I'm writing at the tail end of a fantastic interim break.
Here's what has happened since I last wrote:
1) I conducted a 'proof of concept' reading in our Second Life building with Writers' Workshop Graduate Student, and poet, Kate Thorpe.
Videos of the reading:
The reading went off pretty well. I learned first and foremost how hard it is to organize the efforts of people from various departments. Next, I learned that attempting to have the author reading as an avatar, as well as moving around myself and Jon Winet as avatars, proved to be pretty harrowing. I found myself running around to the various computers logged into Second Life with the various avatars. I was pretty frazzled...in the process I forgot the have the Quicktime streaming program record the audio of Kate Thorpe's reading. The only audio I have from the reading is contained in the video captures (above) that I was able to do during the reading.
In the future I would choose to work with Julie Englander at WSUI's Live from Prairie Lights program to conduct readings in Second Life. At most, I would control an avatar resembling the author for the evening, and ask questions of the author from persons in Second Life. Another option would be to shoot video of the Live from Prairie Lights reading and have it stream in Second Life. Both options require a couple things from an audience member:
a) his or her preferences must enable audio and video streaming
b) he or she must know where to click on the Second Life interface to begin this streaming if he or she does not have these streams set to begin automatically.
Also, Quicktime must be installed on the audience member's computer for the stream to work. There has been some problems with a hack into Second Life accounts...and this may deter potential audience members from attending.
The advantage to streaming audio in this manner is that the audience member can hear the stream no matter where they are located on our parcel of land. The other audio option is to use the in-world audio program. I've heard that this option is not very stable currently. This option fades out the audio depending on how close avatars are to each other AND this option requires that 'voice chat' is enabled in the first place.
So...readings in Second Life have their set-backs...and I think that these are problems with Second Life itself. This platform isn't very user friendly and I think this is a big reason why the initial buzz about Second Life died out.
2) I gave a presentation at the end of the semester "show and tell" for the IMLS fellows at UI SLIS. My outline can be found here. This presentation gives an overview of my work with Jon Winet in the Fall `07 semester.
3) Today I am putting the final touches on my poster presentation for the 2008 4Cast Workshop/Conference held at The University of Iowa.
[4Cast]
I plan to make a video showing the building I've constructed for this presentation. I will post that video along with an image of the poster I will be using in the next post.
4) For next semester I will be working 5 hours weekly with Jon Winet on social networking tools and 15 hours a week with Cliff Missen on researching methods on making Widernet's currently static webpages into dynamic pages (using LAMP, etc.)
Getting ready for another jam-packed semseter!
