Community Mobilization

Sharing Hope TV gets press coverage

Our program Sharing Hope TV recently received press coverage from a local Austin, TX news broadcast. The story takes a look at one user and how she is using the platform to support others in their fight against cancer. Our good friend David Neff was interviewed and really discusses the community nature of the space.

What is of particular interest is how the community at Sharing Hope TV is able to self express and support at the same time. The community is a niche community and they are using the site and the underlying technology in new was not previously designed for. Of major interest is the Creative Commons content compositions, where one artists compiles and reconstitutes works, or pieces of works from other artists into something new and unique.

API tracks Cicadas in Cincinnati

There have been numerous uses of Google Map APIs  to track everything from crime statistics to Relay For Life events to... well bugs. A Cincinnati real estate blog recently reported on an effort by Mt. Saint Joseph University to crowd source Cicada emergence throughout the country. The Map AIP is a collaborative effort by the community to upload Cicada sightings and create a brood by brood map of their emergence year after year. The university is collecting valuable information about the physical location of the Cicadas and the community will benefit with more accurate predictions of when and where Cicadas will emerge each year.

Quitting Smoking happens in Social Networks

A study from Harvard Medical School and the University of California, San Diego appearing in the May 22 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine finds smoking cessation occurs in network clusters. The idea of getting help to achieve a goal is nothing new but here is empirical data that supports the support group. The primary finding of this study is that smoking cessation tends to be contagious, i.e. people tend to make the decision to quit smoking based on the influence of their social networks.

The study is important because it points to the fact that legislating out smoking via taxation and smoking bans push smokers to the fringe of their social networks, and it is clearly important to have a 'quitting network'.

Email Service Optin Lists Selling Fake Virtual Worlds Conference Attendee Lists

As a friend of Chris Sherman and a two time past presenter at VW I am posting this for public awareness!

This is a public service announcement to tell you to avoid an email marketing firm called Optin Lists which is selling fake virtual worlds conference attendee lists.  Repeat: These lists are fake, filled with bogus information. Please keep in mind that we at Virtual Worlds Management (operator of this blog and the Virtual Worlds Conference series) do not sell or rent any of our attendee lists.

We learned of the bogus offering after Optin Lists contacted one of our prior exhibitors with an offer to sell said exhibitor the show attendee list.  See email to the right >>

Upon receiving the forwarded email from said exhibitor one of our undercover operatives here at Virtual Worlds Management, posing as a potential customer, contacted Optin Lists directly to learn more about the company and what exactly they were offering to sell.

A couple of phone calls and email exchanges later and we found that Optin Lists claimed to have all of our attendee lists for sale. (see image to the right).

What really amazed us is the audacity of their claims. While we wish 6,651 people attended the Virtual Law conference last month, that simply is not true. And the Virtual Worlds 2008 Conference did not have 4,375 attendees. None of these attendee numbers in this chart are correct.  We have publicly stated many of our attendee numbers (1,200 people attended VW2008) so whoever put this chart together did not do any research.

Keep away from Optin Lists. Our understanding is that they are also claiming to sell attendee lists for other conferences and tradeshows in other industries as well.

If you want to get in front of Virtual Worlds Conference and Expo attendees the best way to do so is to exhibit at one of our shows. 

This is a public service announcement to tell you to avoid an email marketing firm called Optin Lists which is selling fake virtual worlds conference attendee lists.  Repeat: These lists are fake, filled with bogus information. Please keep in mind that we at Virtual Worlds Management (operator of this blog and the Virtual Worlds Conference series) do not sell or rent any of our attendee lists.

We learned of the bogus offering after Optin Lists contacted one of our prior exhibitors with an offer to sell said exhibitor the show attendee list.  See email to the right >>

Upon receiving the forwarded email from said exhibitor one of our undercover operatives here at Virtual Worlds Management, posing as a potential customer, contacted Optin Lists directly to learn more about the company and what exactly they were offering to sell.

A couple of phone calls and email exchanges later and we found that Optin Lists claimed to have all of our attendee lists for sale. (see image to the right).

What really amazed us is the audacity of their claims. While we wish 6,651 people attended the Virtual Law conference last month, that simply is not true. And the Virtual Worlds 2008 Conference did not have 4,375 attendees. None of these attendee numbers in this chart are correct.  We have publicly stated many of our attendee numbers (1,200 people attended VW2008) so whoever put this chart together did not do any research.

Keep away from Optin Lists. Our understanding is that they are also claiming to sell attendee lists for other conferences and tradeshows in other industries as well.

If you want to get in front of Virtual Worlds Conference and Expo attendees the best way to do so is to exhibit at one of our shows. 

Avatars and AI

Recently  Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute created an artificial intelligence program to run within the platform of Second Life. The researchers are studying the interactions that occur with real people through their avatars. The RPI students created the program to maneuver the avatar and understand some fairly straight forward questions, asked in English.

Operators of "Second Life" don't seem concerned about synthetic agents lurking in their world. John Lester, Boston operations manager for Linden Lab, said the San Francisco-based company sees a "fascinating" opportunity for AI to evolve. "I think the real future for this is when people take these AI-controlled avatars and let them free in 'Second Life,'" Lester said, " ... let them randomly walk the grid."

 

Crowdsourcing great hotel rooms

I am avid user of Seat Guru and have been flying so much (carbon off-sets help me sleep at night) that I have almost memorized the seat maps for my carrier. However I do end up in hotels fairly often and Tripkick is going to be a rather fun site for me over the next few years. Tripkick encourages travelers to rate individual hotel rooms, in the spirit of crowsourcing information.

I think that there will be a further sociological tapping of peer-review and crowd suggestions in everything from restaurants to contractors. Already Angie's list has been a reasonable popular community based recommendation portal, and of course Last.FM is a music suggestion site. I believe that categories (food, hotels, car rentals, attractions) will continue to see specific sites dedicated so a narrow focus as opposed to general spaces like Angie's List. The driver in this trend is partly due to competition, but also the desire to have narrowly focused deep searches as opposed to wide and shallow information.

corporate venture have failed in Second Life, Second Life did not fail them.

The Wall Street Journal published a story recently about how business are leaving second life. They site a Gartner study that I think is fundamentally flawed as it examines only large bus businesses and does not examine locally owned SL industry.

The Virtual world space is where the entrepreneur has the same access to resources as large retailers. The playing field is level and real items of value are creativity, time, and skill. On a business level large businesses do not realize that the virtual residents shun corporate patronage, and encourage buying local. Literally, buy items made by local content creators and do not bother visiting big box retailers. On so many levels corporate venture have failed in Second Life, Second Life did not fail them.Failure to understand the market before entering is entirely the fault of business not the community.

NNDB Mapping Tool

NNDB has created a mapping tool that allows you to create a visual map of the connections amongst the people in the database. The visualizations are enlightening and provide a unique perspective to viewers.
Visualizations are fantastic ways to examine complex data sets. Rob Cross from UVA has been using data visualization tools such as UCI net to track information and energy networks.

NNDB is an intelligence aggregator that tracks the activities of people we have determined to be noteworthy, both living and dead. Superficially, it seems much like a "Who's Who" where a noted person's curriculum vitae is available (the usual information such as date of birth, a biography, and other essential facts.

Brightkite looks a lot like Dodgeball

I just got an invitation to join Brightkite, a private beta location based social network. From the outset the system seems to mirror Dodgeball, a three year old Mososo built by friends Dennis Crowley and Alex.

After playing with Brightkite I really do not see a whole lot of difference between it and other mososos I have seen in the past. The infuriating thing that this system may prevent is what Dennis calls the Ex-girlfriend situation. Once in a circle, always in a circle. It is the quintessential example of how technology does not always play nice with the social realties and proclivities of users.

I will give Brightkite a point for integrating other social space lists to help you connect with existing connections in new spaces. One of the more frustrating things when you experiment with a new system is trying to hunt down all of your real friends. I put in my Twitter user name and found a number of folks I would like to know their whereabouts, particularly during a conference. The heart breaking thing is that Verizon does not support the Brightkite platform yet. But like most innovations most people 'get it' after a while.

Inflation's Little Parts

The New York Times has a very nice interactive graphical representation of the impact of inflation on all of the small parts of our lives. The chart shows where the average American's goes and how inflation is impacting each of the areas differently. An example is that we hear how fuel and food prices are climbing but not much about how new cards are 1.1% less expensive than last year.

As a philanthropic organization the impact of inflation can be seen in the donations received but also the cost of doing business. We hear how food banks and shelters are stretched even more thin because of higher food costs. The non profit community has always been judicious in exercising stewardship in how they use their money, but even more so now.