Launches Aug. 3, Kurt Vonnegut and Howard Rheingold guests on Aug. 7. Isn't it great when it all starts to come together? Now we have to do it for nonprofit organizations and progressive politics. Oh, and bridge the damn digital divide so there is more access to this powerful tool. Bandwidth to the people, my friends.

First, the Infinite Mind blog:

The Infinite Mind

The Infinite Mind Comes To Second Life

The Infinite Mind on Second Life Press Kit - a photoset on Flickr

Beyond The Infinite Mind (Torley's Second Life & techno music Blog)

Beyond The Infinite Mind - a photoset on Flickr (Torley's photos)

Eric Rice - Infinite Mind launches in 3D; Suzanne Vega to perform live; also, Kurt Vonnegut, Howard Rheingold

(After the jump - my rant to the TechSoup-Second Life nonprofit folks)

Hi folks

I'm in a sleepless swelter (91 degrees at 2:30am?) and also a Second
Life fugue state, so I'm up blogging a development that has me mapping
out my next 6 months of work.

You may be aware of this, but a new complex of NPR studios is about to
open in SL. I've collected a number of links and some photos that I
ran across (credits to Torley Linden, who blogged her preview) and
posted them:

http://www.gomaya.com/glyph/archives/001823.html

This makes me even more impressed by what you folks accomplished in
the last event, on the run and with few resources. It also says a few
other things to me:

1) We need a tour of the NPR place and an understanding of how to use
it and how to schedule ourselves in there, if it is actually going to
be open for outsiders. I want a tour anyway, don't you?

2) We need to launch our own project to build a small studio on Info
Island. Maybe it's a research and training studio. Maybe we get the
gurus of other studios in to speak. Maybe it's a studio without walls,
with overflow on the lawn. Maybe it has the ability to be "piped" over
to an amphitheatre for bigger groups. I liked the outdoor feel of the
last event. I spent too many years in soundproof rooms. The NPR stills
I've seen look like they went overboard recreating a "real" control
room, because they could. And ours should be self-instructing, a
"physical" tutorial in online media, as the Ivory Tower Library of
Prim functions to teach building in 3D.

I've been inspired by AngryBeth Shortbread's live TV studio, with
multiple camera switching, at The Port (15,70,56) . You can walk in
and teach yourself how to use it in 5 minutes. She also has an
interactive whiteboard available free in the ICT library if you
haven't seen it - it has a lot of potential. I'd love to see a roundup
or exhibit of available media players and equipment in SL.

I gather from reading year-old SL history that there was a brief move
by Linden Labs to start their own streaming video channel, but it
never happened. There is still a lot of infrastructure, tools and
expertise around. It probably went into the NPR place. You folks
probably know all this better than I do.

3) We also need to document a tutorial on how to do this (as you did
out of Boston) for NPOs, and in fact create a stripped down field
technique for smaller or mobile productions. Can it be done with one
laptop, a Skype headset and a webcam? One new Macbook with builtin mic
and iSight? What did you folks use? What are the limits of our video
stream? How do you get video streaming on the web anyway?

4) We have to make sure that the new media facilities in SL are not in
fact broadcast centers - that they use all the crazy interactivity
that we got a taste of in the last event, and that we find more ways
to expand on that.

5) I have to get up to speed on a lot of stuff you folks have already
wrestled with, including building and programming. Or bark at the
folks who know it already.

6) The TechSoup event was a good proof of concept. The NPR studio is a
breakthrough in visibility and credibility. Now some funder needs to
come in (Soros?) and help make this a democratic tool.

7) More than ever the issue of the digital divide needs to be
addressed. True affordable broadband for a significant portion of the
population. But can you address that in SL? I don't think so. We have
to do that in our communities and in Congress.

But we could think about a way to throw a switch in the studio that
cuts down the bandwidth required to be functional. Limit chat or IM?
Lower framerate on video to one every 5 seconds if necessary? That
would have been enough last time, frankly. Though I am a 30 frames per
second fan. The audio lag was harder to deal with.

Mea Culpa and Carpe Diem:

Sorry to be the newbie coming in and waving his arms in the air. But
all this is to say that I have some time and energy at the moment,
some mostly useless experience in live and edited television, very
little build and program experience in SL, and a lot of opinions. If
that can be helpful to a team of people with more SL experience, let
me know.

sleep...
Dave