Metaverse Roadmap to Singapore
Posted Monday, August 20th, 2007, at 8:21 am Eastern by Mark Wallace
The fifth annual State of Play conference on legal and social issues in virtual worlds is under way this week in Singapore. I had to cancel my trip out there, which is a shame, since SoP is consistently one of the most interesting gatherings of VW thinkers. Jerry Paffendorf is there, though, and reports that the chin-wagging is already gathering steam. Other reports form Singapore have the local government excited over the metaverse roadmap that was recently release (an effort Jerry led and I was one of the contributors to). I’m not sure, but I think the Singaporese government helped fund the conference as well. That’s some pretty future-forward thinking. Wish I was there.
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Reading between the lines, tho’, this event has taken a lot of effort to bring it to fruition. Their blog first indicated an event to be held in Autumn (Fall if your prefer) 2006… but this was deferred to Q1 2007. I’m glad it’s actually happening - but to mem it does seem to have a certain “by the seat of its pants” quality about it.
Well that’s just a shame! I was looking forward to seeing you hear! You certainly are missed by me!
Looks like some decent discussion taking place, and SOP website states “The State of Play V Conference will be broadcast live and video segments for all events will be posted below.” Good to see Jerry Paffendorf is back in the thick of things. Need to check out the Metaverse Roadmap, sounds like it has been updated or something.
Great News! pity i can’t be there.. but i can continue read ur report about SOP.
Looks like all the podcasts from the conference are a bit delayed. Neils Clark has done a marvelous job of reporting the conference over at Gamasutra, here and here. I’m still working on it, not as fast and productive thinker as Neils, I’m afraid! ;)
Aleister,
As one of the co-chairs of the conference, I can elaborate a bit further on the history of the event. We had initially aimed for a January 2007 date, but ended up postponing due to a shortfall in sponsorship. We had received generous pledges from Macarthur Foundation, the Singapore government, Makena, and Kenyon and Kenyon, but organizing a conference in Singapore is quite costly.
I was very disappointed about having to postpone the event, and we individually contacted each sponsor and panelist to let them know that the event had been moved back. During the next few months, as virtual worlds burst into popular consciousness, sponsorship dollars began flowing more freely. We secured additional funding from the Singapore government, and Sony Online Entertainment made an invaluable contribution. This was enough money to make the event happen.
You are correct to note that this conference has been in the works for a long time, but I wouldn’t describe it as a “seat of its pants” affair. Quite the contrary, actually. It was a very time-consuming event that required the collective effort of dozens of people in Singapore and the United States.
Conference video is posted on the event’s main site. So, though you were unable to attend in person, you can at least hear/see what you missed. Wish you could have been there!
Warm regards,
Aaron
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