I’m presenting at the “Midnight to Noon Conference for Second Life Educators and Researchers” on Oct 27

The folks at EduFinland are hosting a conference on October 27 called the “Midnight to Noon Conference for Second Life Educators and Researchers.”

Although the conference is being held in Second Life, the presentations will discuss a wide range of research across many different virtual world platforms.

I’ll be speaking on a panel at 8am EDT on “The Future of Learning in Virtual Worlds.”

At 10am EDT I’ll be giving a keynote presentation titled “The Significance of Contextual Flow – Exploring Jibe and Critical Affordances of Web-Based Virtual Worlds.”  And you can participate in my keynote by visiting my Jibe world on the web during the presentation.

For more details, check out the conference website.  Here’s a summary of the agenda:

A 12 hour conference in Second Life for educators and researchers on education and virtual worlds with invited speakers from Europe and the US. The conference features presentations, panels, workshops, excursion and many other types of activitities.

Mark the date Thursday October 27, 2011 in your calendar now and join us in EduFinland archipelago on the lecture theatre on EduFinland III from midnight to noon (PDT).

The researchers and educators at EduFinland have been doing outstanding work over the years, and I had the privilege of meeting many of them in my last trip to Finland.  So I’m really looking forward to this conference.

Hope to see you there!

My favorite coffee mug, courtesy of Finland.

Take care,
-John “Pathfinder” Lester

The Future of Virtual Worlds: No Fate but What We Make

In the movie Terminator 2, there is a memorable scene where Sarah Connor carves some words into a park bench.

I think those words hold a special meaning for those of us interested in the future of virtual worlds like Second Life, OpenSim, and whatever new worlds will come.

And I believe it’s a very bright future.  For everyone.

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Meanwhile, in Finland

I found that captioned photo while Googling for images of Finland.

But I don’t think we’re allowed to tease Finland anymore.

Not since Newsweek recently ranked them #1 on their list of Best Countries in the World.

I’ll be giving a keynote at a very interesting conference in Finland in October.  Here are some details.

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