YakShaving: Shawn Ferry's Weblog
v. intr. [MIT AI Lab, after 2000: orig. probably from a Ren & Stimpy episode.] Any seemingly pointless activity which is actually necessary to solve a problem which solves a problem which, several levels of recursion later, solves the real problem you're working on.
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« BBC NEWS | Europe |... | Main | Real learning in a... »
20061008 Sunday October 08, 2006
SecondLife, Web2.0 and Collaboration
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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Oct 08 2006, 03:28:18 PM EST Permalink

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