Coming up on the Cybergrrl Oh Podcast!

Don't forget to become a fan at the Cybergrrl Oh Page on Facebook!

Upcoming guests on my podcast:

10/15/2009 Doubledown Tandino
10/22/2009 lynsey Fleury
10/29/2009 Coughran Mayo

See you there!

This week's podcast guest: Nazz Lane

Like any good journalist, Nazz Lane has a nicely written bio with an introduction and everything! ;-)

Introduction:

Rezzing into his second life in March of 2007, Nazz Lane served for an interim period as a business consultant to a leading SL fashion designer and in managing the in-world events for her charitable organization. He began his career in journalism with the launch of his blog, "Lane's List" which is a personal travelogue of people and places in virtuality. Shortly after that he began freelancing for the SL Newspaper where his stories can be found generally in the Arts and Entertainment section of that publication. He is also a Freelance Reporter for the Second Arts Blog, Avenue Magazine, Nu Vibez Magazine and the Metaverse-Tribune. Nazz Lane is also an author in Second Life having recently published in SL the first five chapters of his serialized novel "Borders of Our Lives", based on characters and the setting of Second Life.

Bio:

As a resident of Second Life, freelance journalist and author Nazz Lane leads an active business and social life. Rezzing into his second life in March of 2007, Nazz served for an interim period as a business consultant for a leading fashion designer, and in leading the in-world events for her second life charity. He began his career in journalism with the launch of his blog, "Lane's List" which is a personal travelogue of people and places in virtuality. Shortly after that he began freelancing for the SL Newspaper where his stories can be found generally in the People or Arts and Entertainment section of that publication. Nazz has spoken to and chronicled the stories of Musicians, Venues Owners, Artists, Gallery Openings and Owners, Nonprofit Events, People and Places for the SL Newspaper, Second Arts Blog, Avenue Magazine, Nu Vibez Magazine and the Metaverse Tribune. Since the inception of Lane's List and as a freelancer, he's met some of SL's most talented and creative people and has visited a host of sites, from captivating gardens, to affable and welcoming coffeehouses, classic ballrooms, stylish art gallery's and neighborhood gin joints.

As an author Nazz has published in SL the first five chapters of his serialized novel, “Borders of Our Lives”, which is based on characters and the setting of SL. Since the characters don’t exist solely in the metaverse, the stories integrate their lives, both virtual and real into a mixed reality. The stories cross over because the characters exist in both, the virtual and real, and their experiences on either side of the keyboard affect who they are in both lives. The stories follow the life and activities of Jeffrey Goff (aka Jeffrey Stone a lawyer from Chicago) as he explores this mixed reality.

Nazz is planning to continue working on both his novel and other fiction along with chronicling the lives of the people he meets or places he visits in SL or in any one of the several other virtual worlds he inhabits.

Related articles by Zemanta

• 1 billion hours spent in Second Life (inquisitr.com)
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• Second Life's users have spent more than a billion hours in the virtual world (games.venturebeat.com)

This week's podcast guest: Pooky Amsterdam

Our guest this week is Pooky Amsterdam from Pooky Media. Hope to see you at Corona Cay for the live recording in front of a studio audience.

TIME 10am SLT for 1/2 hour LIVE TAPING (please show up 5-10 minutes early)
This event uses Inworld Voice.

Go to the SLURL below to sit in the "studio" audience and participate in the back chat:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Corona%20Cay/40/137/22

You can hear recent podcasts at:
http://cybergrrloh.libsyn.com or http://www.rezzed.tv

From Pooky's bio:

Pooky believes this is the Golden Age of the Internet, and the possibilities for live TV and original production of the entertainment kind are incredible, unique and valuable.

Pooky has been producing entertainment in Multi User Virtual Environments for over 6 years, and is the Host, Producer and Writer for the 1st Question, treet.tv's weekly "Quiz Show To the Stars," which is a fast paced and fact based hour of remarkable and intelligent programming.

Head of an award winning machinima company, PookyMedia, she is currently developing 2 series as well and using Second Life as her engine of choice upon which to film. The Dating Casino, a dating game show will be starting it's second season in the Fall.
Returning on Sept 20th!

Pooky has produced over 80 hours of quality entertainment on Second Life since March of 2008.

Pooky Amsterdam was born and raised in Manhattan and has a degree in Economics. She is also an accomplished artist and has had art shows at the Ocean Bay Historical Society.

Cybergrrl Oh podcast live in SL

Having a blast with my new format for the Cybergrrl Oh podcast "Living a 2nd Life." Like a chatty radio talk show with special guests. My new producer, SLPN (Stu Warf) rocks!

The show tapes live inworld with SL voice every Thursday at 10am SLT. Here are some of my upcoming guests and topics...

8/20/2009 Alas Zerbino
about writers and writing in SL

8/27/2009 Sioban McMahon
about West of Ireland and Project Children charity

9/3/2009 Cienega Soon
about the arts and art galleries in SL

9/10/2009 Maggie Barkley
about publishing from SL to RL

9/17/2009 Pooky Amsterdam
about using SL as a media platform

9/24/2009 Nazz Lane
about journalism and journalists in SL

Hope to see you there! Click for the SLURL to get to Corona Cay.

Virtual Meetings in Second Life

My social media marketing company Conversify recently held our first virtual team meeting in Second Life. We were looking for a compelling way to bring everyone together because we work from Alaska, Colorado, California, Wyoming, Florida and the UK. Many of our team members have never met in person, most haven't even spoken with one another over the phone.

What was surprising was that it was my business partner's idea to bring everyone together in Second Life - and only surprising because she hasn't spent a lot of time inworld and Second Life is more "my thing." Still, she realized the inherent value of bringing disparate workers together into a virtual space as a way of strengthening the team.

We didn't do anything special for our first meeting other than I laid out some comfortable teak lounge chairs for seating and had a cheese platter, coffee, daiquiris and tequila shots available for refreshments. All but one had voice so we were able to have essentially a conference call with over half a dozen people "on the line." The person who couldn't get their voice to work just used text chat.

The only structured thing we did was asked each person to introduce themselves to the others and tell everyone something interesting about themselves. Everyone came away from the event excited for a number of reasons, namely they were finally getting to meet team members and many of them were trying out Second Life for the first time so discovering it was a thrill.

Here are a few tips for holding meetings in Second Life:

1. Capacity. The biggest challenge with Second Life is technical, and making sure that each participant has a computer with the capacity to handle SL can take some time. Send them to the specs page for Second Life to verify that their system is suitable.

2. Appearance. Don't underestimate the importance of avatar appearance in an inworld meeting, especially if some people have more experience in Second Life than others. Those who are "noobs" could feel self-conscious about their appearance. One of our team members expressed feeling out of sorts because her avatar looked so terrible. I ended up shopping for several team members to purchase hair, skin, outfits, and great shoes for their first foray in a virtual world. (See 2nd photo above for the results).

3. Training. Understand that some of your team may need a little hand-holding. I talked several team members through the basics of walking and sitting, two essential actions that can actually take a while to figure out.

4. Voice. The beauty of using voice in SL is that you can see when someone is speaking (green sound waves over their head) and avatars can even gesture to give far more of a sense of presence than a telephone conference call. Voice, however, is only as good as the person's system and a USB headset with microphone is a must. We spent a good chunk of time troubleshooting everyone's sound.

5. Mics off. When using voice in SL, everyone who is not speaking at a given time should mute their sound to eliminate echoing which happens when someone is using voice without a headset. This works when people are taking turns speaking. However, in a natural conversation, either everyone must have headsets and have voice working properly or you may want to revert to text chatting.

6. Moderator. Even an informal chat needs a host or hostess to keep the conversation flowing. A more formal one - such as going around the room with introductions - can benefit from someone calling on the next person to speak. This can save time as people fumble about deciding who's next and accidentally talking over one another.

These are only a few lessons learned regarding meeting in the virtual world. Happy meeting!

What have you learned regarding holding meetings in Second Life?