SLanguages 2010 SUMMARY

[Heike Philp]

On Friday and Saturday, 15-16 October 2010, the SLanguages 2010 conference took place over a period of 24h.

A newly founded committee took over the work from Gavin Dudeney and with the help of Carol Rainbow [Carolrb Roux] set out to conquer the most technically challenging quest ever: to run a
conference in Second Life.

And what a team effort this turned out to be.

The 24h conference saw...

• 47 guest speakers offering 42 sessions
• 377 unique avatars and 78 unique visitors in the Adobe ConnectPro room (not sure how many were in both venues) enjoyed....
  • 19 presentations
  • 3 plenaries and 1 unconference
  • 8 workshops
  • 2 theatre plays
  • 5 tours
  • 1 Dogme session
  • 2 demo lessons
  • 1 party

To view the programme, click here: http://tinyurl.com/slang10-programme

For the timetable click here: http://tinyurl.com/slang10-timetable

For the RECORDINGS go to http://avalon-project.ning.com/profiles/blog/list

If you have not already done so, please fill in this brief SURVEY.

Most of the recordings have now been published but they are by no means perfect. We lost 3 recordings and one we could recover by asking the presenter for a repeat session. In Adobe the visuals of the recordings are not as good as the actual screensharing. The audio in Adobe is very good but only as good as the audio in Second Life and overmodulated, choppy and missing audio in SL is quite normal. Taking all of this into account, I think the recording team of 8 volunteers worked hard on the backstage and they had done a tremendous job. Some higher quality videos are being produced as we speak.

I am beginning to think that Adobe's recording are not good enough for the purpose of archiving this precious content. However, using virtual classroom technology as a 'virtual window' into a virtual world is certainly an 'ease of access point'. In fact, to find a technical or a pedagogical solution to ease the access to 3D worlds was one of the goals of the AVALON project. AVALON stands for 'Access to Virtual and Action Learning live ONline'. This
appraoch has successfully been piloted at this conference.

The hashtag for the SLanguages conference is #slang10 and the general tag is - from now onwards - #vlang, as it was decided by the educators during the closing panel.

May we express our thanks for the following contributions:

...Alexandra and Annette for their fabulous teaching tool stand.

...Randall for the venues, teleporters and support staff display

 

... Shelly [Rainey] for the poster exhibition

 

... [Quadrapop Lane], 3D arts curator at the University of Western Australia for the arts exhibits and Shelly's awesome machinima.

Quadrapop Black Build in Second Life for Slanguages 2010 from Shelly Terrell on Vimeo.

On a personal note , I mentioned to Shelly once that I wanted to put the 'magic back into the SLanguages conference' and I believe she took this literal. Bless her!

Onlinevents.co.uk for their coverage of the Brecht theatre play.

... [Elinor] for the artistic theatre director and [Anna] for the stage technician and all of the actors of the play.

... [JenzZa Misfit] for making Groovy so groovy during the 3h long party plus late night clubbing.

.. our roving reporter team [Jose] and [Marius], for their interviews. Being new to SL they both had their technical challenges indeed and only ever managed 4 interviews. But, boy didnt they look cool? By the way, they so much enjoyed their job, that they are seriously contemplating to create and maintain a press department. They asked for permission to continue their series of interviews with some of you. I think this is a great idea, what do you think?

... Sian, [Groovy's] daughter and professional webdesigner for the SLanguages logo.

... [Ub Yifu] for the 'Dudeney bust'.

[salam]

It is great. You have done a good job. Congratulations. I wish I could have attended. I have been busy for a while.

[ranjani ramesh]

my first experience at a virtual conference was exciting and i would love to participate in the next one. The efforts to connect people and get the session going was quite impressive to watch.