Metaverse Weekend

Beginning tomorrow, Stanford’s Humanities Lab will be hosting MetaverseU. The event takes place around four discussions by virtual world stalwarts. Their site highlights one of these discussion:

At Metaverse U we plan to have 4 “key” conversations. The idea is to put people with different perspectives on a given topic together and also let them pick up on themes that have come up during the conference. I am very excited to announce that in one of these will feature a conversation between Howard Rheingold, Cory Ondrejka and Raph Koster. I am really curious about what it really means when we get the ability form these virtual communities and had the amazing luck of having the top 3 names on my list agree to come have the conversation about this.

Rheingold is a pioneer of web communities and started one of the first called The Well. Ondrejka is a Linden Lab alumnus and is noted for pushing for players retaining their own IP in Second Life. Koster I’ve talked about previously, but I’m interested to see if the conversation heads into comparing and contrasting Second Life vs. Metaplace. The MetaverseU has more about these guys and other notables they conference has lined up.

The registration price for students is quite doable at $100. Part of me wants to take off tonight for the Bay Area to listen in. However, the discussions are being streamed live in Second Life. Reinstalling SL and flying over is probably a much cheaper trip.

Here’s the logistics:

    * WHERE: Annenberg Auditorium, Stanford University
* WHEN: Saturday the 16th and Sunday the 17th of February 2008