Results tagged “Second Life campus” from INSEAD insight

I’m probably one of the few INSEADers who have visited the campus in Second Life. Which is a shame, because it is quite a pretty place - even if there’s nobody else in sight except for some semi-intelligent bots that look like human beings and attempt to make conversation with you.

I teleported back into the virtual campus just now, and heard a familiar voice around me. It was that of our Dean, Frank Brown, being interviewed on a big screen. It’s nice to be immersed in multimedia all around your Avatar.

What have I done on the INSEAD Second Life campus so far? I’ve attended a talk and reviewed some slides from a previous presentation by a professor. I even chatted to employees of the Hungarian company that developed this virtual campus. In fact I think Second Life is a good medium for an international school operating on different continents and timezones.

However, overall, I feel the virtual campus is underutilised because it’s not as easy to access as Facebook; you need to download a huge installation file and hope that your graphics card can support the 3D rendering.

Still, I’ll continue to support our virtual campus because it reminds me of how INSEAD has shown innovation. Being the first (or one of the first) to have an accelerated MBA course and coming up with the idea of Executive Education, INSEAD’s foray into virtual worlds is another far-reaching step, even if it will take some time to bear fruition.

I was present for the first half hour of a live streaming presentation in Second Life, titled ‘Capacity Building and Partnership in Development’. This is the first of two talks, as mentioned previously. The next talk is by a Nobel Peace Prize laureate so it is worth catching as well.

There weren’t many of us Second Lifers in the audience, but the real life audience and speakers were aware of our presence. I had no problems getting Second Life to stream the video. There was a bit of lag every now and then but that always happens when accessing Second Life in Singapore.

However, my MacBook Pro (2.5Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM) started freezing intermittently, until it happened every few seconds which was quite disturbing, so I had to quit Second Life. I restarted Second Life and the problem occured again. I gave up and started doing my homework instead. I haven’t had this problem on my powerful machine before. It could be due to the latest Second Life software update.

However, I did manage to take some screen shots and learn a little bit about what Lilly was doing about Corporate Social Responsibility. I left when they were discussing HIV/AIDS issues, which is a pity because I handled the new media campaigns for AIDS at the Health Promotion Board, and it would’ve been great to hear more.

I am not sure if there was any interaction between the Second Life audience and the speakers. They just told the real life audience that we were watching the live stream. Someone joked that if confidential issues were discussed, they should ‘accidentally’ pull the plug on the Second Lifers, to which I replied, “HEY!!!” but I’m not sure if they saw my message.

If there isn’t interaction between us and them, and if they really turned off the telly at some point, then I fail to see much value-add using Second Life as opposed to normal web streaming, like ustream.tv. Second Life takes up a lot of processing power already. At the same time it is still a good platform for simultaneous, international dialogues. I was just hoping that it would be a full conference in Second Life, like other sessions I’ve attended on other educational campuses. Maybe one day…

As the new IT/Campus rep and supporter of Second Life, I am excited to announce that there will be two talks in October on our virtual campus!

Being an international school with different time zones, it is a very progressive idea to use a virtual world like Second Life as a common meeting ground. We should be proud of INSEAD for being ahead of many business schools in this aspect.

Even if the topics are not entirely up your alley, I’d say just attend for the experience, meet fellow INSEADers and staff, and take a few photos!

I’ve attended lectures in Second Life before and it feels the closest to the real thing, because you can walk into a room (or teleport, or fly!), sit beside people and start chatting to them too. You can pick up objects. Click on something and you might be given an object that will activate a script, or a text file that will give you more information, which you can store in your inventory, just like a role-playing game.

What I liked more about the virtual experience was that the speaker’s words were transcribed, just like in MSN chat. So you won’t miss a thing. However, it can be bewildering for Second Life newbies.

If you’re totally new to Second Life but want to check these talks out, don’t get an account at the last moment. You need to choose an Avatar, give it a name, and learn how to move about. You may want to wear something nice (yes, even to a virtual talk!), and for the ladies in particular, change your hair colour, make yourself slimmer etc… I and my girl friends went through the same thing when we first went into Second Life! Virtual or not, we want to look pretty, and the guys always want to look taller and more macho :)

But I digress. Do check out the talks. I will be there, and as the Campus/IT rep for my section I will also be there for whoever needs help in Second Life.

Be proud of INSEAD!!!

Update: I just met Cusanus Hax (Avatar name), a real-life Hungarian architect of our INSEAD virtual campus, from Pixelbreeze. He says most of his colleagues building the campus are from Hungary too. So my Hungarian classmates should be proud! And they should check it out!