Linden Lab – Page 19 – Ciaran Laval

March 30, 2017

Sci-Fi Convention Runs Until April 2nd

The 10th anniversary of SCi-Fi Alliance’s Science Fiction convention opened in Second Life on March 24th and the good news is that the convention will run until April 2nd, so there’s still time for you to visit.

The convention, as well as being about many things Sci-Fi in the Second Life virtual world is also part of the Relay For Life fundraising efforts in Second Life, so it’s fun and for a worthy cause.

The about page on the organisers website informs us :

What started in 2008 as a single region Sci-Fi Meet & Greet charity party, has grown into a six sim festival of creativity and purpose; hosting parties, discussions, interviews with notable Actors of Sci-Fi, epic Trivia Showdowns, and one of the best theatricals the grid has to offer The Milky Way Cabaret.

Yes, there’s entertainment here.

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March 29, 2017

Virtual Worlds Best Practices In Education 2017 Now Open

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education 2017 opened today, with Arisia Vita playing the tunes as we awaited the ribbon to be cut to officially open this year’s educational conference.

The conference is a peer reviewed community event, with clearly a focus on education and more to the point, education by use of Virtual Worlds. Education is a life long learning pursuit so conferences such as this one are very much welcome.

The conference does not just revolve around educators sitting down and talking about education, as important as that is, there’s also fun to be had, here are today’s listed events :

VWBPE 2017 Grand Opening Ribbon Cutting Ceremony – 11:00 AM – 11:30 AM SLT
Above the Book: Ebbe Altberg: “A Conversation about Education and Second Life” – 01:00 PM – 01:50 PM SLT (This session will be held privately by invitation and streamed to the Main Auditorium.)
Quadrivium Networking Topic: VR Technology on the Horizon – 02:00 PM – 02:50 PM SLT
Social: The Freewheelin’ Electric Tambourine Man Parade – 03:00 PM – 03:30 PM SLT
Social: Lightning Production’s Bob Dylan and The Band Tribute Concert – 03:30 PM – 04:30 PM SLT
The Keys to Legacy: A VWBPE Quest – 04:30 PM – 04:50 PM SLT
Keynote: Celia Pearce, “The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: Twenty Years in Virtual Worlds” – 05:00 PM – 05:50 PM SLT
Lizards of “ARS”© Installation Participatory Play – 06:00 PM – 06:50 PM SLT
Through the Visual Literacy Lens to Learn Ecosystem – 06:00 PM – 06:50 PM SLT
Quadrivium Networking Topic: Teaching in Second Life, Art and Visual Literacy – 06:50 PM – 07:50 PM SLT

Plenty of varied events, full details and SLURLS can be found here : https://vwbpe.org/vwbpe-news/vwbpe-2017-event-schedule-day-1-wednesday-march-29

I would also advise you to keep your eyes on the main event calendar.

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March 24, 2017

Sniper Siemens Displays The Story Of Second Life In Second Life

Whilst reading this week’s Highlights From The Destination Guide by Linden Lab, Sniper’s Siemens’ The Story – Second Life, called out to me. There’s an accompanying video which gives a great overview of the exhibit, which I will embed near the bottom of this post.

The Story – Second Life is a Linden Endowment for the Arts project, created by Sniper Siemens which tells a year by year story of Second Life, starting in 1999, before Second Life was considered a viable project as a virtual world. Linden Lab were originally looking at hardware and researching haptics, indeed they had been working on something known as “The Rig”, nobody is quite sure where “The Rig” is these days.

To test the hardware being developed, Linden Lab needed software and that’s where LindenWorld comes into the story, LindenWorld would eventually be renamed Second Life, although I’m still convinced that the Lindens have a top secret LindenWorld bunker somewhere on the grid. Blondin Linden would never allow me secret access.

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March 22, 2017

Virtual Worlds Best Practices In Education Conference Gets Ready

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference will start on March 29th and run until April 1st. The event, as the name implies, concentrates on educational use of Virtual Worlds and part of the blurb for the conference tells us :

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education is a peer-reviewed community event focusing on education in immersive virtual environments. This open conference is organized by educators, for educators, to provide an opportunity to showcase the learning that takes place in this community of practice.

Although the grand opening isn’t until March 29th, there are opportunities to have a peek at some educational usage before that, you just need to keep an eye on the VWBPE calendar to find the details.

The conference will have a large focus on Second Life but will also have representations from educational use in Inworldz , OpenSim and more.

The theme of this year’s conference is “Legacy” and this title relates to the fact that this is 10th VWBPE, which is a very impressive feat.

Whereas the focus of the conference is quite rightly education, there will be a couple of one on one interviews with people whom you may be more familiar with from elsewhere as part of the Above The Book interviews.

Ebbe Altberg and Bernhard Drax (AKA Draxtor Despres) will be featured. A blog post gives details on this event and how you can attend :

This year, VWBPE introduces a new segment this year called Above the Book, conversational interviews with Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab, on March 29 at 1pm PST and Bernhard Drax, creator of the award-winning mixed-reality documentary series “The Drax Files,” on April 1 at 3pm PST.

These sessions will be in a private region. To get your invitation to attend you need to submit a question for our guests. Start thinking about what to ask! Questions must be submitted no later than Sunday March 26 at 11:59pm PST (extended from original March 20th deadline).

Still a couple of days left to consider a good question.

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March 21, 2017

A Spoonful of Sugar For Medecins Sans Frontieres

The Spoonful of Sugar festival in Second Life opened on March 18th and runs until April 1st. This is a fundraising event for Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without borders) who are often found providing humanitarian aid in some of the world’s most crisis ridden zones.

A previous Second Life fundraiser under this banner raised a total of USD$11,118.

The event, like many charity fundraisers in Second Life, involves shopping, fashion, breedables, live music, DJ’s and more.

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