Saturday 15 March 2008

Life 2.0 - Just Spreading The Word

A little late arriving in my inbox, but nevertheless I think you might be interested in this. It looks like there may be something for everyone, with lots of interesting stuff to see, learn and/or listen to, which virtually guarantees that I won't be attending - even though the times are distinctly Euro-friendly. To attend the whole thing I think you'd need to be the most dedicated of 'immersionists' (I'm not going to host that debate here right now!) with - how to put this - an event-free diary in first life. [ Minor rant removed at this point ]

Anyway - here is the Info Pack I received - enjoy it:

Life 2.0 Weekend Program - Life 2.0 Summit opens on Saturday, March 15 2008, with the first three hours of "LSL University": a six-hour crash-course on virtual world programming by much-published "recovering Microsoft addict" Mike Gunderloy.

On Saturday afternoon, seven of the most-innovative artist/developers in the emerging VW space come together for a five-hour exhibition/lecture series on "sculpted prims" and other techniques used to efficiently model object and relief detail, and key to the emerging fusion of topographic geodata and open virtual world spaces.

On Sunday, the conclusion of LSL University is followed by a two-hour panel on Intellectual Property, Privacy and Identity with opensource legal pioneer Eben Moglen, architect of the GNUv3 public license, Mark Lenczner of Linden Lab, David Levine of IBM Virtual Worlds and Sean Dague of IBM Linux, a key contributor to Opensim

Join us! If you haven't yet registered for Life 2.0, just click here:

http://www.life20.net/register.php?event=l20spring08

If you _have_ registered, click here for a quick teleport to our amphitheatre, inworld:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/CMP%201/241/11/25

Or log into http://www.life20.net/realtime.php for on-the-web realtime video, streamed audio, and interactive chat!

=== LIFE 2.0 WEEKEND PROGRAM ===
Saturday - March 15, 2008

9:00 AM PDT - 10:00 AM PDT
LSL University 1 - "HELLO, AVATAR!"
Mike Gunderloy - SL:MikeG1 Schumann
Hour 1 of our six-hour crash course on Linden Script Language will take you through the basic anatomy, mechanics and syntax of LSL, a state- and event-oriented, semicolon-delimited scripting language that gives life to objects in Second Life.

Mike Gunderloy describes himself as "a recovered Microsoft addict." Author of numerous books on Windows, including a series of MCSD Training guides, books on ADO.NET, Access and VBA. He's also the author of a series of well-respected books on software design: Coder to Developer and Developer to Designer. Long known to the blogosphere as author of The Daily Grind, Mike now blogs at afreshcup.com, and develops in Ruby on Rails, Cocoa, and other challenging languages, including LSL

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10:00 AM PDT - 11:00 AM PDT
LSL University 2 - "Program Structure and States"
Mike Gunderloy - SL:MikeG1 Schumann
In this second hour, we'll focus on program structure and state logic: essential to well-structured LSL applications

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11:00 AM PDT - 12:00 PM PDT
LSL University 3 - "Data-Types, Lists, and Memory"
Mike Gunderloy - SL:MikeG1 Schumann
Hour three introduces LSL data-types, variables, the all-important list type, and functions used to manipulate variables. Also discussed is the economics of memory usage in LSL, and techniques for getting around showstopper limitations.

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12:00 PM PDT - 1:00 PM PDT
SHOW-FLOOR OPEN!

Spend the luncheon hour with our sponsors, Sun Microsystems and Cisco Systems!

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1:00 PM PDT - 1:30 PM PDT
Sculpty Day II - Introduction and Opening Remarks
SL:Xenius Revere
Following on the enormous popularity of Sculpty Day at Life 2.0 Fall, this expanded four-hour mini-symposium brings together eight of the finest artists, modelers, and art-tool software builders on the Grid. Artists, developers, web creatives will all profit from this diverse series of presentations, which encapsulate the latest technology, techniques and best-practice around the economical modeling of detailed forms and tricks of rendering with light and shadow. In this introductory speech, Xenius will explain the basics of how sculpted-prim technology works, explain why and in what situations it's used, and describe some of the scope of research, art and practical business now tying into this modeling capability.

Xenius Revere is one of the most advanced Maya practitioners, builder/architects and sculpted-prim modelers in Second Life. Formerly with Electric Sheep, now Creative Director for Deep Think Labs, Xenius is also in the midst of designing RIOT Combat, an ultra-immersive mechwar game on the Second Life platform. He also vends his furniture lines through YEP! and in a collaborative partnership with BAPFH. Finally, Xenius designed CMP's new sims in Second Life, exploring the outer limits of world-with-no-gravity deconstructive architecture in the process.

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1:30 PM PDT - 2:00 PM PDT
Sculpty Day II - Aminom Marvin
SL:Aminom Marvin
In this session, meet Sculptomancer Aminom Marvin, one of the most technically-advanced makers of "sculpted prim" art and utility objects on the Second Life grid. His best-selling virtual product-lines include hundreds of meticulously-detailed building components, machine parts, microgeometrics, faceted forms and more.

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2:00 PM PDT - 2:30 PM PDT
Sculpty Day II - TheBlack Box
SL:TheBlack Box
TheBlack Box is the author of Sculpt Studio (now new and improved), the Wonder Chair and a growing line of security and sim-management products in the Tri-X line.

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2:30 PM PDT - 3:00 PM PDT
Sculpty Day II - Crash Prefect
SL:Crash Prefect
Crash Prefect is a graphic artist now best-known in Second Life for his work creating the somber atmosphere of DarkLife, the world's first immersive adventure game set in an open virtual world.

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3:00 PM PDT - 3:30 PM PDT
Sculpty Day II - Anjin Mieli
SL:Anjin Mieli
Anjin Mieli is a phenomenally-insightful developer, whose metaverse work has ranged from the creation of artificially-intelligent robot goldfish to processing chains that import geodata to produce minutely-detailed one-prim topologies.

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3:30 PM PDT - 4:00 PM PDT
Sculpty Day II - Cel Edman
SL:Cel Edman
Cel Edman is the creator of SculptyPaint, one of the first opensource tools for SL sculpted-prim modeling

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4:00 PM PDT - 4:30 PM PDT
Sculpty Day II - Yuzuru Jewell
SL:Yuzuru Jewell
Japan's Yuzuru Jewell is the creator of Rokuro, now available in a Pro edition -- a powerful and intuitive sculpted-prim texture generator for Windows; and Nomi (chisel), a sculpted prim relief-making utility, which derives 3D information from a photograph by assessing surface brightness.

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4:30 PM PDT - 5:00 PM PDT
Sculpty Day II - Xenius Revere
SL:Xenius Revere
Xenius Revere is one of the most advanced Maya practitioners, builder/architects and sculpted-prim modelers in Second Life. Formerly with Electric Sheep, now Creative Director for Deep Think Labs, Xenius is also in the midst of designing RIOT Combat, an ultra-immersive mechwar game on the Second Life platform. He also vends his furniture lines through YEP! and in a collaborative partnership with BAPFH. Finally, Xenius designed CMP's new sims in Second Life, exploring the outer limits of world-with-no-gravity deconstructive architecture in the process.

=========================================
Sunday - March 16, 2008

9:00 AM PDT - 10:00 AM PDT
LSL University 4 - I/O and Object Communications
Mike Gunderloy - SL:MikeG1 Schumann
Hour 4 of our six-hour crash course on Linden Script Language covers how objects accept input, return data, and coordinate asynchronous distributed processing (i.e., talk among themselves) -- critical to most serious Second Life tools and utilities, and absolutely key to unleashing the power of this environment for simulation, dataviz and other challenging applications.

Mike Gunderloy describes himself as "a recovered Microsoft addict." Author of numerous books on Windows, including a series of MCSD Training guides, books on ADO.NET, Access and VBA. He's also the author of a series of well-respected books on software design: Coder to Developer and Developer to Designer. Long known to the blogosphere as author of The Daily Grind, Mike now blogs at afreshcup.com, and develops in Ruby on Rails, Cocoa, and other challenging languages, including LSL

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10:00 AM PDT - 11:00 AM PDT
LSL University 5 - Physics, Movement and Rezzing
Mike Gunderloy - SL:MikeG1 Schumann
In hour 5, we turn our attention to objects causing other objects to materialize and disappear; and to objects moving around -- both with and without application of physics. Object creation and movement in SL is great for entertainment, but it's also a critical component of many serious applications, from simulation to security.

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11:00 AM PDT - 12:00 PM PDT
LSL University 6 - LSL and the Web
Mike Gunderloy - SL:MikeG1 Schumann
Integrating SL to the web enables bidirectional access to streamed media, content, data, and computing power: key to virtually every commercial virtual world application, to v-commerce, to metrics, to audience development and community. In the final hour of LSL University, Mike will talk about how SL talks to the web, and vice-versa.

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12:00 PM PDT - 1:00 PM PDT
SHOW-FLOOR OPEN!

Spend the luncheon hour with our sponsors, Sun Microsystems and Cisco Systems!

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1:00 PM PDT - 3:00 PM PDT
Intellectual Property, Privacy and Identity in Open Virtual Worlds
Eben Moglen (SL: EbenMoglen Euler) - Director, Chair and Chief Counsel of the Software Freedom Law Center; Mark Lenczner (SL: Zero Linden), Architect, Linden Lab; David Levine (SL: Zha Ewry), IBM Research; Sean Dague (SL: Neas Bade), Developer, IBM Linux Technology Center, Contributor, OpenSim; Tish Shute (SL: Tara5 Oh), principal, Ugotrade.com; John Jainschigg (SL: John Zhaoying), Exec. Director, UBM/ThinkServices Metaverse

As virtual worlds become more open and more a part of business and daily life, they present opportunities to evolve traditional notions of intellectual property -- its value, security, uses and protection -- to interact richly with global community in surprising new ways, and to experiment with identity, trust, reputation and other socially- and economically-valuable constructs no longer non-optionally linked to the physical body.

What does this mean to the architecture of virtual worlds and the systems that interconnect and plug into them? And what does it mean to the system of laws, regulations and common-sense assumptions governing human intercourse in these environments? In this free-ranging two-hour panel discussion, we bring together key architectural thinkers from the domains of law and software to discuss and debate these issues.

Eben Moglen, Director, Chair and Chief Counsel of the Software Freedom Law Center, has had a distinguished career as a legal scholar and courtroom pioneer on the bleeding edge of technology. He defended Philip Zimmerman, author of PGP, against criminal charges brought against him by the Customs Service under the Arms Export Control Act. He was primary enforcer of the Free Software Foundation's GNU public license, and is the architect of GPLv3.

Mark Lenczner is one of the key architects of Second Life's evolving infrastructure. He authored the first draft of the SL Grid Open Grid Protocol, a key step forward towards virtual worlds interoperability.

David Levine works on virtual world architecture and applications for IBM. He is a key organizer of the Architecture Working Group (AWG), a key open initiative, headed by Linden Lab with contributions from IBM and other vendors, with the goal of evolving virtual worlds' architecture to large scale and interoperability.

Sean Dague is an IBM Linux expert, who, since 2007, has been a key contributor to OpenSim, a project that began as an attempt to reverse-engineer and opensource a Second-Life compatible server system, and has expanded into a loose, but highly-productive confederation of coders, alternative grids, and grid-architectural extensions.

Tish Shute blogs on virtual worlds and allied technology at ugotrade.com, and is one of the best-respected citizen journalists now covering this fast-growing field. This panel grew substantially out of her wide-ranging research on open grids and related topics.

John Jainschigg is Executive Director of UBM/ThinkServices Metaverse (formerly CMP Metaverse), and the founder of Life 2.0.

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