Prompt Criticality: Linux and Chaos

Last night I spoke at the 22C3, the Chaos Communications Congress hosted by Germany's Chaos Computer Club in Berlin. 22C3 is the European Hacker Conference and broadly draws from Germany, Northern Europe, and Scandinavia. While clearly run on a tight budget, 22C3 is very professionally done, with excellent network connectivity (the same can't be said for the nearby hotels -- what is it with European hotels and broadband?), an incredibly supportive staff of volunteers, and lots of patience for Americans who don't speak any German (that would be me.)

What made this talk especially exciting was that it was the first public showing of the Second Life client on Linux. On a laptop that arrived the day before leaving. With a version of the client that Icculus' finished while I was waiting to board my flight our of SFO.

With an ATI card.

So, yes, the maximum degree of difficulty. Despite all of these risks, everything worked flawlessly. I did the entire talk in SL, using the latest version of my slide viewer (that works much better now that thanks to Richard's HUD attachment points), and running through the story of SL and user-creation over the course of an hour. It might have gone a little fast since a large chunk of the audience were non-native speakers, but there were good questions both during and after the talk. Once 22C3 posts the slides and the talk, I'll link to them, but if you'd like the presentation now, pop into Second Life and instant message Cory Linden. I'd be happy to give you a copy of the talk.

The final joy was that I kept meeting people at 22C3 who are either using SL or thinking about using SL. There seems to be a fascination in Europe right now with projects that combine art and business, which Second Life spans perfectly. Objects of Virtual Desire was brought up several times and is clearly just the first example of many interesting projects to come.

[Edit: Also, if you'd like to be added to the Linux Alpha list, please email me at cory at secondlife dot com. We aren't sure when/how we'll start it up, but it will be soon. We may also not use everyone right away, but progress has seemed rapid enough that we should be able to progress relatively quickly.]

Comments

Damn, i never noticed you were giving that talk, otherwise i'd have been sure to attend. I really wanted a good look at that program.

Posted by: suckervillle | January 03, 2006 at 04:40 PM

Hope you liked it in Europe. Lots of interesting stuff happening here right now. The mesh of art, digital and business will change quite a bunch of things in 2006. Interesting times ahead - brace yourselves...

Posted by: Oskar Lissheim-Boethius | January 06, 2006 at 05:26 AM

Email sent out to you concerning SL Linux Alpha Client. I'm very much intrested! Maybe I can throw a Gentoo ebuild to help out.

Posted by: STrRedwolf | January 06, 2006 at 06:42 PM

Thanks for everyone who has sent in questions about the client. I've got you all and we should be ready to start some more experiments in the next week or two.

Posted by: Cory Ondrejka | January 07, 2006 at 11:17 AM