Tags: Twitter, Chronicles, Second Life, Virtual Worlds, Metaverse, Social Computing, Knowledge Management, KM, Learning, eLearning, Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing, Communities, Slideshare, eFoundations, Machinima, Virtual Collaboration, Online Collaboration, Remote Collaboration
Ha! And then they say that twittering hasn’t got any value add to knowledge workers. That is funny! Earlier on today one of my Twitter friends, Beth, from Chronicles – The life and resources from Beth, shared a twittering with a Web link to a superb overview presentation on one of those topics within the realm of social computing that more and more people keep talking about over and over again: Second Life. Yes, that is right, without that particular comment from Beth in Twitter I would have missed on one of those presentations around Second Life that is just worth while going through if you would want to know a whole lot more about this particular application and get to find out where most of the hype is coming from.
In the past, you would remember how I have been creating a number of different weblog entries around the subject of virtual worlds, the metaverse, Second Life and how it is shifting slowly, but steadily, the way we interact with other knowledge workers virtually, specially in the knowledge sharing, collaboration and learning environments. Well, Second Life in 3600 Seconds is one of those presentations, shared in Slideshare, that will certainly not only provide you with a good overview of why you may want to pay attention to Second Life, but it will also show some of the first initial steps to get going and some key concepts to keep in mind while you try out and experiment further.
I am really glad that Beth has shared this hat-tip today, because whenever someone coming over to me asking for a good overview of what virtual worlds are and how they operate, this is certainly one of those presentations that I would be more than happy to recommend to others. It has been put together by Eduservfoundation, the folks from eFoundations, and it surely makes for an interesting and educational read. Worth while the 3600 seconds, don’t you think?
Oh, and if you didn’t have enough check out the very helpful resource that Beth has put together as well in Chronicles around the subject of Second Life. That one is a worth while read, too, for sure!
And, finally, if you want to get hooked into Second Life, but do not have a good excuse for it, check out this particular piece of machinima that Beth shared as well over at her weblog. Very nicely done and kind of making you want some more, don’t you think?:
Thanks much, Beth, for the hat-tip and for the lovely links and resources you have put together regarding Second Life and the metaverse. I am sure I will be making use of them quite extensively. So, thanks for those! Well done !
Luis, thanks for reminding us of what Beth’s presentation is telling us. It has passed in front of my eyes, and I missed the point, because so many presentations about second life are everywhere and people like me tends to miss the key theme that a group of twitters are brining to our attentions. Rgds
Hello Sawada-san! Thanks a lot for the feedback comments and for dropping by! Not to worry, Second Life is one of those subjects that takes a little bit of time to sink in, if it ever does. At the very beginning, a few months back, when I was first exposed to it I was not quite sure about the value add and how it would be able to improve our current flow of knowledge sharing and collaboration. However, once you get started with it and start meeting people with your same interests and passions it kind of drags you inside so much so that the business value becomes apparent right away. To an extent now where, in my opinion, I feel that offerings like Second Life, i.e. the metaverse, is perhaps the next ground to enhance our virtual interactions with distributed teams, whether are sharing our knowledge, collaborating or just learning from others, specially the learning part, that is what I feel is going to be key over the next few months, couple of years.
More and more businesses are opening themselves up to the many benefits that Second Life has got to offer and there is no doubt that we would still need to how it will explode further within the enterprise in order to help augment what we already have as far as knowledge sharing, collaborative and learning tools are concerned.
Perhaps one of these days we may be able to bump into each other in Second Life and hang out together. Just give it a try and see how it can help you with your daily virtual interactions.
Thanks again for the feedback!
Luis, thks for the further description about how you look at Second Life from knowledge sharing point view. Expecting a lot that you would continue covering this theme !!
Hi, Luis. I’m glad that you found the resources helpful! I’m also working on a guide to education resources in Second Life that should be finished and posted sometime in the next week or so.
Have you visited Info Island in Second Life? It’s a great example of collaboration in a virtual world. Some of the people who work on it are paid for their time by the library they work for in real life, others are volunteering. There are librarians from around the world, including Australia, England, Netherlands, USA, Canada, Czech Republic, and others. Right now there are around 20 islands/sims linked together into an Info Archipelago, and it seems like that number is constantly growing. There is some information about it at http://www.infoisland.org/, but we also collaborate through a Google Group, a volunteer portal website, a NING social network, and through notices and group IMs in-world.
Hi Sawada-san! Thanks a lot for the additional comments. I will surely commenting some more further on the impact that Second Life and the world of the metaverse is having as far as knowledge sharing and collaboration is concerned. Including, as well, of course, its impact within Learning. In fact, I am just waiting on clearance from a recent presentation I attended around the subject of The Future of Learning and I am hoping to be able to share it over here, shortly. It will be very enlightening and certainly will provide a good overview of where may be heading as far as virtual worlds interactions are concerned. And not just Second Life. Stay tuned!
By the way, I have enjoyed the summary you have put together in your blog as I feel that it is quite representative of where we are in advancing forward boosting our different KM strategies by looking into how Second Life can help boost that knowledge sharing culture that social computing has already started. Exciting stuff, no doubt!
Hi Beth! Thanks much for the extensive feedback comments and for dropping by! Welcome to elsua!
All right! Excellent! That would be really nice! I think it would tie in quite nicely with the conversations I have been having with Sawada-san on the impact that SL will be having around the education and learning. I would be more than happy to help spread the message whenever it is ready. Keep us posted, please.
No, I haven’t! And I guess that I have just self-invited myself to check out the place further. There is just so much action going on in SL than I am constantly amazed by the superb stuff that quite a few folks are building up very quickly. Certainly, the potential is there and it looks like you guys have got something really thorough built up and making sense of it while combining both the best from the metaverse and other standard traditional knowledge sharing and collaborative tools. So it would be my pleasure to hang out some time over the next few days and see how things would go. I hope we would be able to meet up or something at Info Island.
Thanks again for the extensive feedback and for all your thoughts on this. Very enlightening and worth while following upon.