Nexeus Fatale

One of the many conversations I’ve had with a few people after the Virtual Worlds 2007 convention was that of a definition of community, and the definition of an online community. At one point when social platforms such as Second Life, There.com, and MySpace were small, the definition of community was that platform. You were a MySpace-er, a Second Life-er, the community was entirely comprised of those within it. Each of those communities have grown at rates where the definition had to change and the original community aspect of these virtual social interactions were redefined. This parallels the development and the growth of the Internet as it is not just a thing but rather a galaxy where all of these universes exist.

Most of us know the history of the net, it started out as an means of communications between several universities across the world. It was a small galaxy, each university was a universe that was comprised of the things that made it different; it’s text, library, literature, students, thinkers, on and on. As the net grew, the galaxy grew, new universes began to develop and in each universe were the things that made it different, at one point it was easy to index the universes, Business, Entertainment, Music. I remember at one point of the net’s development that AOL was considered the Internet. Now many new universes are appearing that are slowly becoming galaxies (Virtual Worlds/MMO’s, Social Media, Media) and it becomes less about being a “MySpace-er” and more about being on Planet MySpace, less about being a Second Life-er, but more about being in Second Life. At one point those were communities, small planets where everyone knew what was going on. Now on Second Life it’s hard to keep up with everything as many communities within this planet exists (such as the Live Musicians, and Fashion Creators).
Online and virtual communities are now very different, they are cities within the platforms they exist in. A really good example of the RedvsBlue community which (in my example) would exist on the Machinima Planet, in the Media Universe. If you think about it a small IRC server on someone’s home server that hosts 10 people could be akin to Rhode Island. It is in these new definitions of communities where the real synergy for Virtual Worlds lie.

Being that the ticket price for the Virtual Worlds Conference was well beyond my current budget and many of the participants who I work directly with on the SLCC were attending, I did not participate in the Virtual Worlds 2007 conference in New York City. However, after today’s events there was a meeting concerning the Second Life Community Convention (SLCC), mainly ironing out all of the progress we have had so far, and establishing final steps to make this years conference a success.

The beauty about these conferences is that I get to see my two friends, Jeska and Catherine Linden - two people who have really helped me on important projects, development and issues that I’m working on within Second Life. Of the people in Second Life, both Jeska and Catherine are of my favorite! I also get to have my dear friends FlipperPA and his wife Jennyfur in person for wonderful commentary, if you have not met these people they are some of the most interesting, wonderful, and nicest people in all of the metaverse.

Tonight ended with discussion with Spin Martin about hip-hop culture in Virtual Worlds (we have an agreement that Tank from the Matrix (Marcus Chong) or Ty Diggs should play the main character in the movie adaptation), and Jeska looking up at a red balloon. There were also plenty of other thoughts that made me re-think about the metaverse and certain over MMO worlds (such as Kaneva which is getting a lot of publicity). The major theme from the conference seemed that controlling the content is an important thing, but from the discussions with those I know it isn’t the content control - but rather what the user is doing with your content. It’s complicated, and it hurts my head a lot, but I’m happy at least this sort of discourse is happening.