Basically, videos that show you real-world re-enactments of what virtual activities are like.

Like, say, this one for Second Life.

This is the final result from the Metaverse Summit I took part in last year. I have to admit I kinda slacked off on the follow-up participation.

In any case, the PDF of the Metaverse Roadmap is here, and I am sure it is full of visionary stuff everyone can argue about.

I missed the last half of the summit because I was either outside in impromptu meetings, or rushing off to the airport.

Fortunately, there were plenty of other livebloggers in the audience:

Mainstream or Not: Virtual Worlds News 

 The Next Big Business Model?: 3PointD, Virtual Worlds News

Virtual Goods Meet Entertainment: 3PointD, Virtual Worlds News

Virtual Worlds News has a liveblog of the panel I was on.

I am back home now and exhausted. Good night.

Edit: another take here.

» Craig Sherman, Gaia Online
» Daniel James, 3 Rings
» Amy Jo Kim, Shufflebrain
» Byron Reeves, Stanford University
» Nabeel Hyatt, Conduit Labs (moderator)

We’re going to talk about why this works for people.

Byron Reeves:

I have a lab here doing psych experiments looking at how people respond to virtual stuff. And the needle points to “real” rather than ‘fiction.” So my answer to why people care about virtual goods is that the human brain is not specialized to differentiate between virtual and real. Close counts — the same neurons fire. Same dopamine releases, same reward structures. My current interest is beyond avatars and stuff, and now is virtual money applied to real behavior. Uses for virtual currency in the real world, not encumbered by regulations — and less psychologically heavy. Interested in how to use it with adults and in enterprise. The lab results seem more applicable to adults!

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» Paul Thind, Habbo
» David Wallerstein, Tencent
» Kyra Reppen, MTV Networks
» Min Kim, Nexon
» Justin Hall, Passively Multiplayer (moderator)

David Wallerstein, Tencent

Chinese net penetration is atill only at 10.5%, 35.2% wireless. Korea is at 73.5 and US at 69.3. Internet cafes are still the top means of reaching the Internet. (Shows picture). Everyone is using headphones. This user is using QQ. China is all about multitasking…

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UNESCO turned down a Shinto shrine in Japan for a World heritage site because it’s about solidity of process: getting rebuilt regularly, rather than solidity of edifice. They rebuild it on the same site, to the same plan.

 Tells story about how his group was able to get support from a Perl newsgroup on Usenet, but the C++ engineers from AT&T not only didn’t believe that it could happenm, but even after it happened, didn’t think that it would work, because they knew it couldn’t in theory.

 Today AT&T is in trouble, but Perl is a Shinto shrine, because millions of people love Perl and love one another in the context of Perl. No contracts, no money changes hands.

 Love seems too squishy to talk about at these sorts of conferences. But what we have is a set of tools to aggregate things people care about, in ways that are unpredictable – simple things like mailing lists, and Usenet, nothing fancy. Love becomes a renewable building tool.

 You will make more accurate predictions about software and services, if you ask not what is the business model, but whether the people who like it take care of each other. Linux gets rebuilt every night by people whose principal goal is that it exist the following morning.

 Future commercial opportunities will be inextricably intertwined with this practice. When Torvalds posted his first message, he got a global network of collaborators within 24 hours. And that pattern was new – but now it is Wikipedia, the immigration stuff coordinated on mySpace, Flickr to coordinate after natural disasters.

 This pattern will go way more places than it is today. We will always love one another, we’re human. With love alone you can go far, but coordinating tools take it farther. In the past love did big things, but now we can do big things to love.

Denise Caruso of the hybrid Vigor Institute.

On risks of innovation.

Book: Intervention: Confronting the Real Risks of Genetic Engineering and Life on a Biotech Planet

Can’t calculate the risk probability of something that is brand new. The most important thing are the assumptions that you use to assess risk.

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Virtual Goods: the next big business model is an article by Susan Wu, who we work with (she’s at Charles River Ventures, one of our investors). It’s chock-full of juicy stats on some of the revenues that virtual item sales companies are generating. Definitely worth a read — and interesting that the article is so controversial (check out the comment thread!).

Liveblogs of the panel I was on today have shown up a few places already:

• Supernova Conversation Hub
• Wonderland
• Mamamusings