UberNoggin

It’s not always easy to see how Second Life can be useful for training. In many cases it’s just not the best tool for the job but sometimes a training need just matches perfectly. Kelley Executive has a great face to face training program to help companies understand the differences in generational management needs. In their current sessions, participants learn how each generation’s views on management, technology, employer feedback etc can be different and how to work around those differences to leverage strengths. But we wanted to be able to offer the training to geographically disparate groups while maintaining the interactivity so I translated it into a SL experience.

Introducing the Work Style Totem Activity. Participants get a copy of the totem (as seen above) which asks eight questions related to their preferences for management, collaboration, and technology in the workplace. Darker colors represent more traditional views; paler colors match Millenial workstyles. After each participant had completed their totem the group has an easy to understand visual representation of their preferences and a great discussion ensues.

It’s a simple activity. The totem was easy to build. And yet, the delivery method (ie in SL) allows for groups from all over the world to come together and participate in the session. It works because it focuses on the strengths of the SL platform while maintaining the interactivity crucial to the training.

Have you translated a F2F activity into SL? Did it work? Tell us about it!

It’s easy. Just Google “Yourname + Needs” and copy out the first ten instances of the phrase. Oh boy! Mine are a little depressing.

1. Sarah Needs A Cold Shower, Self-Esteem
2. what Sarah needs is a date, maybe some fun, and if it works out a bit of schtupping.
3. Sarah needs to set up her experiment by finding subjects
4. Sarah needs a Wii
5. Sarah needs to get her life back
6. sarah needs some love
7. Sarah Needs Batteries
8. SARAH NEEDS YOUR HELP PLEASE!!!
9. Sarah Needs Your Manly Vote
10. Sarah needs to be hooked up to a respirator in order to survive

Thanks to my mom for this fun little game.

So you’ve been thinking about taking your business into the virtual world but you need some help. Maybe you need some numbers, some handy facts about demographics, some insightful analysis about what this whole movement to the virtual world really means for business. Well, O’Reilly is here to help.

Now, I’ve read dozens of “white papers” claiming to be guides to Second Life and other virtual spaces and most of them get mocked and tossed into the circular file here at the Intellahome but, as much as I would have liked to claim that “even O’Reilly doesn’t get it!” I can’t. This is a great white paper.   It’s actually useful! *gasp!* I know! You probably think I’ve lost my marbles, but listen up.

If you’re someone who needs to make the argument to your company or organization for a foray into the virtual, this little baby will actually give you some really decent ammunition: non-inflated demographic and population stats, useful information about money exchanges and purchasing habits, and context for Second Life as one of many new virtual spaces that should be on your radar. It even has a fair assessment of adult content in Second Life that neither glosses over risk or over-hypes it like some of the conservative press has tried to.

It’s worth a read.

Disclaimer: I should note that I did get my copy of the report for free though I would still have been happy to trash it if it deserved it. You can’t buy Intellalove

So I’ve been having trouble with image spacing over at the SL-Education Blog. They were crammed up against the text no matter how much padding I put in. Tonight I finally got sick and tired of wrestling with it and called for help. No I didn’t turn on the Bat Signal. I Twittered!

Intellagirl: Anyone know a whole lot about WP? Not a little…but a lot about the ins and outs of the CSS and why it might not act like it should? about 1 hour ago from web  

And what do you know no less than a minute later a stranger popped up in my Guest Gchat and offered help. Not only did he teach me about the Firebug extension for Firefox (which is awesome btw), but he walked me through the edit in my style.css that was necessary to fix all my image goodness on the blog. So this is a story about one tool leading to another. First, Marcus Welz (of Slbuzz fame) are Twitter friends because we’re both Second Life junkies. So Second Life leads to Twitter which leads to the little Gchat plug in which leads to Firebug which lead to me having a fixed blog!

Giant hugs to my geeky community of friends!

Authors of Second Life For Dummies Live in Second LifeAbracadabra – March 20, 2008 – SLED and SLRL’s own Sarah “Intellagirl Tully” Robbins and Mark “Typewriter Tackleberry” Bell, authors of Wiley’s Second Life For Dummies, answer audience questions in Second Life on March 27, 2008 at 3:00 p.m. SLT/PDT.  Along with primary seating at The Magicians Colonnade at Abracadabra <http://slurl.com/secondlife/Abracadabra/201/90/31>, there’s balcony seating in the neighboring sim, Seifert Surface’s xyz.  The event will be conducted in text chat.

A prize giveaway celebrating Dummies Month includes four real-life Dummies prize packs from Wiley, each including a Dummies duffel bag, a copy of Second Life For Dummies, and other Dummies goodies.  For avatars there are free jackets and coffee, Enchanted Teachers’ Apples, and a few surprises.  Instant message Chimera Malaprop or Art Laxness for a teleport offer.

Mark and I often do a bit of brainstorming on the big dry erase boards in our dining room. Lately, we’ve been churning out research-type questions about virtual worlds. I thought I’d post them to save them from little hands and erasers and perhaps to get some discussion going.

• What is a virtual world? what definition works best to aid research? Is it different than a virtual environment?
• How does the ability to see others’ friends list change our perception of them? How is that perception different in a space where we can’t who someone is friends with?
• How can identity formation mechanics be made interoperable? Should they?
• How is the style/goal of the world or environment tied to expected avatar behavior (ex. Miis with guns?)?
• What are the trust implications of communication in multiple virtual spaces? (ex. Do I trust someone more who I know in SL and on Twitter?)
• Are social networks virtual worlds?
• Identity: does more information = more trust, does more or less choice allow for more succinct identities?
• Are we more or less immersed in spaces where we have more choices in identity formation?
• Does less identity = less immersion?
• Does greater choice in identity formation result in more accurate identity portrayal? more trust worthy identity?
• How would MUVEs and MMORPGs be changed if more SNS mechanics were added to them?
• What influences greater number of friends in an MMORPG/MUVE? mechanics of friendship? purpose or advantage of friendship? personality expression?
• Do SL or FB users have more friends? How does introversion or extroversion influence number of friends in each space?
• Is FB a more powerful social network because it can incorporate multiple identities and connections? Pull info from other spaces?
• Do we “know” people more if we”know” more than one of their online identities? If one of those identities is a SNS rather than a MUVE or MMORPG?
• How do we verify someone’s identity? What info do we need to feel that we know who they are?

These are pretty disorganized but you probably get the drift of where the ideas are going. I haven’t had a chance to think through any one of them to the point of satisfaction but Mark and I have been wrestling with the definition of virtual world because we just don’t feel that the definitions offered by others are prepared to deal with the multitude of spaces that are popping up online. So far we think that a virtual world is one in which:

• the world goes on whether you’re logged in or not; you can’t pause the world
• digital
• hosted remotely
• capacity more multi-user
• users are represented by some kind of avatar, identity that they create (even if it’s text-based or very limited in construction)

What would you add? Would you take anything away?

Gotta love it when your work becomes a marketing bullet!

One of the oldest debates among Second Life users is about how to merge Second Life better with the rest of the web. Folks have argued for the ability to have interactive HTML browsing inside Second Life for years but the issue has its detractors. A new release from the Electric Sheep might signal a bit of a positive sea-change, though.

Thanks to their involvement in the CSI: New York Project, the Sheep have developed a new viewer interface for Second Life that looks more like a browser.

Notice the back button, “My Stuff”, and “Shopping” buttons on the OnRez viewer. The changes are intended to help newbies who join via the CSI project get around without having to learn too much Second Life jargon. It’s a super smart idea.

According to the Sheep press release, the  new viewer will be available to new users who register through the CSI site and existing SL uses on October 24.

Tonight’s Law & Order Special Victim’s Unit episode, called “Avatar”, will take on a story about under age sex in a virtual environment called “Alternate You.” Looks like a stab Second Life and all the controversy over age verification and the mysteries of the fine line between real life and virtual life. Set your DVRs!

This poster was created to advertise a talk I’m giving at Notre Dame in September. It’s the ass-kickingest poster anyone has ever made for one of my talks. I love it!

In other surreal news, I found out yesterday I was nominated for Faculty/Staff Homecoming Queen. Ha!