A virtual presentation
Published on May 26, 2007 at 10:52 am.
5 Comments.
Filed under conference blogging.
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Well, we had a session this morning like none other that I’ve ever seen at a conference. The speaker, instead of standing in front of the audience, sat a computer, and gave a presentation via Second Life. Dr. Simon “Pete†Worden gave a presentation via his Second Life avatar Simon Pete Raymaker. The talk was live in cyberspace, and presented on screens in the front of the room.
For those of you that don’t know Second Life, it is an online virtual world where you can interact with others online in real time (or as real time as the internet is capable of). This is an extension of online instant messaging. You can interact with others via text messages (and now audio). But, unlike the old form of instant messaging, you can interact with multiple people. And, you can move from group to group. And, it has a visual component. You can create a scenario, like a virtual environment. Then, you can create an avatar (a computer generated image of yourself, or what you’d like to portray yourself as). You can move about, see different things, and interact with different people.
But, NASA’s Colab is looking at perhaps using such things as Second Life to promote international interaction between people. There is the possibility that in the future you (or, rather, your avatar) may go along with the next astronauts to walk on the Moon, or you might walk along with the first astronauts to go to Mars. It is an interesting idea, but I don’t know how I feel about this.
However, I do know what I think of the presentation. The presentation was distracting. There were two screens, and my attention kept going from one to the other. But, if you kept reading the Second Life text, you got distracted from the talk. And, the avatar moving around, floating, flying, etc was cute, but standard visuals with text and images would have transmitted more information. Now, I’ll grant I’ve never experienced anything like this before, and I don’t do Second Life, so I may not have been getting the most out of this. But, I really like having a real life presenter.
But, I also can see where such virtual reality interactions can be a major tool promoting interactions between distant people. It needs work, though, for serious science work. But, it can be a really good tool to bring space science to people who otherwise would not have access.
-Astroprof
jessy cowan-sharp/dragonfire kelly. on May 26, 2007 at 1:58 pm: 1
hi astroprof,
thanks for the feedback! it’s a learning process for us all, and i agree there are ways we could have streamlined the (multiple channels/mediums of) information coming to the audience. hopefully as we do this more, it will become a more wholly positive experience :). again, thanks for the feedback, very useful.
Astroprof on May 26, 2007 at 11:16 pm: 2
This has a lot of potential, and, of course, I had never seen anything like this presentation, so it could be just me being overwhelmed. As you say, with practice, you can match the presentation to the audience. I remember when the first powerpoint presentations were made at conferences, and they seemed rather awkward, trying to load up everyone’s presentation when they went to give their talk, but now that is all streamlined. This will be better after we all get used to it. And, who knows, it may become a commonplace thing at conferences, too!
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Tara on November 17, 2007 at 3:30 am: 4
Hello, Was the presentation at all interactive with the audience, to show the audience it was in real-time?
Astroprof on November 17, 2007 at 11:04 am: 5
The presentation was not actually interactive with the audience, but it was interactive with a moderator, so yes it was clearly real time.