events

We have a special Metanomics event this Friday, as part of Clever Zebra's vBusiness Expo. I am interviewing Larry Johnson, CEO of New Media Consortium, fresh on the heels of his testimony to the US Congress.

You may need to register for the vBusiness Expo to join us at the live venue, but of course our event partners will have a place for you too.

Mitch Wagner of Information Week and Steve Prentice of Gartner, Inc., have both expressed some fairly serious concerns about the future of Second Life and Linden lab. Hear what they have to say!

Mitch Kapor will be joining us for a special edition of Metanomics. Note the unusual day (Friday) and time (10:30 am SLT).

This Monday, March 17th, 2008, at 11:00AM-12:00PM SLT (2:00-3:00PM EST), Robert Bloomfield and Metanomics will host Dr. Nick Yee, research scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center. Dr. Yee recently received his Ph.D. in Communication from Stanford University, where he conducted experimental research on social interaction and self-representation in immersive virtual environments.

In preparation for this week's event, there is a wealth of background reading available on Nick Yee's website:

The Daedalus Project is an ongoing study of MMORPG players. MMORPGs (an acronym for Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) are a video game genre that allow thousands of people to interact, compete, and collaborate in an online virtual environment. Over the past 6 years, more than 40,000 MMORPG players have participated in the project.

At Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, I work with Jeremy Bailenson in using immersive virtual reality (VR) as a platform for conducting experiments in social interaction and self-representation. In particular, we are interested in exploring how to break the rules of physical social interaction to enhance interactions in virtual environments.

The PlayOn Group is a research group at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) that explores the social dynamics of Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs). In the group, I parse and analyze large data sets from longitudinal in-game census snapshots.

Monday's event will take place in the 4-Sim CMP Amphitheatre on CMP Island in Second Life. It will also be filmed and streamed live on SLCN.tv.

If you discover it to be full, however, you can still participate in the event live at any of our event partner locations, which are listed after the jump.

Prof. Robert Bloomfield of Cornell University will be interviewing David Levine, from IBM's TJ Watson Research Center.

David is a 23 year employee of IBM Research, with summer and university interneships, extending back another five years. His interests in Social computing and online collaboratoin extends back to work in 1982-1985 in IBM's onfline BBS style conferencing systems, and tools for sharing applications in the very early days of Personal Computing.

David has worked on a variety of projects in his IBM career, including network and systems management, Intelligent Agents, Reasoning engines, high distributed e-mail
systems and reasoning systems for policy based systems.

David's current work is focused on Virtual Worlds technology, and the long term
implications of broadly deployed social collaboration tools. He works with Linden Lab's
Architecture Working Group, and IBM's OpenSim team. David's work includes both the
technical work needed to permit interoperation between virtual worlds, and how
policy and social implications of this work.

David can be found in Second Life as Zha Ewry.

The event will occur at the CMP Amphitheatre at CMP Isle 1.

If you discover it to be full, however, you can still participate in the event live at any of our event partner locations, after the jump.

David Levine, IBM researcher, will be my guest on Metanomics this coming Monday, March 3rd. (Byron Reeves is being rescheduled to a later date). We will be meeting at the usual time (11am SLT/PST).

Topics will include the business implications of:

The nitty-gritty of what David is working on is technical for the show--but with my constant, gentle urging, David will walk us through these topics in ways that I and other business-oriented viewers will be able to follow.

I am also hoping I can get David to comment on the very different business models of Linden Lab and There (specifically, sponsor- vs. user-created content). David had some very interesting observations on last week's Metanomics show, which featured There CEO Michael Wilson. But it remains to be seen what David is willing to say on the air....

Details on locations to follow.

Rob

On March 17, 2008, at 11:00 SLT (2:00 EST)
Professor Robert Bloomfield and Metanomics will host

Dr. Nick Yee, Ph.D.

Location TBA

On Feb 18, 2008, at 11:00 SLT (2:00 EST)
Professor Robert Bloomfield and Metanomics will host

Someone TBA
Details Coming Soon.

Location TBA

On February 11, 2008 from 11:30AM-1:00PM SLT (2:30-4PM EST),
Professor Robert Bloomfield and Metanomics will broadcast live from

Virtual Worlds and New Realities in Commerce, Politics and Society
A conference hosted by Emory University

Live on SLCN

On Feb 4, 2008, at 11:00 SLT (2:00 EST)
Professor Robert Bloomfield and Metanomics will host

Robert Gehorsam
President of Forterra Systems Inc.

Location TBA

Many Metaversed readers have likely heard that CCP has hired a professional economist, Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson, to analyze the data from their highly sophisticated economy in EVE Online, and also advise them on economic policy. His first report covers the mineral markets.

I had an opportunity to chat with Dr. G today (which I find easier to say than Eyjól, which he prefers), and he has agreed to appear on Metanomics sometime soon. We are arranging the date, and hopefully will include some residents active in EVE's business community.

On the other hand, maybe I will try to get Stanford Professor Michael Boskin to join us, who has just agreed to become chairmon of the Council of Economic Advisors for Gaia Online. Hmmm....the possibilities for this series are endless....

On March 10, 2008, at 11:00 SLT (2:00 EST)
Professor Robert Bloomfield and Metanomics will host

Richard Bartle

Location TBA

Richard Bartle is the author of Designing Virtual Worlds , and was one of the co-designers of the "MUD," the Multi-User Dungeon, which forms the basis of virtual worlds today. "The MUD was to MMORPGs what the Beatles were to rock and roll. And by all accounts, Richard Bartle was (and remains to this day) a man ahead of his time. "

Professor Edward Castronova of Indiana University, author of "Synthetic Worlds," and recipient of a grant from The MacArthur Foundation to develop a virtual world based on the works of William Shakespeare. Ted will discuss his new book as it launches in November. Stay tuned for more information!