Betterverse: Nonprofits in the Virtual World

Launch of Web-based Virtual Broad Art Museum Tonight at 6pm ET

Tonight will be the official launch of a new web-based virtual art museum called the "Virtual Broad Art Museum."  From 6-8pm ET you can attend the mixed-reality opening reception for the new 3d art space on the campus of Michigan State University or in-world at VBAM, interacting with five new exhibits created especially for this space.

Developed by the Institute for Digital Media Arts at Ball State University, the virtual museum is a precursor to a real world Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum being built at Michigan State University, designed by Zaha Hadid.  The physical museum will finish construction in Fall of 2012.

There are five main exhibits you can experience at the Virtual Broad Art Museum are:

• con|FLUENCE where visitors can create pathways based on reactions to both social and spatial relationships
• Survey, an immersive landscape simulation using real time weather data from the location of the Broad Art Museum in East Lansing, Michigan.
• dis|PLACE, an interactive gesture-based performance that will be exhibited at the VBAM reception on the 15^th of March.
• Proxy, a performative, interactive and site-specific virtual installation where participants shape the evolution of a sculptural and sonic composition as a response to the Museum. 
• and  Flickr™ Gettr which connects the social image web service of Flickr™ to the virtual Museum environment

I briefly visited the museum today and was impressed by how well it ran from my browser, using the Unity 3D plug-in.  Definitely worth checking out here.

Second Life Residents Discuss Implications of SOPA / PIPA on Virtual Worlds, Free Expression

Last Friday, January 20, at the Nonprofit Commons in Second Life, we had a great conversation about the proposed SOPA / PIPA legislation that would impose stiff penalties on websites and internet services that posted links to alleged copyrighted content. About 45 avatars crowded into the NPC amphitheater to share their views on bills before the US Congress, and the potential impact on the internet, free expression, and virtual worlds.

Thanks to the 45 avatars who came to participate!

Here's a summary of the some of the key points and links for further information and commentary.

Minecraft going dark on January 18 to Protest Web Censorship, Linden Lab is silent

 

From a tweet by Minecraft creator Notch, I learned that the website of the sandbox MMO game Minecraft will be going "dark" in solidarity with thousands of other sites on the internet closing their doors in protest of the PIPA / SOPA legislation before the US Congress. 

To be clear, the game Minecraft will still be playable for those that have already downloaded and activated it.  Just the web-version of the game and the website Minecraft.net will not be accessible. Still, that's a bold move for one of the hottest online games out there!

 No other MMOs or virtual worlds that I know of are planning similar actions, unfortunately, despite EFF confirming that these games and worlds are just as prone to censorship and punishment as "regular" websites. New World Notes asked Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life, if they would be issuing a statement or taking any kind of stand.  Their press person said that he "had not comment at this time."  How disappointing since Second Life could just as easily be put under scrutiny, penalized and even shut down, if even one of its millions of residents were to post links to some infringing content.

That's too bad.  It would be a powerful statement if the metaverse went dark, and if millions of players went to their representatives to tell them to oppose these bills.

2012 Federal Consortium of Virtual Worlds Conference Set for May 16-18

Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds Overview from Eric Hackathorn on Vimeo.

Paulette Robinson sends out details about the 2012 Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds Conference, the annual gathering of the consortium, which is designed to "explore multi-agency and intra- agency collaboration using the robust capabilities of virtual worlds, examining best practices across multiple sectors."  They always have an impressive mix of government agencies, technology providers, and academics studying the field at this event.

The 2012 FCVW conference will be held on May 16 (workshops) and May 17-18 (main conference program) at the National Defense University in Washington DC. You can participate in person for a fee or online for free.  Head to the official website for details on the conference starting in mid-January.

Virtual Worlds, Isolation and Reaching Critical Mass (editorial)

 

Today I came across this news story about a program in Maine to help adult students to achieve their GED's using a virtual learning platform (in this case, the JIBE virtual world.)  While this seems like a worthwhile effort, I was struck by the claim that one of the goals of the project is to "reduce rural isolation" for students who can not get to a traditional class because of work or family obligations.

“We have a young mom who has no license. She’s a stay-at-home mom,” a teacher is quoted as saying. “This is nice for her. She can go in there and not be so lonely. It’s really doing its job of breaking the isolation.”

But watching the video, you can not help but notice that the presumed student avatar is almost completely alone during the entire experience. He has one brief encounter with someone who might be a teacher, they exchange some text chat, and then she runs off into the distance. Otherwise, he is simply wandering around empty corridors and clicking on objects.

On Mixed-Reality Conferencing: The "Tech Test Zone" in San Jose, Second Life, ReactionGrid and uStream

 

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of volunteering at the Tech Test Zone conference sponsored by the Tech Museum. The conference assembled a diverse group of technology developers, museum professionals and other interested folks like me at the Tech Museum's site in downtown San Jose.  For those that weren't able to attend in person, the proceedings were also live streamed to the web and the virtual world of Second Life.  In addition, ReactionGrid hosted a chat room in their virtual space for people to hang out and chat as they watched the video feed.

I was tasked with monitoring and moderating the different virtual venues and helping the virtual participants interface with the real life conference. I love working at mixed reality events like these, despite all of the difficulties in trying to keep track of multiple streams of input from the conference room, the web, and two virtual worlds.  I feel like I am getting a more multi-dimensional experience by tracking all of these different conversations and threads going on in these different, but intersecting venues.  

I spent the most time toggling between the uStream chat room and the Tech Museum's virtual venue, trying to stay on top of the different conversations going on there, at the same time also listening to the current speaker.  While there were many more people apparently monitoring the conference on the uStream page , there were only a handful of people actually engaging with the content in the chat area.  In contrast, in the Second Life space, virtually all of the participants were interacting with each other and the subject matter in some way.

Leveraging the Strengths of Multiple Virtual Platforms: The Rutger's Business School Case Study

Jon Brouchard over at ArchVirtual writes about how his company has been working with Rutgers University to develop different virtual models of their new business school, while the building is still being constructed.  It's worth reading the whole article to learn about how and why they employed different virtual platforms at different stages in the process.  To summarize, he used three platforms:

• Second Life: To recreate the schematic and conceptual models and make the design accessible to students and faculty.
• OpenSim:  To build a more comprehensive model of the campus, including more of the context surrounding the Business School’s new building site.
• Unity: To make the 3D models available via multiple channels: embedded on a website, within a FaceBook page, running on an Android or iOS device, whether online or offline.

Here are a couple of videos showing how the prototypes looked in Second Life and Unity.

Attend the Tech Museum's "Tech Test Zone" on November 15 in San Jose or Virtually [updated]

We are excited to announce that the Tech Museum is organizing a conference on the latest interactive technologies on November 15 called "The Tech Test Zone: Interfaces for the New Decade." The event will bring together "the most innovative developers of new interactive technologies" in The Tech Museum's newest gallery. Learn about and demo cutting-edge interfaces such as:

• Augmented Reality
• Deformable Surfaces
• Eye Tracking
• Gestural Interfaces
• Gigapixel Images
• Motion Sensing
• Multi-touch
• Natural User Interfaces
• RFID
• Smart Museum Systems
• Tablet Computers
• Ubiquitous Media

Looks like a really neat event for anyone trying to keep up with the latest in interactive tech. You can attend in person at their San Jose, California location or virtually via a number of different web-based and virtual platforms.

To register head to their registration portal today, since space is limited.  In-person registration is $125 and virtual participation is free!

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UPDATED 11/9: Organizer Robert Ketner sent us the locations of where you can watch the event online: 

• Main video and audio stream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/the-tech-virtual
• The Tech 2 in Second Life (tentative) http://slurl.com/secondlife/The%20Tech%202/131/128/33
• Reaction Grid Jibe location http://reactiongrid.com/unity3d/expo/ (Hosted by John "Pathfinder" Lester and Reaction Grid team.)

Other locations will be added on the conference page.

Seeking Psychological Counseling and Therapeutic Services in Virtual Worlds

Last friday at the Nonprofit Commons, RJ Muni, licensed psychotherapist, spoke with the community about psychological counseling services he and his volunteers provide for Second Life residents at NewWays Counseling / Sunshine Garden.  We discussed other groups and individuals who were providing counseling and therapeutic services in-world, and I realized that it might be helpful to have a listing of those resources for others.

So I created a page on the Nonprofit Commons wiki here .If you know of therapists, mental health centers and others providing psychological counseling in virtual worlds, please provide that information to nonprofitcommons@ techsoup.org so those can be represented.  And if there are already listings of these services somewhere online, we'd appreciate the link.

I think that psychological counseling using virtual worlds is one of the strongest use cases in showing the real value of virtual worlds in people's real lives.

"Login 2 Life" and How Virtual Worlds Enhance Our Lives

 

"Login 2 Life" is a new documentary directed by Daniel Moshel that examines the life virtual, wherein he shows that it isn't as much about escaping your "real" life as much as extending and expanding what it means to be human.  It's an impressive feat that the trailer above doesn't do justice to.

A meandering series of vignettes, "Login 2 Life" follows the life paths of six people who spend a good part of their days and nights in virtual online spaces, notably Second Life and World of Warcraft.  His subjects include a disabled woman who connects with other people with disabilities in Second Life, a singer in Germany who gigs to an online bevy of fans, and an entrepreneur who creates and markets virtual sex devices. He also profiles a number of dedicated World of Warcraft players, one severely disabled, another who plays as his profession, and a family who "gold farm" for their livelihood in China.