POP!TECH IN-WORLD

At this rate, the feature is going to go from novelty to necessity in a few months. Just a couple weeks after the Second Life Community Convention simulcast a video recording of the event into SL, so Residents who couldn't make it to New York City could still watch Philip Linden and others speak, another convention is doing the same thing-- only tomorrow, the Pop!Tech conference in Camden, Maine, and with luminaries like Ted Castronova and Steven Everything Bad is Good for You Johnson.

Event is 2pm EST, so if you're interested, reserve a virtual seat ASAP. Details and contact info after the break.

(By total happenstance, Thomas P.M. Barnett spoke at least year's Pop!Tech, and SNOOPYBrown Zamboni and I are making arrangements to stream the podcast of that talk into Second Life, as a kind of pre-apperance briefer for Residents to the ideas of Barnett-- announcements on those in-world events imminent.)

This Friday, at the sold-out Pop!Tech conference, we will be conducting a fascinating experiment in co-mingling the virtual and the 'real'. In a session Friday afternoon at 2pm EST, the leading thinker on the economics of virtual worlds, Ed Castronova, and student-protester-turned-
videogame-designer Ivan Marovic, and Steven Berlin Johnson, author of the delightful Everything Bad is Good for You, will be conducting a discussion on the serious impact of gaming -- how it may be used in everything from democratic participation to social change.

As if that weren't interesting enough Pop!Tech will be streaming video of the entire session into Second Life in a (eerily, architecturally near-perfect) version of the Camden Opera House where the RL conference is taking place. In the real world Opera House, there will be a large flat-screen monitor on the stage where PopTech attendees can watch the SL Residents watching the speakers, completing the circle (and possibly leading to the collapse of the Matrix.) In-world, a group of SecondLife residents will watch the session and participate as virtual audience members.

If you'd like to attend the session in Second Life, please contact [email protected] to request an invitation -- and do so right away, since seating is very limited.