Global Kids' Digital Media Initiative

The following are Barry Joseph's reflections during our work at the Second Life Community Convention.

FRIDAY EVENING POST

The SLCC has barely begun, yet I am already exhausted, elated, and nearly horse. My head’s spinning.

Traveling to the conference was quite an adventure, what with yesterday’s storm that, at last count, had killed a dozen people and caused untold damage (why is there always a storm when I come to Chicago?). Many travelers to the convention found their trips cancelled, delayed, or made it without their luggage. We were lucky enough to travel during a calm and had no difficulties.

However, using my new Twitter account, I got to experience a cross-section of the community traveling from all around the country. Twitter allows me to get SMS messages posted by people I “follow” – sort of like getting photo captions (but without the caption). All day I got message like: “Waiting at gate 3d at Hartsfield,” “finally landed in chitown,” and “Still on the damn runway in Newark waiting for clearance to takeoff.” It made it feel like we were traveling together, on separate adventures converging on one location. Very dramatic.

When we arrived at the hotel, a nice Hilton overlooking Grant park, it was filled with bicycles. I mean, everywhere: on the stairs, in the hallways… it turns out this weekend is a triathlon and this hotel is where everyone is staying. Could that be a more ironic pairing? One event is about the physical body while the other is about the virtual. And, as one SLCC attendee commented to me, it’s not hard to tell the two groups apart.

We got our rooms and registered for the conference. Joyce has done a beautiful job creating the SLCC program. The parts about the Non-profit and Philanthropy thread also came out fantastic (MacArthur is not mentioned in the two sponsor sections, however, but the small Non-profit schedule card that Joyce created that volunteers stuffed in the welcome bags looks amazing).

Then it began. The Oh-You’re…-Scream-Hugs. And they continued all night. After working with Cathy Arreguin since early winter on a weekly basis (and whom will be writing our report on the education track), we finally got to meet for the first time in person. Equally exciting was meeting Mercury Metropolitan, Global Kids teen intern who has been working for us ½ time for the past year, for the first time. And his mom! Totally amazing. And then there was Kim Annubis, who, amongst other things, created the first Global Kids island, Aesop Thatch, the legendary former-teen grid architect, Brooke Barmy with whom we have worked with many times in the past year. All of the people, from Randall, to Flip, to Jeremy, who have been coordinating the SLCC. And, of course, the Lindens: Catharine. Jeska. Claudia. By the end of the night, as I mentioned above, my head was spinning.

Working with people remotely over long periods of time is not new for me. I’ve been doing it since I was a teen (over two decades at this point). And there is always that amazing energy when you meet someone in person for the first time with whom you already have a deep relationship; it’s like putting one hand in hot water and the other in cold. Your experience of the moment is in conflict with what you know to me true. It FEELS like you are meeting someone for the first time, but you just KNOW that’s not the case. And then, like a good hour spent at the 10th Street baths jumping back and forth between the extreme hold and cold, you enter a euphoric state, having integrated the two and moved beyond. Or something.

This evening many of us attended the invite-only machinima social, organized by Moo Money and BuhBuhCah (who also sponsored it). It was lovely. Not only did we get to socialize but Moo organized a wonderful collection of machinima. Some were well known and fun to see for the first time on a screen, like Robbie Dingo’s “Watch the World,” (people applauded as soon as it began, it has touched us all so deeply), and ones that were new to me (like this hilarious one about SL meeting someone’s dream of wearing hamburgers).

It is also great to see so many teens here. Not just the three Global Kids Leaders we are chaperoning, and Mercury and Brooke, but also Chilo and others I have spied. It’s an honor to get to spend time with them here and, to be honest, I can’t imagine what it’s like to be in their shoes. It’s exciting just to imagine.

Finally, Joyce delivered our Moo cards and stickers. We each got a new set of Moo business cards. Those are always fun to trade. We also got our first batch of GK Moo stickers, which are stamp size. One promotes the MacArthur blog, one the Global Kids’ one (“You got served at HolyMeatballs.org”), and one is just the GK logo (which has been the most popular). It’s been fun sticking them on people’s badges (BuhBuhCah let me put one on his computer and Pathfinder Linden has one on the back of his iPhone!).

But the best best best of the Moo cards are the puzzle cards we created for our Education Track presentation tomorrow. 12 sets of 16 cards which, when combined, create a beautiful image describing a variety of best practices. I can’t wait to watch people put them together and explore them tomorrow.