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…
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