Presenting, Random Musing
It’s Easy to Throw Real Stones at Virtual Glass Houses
My, how virtual worlds have tarnished. From all the high expectations of 2006, people calling for the coming of the “3D web”, and its been a year since the crows on the wire started sqwaking the “Second Life is Dead” as the big corporations who responded to the flash of light packed up their virtual buildings and left. Or, now it is relegated as a niche or that it is only good for 50 people.
Here is a code phrase to look out for- any statement that X is dead is suspect unless X is that skunk you ran over on the highway and has been flattened. Always question such assertions; ask to see the corpse.
I’m just coming off of a two day utterly engaging experience in what we do at the NMC as online conferences- these are not your webinar slideshow brigades- for 3 and a half years, we have run two to four conferences per year in a virtual world space, ones where people pay money to attend, and I can say first hand that the ones we have run are a completely different, and from what I have seen, more participatory experience from your typical web-based conference.
This is going to be a monster long post, maybe the longest I have ever lobbed on my server…
But before I make a case about this, which I am setting up for the rock throwers, I’d like first to rave about the NMC 2010 Symposium on New Media & Learning — from behind the curtain, it is an utterly exhausting affar, and usually by the time it is over, I have decompressed, and lack the energy to really capture the experience. But this one, may have been the best one we have every done, for the range and quality of the sessions and the discussions we saw bubbling around it.