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July-September 2009

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Second Life and User Groups
by Don Singleton

I tried out the Virtual World Second Life in late 2007; my avatar DJ Earnshaw was "born" 11/8/2007. I messed around in it for a few months, and then lost interest. I became interested again when Elizabeth Stenger (avatar CallieDel Boa) gave a program on it at the 2009 APCUG/FACUG Conference). I was not at the conference, but Hewie Poplock arranged for most of the conferences to be broadcast on Ustream, and I saw Elizabeth’s (Callie’s) presentation, and my interest in Second Life was reawakened.

Many dismiss Second Life as "just a game", but as this article I wrote for TulsaHighTech shows, it is a lot more than "just a game". It is certainly a lot more than "just a game" to people like Gentle Heron of Virtual Ability. Just look at this video she made.

Microsoft must not think it is "just a game" either. I have attended some of the Second Life .NET Users Group meetings on Microsoft Island where the same presentation to IT Pros was going on in Second Life and in Live Meeting.

I have participated in Second Life Events that also had Real Life components, including the Best Practice in Education Conference I reported on it at http://snipurl.com/gso2g, the Health Panel Expo - May 27, where I was one of the Bloggers/Notetakers for the 2 pm Disability Panel and the 3pm Cancer panel.

I hope to be involved with the inworld part of Second Life Community Convention 2009 which in Real Life runs from Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 8:00 AM - Sunday, August 16, 2009 at 6:00 PM (PT) in San Francisco, CA.

I feel Second Life offers some interesting opportunities for user groups. Besides Callie, the only two UG members I know of in Second Life are Sam Wexlar (Cruiseman Inventor - 4/3/2009) and Hewie Poplock (WebProf Magic - 6/6/2008), but I would like to meet others and see if we can develop some User Group related activities in Second Life.

I have not yet learned how to do it yet, but there are ways to bring parts of Real Life into Second Life (view web pages, watch movie clips, bring RL audio into SL, etc, and ways of bringing parts of SL out to RL viewers. And with a little work I think we could generate some interesting programs for our respective User Groups.

If you are a member of a user group and are in Second Life, please IM (send an instant message in Second Life) to DJ Earnshaw and identify your RL (Real Life) User Group. I will send your avatar a box of APCUG T-Shirts.