While we were at CEC the topic of remote collaboration came
up.Specifically the benefit of getting a fair amount of the
Sun
Managed Operations team back together in a team building type
(Bar) environment.
From there discussion of virtual communication and similar topics was
broached. We talked about using
AIM,
IRC,
MUD/
MUSH/
MOO and a
couple of related tangents. We then talked about using
SecondLife as the
location for collaboration after Jonathan mentioned using it for a
press conference.
The first thing I thought about in this discussion was using a MUSH at
theurgy.digex.net (now defunct) for communication, and some play. I
remember reading
'Collaborative Networked Communication' by
Rémy Evard (
Original
ASCII although I must admit that I had to search for it and I
thought it was written be someone else).
The paper gives example usages which I will not repeat here, however
the thought was that having effectively a room in which to talk could
be beneficial in our current environment. Many managed
operations employees are flex or are not in the main office in
Ashburn. A couple of times people have attempted to establish
standing AIM chat groups/rooms and IRC channels. None of them has
garnered even small scale adoption.
So the end result here, is that I have created a SecondLife account and
we will try playing around with SecondLife. The next steps to bring
back some of the old theurgy magic would be to create a some objects a
spleen (so you can vent it), some skinheads (
to
take bowling), a happy fun ball (to taunt), a tonka truck (to
beep the horn and run into people's ankles) and I may be crossing
servers a game of connect four.
I just don't know that I need the avatar based communication model.
Location/Room/Channel based communication to allow for better
focus and separation of relevant content makes sense to me, it is just
the rest that I don't think I understand/see the need for the rest of
it.SecondLife appears to have a relatively heavy footprint, when I am
navigating around about 50-75% of my CPU and 250+MB memory.
This could be another case of buy a new computer, the one you
are using is 4 years old.
Possibly with a bit less friction and a bit more free processing power
it interaction would be a smoother and I would see more of an enabling
technology and less of a drain on my overloaded resources.
In any case Sun is holding a Press conference about just this topic,
I'll be there.
Sun Microsystems To Launch Presence in Virtual World Second Life
WHO: John Gage, Chief Researcher and VP, Sun Science Office
Chris Melissinos, Chief Gaming Officer, Sun
Philip Linden, CEO, Linden Lab
WHAT: opportunities for experimentation with new forms of
communication, collaboration and economic
activity in the virtual world.
WHEN: October 10, 2006. 10 a.m. Pacific Time / 1 p.m. Eastern Time
HOW: Join Second Life for free at: https://secondlife.com/join
WHERE: In Second Life, go to: "Sun Pavilion"
Or click the following shortcut link: http://tinyurl.com/m338r
* Note: access to the Sun Pavilion will be restricted prior to the
event.
Although if it wasn't for a post I randomly saw on
Kevin
Roebuck's Blog
I would have no idea about the details of the event.
I do also see the following
Kevin
Maney's Blog
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