Help Make State of Play Happen
State of Play is one of the most important conferences on virtual worlds held each year, as it generally features not just game and world developers but academics, economists and legal scholars who have devoted a large part of their careers to investigating just what role these places play in our society today and going forward. This year’s event, to be held in Singapore, is intended to knit together the global community of such people in a closer way than they have been before. That in itself is an important undertaking, given the fact that legal and tax regimes in the Asia-Pacific region arguably take a more forward-thinking approach to virtual worlds than we do in the western hemisphere. But the conference is apparently short of funding, according to a recent post on the Terra Nova blog. So if you have some extra cash or know someone who might be interested in being associated with the event, get in touch with Aaron Delwiche, who’s organizing the whole thing and whose details can be found in the Terra Nova post. As he puts it: “When Beth Noveck and I set out to plan this event, we overestimated the readiness of our Western colleagues to embrace this groundbreaking project. Five months down the road, we are still trying to raise enough money. We are rapidly approaching a ‘go or no-go’ decision point.” It would be great if the decision were a “go.” Help make it happen, if you can.
Feeds
isn’t there something amusing about a meeting about a virtual world not being held in a virtual world?
Only as amusing as a meeting about the real world taking place in a virtual world ;).
> “When Beth Noveck and I set out to plan this event, we overestimated the readiness of our Western colleagues to embrace this groundbreaking project.”
Go Aaron!
> isn’t there something amusing about a meeting about a virtual world not being held in a virtual world?
It is a great idea. An interesting point of contention here may be that Second Life is perhaps the only virtual world capable of hosting a large-scale event like this with audio, video, images, direct teleportation–the whole package–but there may be some politics involved in featuring one virtual world above others. Don’t know, but it sometimes happens. There’s already a State of Play Academy built in There.com that holds regular classes. Maybe it could happen there, but you’re out of luck on video and Mac access, which really does make it tricky to connect with a real life event (and Mac users like me :).
I’d love to see a State of Play extension in Second Life or There.com for people who can’t make it to Singapore. It would be doubly nice in SL, beyond video, since SoP is strongly connected to the Terra Nova community and recent comments on that blog have shown that some frequent commentors there either aren’t fond of or haven’t used SL very much. Here’s a great chance to make use of ‘the Paris Hilton of virtual worlds’ and turn those frowns upside down! Or at least have a common experience and test of this kind of non-game platform.
Maybe we could rally a Save State of Play campaign to run a community hosted conference in SL? A public effort patched together out of people hosting connected discussions. If we could get live Quicktime video from State of Play that could really fly since the issues discussed at SoP are incredibly relevant to many SL residents.
Doesn’t solve the money issue, but it helps on the access issue, that’s for sure.
Thinking out loud,
I am all excited about SOP even though I will not be attending. The location is simply way to far for me to travel to considering I have prior obligations immediately before and after the proposed dates. I understand that Hawaii was not a good place either because of the lack of on the ground support - and that is a shame. I hope that you all are able to pull this off and maybe consider charging a small fee for people to view a web cast to cover the costs.
As I wrote on Terra Nova, State of Play III for me was a landmark experience, and it’s a vital conference process, bringing together many strands of disciplines including law, economics, sociology, ludology — and game companies, software companies, universities, major corporations like IBM. It’s a hugely important crosswords in the Metaverse. That’s why it *should* be taking place at least on a parallel basis within the best platform for this purpose now, which is Second Life. And yes, we should get up a movement to have a satellite conference within SL that can add on to what SOP IV is doing.
I personally can’t travel that distance at that time nor take on the expense and I know many who can’t. I think it might have been premature to stage it this year in Asia, though I respect all the thinking that went into
That said, I’ve been a critic on TN about how they are going about this. Rather than just say, hey, this is a really important conference, help out, it’s turning out to be way more costly than we anticipated, they’ve wrapped their whole pitch in this high-toned fashionable anti-Americanism, of the kind that you get especially from Americans on the hard left cooped up in university faculties these days.
Their premise seems to be “We were unable to raise money, therefore Americans must not be ready for the international conversation and can’t step up to be open to other cultures”.
And that’s total, unadulterated bullshit, and I’m not the only ones calling them on this. Just because you couldn’t raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to hold a game conference in Singapore where Beth Novek is a visiting professor doesn’t mean there isn’t a) interest in such conferences b) interest in Asia as a powerhouse of games and social technology or c) interest in funding. There is.
But not if it has to be wrapped in that sort of political correctness in advance. It begins to beg the question: why can’t any of these large Asian corporations, game companies, and governments be tapped? Aren’t they interested in the international conversation? Why are Americans being banged on and guilt-tripped at the same time as they are expected to be the ones ponying up a thousand here or a thousand there (as people were doing on TN).
There’s something wrong with this picture, and my asking this question shouldn’t be dismissed with “being a troll” or “being negative” or “a personal attack” on these organizers whom I don’t know, and who are immaterial to my larger questions.
I think if you hold an expensive conference abroad, you need to plan and get the funding in place first, not bang on people 2 months before the opening, and not in an open Internet appeal. I don’t know if Linden Lab or Blizzard or Eve or any of these companies are on board — I don’t see them mentioned. What foundations have been approached, etc.
So rather than have SnoopyB pass the hat to raise $42.17 US in Lindens within SL, I think they should just keep fundraising and postpone the conference. An alternative would be to reduce its costs and up its registration and participation in a U.S. city, while at the same time using the funds already in hand to ensure that there is significant Asian presence, if that is the goal.
Sigh. I write a post and it never takes on Walker’s blog, it is so frustrating.
Read my commentary on TN about this. Bashing Americans even while seeking to fund-raise from them with politically-correct admonitions about how Americans are ostensibly unready for the international conversation is just lame.
I’m all for holding an extention of SOP IV in SL and not worry about favouring one platform or another because SL is obviously the world where it could be done, and cheaply and relatively well.
We’d need to hear a lot more about these organizers fund-raising efforts, i.e. with Asian governments, game companies, and major corporations, before coming to the conclusion that it makes sense to go openly on a blog and pass the hat to raise $1000 here and there.
Sorry about that, Prok. It’s cos of the spam. If it has the words “sex,” “porn,” or any of a list of presciption drug names in it, it goes right in the trash and I don’t even see it. Then there a whole long list of other words that send it to the moderation queue and I have to go in and manually approve it. Which is what happened to your original comment. Which now appears above.
I think the word that is sending it to the moderation queue must be “Prokofy Neva,” Walker.
lol, you *wish* I was paying that much attention! But nope, so far I haven’t had to moderate or kick anyone. I have deleted I think two particularly vituperative posts, but I’m happy to say they weren’t by you, Prok.
Snap!
Happy proooon xanaaaax to you, too, Walker.