Thanks for your message Phil. This particular event is aimed at staff
and professionals. As you say it is critical to make involvement mean
something in the real world first and that's why to preserve the trust
we have in the "real world" we preferred to test it out with a range
of professionals from different services before considering reaching
out to local residents. Some may want to use it for tourism, others
for control groups, others for scenario planning - which imply
different types of involvement. It will be for our staff to decide if/
how they use it in the future and for professionals in other
organisations to discuss what this means for local government - so
please feel free to join us on the 16th July to debate whether public
service organisations need to get it right in the real world before
entering the virtual world
What do I need to do to get connected?
* Create a free Second Life account from the website here:
https://secure-web6.secondlife.com/join/
* Download and install the free Second Life client from here:
http://secondlife.com/support/downloads.php
* Jump or teleport to the venue by navigating to this internet
address: http://slurl.com/secondlife/second%20places/86/39/28 Click on
the “teleport” button to enter the site and explore.
On Jun 27, 11:05 am, philralph <p...@ralph29.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi Noel, this event sounds interesting and positive from the way you
> describe it. I happen to live in Kent and wonder if ordinary citizens
> and community groups will get to hear about it? Pardon my cynicism,
> but with regard to community involvement (let alone empowerment) isn't
> a more pressing need to make this actually mean something in the real
> world first?
> On Jun 25, 1:22 pm, "noel.hat...@googlemail.com"
> <noel.hat...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > I blogged a while ago on the IDeAs Community of Practice about the
> > possibilities of hosting a Second Life event.
> > Anyway, we are now actually to face the brave new world of...virtual
> > worlds. While for sponsors, there will be the opportunity to host
> > virtual stands, for everyone else, entrance will be free and open,
> > with a range of presentations hosted live from Kent onto Second Life
> > where both the virtual & live audience will be able to participate and
> > share ideas both with the speakers but also with other people
> > participating.
> > We thought that it would be an interesting experiment for you to
> > experience this event both virtually (if you can't make it down to
> > Kent) or in real life. An even more interesting experiment would be to
> > start a discussion "on the ground" on the potential of virtual worlds
> > for public services and community empowerment.
> > This could also be the opp to test out mashups which integrate Second
> > Life and other tools (like twitter, youtube, etc) that could even be
> > used on the day to get as inclusive conversation as possible.
> > What does everyone think? Who would be interested in coming?
> > For those not aware of Second Life, it calls itself an online 3D
> > virtual world imagine and created by its residents and "inhabited" by
> > millions of people across the world.
