Impressions : Earthdance Global OM in Second Life

Today I attended the Earthdance Global Festival for Peace in Second Life. This is actually a first life organization and gathering that has taken on a virtual world component as well.

Main:

http://earthdance.org/

and the SL component:

http://www.earthdancenetwork.com/group/earthdancemysticalmastery

This was the third year in a row I attended. Today's events included a show with Cypress Rosewood performing with the Changhigh Trinity Sisters doing their fireshow. I've actually enjoyed Cypress' music since before he was Cypress -- he is Tony Gerber in first life, a member of Spacecraft as well as a solo artist:

http://cypressrosewood.com/Home.html

The Changhigh Trinity Sisters show is always a treat. If you want a good example of what can be done with building and graphical elements in Second Life integrated into a performing artist's show, check them out.






And here are myself and my friend Rain scoping it all out:




The event centers around the Global Peace Prayer that is played around the world at a synchronized time so that everyone taking part can pray and take in and send out positive energy in whatever way they wish. You can even download the track and play it at your leisure.

Even though it was only an hour (for Cypress' show) and 10 minutes (for the prayer) that I took part, it was the highlight of my day that I looked forward to all week, as well as a reminder that we are all interconnected and how I can be open to the world.

For a more thorough writeup, see this CNN iReport by any1 Gynoid:

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-334376

ThinkBalm

I found a neat new company to research and keep a 3-D eye on. It's called ThinkBalm:

http://www.thinkbalm.com/

As stated on the website, the mission is:

"ThinkBalm offers independent IT industry analysis and strategy consulting services."

And specifically this is in the area of "work-related use of the Immersive Internet." This means that they are doing research and analysis and consulting in 3-D web technologies like virtual worlds and other like technologies. There's also a LinkedIn group, which is where I found out about them in the first place whilst browsing the profile of someone else who works at IBM. The group is a community for discussion and brainstorming around the aforementioned ideas.

http://www.thinkbalm.com/community/

Tonite I visited their island in Second Life, the ThinkBalm Data Garden.



They display some nifty 3-D data visualization examples, specifically around data regarding virtual world adoption in business. There's a neat activity regarding barriers to adoption that I can agree with, specifically in getting users interested in the technology and the problem of inadequate hardware.

I think the data visualization is what draws me in here. I've seen a few different data-viz technologies in Second Life. Being a programmer and having written a few intermediately complex scripts myself, I'm extremely curious at what the technologies and programming aspects are of the mechanisms. It's also really really cool to see a set of data represented in 3-D. It's not a new idea, of course, but the technologies are new enough that there are lots of companies doing research and development in this area. But it's really cool to see a company say, here's data on the research we did, in a 3D representation, which is totally appropriate for a virtual world company.

I found a report that they just published:

http://www.thinkbalm.com/2009/05/26/thinkbalm-publishes-business-value-study/

Check it out if you have time. There is an event coming in October for people new to the LinkedIn group to get to know each other. If I'm not on a real-work meeting at the time, I will attend and blog about it then!

Sound

I've always been intrigued by what part music, and more specifically, sound and its properties, play in the world. I am a musician, a music aficionado, a software engineer, and a space and science enthusiast, and a Buddhist, among other things. I've been wondering for a while now if there is any way I can tie all my interests together, interweaving my research and projects into some sort of manageable frame of activity I can work around or into my day job and other survival activities. Thus, the posts you will see on this blog will be about a variety of topics. I suppose I could separate them out into a minimum of two blogs, one tech, and one personal interests, but that defeats the purpose I've described before, and there isn't enough time in the day for that anymore.

I've been a music fanatic ever since I can remember. The first song I can remember loving was "Dueling Banjos", which to this day I still don't know who recorded. The second was "Theme From S.W.A.T." -- yes, the TV show-- and also I don't know who recorded that one either. I'm on the internet writing this after all, so I could just go look it up but it takes away from the anecdote. I'll do the homework later and let you know.

I like to read, and so my interest in music has led me to various other forms of sound such as sound healing, environmental sounds, and what the properties of sound are from a scientific perspective. Given that all things are one, in the end, I've decided to use this blog to continue to explore, document my travels and findings, and through the practice of awareness, see what I can learn and where my research takes me.

Welcome aboard!