Kansas Government Information

Be sure to check these resources later tonight so that you’ll be in bed before Santa’s arrival. You know the rules: “There must be no peeking or he might pass you by!”

RIT has been using Second Life as another vehicle for its online education component, with much of the build being created by students. It’s expanded since my first trip there last May and will continue to grow with plenty of 3D models of student projects in areas like economics and mathematics.

They not only have excellent resources, but also dedicated staff and enthusiastic students.  Expect big things to come out of this project.

The Program for the Future Conference is “An Invitation to Innovation. An interactive conference inspired by Doug Engelbart’s vision of harnessing technology for human betterment. “

The conference takes place Monday (12/08/08) at The Tech Museum of Innovation and Adobe Headquarters in San Jose, and then on Tuesday (12/09/08) at Stanford University. And for those of us who are not on the West Coast, we can attend both days in Second Life. Register now before all the FREE virtual tickets are taken!

Featured speakers include

• Professor Thomas Malone, Founding Director, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence
• Professor Hiroshi Ishii, Associate Director, MIT Media Laboratory
• Peter Norvig, Director of Research, Google
• Andries van Dam, Professor, Brown University
• Alan Kay, President, Viewpoints Research Institute
• Steve Wozniak, co-founder, Apple Computer, Inc.

Plus an impressive list of other speakers that is essentially a “Who’s Who in Computing.”

This should be an extremely valuable two days for anyone interested in where technology is heading. I’ve got my virtual ticket and my avatar, Rebekah Cavan, and I will be there both days.

The cocktail party begins tonight at 5:30 p.m. and the unconference runs through Sunday at 3:00 p.m.

Here’s the blurb I received from Renee Lloyd. It looks like this will be a great opportunity to connect with other geeky women and share some ideas, do some networking, and have some fun!

“She’s Geeky is a neutral, face-to-face forum for women who like to geek out about all kinds of things: computers, science, math, design, robotics, web 2.0 etc…

The purpose is to bring women from a diversity of technical sectors together to:
1. Exchange skills and learn from women in different fields of technology
2. Discuss issues that affect women in the technology industry
3. Connect with other women in technology, computing, entrepreneurship, funding, hardware, open source, nonprofit and any other technical geeky field
4. Build cross generational relationships.

Two up-coming events:

EAST COAST: New York City – December 5-7 (with the 6th being the main day)

WEST COAST: Mountain View – January 29-31

Unconferences are a great way to exchange and learn from one another and this is how they work.

At the beginning of the day, we create the agenda. Everyone meets in one room and posts topics they would like to present, see or discuss. This creates a rich assortment of agenda items and makes for an exciting day of learning.

From there, we go to separate areas or rooms assigned to each topic. The session can be a presentation, inquiry about a question or discussion about an issue or technical field. or. One participant volunteers to record the proceedings.

The notes from each session are collected in the newsroom, then a book is compiled with all the notes from the conference and distributed to everyone who attended.

When you come to She’s Geeky, you benefit from the opportunity to:
1. Build relationships and even partnerships across disciplines.
2. Learn something new from other geeky women.
3. Find answers to the questions that matter to you.
4. Consider business issues related to the technology industry.
5. Be exposed to new ideas for making and keeping technology relevant.”

This caught my eye today:

Who wouldn’t want a plant to post its status to Twitter so you know when to water it?

I know this sounds like a fun toy, but keep your eyes open. We’re going to see a lot more of this sort of thing. Getting status updates delivered to our inboxes and cell phones in real time will be commonplace before long. So go ahead - be the first one at your office with a twittering plant! : )

Second Life is a free, online world created entirely by its inhabitants. Come explore this world and see how it is being used to create an interactive, 3D interface to the web.

Find out how easy it tis to join millions of people worldwide interacting, in real time, in this virtual space.

** You must register for this program by calling the library at 585-223-9091 or on the library website.

This free event takes place at the real (brick and mortar) Fairport Library on Wednesday, October 8 at 7 pm.

Location:

Fairport Public Library
1 Village Landing
Fairport, NY 14450

Direct Slurl enables a location-based url that allows a newbie to teleport directly to a Second Life space without having to go to Help Island first. Help Island has been a turn-off for quite a while. There are less-than-polite avatars hanging around and harassing people in these newbie areas. Not a way to make a good impression. People were turned-off before they had a chance to see the vast world that Second Life has to offer.

Direct Slurl will still take a new user through the process of setting up an account, but now they can be immediately directed to someplace useful, like the Alliance Virtual Library archipelago where they will find friendly, helpful library staff to ensure their first trip into Second Life is not their last.

Here’s the Slurl for Info Island International, the main hub of the library region:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Info%20Island%20International/116/237/34

This is a truly fascinating presentation:

More information can be found at Mediated Cultures, and at Anthrovlog. 

Check out this list of projects going on at MIT’s Convergence Culture Consortium.

It’s an amazing field and well worth watching what these people are doing.