Politics in Second Life Needs Well People

So, the big event went off last week when Rep. George Miller showed up in the virtual Capitol Hill in Second Life, but I couldn't get an invite.  Mind you, I did find out late, but to me it looked like too good of a secret.  Why do I say that?  I read all the usual (Republican) political blogs and I couldn't find any that attended and when I did see the press release via Reuters and emailed for a seat (like it says in the release) I received no reply.  I wanted to attend  and would have participated in the conversation if I could have been there.  From the looks of the screen shots, I'd say there was still room available, but that might not be a fair comment because I can't tell from the photos what another person would have done to the load and rezzing speed.

Unfortunately, from what I can tell that was posted, it looked pretty boring and like a lot of things in Second Life these days over-hyped.  This was the hype written in the press release:  Clear Ink and Sun Microsystems co-sponsor first Congressional presence in a virtual world, extending access and discussion for nearly 1 million “residents” of Second Life.  I was one of the million residents and tried to get access but couldn't.   Am I a little upset.  Yes, but don't brag about extending access during the first Congressional presence and don't say email us for an invite if you don't intend to provide them.  And, try to update the wiki with timely information because that was what it was there for.

I am a fan of Second Life, but for me from what I can tell via the screen shots and Rocketboom video, it was a boring conference call and what the world doesn't need is another conference call.  Sure, you can have a virtual seat, but like a few people in the front row you can fall asleep when it isn't interactive.  Second Life is unique when you can demonstrate your own creativity and have fun doing it at the same time.  And, if you are a marketer, having a 3-D demonstration of your product is excellent.  Problems are with a conference call like this, is that it seemed too controlled and the product is much better in RL.

While I do think that politicians and all new marketers should test out new forms of media and communications, it is increasingly important in politics to make sure that both sides get a chance to participate.  Let's not get too excited over this toe dipped into the political water.  There just isn't enough critical mass on Second Life right now to make it a viable political forum.  We need average Americans participating in virtual chats like this for it to be democratic and right now the average America is not paying attention - like the person in the purple shirt falling asleep during the Congressman's conference call.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Comments

[Kiwini Oe]

I appreciate your comments, Eric. This whole thing started with a discussion on December 20 about "What can we do by Jan 4?" and was an intense scramble to get something up and running by then. In addition to designing and building the island, we had to coordinate with people from about 12 orgs who were on various holidays and vacations during those two weeks. It wasn't planned out weeks in advance, so the limitations that you mention were based mostly on what was possible given those conditions.

Unfortunately the two sims we threw together to make Capitol Hill would only support a small subset of the millions of residents, and after considering different models, we ended up allocating invitations to the various groups who pulled it off. I was still receiving requests via IM as the event went on, and was adding avatars as quickly as I could. I also think that avatar requests that were added to the access list were never confirmed. Some on the invitation list weren't there, given the last-minute nature of the invitations and also the lack of confirmation.

Attendance varied during the three hours of the event, and the SL viewer actually limits the number of avatars you can "see" at any one time. Had we filled every last seat, of course, the lag would probably have been bad for all.

We're still looking at the effectiveness of different kinds of media, including streaming of external video as well as audio feeds. That's a balancing act, given the higher information bandwidth afforded by the human voice versus typing avatars, yet the SL experience is still ultimately avatar-mediated. We also found that having both channels -- audio for the guest, chat for the attendees -- allowed attendee discussion to occur over the audio conversation.

About halfway through the project, we decided to open up the Capitol Hill and keep it open, at Clear Ink's expense. There have already been a lot of interesting one-on-one and small group pickup conversations, and there will be more scheduled group discussions as well as more formal events. We want it to be bipartisan, and I've tried to contact the Republican Policy Committee and House Republican Conference to invite their participation and information feeds, but haven't heard back yet.

It was an experiment, not an end-point, and we're learning from this how to continue this kind of thing. Your comments are helpful as we sort things out. I hope you'll be able to make it to future events.

Kiwini

[PardonMyFrench]

Thanks Kiwini for the explanation. I'd love to be there the next time you have a formal event, at least to round out the participants.

Eric