I will soon write a post-mortem of the Science Online conference and especially the Second Life side, but overall it went pretty well and one of the best parts was the speaker broadcasting live through SL!
To summarise: a speaker realises with two days to go that his passport has expired. We decide he will still speak – via Second Life. Some potential for disaster here, I think, but we act confident… I stand up at the microphone when it is his turn to speak… I explain what will happen to the audience… I look expectantly at the big speakers… we all look expectantly at the big speakers… there is some nervous tittering… I’m fairly sure there is some skeptical twittering… and then… HE SPEAKS! And cue a round of applause :-)
We hear Dave Munger coming loud and clear through the speakers and the RL and SL attendees start clapping as they can hear him beautifully. That was a good moment. He was able to give his normal presentation, show his slides and even take questions at the end.
Virtual Dave, pic by Mike Peel
The day wasn’t perfect, the technology is still developing rapidly and users are still learning. It obviously isn’t as good for face-to-face contact as being able to attend in person, and the interaction between RL and SL attendees needs to be worked on. But, it is cheaper, easier, greatly expands the range of speakers and attendees who can participate in any events and I very much doubt this will be the last you’ll hear from me or virtual speakers in this kind of event.
More thought-through comment from Dave Munger himself and fellow speaker and attendee Arikia Millikan.
Love this idea of virtual speakers – it will be able to open up conferences to a much wider audience. I look forward to reading more.
Thanks, Alyssa – we’re doing two more events in the next couple of weeks (the NatureJobs careers fair The Source Event and, fingers crossed, the next Nature Debate), so will report back on how they go. Even better, everyone should come along!
Also, we’re looking to do a lot of events in the next few months to properly test whether there is a market for this kind of thing, so if anyone wants to try this at their conference, give me a shout.