Bruce Damer Speaking and Educational Programs
Overview of Programs
I am available to present keynote or plenary addresses, roundtables, panels and other conference sessions, and full and half day educational seminars and tutorials. My company, DigitalSpace Corporation also offers a full line of virtual world design services. I have extensive speaking, project brainstorming, and course instruction experience, providing numerous conference, and in-house corporate and university programs annually. Please feel free to contact me regarding your interest by contacting us via this form. Topic areas I can cover include:
- Virtual worlds for use in education, science, entertainment, collaboration and training The design and management of virtual communities The virtual community as a tool for one-to-one and dedicated customer support Multi-user virtual workspaces for meeting support, problem resolution and teleworking Cross-disciplinary syntheses between evolutionary biology and large system design Issues in the creation of a compelling cyberspace: business and design models Building and operating teleports (immersive CAVE and war-room environments) for education, entertainment, and business and scientific collaboration
- Using virtual worlds as a global cyber-bridging medium linking schools, governmental and non-governmental organizations
All presentations include live on-line interaction (computer and network access permitting). If sufficent number of workstations is available in a tutorial setting, attendees will experience hands-on use of these environments and collaboratively build and communicate in excercises with each other and other virtual instructors brought in for the event. This type of tutorial is detailed at A half or full day Advanced Course at Avatar University.
During these presentations, tours of virtual environments in cyberspace will be conducted, and we will meet inhabitants of these worlds. Some of the active projects being conducted by Bruce or his organizations will be visited, including:
Cyberspace becomes a Place
The rise of virtual worlds on the Internet
Abbreviated description for a shorter plenary or keynote session (half hour)
Since 1994, we have become accustomed to seeing the Cyberspace as a great sea of World Wide Web documents. However powerful the Web is, it may not be the ultimate interface to Cyberspace. More fantastic views of Cyberspace have been given to us by Hollywood or from fictional worlds like the Matrix in William Gibson's novel Neuromancer or the Metaverse in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. These visions portray Cyberspace as a labyrinth of interconnected virtual worlds inhabited in real time by millions of people represented as avatars. The coming of virtual worlds will represent a true paradigm shift for our on-line experiences, moving Cyberspace beyond a mere interface to becoming a place.
But is this a reality for some distant time in the 21st Century? Surprisingly, from 1995 to 1998 a variety of inhabited virtual worlds have appeared on the net with thousands of users colonizing and developing an enormous and sometimes innovative digital real estate. In this presentation, we will tour live into several on-line virtual worlds, meet and speak with their inhabitants. We will then take a grand tour of several purpose built areas which suggest the coming of a powerful new medium for collaboration, play and learning. For a preview of the material to be covered, please see http://www.damer.com/programs/index.html#opening or visit the Contact Consortium homepage at: http://www.ccon.org.
Our grand tour of worlds will take us to the following destinations in digital space:
- The exhibition world which hosted Avatars98, the first conference held inside cyberspace serving 4,000 attendees, 48 exhibitors and six parallel speaking tracks.Pushing into new spaces for on-line pedagogy in The U Virtual University Architecture Competition and University of California Virtual High SchoolBusiness collaborative conferencing inside 3D data models in datafusion world and a number of customer virtual community worlds including the prototype Borders Bookworld, 3D net-hosted retail environments for Borders Bookstores The social anatomy of a virtual village in Sherwood Forest TownGrowth and learning about nature in biologically inspired worlds such as Nerve GardenVirtual worlds on the horizon in support of large scientific and public experiential events, such as NASA Mars Pathfinder and other NASA project worldsHollywood and cyberspace as a universal improv space for Inhabited Media Properties
- The economics of virtual worlds and their communities, the hardware and immersion equation behind the coming of the Home Holodeck
The biologically inspired worlds of Biota.org, a public terrarium in CyberspaceExtended description for a longer session (60 to 90 minutes)
Cyberspace is about to become a real place! The PC has evolved into a capable real-time 3D platform and is now serving as a portal into large scale Internet hosted graphical virtual worlds inhabited by thousands of users represented as avatars. The rise of these true virtual spaces in Cyberspace moves us beyond the document metaphor of the Web, and the point to point broadcast model of email and videoconferencing. In these spaces, visitors experience a sense of place, create shared memory, leave persistent objects, and experiment with new forms of identity. These first virtual worlds may be a glimpse at the ultimate shape of Cyberspace. Despite their early state of development, they suggest the coming of a powerful new medium for collaboration, play and learning in the 21st Century. In this overview of the medium of virtual worlds, we will consider the applications and economics of the technology, the system and user interface architectural issues of constructing these spaces and the social craft of creating and sustaining the communities within them. We wiil then take a grand tour of worlds to the following destinations in digital space:
- The exhibition world which hosted Avatars98, the first conference held inside cyberspace serving 4,000 attendees, 48 exhibitors and six parallel speaking tracks.Pushing into new spaces for on-line pedagogy in The U Virtual University Architecture Competition and University of California Virtual High SchoolBusiness collaborative conferencing inside 3D data models in datafusion world and a number of customer virtual community worlds including the prototype Borders Bookworld, 3D net-hosted retail environments for Borders Bookstores The social anatomy of a virtual village in Sherwood Forest TownGrowth and learning about nature in biologically inspired worlds such as Nerve GardenVirtual worlds on the horizon in support of large scientific and public experiential events, such as NASA Mars Pathfinder and other NASA project worldsHollywood and cyberspace as a universal improv space for Inhabited Media Properties
- The economics of virtual worlds and their communities, the hardware and immersion equation behind the coming of the Home Holodeck
Features of the session
- Virtual communities 3D interfaces, streaming media, multi-user technologies Distance learning, training, and teleworking applications Virtual worlds for entertainment, inhabited media properties Scientific collaboration spaces
- Interaction design
Who Should Attend This session should appeal to a wide audience, including
- Web site and real-time interaction designers 3D designers Emerging media specialists and writers on new media Intranet and VPN developers looking for cutting edge training and collaboration spaces Scientists seeking a new collaborative medium Virtual community developers and operators Social computing and multi-user interaction specialists Game designers Distance learning, virtual workspace and teleworking researchers
- Designers of on-line performance arts, narrative story telling, and virtual theater
For a preview of some of the public virtual worlds, go through the Avatar Teleport on the Contact Consortium home page at http://www.ccon.org.
Technical Requirements for Presentations
Machine Specifications: The speaker can come with a fully loaded laptop, if this has been pre arranged. If a machine on-site has been requested, the specs follow:
A projected Win95 or Win98 Pentium PC (more than 256 colors (16 bit or higher) please on the projector ). If it is a small conference room audience, the PC can be connected to a large monitor. The PC should be on the net but not behind a firewall. A 28.8 dial up connection to an ISP is adequate. Speakers and microphone are requested if possible (soundblaster 16 compatible soundcard). If someone can pre-load and test the following software it would be very helpful. I can be reached at +1 831 338 9400 for assistance:
1. Active Worlds (from http://www.activeworlds.com)
2. Onlive Traveler (from http://www.digitalspace.com/avatars/onlive.html )
3. Other virtual worlds as requested
4. Internet Explorer 3.0 or above
5. VRML plug-in for the web browser (cosmo player from http://www.cosmosoftware.com/ )A VHS VCR is requested for playback on a large screen (sharing the computer projected screen if possible)
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