Wow!

I have been trying to get this news up here since yesterday, but I was too busy with other stuff related to it at the office, and then promptly passed out when I got home, so was unable to get to it till now.

Out of the blue (or, out of the mailbox, I suppose), a couple of copies of "AD COLLECTORS" showed up here late last week. This is a special supplement to the Italian edition of Architectural Digest magazine, one specifically targeted to "collectors" to give them tips on what's "hot" and is likely to be greatly increasing in value over the next several years.



As you can guess from these scans of the various pages involved ... they are recommending the collecting of "metaverse art", and specifically mention (in the expanded blurb on the page with a lot of portraits) Avatrait, both the in-world Gallery (LINK) and the sales of hard-copy framed prints through our Evanston, IL offices (via Avatrait.com).

In the article (which we had translated over the weekend) they discuss Second Life art with various gallery owners in Europe, who quote pieces going for as much as 7,000 euros ... needless to say, Avatrait's current pricing is a steal! As it happens, the majority of the images they used (including the cover) are by Avatrait artists ... so you know we're excited.

More later ...

What a day ... in-world, yet

One thing about Second Life that I have a love/hate relationship with is the ability to do a LOT of meetings with a LOT of folks ... on one hand, I never had to venture away from my desk today to forge out onto the frozen tundra of Evanston to go anyplace, but I still took 4 meetings over about 5 hours and I'm beat ... I mean, the efficiencies are awesome, but it's hard to say "can't make it" unless things are actually scheduled for the same time slot!



The first of these today was the regular Friday meeting of the Non-Profit Commons (LINK). All sorts of exciting stuff was introduced, including concepts for their new (second) sim, and Rik Riel's announcement about the "Best Practices for Non-profits in Second Life" report (funded by the MacArthur Foundation via the GlobalKids.org group), which he'll be doing a presentation on during the regular Friday meeting (at 8:30am SLT) on February 8th.



The other conference of note that I ran off to was the presentation that Jeff Barr of Amazon.com (Jeffronius Batra in-world) was doing as part of the "GeekEnd" conference that they're running today and tomorrow over at Orange Island (LINK). Barr was discussing some awesome new things that Amazon either has available now, or under development that will greatly improve Second Life (I may be stretching his words, but it sounded to me like he was implying that we may finally have real on-demand sim server scalability coming soon). I'm so glad I made that presentation! The files don't seem to be up yet, but they said that the transcripts (the presentations were in text instead of voice) would be up on their site (LINK) at some point.



One other brilliant thing I picked up today was a way of circumventing the 25-group limit ... I've bitched a lot about having to belong to so many groups in the course of all our development, and having to drop out of others that I would just as well have been in order to keep under the limit ... but what the folks at Orange have done is set up Avatar accounts who are named "EventReminder (GroupName)" and instead of having group announcements going out, there are IMs from the Av, and they have signs to click which automatically "Friend" you with them, effectively giving you unlimited number of announcement outlets ... like the Guinness guy above is saying, "Brilliant"!

More gallery fun ...

Well, last night was the debut of the new series of art classes over at the Avatrait Gallery (LINK) with Ryker Beck doing "SL Art 101: An Introduction". This proved to be very popular, and most of us "Simuality Management" types ducked out early to keep the stress on the server at a minimum (and we did manage to have well over 40 Avatars in the classroom, following an audio/visual presentation, without crashing!).



The start time of 6pm SLT was not very popular with the European S.L. crowd (as that was around 3am their time!), so Ryker has agreed to do another session of this class on Sunday, January 27th at 9am SLT (about 6pm in Europe)! Given the popularity that these classes are evidencing, it's probably a good idea to double up on them like this, because were everybody to try to get in all at once, it would surely have crashed the server. I hope that Linden Labs is working on the "scalability" issue ... it would be great to just "order up" extra bandwidth when events like this were happening.



Next week brings the start of the Art History classes at the gallery. S.L. newcomer Hitoshi Mayako, who has an MFA from the University of Chicago, and is on staff at the Art Institute, will be bringing top-level expertise to the subject. That's going to be happening at 7pm SLT (sorry Europe!) on Tuesday, January 29 ... needless to say, we're probably going to have to look at doing a "reprise" presentation of this as well!

Here we go ...

We have been "waiting for funding" (the eternal bane of I.T. start-ups!) for quite a while, as the better part of a dozen Venture Capital entities looked us over, and having Big Project after Big Project just stacking up awaiting the dollars through the door to get these things started. Well, finally one of these guys "pulled the trigger" and, like a dam breaking, we're now hitting the ground at the speed of sound.



One of these (and rather central to my upcoming activities) is our participation at the Spring 2008 Virtual Worlds conference in New York. We had hoped to have been the "lead sponsor", but time got past us, and another company got that, but we're going to be a "Gold" sponsor with some other options added on.

Aside from builds that we're developing for clients (such as Club Mannequin {LINK} and the stuff I've been writing about of late), we also have some Very Exciting Projects that we're developing in-house, and one of these we're planning on "officially unveiling" at the Virtual Worlds show!

Of course, in the eternal twist of phrase by The Rutles, "All You Need Is Cash" ... and now that the cash is on hand, ALL of the parts (press kit covers, pamphlets, booth design, promotional items, travel plans, etc., etc., etc.) need immediate attention, and we have only 9 weeks before we get on a plane! I just booked our exhibit package today, and have a printer coming in to give us some quotes tomorrow, etc.



It's amazing that I haven't been back to New York in as long as it's been. I grew up on the Upper East Side (from ages 2-9) and used to go back either for business or to hang out with friends several times a year. I don't know if the last time I was there was for the Kalachakra Initiation that the Dalai Lama gave at Madison Square Garden back in 1991, or a trip my wife and I did out there sometime around then (we went to see Blue Man Troupe when they were still only at their little theater in lower Manhattan), but in either case it's been nearly 20 years since I've been back.

Needless to say, I'm excited ...

Whew ...

Well, we're almost done with the project that needs to be all tied up with a nice little bow tomorrow morning. The Boss and I were in at the office till 11:30pm last night, and there are five us "burning the midnight oil" tonight ... although I really expect that we won't go quite to midnight!

Because of working on this all day I've hardly been in-world, but I thought I'd share a pic of Eschatos over at his Maxwell Street "ghetto" place, communing with his growing collection of pinball machines as the El train runs past ... although I must once again apologize for his "half-rezzed" suit jacket ... it always seems to be the last thing to rez up anyplace Eschatos is, and ends up making him look like he's been sleeping in the street!



Anyway, tomorrow morning we'll be done with this big project ... I spent most of yesterday stitching together bits of Machinima, and today I was doing audio editing, adding "PowerPoint slides" into the video and trying to get the voice-over to fit as near as possible to the pictures. We still need to fit this little 2:22 movie into the bigger Machinima that's part of the Client's eventual PowerPoint presentation, but I'm pretty sure we'll be good to go by midnight.

All sorts of cool things are happening ...

But I can't really talk about them at the moment!

Let's just say, as busy as I am today (and I'm only in here right now because I'm waiting for a download to finish), is likely to be the base-line for the next several months.



Here's a shot of Eschatos setting things up over at the Avatrait Gallery's "classroom" space for an in-world presentation ... don't mind the fact his suit hasn't rezzed yet. Right now I'm working on a project which involves a Machinima within a PowerPoint within a Machinima within a PowerPoint which will be presented by one of our Big New Clients (press releases coming soon!) next week.

Ooops ... the thing I was waiting on is done ... gotta go!

Awww ... bummer!

One of my least favorite things about Second Life is that things that I think are way cool will suddenly disappear, and this happened again today. It looks like the Four Deuces folks have finally thrown in the towel. Now, if you're not familiar with them, they had started out with a multi-sim build that was focused on a Poker casino ... the whole sim being "Chicago themed" with stuff like the Art Institute, the Palmer House Hotel, Navy Pier, and the Chicago River with various bridges getting at least "name-checked" in it. After Linden Labs pulled the plug on in-world gambling, most of this stuff disappeared, and what was left (one sim centered around the Art Institute) had moved to some other place (or, at least when I used specific landmarks I was dropped into empty sims).

Now, aside from the fun Chicago build, Four Deuces had a fabulous radio station that not only could you hear over there, but was available on the web as well (as of today that's gone too). They seemed to have been trying to re-envision the "Four Deuces" sim as something of a "nightmare" Chicago, with meat packing plants, a morgue and funeral home, police station, and some really creepy stuff tucked away here and there ... plus two night clubs, a version of the Sears Tower, and the in-world "studio" for the radio station. The only thing was that there was never anybody there, except sometimes a lone builder fixing up details on things like the loading docks outside of Chiapetti meats. I kept waiting to hear something about them opening ... but nada ... which is too bad because they'd obviously spent a TON of time on making a very fascinating and detailed build.



Here's what's on the other side of the landmark today ... the name's been changed to "Carthage", and there's one stockade (with several people dancing in it ... go figure) and one Gothy-looking tower that had a bunch of "oooh, spooky" stuff for sale inside. As you can see from the inset, the S.L. map hasn't updated, and it still shows the lay-out from it's most recent Chicago manifestation.

I suppose if the same folks are involved, this will end up being as cool as the various "Four Deuces" builds were (and the audio stream was still pretty good), but it's awfully sad to have a "favorite place" (no matter how empty of other avatars) just up and disappear like this!

Hither, thither, and sometimes yon ...

Well, Eschatos was unexpectedly all over the place today. Frankly, I had a big research project going unattended in the task bar while various places drew our virtual presence. First was a bit of "getting ducks in a row" over at Club Mannequin (LINK) where I snapped this pic of club manager Jada Hoyer getting the music mix together for an upcoming fashion show ...



But that didn't take much of my day, however in the early afternoon, a call went out to the Non-Profit Commons (LINK) group list from Kali Idziak, asking if anybody could come by the sim to act as something of an impromptu "welcoming committee". It turns out that MSNBC had published a rather extensive article about the NPC entitled Pixelanthropy: Charities tap into Second Life this morning, and that quite a few folks were wandering in, having read that.



I hung out there for a while, and then went to check out Coughran Mayo's new island for his non-profit (I don't think they're quite ready for visitors), and then followed up on some really cool in-world features that I'd noticed In Kenzo's phone exhibiting (going over to a build that she'd done for the Canadian "Telus" phone group). Hendry Goldkey, founder of Simuality, has the same phone (a MotoQ) and was very interested in all the stuff Telus had it doing. Needless to say, I'm sort of hoping that this will end up with us all getting "company phones" that will shift phone calls and e-mail in and out of world!

So, here I am, stranded in Real Life ...

J-U-N-K-I-E ... yep ... not doing too well without my in-world fix ... I mean, it's not like I don't have the Internet or anything (so my skin's not crawling), and I'm catching up on a lot of blog reading, but I feel so exiled!



Have I mentioned how amusing I find the 2001-themed "Grid Down" graphic that L.L. uses for these planned outages? I do ... hear me giggle while I keep frantically hitting reload on the SL BLog like a rat in a Skinner box.

Maybe I should go have lunch early today and hope that SL's back up when I'm done.

Whew ...

OK, so if you were watching Eschatos today, you'd say "Hmph! He barely ever moved from his desk!", but the live body on the other side of the keyboard had quite a day.

One of the many, many things cranked out the door today was a press release about a new series of Art Classes that will be held on Wednesday evenings (at 6pm SLT) over at the Avatrait Gallery's (LINK) upstairs classroom space.



This is going to be very cool. It's starting on the 23rd with the first installment of "S.L. Art 101" being done by Ryker Beck, who is known for her helpful tutorials on graphics, photography, and scripting.

There are going to be three "regular" (once a month) classes, "S.L. Art 101", "Art History" and "Art Appreciation" (I guess we're still getting folks lined up to teach the other two), plus special classes and "meet the artist" discussions on the other Wednesdays.

I had some other Very Cool Things run through they keyboard today, but I suspect they're still in the "can't talk about 'em" state, but it was a very full, if exhausting day.

Hopefully I can get Eschatos unchained from his desk for a bit of a walk-around later in the week ... I'm hoping to have more varied stuff to write about in here than just what happened at the SL and RW desks!

Some days are more active than others ...

Yes, there Eschatos sits, all alone in the big conference room. There was supposed to have been a meeting this morning, but everybody had too many RL things to do. We may yet have a meeting this afternoon, so instead of dragging back down to his virtual desk on the virtual ground floor, Eschatos sits and waits.

I, however, have been pretty busy ... resourcing some of our printing needs (and we have a LOT of printing needs) for the Virtual Worlds Conference in New York City in early April, and getting out an in-world press release about Jada Hoyer taking over the reins at Club Mannequin (LINK). I'm going to be typing my fingers to the bone this week, with as many as four in-world releases and at least one headed for the dead-tree press.

In-world on a Sunday ...

I guess it's a testament to how disconnected I have become to the current football season (alas, my Bears tanked early after having lost in the Superbowl last year) that I was in-world instead of watching the Wild-Card playoff games (in my defense, I did see at least part of all four games, just not all of any of them).

Once again, Jada Hoyer managed to put on a hot party over at Club Mannequin (LINK)...



... I'm hoping that she'll get some time today to send off some biographical stuff to me so that I can get a release out about her taking over Manager duties at Mannequin ... I think she's being modest, but we want to let folks know that she's running the show there!

Busy, busy ...

I really didn't think that I was going to be able to be in-world today, as I usually have to take my daughters up to their martial arts class on Saturday, but I needed to do some repair to The Wife's computer, so I got to stay home and she took them.

I actually had four "social events" that I would have liked to have made it to, but the party over at Broadway Live had pretty much wound down by the time I got there, and ditto the "sports gear" party over at Club Mannequin (LINK). Oh, well.



I did make it over to the grand opening of Kiva.org's new space (LINK) over in the Non-Profit Commons (LINK). Kiva is an interesting concept ... they are a "micro-finance" network which allows folks with a bit of extra money (and we're talking as little as twenty-five bucks per loan here!) provide a cash infusion to a third-world entrepreneur who needs a resource for financing. Now, I suspect that the lenders aren't making much cash return on their money, but if they've been able to help somebody bootstrap themselves out of poverty, I guess that's its own reward.



Needless to say, Kiva's very cool and you should go check them out, either in-world or at their web site!

The other thing that I was able to make it to was the mentioned-yesterday opening of the Clarrise Cinquetti show at Avatrait Gallery (LINK).



These opening parties are always fun, with lots of folks turning out ... in the above are Track Hax, Avatrait founder, and Stephen Venkman (with his back to the camera), Avatrait gallery manager.



If you want to check out more of Clarrise Cinquetti's art than you can see in these snaps, drop by the gallery in-world, or at the Avatrait site (where you can buy real-world framed prints of her work, as well as that of the other fine Avatrait artists!).

Anyway, that was my "surprise" social excursion in-world today. Back to your regular programming, I'm sure, in following posts.

As I mentioned yesterday ...

OK, so I went out and snapped a picture of one of the mysterious floating objects ... this steaming cup of black coffee is hanging over the PeoplePool office over on Simuality (LINK), right next to where I sit at a desk all day.

We're still working on getting me set up with the right "permissions" to make these random items go back from whence they came, but they do add a certain air of serendipity on the island!



In the background is the very popular Avatrait Gallery (LINK). The new exhibit featuring Clarrise Cinquetti opens tomorrow (Saturday 1/5) with a big bash at 1pm SLT. Her show will be featured through the end of January ... so do get over there to check it out.

By the way, speaking of "random items" ... Avatrait Gallery always has a free framed graphic from the featured artist available by the front desk ... I just picked up a copy for my in-world art collection!

Uh ... Eschatos NOT In-World at the moment

OK, Second Life is off-line at the moment (horrors!), so since Eschatos can't be sitting at his desk (as realistically depicted here), I figure I'd pop in to update the blog.



Frankly, I'm still "feeling my way" through on what to address in here, although I'm leaning towards doing "my adventures in-world" ... but with a certain level of "editorial control", of course!

I'm hoping that the current "Inventory Issues" that is the cause of Second Life being down won't end up spewing "lost items" all over the place. Our chief builder, Rosalie Rothlisberger, ended up having a bunch of stuff disappear the last time something like this happened, and I'm still running into things that went missing then, coffee cups 50m up in the air, laptop computers sticking out of walls, umbrellas slowly rocking in the currents on the "sea floor", etc.!

There are still a few of these "missing items" out there ... maybe (once I can get back into S.L.!) I'll snap some pics and show them to y'all in a subsequent post.