Tomarus Lednev

So, a few weeks ago, I attended metameets, “A European conference about the present and the future of the 3d web”. But did i really attend it, or did my virtual representation of myself? Where was i really? And what does it matter?

As far as i was concerned, the meeting was boring overall, but certainly had interresting parts. There were boring powerpoint presentations of stuff we already know and with boring numbers to fill up the screen. And there were some really interresting presentations about current technologies which outperform current large commercial platforms, like Second Life. I believe the presentations itself were not all that important to the goals of metameets. But the gathering itself, the meeting, and the presentation of the meeting itself, is where the success of this kind of meetings lies.

As you can see on the screenshot, there is a Second Life viewer running in the background where i’m logged in. Inside secondlife there was a live stream of the peoples back’s and the mp3 stream of the voice of the current speaker. Outside, on the good old www there was another stream with a view of the screen the RL metameets attendees were watching. Also, on another screen (not visible in the screenshot) there was a RL person logged in with the SL viewer. The two people you see on the screen are actually logged in from another virtual world, Active Worlds. And the best part, they were using their phone to speak to the audience, through Active Worlds, inside Second Life and inside real life. Live on the web!

Now think about that. Where would you go to attend a meeting like this? I believe you don’t have to be anywhere to attend a successfull meeting, but you can be everywhere at the same time! The here is everywhere!