Category Archives: Pioneer Lessons

“We were here” – Discovering Footsteps in the Wilderness and Flags across the Hypergrid

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I started the Hypergrid Adventurers Club because I think the development of Hypergrid-enabled interconnectivity between Opensim grids is a beautiful and fascinating evolution.  And in my experience, if you want to help cultivate growth and innovative uses of a new technology, it’s a good idea to do whatever you can to build a supportive community around it.

Recently I noticed a very interesting phenomenon across the Hypergrid.  On regions in areas that allow visitors to build or rez objects, some people are planting flags.

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Presentation at 2012 Follow the Sun: “Integrated Reality and Next Generation Virtual Worlds”

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Follow the Sun 2012 is a free online conference that runs from March 27-30.  Here’s a summary from their website:

“Digital Futures Institute, Beyond Distance Research Alliance, Athabasca University, and our commercial partners are proud to provide this year’s 48-hour, online learning festival at no charge to all participants. The theme of this year’s conference moves beyond educational technology to examine knowledge development and exchange across the disciplines.”

I’ll be giving an online presentation on Thursday March 29th at 2:30am EDT (yes, that’s 2:30am).  The topic will be “Integrated Reality and Next Generation Virtual Worlds.”

Here are my slides on SlideShare to give you a preview of what I’ll be talking about, and I’ll update this blog post with a recording of my presentation after the conference is over.

Update 3/29/2012: Here’s the recording of my presentation.

–John “Pathfinder” Lester
Chief Learning Officer
ReactionGrid Inc.

Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts – Virtual Broad Art Museum in Jibe

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The Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts (IDIA) at Ball State University is a research and design studio exploring virtual reality, simulation, games and interactive interfaces.

IDIA been commissioned to design and build a virtual presence and artworks for the upcoming Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University.

And they’re building it with ReactionGrid’s Jibe platform!

For more information, check out IDIA’s project website.

–John “Pathfinder” Lester
Chief Learning Officer
ReactionGrid Inc.

Virtual Worlds Presentation for 2012 Virtual Enterprise Conference at Glyndŵr University

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The Virtual Enterprise Conference at Glyndŵr University brings together a diverse range of web entrepreneurs, students and academics to discuss the opportunities for e-entrepreneurship offered by virtual worlds and the social web.  It’s hosted each year by the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at Glyndŵr University.

On Feb 23 at this year’s conference, I had the pleasure of giving a presentation on Best Practices in Virtual Worlds.  Here’s the full video.

The Right Tool for the Right Job: Best Practices for Virtual Worlds from John Lester on Vimeo.

You can grab a copy of my slides on Google, and you can visit the Jibe world featured in my presentation by going here.

Thanks again to Matthew Draycott from the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at Glyndŵr University for inviting me to speak.  It was a great opportunity!

– John “Pathfinder” Lester
Chief Learning Officer
ReactionGrid, Inc.

Hypergrid Adventurers Club visits OSGrid – January 5 2012

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To celebrate the reboot of the Hypergrid Adventurers Club, we took a trip from jokaydiaGRID to OSGrid.

It was a very successful journey, and I hope everyone had a good time.  Read on for a summary, some pics, and instructions on how you can make the journey yourself.

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Peru and the Future of Virtual Worlds

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Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP) is the #1 ranked university in the country of Peru.

It is also home to a wonderful research project called Grupo Avatar.

Read on to learn more.

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Making the Most of Meeting in the Physical World: Evocative Artifacts

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MIT’s Technology Review recently published an article on how CardCloud Spells the End of Physical Business Cards.

As someone who spends most of their professional life immersed in the online world, I tend to agree that physical business cards are not an ideal tool for information exchange in the physical world.

But I have a slightly different idea about why I feel that’s the case.

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Hypergrid Adventurers Club – Visiting a recreation of the astronomical observatory at Pic du Midi de Bigorre

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Our Hypergrid Adventurers Club visited a virtual recreation of Pic du Midi de Bigorre in NewWorldGrid this past Sunday.  Follow in our footsteps and check it out for yourself!

Pic du Midi de Biogorre is a mountain in the French Pyrenees famous for its astronomical observatory.

Aime Socrates (who has also built some amazing recreations of nuclear research facilities at CERN and physics education spaces) is building the mountain out as a learning space for students interested in astronomy.

Here are some photos from our journey.

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On Leadership and Community: Wisdom from Lao-Tzu

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Lately I’ve been thinking about leadership and communities.  And in particular, how the two are so delicately intertwined.

This beautiful passage from the Tao Te Ching has been on my mind a lot.

“Learn from the people

Plan with the people

Begin with what they have

Build on what they know

Of the best leaders

When the task is accomplished

The people will remark

We have done it ourselves.”

On Being “Part of the Product”

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Dusan Writer thinks a lot about the business of virtual worlds and, specifically, Second Life.

He recently wrote a very thoughtful and interesting blog post titled “SECOND LIFE NEXT: 2011.”

In my comment on his post, I said the following:

You also talked about how “user generated content is not a business model.” I’m not sure I fully agree with you on that. The bottom line is, if you’re using a service and not paying for it, you’re not a customer. You’re part of the product. At least that’s how all successful businesses see it.

I’d like to expand a bit on what I said in bold.  Because, if done right, I think it’s a very good thing both for businesses and customers.

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