Rattling around

Talks given: 3 (good); Of those, no. given about SL: 2 (good); Number of unexpected duckings in SL sea: 1 (bad)
Have spent last few days rattling round country giving talks, hey ho such is life of busy academic, high tailing it on trains whilst students beat vainly on RL door, ahem. On Wednesday gave talk about future of library profession in meeting needs of millennials (and so forth), so although not actually ABOUT SL feel was some excuse for showing couple of SL pictures. Actually zippy title of talk was Cutting through the hype to make a confident future library and information profession so can see that am able to Talk the Talk if not always Walk it.
Presentation on Thursday was Collaborating in SL given to European Business School Librarians Group (when I put this online I will link to it). Used my FUMSI “10 techniques for business in SL” article as framework and also asked Ishbel to talk in SL about what St Andrews Uni Management School is doing. Had originally been due to start at 11.30 but management guru who was due to talk at 9 couldn’t make it in time, so ended up doing the early morning slot instead.

Fortunately Ishbel was able to be in SL at 9.30 too so went famously except for when found myself unexpectedly falling through floor in Management School (in SL, that is). Turns out that management lecturer has multiple choice quizzes which dump students in SL sea when they answer wrongly. V. droll except if this happens when one is demonstrating SL in front of 40 eminent librarians from length and breadth of Europe in RL palatial surroundings of Ashridge Management School.
Ashridge is v. v. impressive being ex-Stately Home with amazing gardens and woods. In fact whole thing is a real SL fantasy of gracious living and landscaping, especially at springtime with bluebells in beech woods, wisteria climbing over ancient stone walls, hydrangeas, tulips and other props of SL landscapers, not to mention RL deer and assorted birds with associated birdsong. Recorded some Woodland Sounds with new MP3 player and will see whether can turn these into a sound effect for the woods in Infolit.

3rd talk was actually given nearly 2 weeks ago, but have failed to blog it, indeed could not remember exact title (it was about inquiry based learning in the first year), but all ppts from the event have now gone online here .

Did not take any pics at these events, so here are some I prepared earlier... the first one shows me flying past Hobbiton on the witch broom tour of the island. I finished by setting myself off on the tour whilst I answered questions in RL and one delegate said she liked the witch broom best. The second picture is one I used in the presentation - of a recruitment exhibition at Clemson University Graduate School.
The last pic is one of those SL moments - I tp-ed into my personal plot of land to find the sky filled with a giant prim. Where did it come from? Where did it go? Who knows. Anyway, it has gone now, as have (incidently) a couple of my neighbours. Fortunately no new night clubs, when I last looked, though.

Because I can...

Library talks attended: 1 (good); Grape harvest pressings attended: 1 (good): Fashion shows attended: 1 (good, laggy); retro objects bought: possibly a dozen (bad)

Generally give abiliy to dot in and out of meetings etc. as prime benefit of SL. However also means that am attending all sorts of events that would not otherwise, thus eating into time when could be sleeping, cooking, writing peer reviewed papers, conversing with RL friends etc. Over last couple of days:

1) went to talk given by Puglet Dancer, on issues to do with librarians - one interesting thing was that one of those attending had got a full time job as "Immersed librarian". Will have to get quote from her for my article for CILIP Update. Was on American Library Association sim which has some natty features (e.g. banned books exhibit) but is somewhat functional (as opposed to brimming with decorative yet useless objects). Flew across to nearby ASIST sim afterwards, which is even more basic. Suppose I cannot grasp how anyone can have 15,000 prims and 64,000 metres at their disposal and not want to landscape it and fill it with animated squirrels and amusing sofas.

2) Earlier in the day had attended fashion show given by SySy Designs. Took a table unobtrusively at one end. Had attempted to dress in something with a low Avatar Rendering Count. Seems to be considerable ire directed at people who turn up at shows, hunts etc with a high ARC, although as current thread on the SLED list indicates, actually ARC isn't the main lag-causer.

Anyway, it WAS a bit laggy, but seemed friendly event and I was motivated to drop into the SySy store and buy a couple of dresses afterwards. Have fashion blogged the more successful purchase here.

3) This evening had no intention of doing anything but finishing aforementioned fashion blog post and putting up some poppies (for remembrance day). However, Riven had dropped me an invite to a grape harvest celebration and once there was charmed by dancing, as well as by grape treading animation.

4) Previously had got into retro mood and had been hunting out records, psychadelic posters and the like. Was searching yesterday for a record player, without really finding anything, but today bumped into the very item when browsing round the new Hotel Dare area, and followed link to main location which turned out to be a shop/club in a build by Melino Style, one of my favourite designers (that is the top picture, me looking through the record collection, or, more precisely, me doing a "sorting through the records" animation ).

Hmmmmmm. Think I should get some sleep.

Sort of ready .. but is SL?

No of slides uploaded into SL: 44 (bad, probably); No. of notecards created: 1 (good); No. of hours in advance that set up ppt etc inworld: 3 (v. good); amount of access to island where am supposed to be giving talk: zero (v.v. bad)
Have spent long time putting together ppt, putting text into notecard, adding links etc, loading notecard into poster, uploading ppt to Slideshare and setting whole thing up in SL conference room on ISTE.
Started to try trick recommended by Sirexkat, namely creating a little object for each ppt texture, so that by the time you came to that slide people's computers would have already picked up teh texture. Neat, but it was taking *** ages to produce them and afraid gave up after the first 8.

Anyway was feeling moderately hopeful despite earlier pear-shapedness of some technical things, namely that streaming inworld didn't seem to work properly, one key speaker couldn't get inworld and had to postpone and I couldn't get into one of the venues. Hey, that's SL. Also felt it was pity that was manifesting only as cloud of vapour (so presumably people with earlier viewers were seeing hideous Ruth avatar), considering amount of time planning wardrobe. All that cute pinkness and purple, and all one can see is mist.

However became not inconsiderably concerned when realised that all efforts to get onto ISTE islands, any of them, were failing. ISTE as in, where am supposed to present. Decided to do something constructive, so set up ppt etc. on Infolit as could get there no trouble and presumably so could others. IMed one of organisers who confirmed that ISTE 1 had gone missing. Not something that happens in RL unless is some sudden natural disaster or you find self in middle of Dr Who episode.

Anyway am now out of world in sanguine mood. Organiser seemed to have preference for me moving to another set up venue elsewhere, but frankly would prefer to be on home ground. Hey Ho.

Before got into WTF mode I did manage to drop in on Baldric Commons talking about some quests. Interesting. Attention was caught by one about the Giant's Causeway in N. Ireland (I've been there! one might appropriately say that it rocks) where people have to find the salmon of knowledge. I can think of a few people who could do with finding that. Students have to take their pic with the salmon when they find it, to put in teh Hall of Heroes, and the overall goal is to increase interest in the English texts (Baldric is with the British Counil in Barcelona). There was also a time travel quest, in which scenes are set up which have anachronistic objects and people have to identify which ones they are.

In fact this session is only one have actually managed to follow so far apart from hearing some of the Lindens opening speech via the web. What will the next few hours bring? Who knows. By that time there probably won't be an audience left.

Preparation, unreadiness

Days since last blogged: 23 (v.v. bad); Papers being presented at SLEDcc in 2 days time: 1 (good); Amount of preparation for paper: zero (bad); No of papers presented in other RL countries since last blogged: 3 (good) (well, I hope so)

Having been whizzing round world in RL (not exaggeration in fact since have been in 3 countries and 2 continents in last 3 week, though that does include the UK as a country which is perhaps cheating). Also in SL have been demolishing and building, shopping, attending discussions, chairing discusions and so forth. Actually have really done rather a lot so perhaps is no surprise that this blog has been languishing neglected. However, have to confess that in that time have done 2 (or is it 3) fashion blog posts in the http://iheartsl.com/ blog Perhaps should feel guilty about that.

Anyway, one of these fashion posts was of the outfit that intend to wear whilst presenting paper at SLEDcc (see pic of me pretending to practice speaking). Outfit will need to be good as at present is all that I have prepared for people to look at during 50 mins am scheduled to present. Am not in a parallel session either, so as far as SL conference attendees are concerned it's me or --- all the other things they could be doing in SL or RL so will probably attract modest audience and be OK.
Have never given a presentation with Voice and ppt in front of large audience before in SL. Thus, although have given oodles of talks in RL to audiences of various sizes and persuasions, and led oodles of discussion in SL, am starting to feel odd twinge of what might be described as Nerves.
2nd pic is arty shot which may symbolise feelings after gibbering at audience (I mean "sharing experience and engaging with audience to stimulate debate and reflection", ahem) for just under an hour. If you are registered at SL SLEDcc and wish to watch my humiliation, the time is Friday 5th at 1pm SL time and the theme is: Using first and second life to develop inquiry skills in the freshman year at a UK university: a happy blend? To save your breathless anticipation, will be saying "yes, a happy blend indeed".
Conference wiki is at http://sledcc.wikispaces.com/

Talk, CILIP

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Presentations posted to Slideshare: 1 (good)
Above you should find embedded my presentation given on 29 January 2008 at the annual general meeting of the CILIP Commercial Legal and Scientific Information Group, in London. I firstly present some basic information about Second Life. I go on to talk about my own experience as educator, researcher, shopkeeper, procrastinator etc etc. I talk about the value of SL in business and professional life, and indicate opportunities for library and information professionals. This is the meeting where people were merry and asked nice questions.

I'll also mention that the CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) Office has vanished, along with the Wales1 sim it was in. My gift of an ikebana was returned to my Lost and Found, so I zipped over and found a primless landscape - rather soothing. Anyway this prim-free zone was only there for a few days, then phut! gone. I emailed someone at CILIP HQ and they said they don't think they'll have a new office in the near future as they need to concentrate on core member services. Hmmm......