As part of the community grassroots fundraising relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina victims in 2005, Frans Charming was involved as the overall project manager and along with Rhiannon Chatnoir and other volunteer builders, recreated part of the French Quarter of New Orleans in Second Life.
You can find more pictures in this set.
Experience the recreation in Second Life.
The Vesuvius Group is proud to participate – with the Center for Public Diplomacy and Metaplace (Raph Koster, the founder of Metaplace, as usual, writes a very smart blogpost about the future of virtual worlds and how we can take our place alongside other social media in getting the news out) – in presenting the live stream of Obama’s speech about the future of citizen democracy streaming live from Ghana. Please come join us in this historic moment as social media, virtual worlds, and civic participation come together. We are deeply excited to be participating in this grand experiment to facilitate conversation and community and civic participation! Check out the coverage of the virtual version on CBS News.
Please join us for an event featuring Obama’s speech streaming from Ghana along with leaders speaking: Kenton Keith, Tim Burke and Derrick Ashong.
On Saturday, July 11, a global conversation will push definitions of citizenship by demonstrating how new technologies enable global civic participation. Citizens from numerous countries will meet together in virtual worlds to collectively watch a speech from President Obama, view Twitter feedback on his talk, and join in discussion with musician and activist D.N.A. (Derrick Ashong), Ambassador Kenton Keith and African historian Professor Tim Burke.
President Obama will speak to a live audience in Ghana, Africa. His speech will recognize Ghana’s stable democracy and leadership in the region. It is expected that Africans from all over the continent will converge for this momentous speech. The White House is using a Twitter feed which will enable individuals from around the world to participate in the conversation and share their thoughts with President Obama.
This event provides a public sphere for people to come together as citizens sharing independent views which in turn shape the political institutions of society. These conversations, literally hosted in a virtual physical space, are essential for the marketplace of ideas in our globalizing society. Following the event will be music from D.N.A. Please join us for this historic event.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
8:00 AM Eastern / 5:00 AM Pacific
Twitter Hashtag – #obamaghana
for more info:
More press from:
We were a vendor this past weekend at the Virtual World Best Practices in Education 09, and had a great time meeting people and going to presentations. Lots of insightful stuff, which we hope have been blogged about around the web. 😛
For now we have these textures we made for our vendor spot.
Built for Global Kids, NYC as part of their MacArthur Foundation funded initiative to create a International Justice Center within Second Life that would focus on issues of justice and human rights law throughout the world. Still in progress (in second phase of dev) and also involved event management during opening events.
View more images of the build.
Articles about the project:
Machinima created for the 48 hour film festival that took place within Second Life. The screenplay, storyboards, build stage sets, props, filming and editing done by The Vesuvius Group.
Other entries can be viewed here.
Created a reproduction of part of Google’s Mountain View, CA campus for the 2007 Google Zeitgeist event. It included 3D representations of Google technologies, a networking lounge area, a speakers hall with information on all speakers and the ability to message them and creation of an interactive HUD that contained this info, a map and other event tools for attendees.
This was an event specific project and unfortunately is not still available to view. You can view images of the build here and here.
Articles about the project (multilingual):
Kzero
Ambling
Mindblizzard
Metaverse.lePressing
MaxFear
Created the official starting point sim for the 2007 Relay for Life. The them for 2007 was “The Quest (For the Cure)” and we created a Tolkien inspired themed sim that included a hobbit village, the elven city of Rivendell, a scaled down model of Minas Tirath, the Argonath sentinel statues, the Black Riders racing up to Weathertop and Mordor which included Shalob’s cave, the smoking volcano of Mount Doom and the fortress tower of Mordor.
This build was up only during the Relay for Life event. You can see more images of the build here and here.
The Second Life sim Virtual Beliefnet was used as an entry point sim for the online community of http://www.beliefnet.com which included a welcome area, event area, informational and user quiz space and a parceled off section for community housing, all set to a calming design and well landscaped terrain that included influences from various spiritual denominations and paths.
Virtuallive.tv was a mixed reality event that took place at the Canal Room Club in NYC and Simultaneously within Second Life. It featured the performances of the bands Buddhahead and Shock Radar playing live at the venue, streamed live into SL as the backdrop where the band’s avatars were performing for the virtual audience and footage of the virtual performance shown back into the club, both streaming live back and forth. We created the stage setting environment, custom avatars modeled after real life band members and in world promotional items. We also puppeteered at real life event and filmed and produced machinima for event.
You can find more images here.
For the 2007 Podcamp NYC unconference we created the accompanying Second Life event build which included a circus themed area with a central event tent and tents for all sponsors that featured their logos, information and links to sponsor websites.
