with (as he did once he was given a tour around the rockets at the International Spaceflight Museum inworld – he’s a 77 year old wannabe physicist). I am continually amazed at the creativity of our Residents, be they consumers, enterprises, or educators, and our strategic roadmap has to focus on continuing to figure out new and better ways to enable the creativity of existing Residents and attract new people to participate in this incredible ecosystem.
So what do we mean by strategic roadmap? Sounds like a lot of consulting jargon I’m sure. At Linden it is the process we use to help us prioritize where we put our resources – to better serve existing Residents and to grow our user base in high potential markets. Some of it has resulted in big investments in what I would call the ‘must-dos’, those things we need to do no matter what – increasing technical stability, scalability and predictability, improving the overall user experience so we continually delight new and existing users, and enhancing core products such as land and e-commerce (thus the purchase of Xstreet SL and OnRez). Other parts of this roadmap are about where we invest to grow our user base, including how we can better serve and grow our international markets, how we can better serve inworld businesses and land owners, and what types of ‘killer applications’ will increase user hours and attract new users. While we conducted a formal inworld survey last May to get input on these issues, and will launch another one soon, if any of you have ideas on the above, please send in comments here.
Now that I have officially joined Linden in this new role, I will continue to work with Mark and the rest of Linden on our strategic direction, as well as being responsible specifically for potential strategic partnerships, international strategy and market growth, and education. Most importantly, I look forward to continuing to help Linden nurture and support the amazing Resident creativity and activity that is Second Life.
The world of Second Life is full of creative, innovative people from around the world, and the educators who teach and work inworld are no exception. Every semester hundreds of students participate in unique learning projects in Second Life. We’d like to highlight a few of 2008’s projects that we can all learn from and enjoy.
Second Life Education blog
Visit the Second Life Education blog (SLed blog) to read about many more great education projects from 2008.
Interested educators are also invited to join the SLed email list.
Hotel & Tourism Management – PolyU Resort Island
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University used Second Life for orientation for 400 freshman students.Over the course of three weeks, the inworld orientation program consisted of 7 individual learning activities: learning styles, multiple intelligences, active learning, academic honesty, classroom etiquette, citing references and hotel room design. They also held 3 competitions – parachuting, through the hoops and a fashion show, as well as 8 live sessions on learning challenges, plagiarism, library and open Q&A, finishing with a dance night and fashion show.
For details of the program see the Hong Kong Polytechnic University web site
Creator: Paul Penfold [RL] Paul Allandale [SL]
SLURL: HKPolyU Resort/121/167/26
Virtual State Fair (Morrill) and Virtual County Extension (Morrill2)
The Virtual State Fair is home to the Cooperative Extension System, a collaboration of over 70 colleges and universities in the USA, providing educational outreach to communities and individuals via a network of county-based educators. Originally agricultural, the programs have expanded to include a broader range of topics such as personal finance, parenting, disaster preparedness, natural resources, and more. The Virtual State Fair offers a combination of entertaining activities and useful information for the general public.
College faculty, researchers, and educators are meeting regularly to collaborate on projects both in Second Life and real life. Second Life projects under development include family caregiving, turf grass, and integrated pest management. Classes on consumer education topics will be taught by extension educators’ inworld during 2009.
A short video of the Morrill islands can be seen on YouTube.
Creator: LuAnn Phillips aka Thynka Little
School: Cooperative Extension System
SLurl: Morrill/128/128/24
Republica Dominicana Virtual
The Republica Dominicana Virtual project brings virtual worlds to the Dominican Republic. Several universities participate in the project including: students and faculty from the Technological Institute of the Americas (ITLA); the philosophy department from the Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo (USAD), oldest University in the new world; and the virtual headquarters for Funglode (Foundacion Global Democracia y Desarollo) hosting art gallerys, various historical landmarks, and a library.
Creator: Jan Herder aka Pausanius Raymake
School: Funglode (Foundacion Global Democracia y Desarollo) of the Dominican Republic
SLURL: Ontos /82/114/23/
Counselor Education in a 3D Virtual Environment
Victoria L. Walker – PhD. Candidate at Regent University – built a counseling training facility in Second Life providing student counselors a location to practice and develop their counseling, interviewing, and diagnosis skills with avatars that display many of the physical and emotional features students may encounter once practicing in their communities. The inworld counselor training simulates the features of a community counseling facility or a school counselor’s office while providing instructors with access to observe without distracting the student counselor or the “client” avatar during sessions.
Creator: Victoria Walker aka Zeana Tammas
School: Regent University
Really Engaging Accounting
At the University of Central Florida, Steven Hornik aka Robins Hermano uses Second Life to teach a financial accounting course, and hopes to publish data he feels is among the first statistically significant empirical data showing a relationship between student engagement using SL and student performance. The course uses Second Life to help students learn the basic concepts of accounting through nontraditional methods.
The reason behind the project is simple, to engage the students in what is normally a very non-engaging course. Taught since the fall of 2007 when class size averaged 250, this fall class size was close to 900 students in one section, with 75-80% of them completing assignments inside of SL.
Creator: Steven Hornik aka Robins Hermano
School: University of Central Florida
SLURL: Teaching 4/68/158/22
The Hopkins Tibetan Treasures Multimedia Archive Project – The WylieWriter
Write Tibetan in Second Life. Tibetan presents a challenge for Second Life educators because of the complex way Tibetan words are written. This project allows Second Life educators to overcome the challenges of translating Tibetan words and write in Tibetan with the help of a proprietary system called the “Wall of WylieWriters”. This innovative teaching tool enables students and teachers to interact in Tibetan language classrooms in Second Life. Developed by Wamlabs of Shipley and the Eepaw Shop of Smoky. The project name refers to Wylie, the standard Tibetan transliteration method.
Creator: Bill Magee aka Wam7c Macchi
School: Dharma Drum Buddhist College, Taiwan, Funded by the Taiwan National Science Council.
SL Education Roundtable (SLER)
Hosted by Montclair State University, SLER’s mission is to provide a roundtable setting for interested parties to discuss various topics relevant to furthering the use of Second Life for education. Roundtables occur weekly and often have up to 50 participants. All are welcome to attend, whether presenting or just sitting in to learn about new possibilities Transcripts of past meetings are available in the Library Building just outside the CHSSSouth Amphitheater inworld.
Creator: AJ Kelton aka AJ Brooks
School: Montclair State University
SLURL: Montclair State CHSSSouth /128/156/22
Clare Linden here, with an interesting challenge, to write a few words about Second Life in 2008 from the point of view of International, at Linden Lab. Not wishing to disappoint, I begin at Wikipedia, and note this intriguing definition of International: ”In American English, “international” is commonly used to signify “outside of the country”. For the rest of us (non-American English!), the word “international” would describe interactions between two or more Nations as in “an International football match”.
And there it starts; on our interconnected, mutually dependent, symbiotic, globally incorporated planet, the definition of “International” is different in two Nations that share the same language!
Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia.
— Charles M. Schulz US cartoonist (1922 – 2000)
Second Life in 2008
So, perhaps the answer is to take us to a world where such trivialities are removed and it is much more likely that you will find yourself in an Irish Pub singing along with at least 4 other nationalities or maybe visiting an art installation by talented people who come from countries you haven’t heard of before, or learning a language with native speakers, all thanks to technology visionaries who wanted to make the whole world a better place.
There’s been much to do and quite a bit of change around Linden Lab during 2008, not least a realization of how truly global the appeal of Second Life is. Almost every country on the planet now has Second Life devotees who enjoy unleashing their creativity, taking part in community activity, or communicating with colleagues and friends in their own Second Life world.
During 2008, 60% of the residents in Second Life were from countries other than the US. For much of the year M Linden has spoken passionately about the improvement Linden Lab wants to bring to the Second Life experience, and that includes the International experience.
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