What were the titles of the two books you suggested during dinner?

i forgive you ;-)
http://tinyurl.com/22sof2

So, you'll be at ignite! I think we'll meet there :-)

hey David, my quest for knowledge continues...
http://tinyurl.com/2ffjxm

hey David, got your video, lets continue, but gotta go now, will record my response either during the mt to lax or my flight to london... thats fun ;-)

David, thank you so much for sending me the links to the videos. i wish i had more time right now to give a proper response, but that will have to wait. it's all been so great and inspirational. both you and Marc are fantastic.

David,

Just watch your presentation. Looking forward to meeting you.

Phil

The plan says it ends on 10:30 but who knows ;-) Good flight!

just seeing all the questions regarding SL on here :-) It indeed is still a problem that many people don't get it, it seems. It sort of depends on where you start, who you meet in the first time on there I guess. As for what people are doing there, it really depends. SL seems to be something different for everybody. Some are just making new friends and chatting, some are creative and building things, some are exploring possibilities in online collaboration, some are looking for possibilities in eLearning, some are bringing their communities on there to have another aspect on interacting with them, some are doing fundraising there, some have found a way to make (big) money and so on.

The great opportunity here is freedom to do what you want I think. For me it started with the creativity aspect (first thing I did was creating a T-Shirt) and it moved on into community as I got to know a lot of great people. These days I am quite a lot into evolving the platform and also taking part in the SL Architecture Working Group as well as the Virtual Worlds Interoperability Group (which is forming right now). I definitely got to know a lot of great people in there and I think the immersion aspect of SL really helped this. There is definitely a lot of great and interesting stuff happening and for me it sort of feels like being part of the web in the beginning. Pioneering times with many people not understanding what I actually do ;-)

Hey David, I'd be happy to meet you :-) You should have come to Barcamp though, I just did a SL presentation yesterday.
I will try to get to you tomorrow or maybe we meet at the Geek Dinner tonight? I am probably going there.

i do think the design aspect is cool. (more so back in 1996 when it was so new and because i think SL still looks like that site i mentioned from then and that the graphics and design haven't come that far, though i know they have. if anyone knows what i am talking about and remembers the name of that place, let me know. the most i can remember is the tikki room, the floating head avatars, and the swirling thing when you were signing on.) i don't know, i get caught up in these back and forth thoughts about how most people try to move away from virtual worlds to closer to real life communities and sites. SL is a lot like the Sims, but the Sims is actually a game, where as SL represents real life possibilities in a game like setting. given the choice between communicating with my friends in the states via SL or via video chat, facebook, im, email, etc. SL would be the last thing i would choose. given the choice to shop online via SL or going to directly to an online shop, where i can see the product, (usually) read reviews and a description, see a real picture of the item, and so on, i would choose the online shop. doing this on SL would unbalance my feeling of reality in such actions because it would feel more like a game. i can understand others still enjoying this and using it as their favored means of doing things online. and to be honest, i always feel like those people are either gamers or people that like to feel anonymous online. obviously, i am still very ignorant to the whole topic and curious about it because as far as social communities go, this is perhaps the one i have moved farthest from and therefore given less thought, consideration, and attention. i am curious especially about the users. who are they? what are they using it for? why do they choose SL? too many questions.

i am looking forward to your video. post the link when you get it up. and i really hope i am not ruining the experiment. don't answer in words, put it in the video. haha. ;)

Hi David!

Thanksf for the note! Vulcano is a project I would like to know more about, because I see synergies opportunities there. One more reason to meet you!

just send you an invite for seesmic, so now we can launch our little experiment, ah, got a second invite code as well, do you have anybody in mind you would like to participate?

just watched marc uhlig's video to you. i have to agree with him, as i also haven't really gotten the big deal around SL. back in 1996 there was a similar site. it had virtual worlds, avatars, etc. you could chat with other users, even talk to them if you had a mic, have private conversations, block others, and all that. it was great to use to communicate with others outside the US and save the long distance phone calls. but then it was all of a sudden gone. years went by and i didn't see anything like it, that is till SL popped up. but the virtual world wasn't even the important part of that site for me. it was purely communicating with others, especially beyond chatroom capability. other than for fun, i don't know what good SL is today. everything you can do there, you may as well do through other sites without having that game feeling to it.

ok, here we go, but, lots of "ahs" in there ;-)
i said it earlier, i am learning...
http://tinyurl.com/2agzrx

too bad that you are leaving early, i was looking forward meeting you... we already had the video blogging thing, i had a couple of questions for you regarding SL because i don't get it...

it has a huge user base, but most of them are not active, big corps spend big money into marketing their stuff in SL with very little success.

so who is the typical SL user, and what is he/she it using for (and i am talking about using, not just signing up for it)? is it just for entertainment like gaming, or is it more?

Thanks for your useful suggestion David : )

Hi Dave. Thanks for your message. Great blog! Would love to meet you. There are tons of questions I'd like to ask you and experiences to share :). The only problem is I'm in Berlin just for one day, max two (Tue and/or Wed). My duties keep me on the leash:). And I've found out on your page you're leaving on Tue morning. I'll contact you on Xing, then.
Regards,
Tomek

Ciao David!

Sì, vediamoci all'Expo, magari mentre stai facendo live-blogging sull'evento.

See ya soon!

francesco

David,

Thanks for your comment. I checked your profile and it's too bad that I only fly in Berlin around noon on Wednesday.

As for your question, I think it will be interesting to combine one's credentials from many sites into a virtual personality profile. Identity 2.0 will bring us there. But beyond these cool and sometimes useful credentials, I think we have an urgent need to authenticate users' identity beyond banking or financial information.

Building a system that will not rely on the states (ex. documents like passport or driver's license) to authenticate the identity of individuals is a major challenge (online and offline) and it goes beyond the scope of technology issues. But by allowing an individual to build value in his/her online "identity" may provide a way to build this system.

I'd be happy to further discuss this with you.

Phil

David,

Good points. The network will stay up indefinitely, so you'll have plenty of time to connect with people after the event. Your contacts are also exportable, so once you do connect you'll be able to take your new friends to your permanent home (LinkedIn, FB, email address book).

I also think using the sessions and conference map as ways to connect are good ideas. There was supposed to be a calendar app coming online that would have let you mark the sessions you were going to and see who else was going to those sessions as well as what sessions were most popular with your friends. Looks like deployment hit a snag though, so I'm not sure if it's going to come online.

got your point, and you are right, we are not quite there yet. but i am absolutely amazed how much faster information is distributed with a micro blogging engine like twitter compared to a regular blog.

i think what the seesmic guys want to accomplish is a real video twitter, so wouldn't this be the next logical step, because it's even faster to record a short movie clip than typing... and maybe even more personal?

i have to admit, i am not a good seesmic user at the moment (one reason is probably my german accent, i just have to get over it), but i want to learn to produce something that is presentable and give them feedback, because usually a service like this gets better and grows with its acceptance.

regarding utterez, haven't really played with it yet, but i think it's also a quick and easy way to broadcast your thoughts.

I think you're great. I noticed earlier, that the homepage was covered in me leaving comments and felt a bit like I was hogging the place. So, I was happy to see your comments begin to fill the place. And we may have never met, but you do look familiar. I absolutely think, that a social network set up for such an event, should be used to make contact with others. I like to see it being used to. I'm a bit of a social network geek. (Others will tell you that's an understatement.) Anyway, if we do get a chance, I am sure it would be great to meet you.

didn't see you you on seesmic or utterz yet, what do you think about these, the future of blogging or just a current hype?

you said you will do live blogging... i wanted to test this with seemsic, so video live blogging...

i can't place why you look so familiar to me. but hey, let's play "who can dominate the crowdvine".

ouch, yeah, actually mata-mata is the what happens when you try to do ten things at the same time and what you meant was maka-maka ;-)

All right, you win! :-) Let me know when the talk is online...

Well, I've read more carefully some stuff about you and I think we have a lot of stuff in common! Since you're preparing a talk, why don't you give it _really_ at Web2Open?

Sure, drop me a line during the event, or if you recognize me just come and say hi :-)