Enjoy!

* New keynotes include: Jeremy Liew, Managing Director, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Mark Pincus, Founder and CEO, Zynga.
* 125 speakers covering the subjects of virtual goods, social media, digital law and 3D learning.
* Best Buy’s innovative social media strategy keynote: With Best Buy’s Gina Debogovich and Jason Parker.
* Super Social media case studies from leading brands: Walmart, Best Buy, Intel, H&R Block, and Kodak
* Virtual goods case studies from Playdom, Six Degrees Games, MyYearbook. Plus hear from Habbo, Zynga, Social Gaming Network, Playfish and more.
* The venture capital point of view: Hear from Lightspeed, Rustic Canyon Partners, SVB Capital and Venture Capital-Private Equity Roundtable
* Get the latest market research from from Strategy Analytics, Interpret, Pearl Research, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, VGMarket and ThinkBalm
* Get your hands dirty on the expo floor with demos of the top new technologies.
* Understand the critical legal ramifications pertaining to games, social media and virtual goods
* Learn how to use the latest 3D technologies within your enterprise to save money now.

(And don’t be surprised if you see more 3pointD posts here in the near future. I know, it’s been a while and there’s a lot of cleanup to do, but I think things may be picking up speed, if not here then in a related location. Stay tuned.)

ANNOUNCEMENT: Metaverse U Conference at Stanford University

* WHERE: Annenberg Auditorium, Stanford University
* WHEN: Saturday the 16th and Sunday the 17th of February 2008
* WEBSITE: http://metaverseu.stanford.edu

Stanford Humanities Lab (SHL) is thrilled to announce the Metaverse U conference at Stanford University. This two day conference will be held on February 16th and 17th 2008 and feature speakers from a range of disciplines spanning industry and academia. Our lab has worked in virtual worlds for some years now and have seen interest in the space grow exponentially in recent years. We believe that the time has come for an event to tell the interesting stories from the evolving metaverse. The current generation of spaces is part of a larger historical picture and many lessons have been learned over the years. Our ultimate goal with Metaverse U is to create a broad conversation about the pressing question of what the metaverse should be.

Metaverse U’s growing list of speakers includes Raph Koster (Metaplace), Brewster Kahle (The Internet Archive), Jeremy Bailenson (Stanford University), TL Taylor (The IT University of Copenhagen), Cory Ondrejka, Tony Parisi (Media Machines & Web3D), Jon Brouchoud (Wikitecture), Wm. LeRoy Heinrichs (Stanford Medical Center), Rebecca Moore (Google Earth), Parvati Dev (Innovation in Learning), Byron Reeves (Stanford University & Seriosity), Kari Kraus (University of Maryland), Christain Renaud (Cisco), Mike Liebhold (Institute for the future), Daniel Huebner (Doppelganger), Vladlen Kolutun (Stanford Virtual Worlds Group), Howard Rheingold, Henry Lowood (Stanford University)

For more information please visit: http://metaverseu.stanford.edu

Registration is open at: http://metaverse.stanford.edu/registration/register-now

His new book, Exodus to the Virtual World, is also now available. I’ve been flipping through a copy, and it looks pretty interesting. Whether or not you agree with the thesis — that game mechanics are going to increasingly influence real-world governance and society — there’s a lot of fascinating research packed into its pages.

Arden is made possible through the generosity of the MacArthur Foundation. Read more on both at Terra Nova.

It is my pleasure to invite you to the first Metaverse Meetup on Thursday November 8th at Stanford University. We want to bring together people from across industry and academia who share an interest in virtual worlds. As our first invited speaker we are thrilled to have Mike Liebhold from the Institute for the Future. His talk will be entitled: 3D data for real world virtual worlds. This will last for about 20 minutes with plenty of time for some good conversation afterwards. We are also having an open mic session, so if you want to pitch a project, find collaborators etc. then here is your chance. The basic idea is a pretty loose format with lots of time for networking built in.

Here is the scoop on Mike:

Mike Liebhold is a Senior Researcher for the Institute for the Future, IFTF, focusing on the mobile and abundant computation, immersive media and geospatial web foundations for context-aware and ubiquitous computing. Previously, Mike has worked for an impressive array of companies including Intel Labs, Netscape Communications & Apple Computer.

Here is the talk abstract:

Abstract 3D data, maps, and software will change the way we compute and interact with spatial services. Moving beyond simple texture mapped terrain and boxes, new 3D mapping frameworks are rapidly evolving into platforms for real world virtual world media, interaction, commerce, and science. In this talk I’ll review work of various groups who are building different components of a 3D Geoweb. I will first describe how their 3D data and software will work as a platform for a 3D real world virtual world, and then, what kinds of new applications and user experiences might be developed on these platforms, and then finish with a brief discussion of prospects and mechanisms for data interoperability allowing users to create, discover, use, and exchange 3D data across platforms.

When: Thursday, November 8th 2007 from 6pm to 7:30pm
Where: Wallenberg Hall, Stanford University

More practical stuff:
* Feel very free to forward this email or blog about this.
* No need to RSVP but you can write me (Henrik Bennetsen: hbe AT stanford DOTedu) if you have any questions.
* The next of these events will be on Thursday, November 29th and will feature Jamais Cascio talking about the Metaverse Roadmap .

Great news! After I announced the Metaverse Meetup a number of you wrote and asked if there was going to be a virtual component to this. After some hectic work behind the scenes and a most kind hosting offer from the people behind the excellent International Spaceflight Museum we are now able to stream live video from our event into Second Life.

The event is taking place on Thursday, November 8th, 2007 from 6:00pm – 7:30pm SLT/PST and to attend via Second Life you go here:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spaceport%20Bravo/66/74/184/

After the talk we will also take questions from the Second Life audience look forward to some interesting mixed reality Q&A. Please be advised that for technical reasons we have to impose a cap at 50 visitors for the Second Life part of this event.

I hope to see you there,
Henrik Bennetsen