So just arrived back yesterday from the Virtual World Conference in London and I am catching up on email and blog posts (translation:  surfing Facebook and TMZ.com).  I tried to update via Twitter mostly, but unfortunately we were stuck manning the booth and in meetings, so I was able to attend only one session in its entirety.

The session was the keynote by Linden Lab’s new CEO Mark Kingdon.  I had actually been looking forward to that, as my husband works for LL and constantly gets an earful from me about suggested directions Second Life could take from a brand’s perspective.  The keynote was good, we got a few jokes, a colorful video and slide presentation, an announcement from River Runs Red, and some interesting market stats.  But what really struck me was how NEW Mark is to VWs.  He was still tickled at how big his virtual office was, the fact he could fly, and made a point that “Only in VWs can you have a business meeting around a campfire with a giant teddy bear.”

Call me jaded.  Call me snobby.  Call me ready to move on to a more detailed wonderment of VWs.  But his audience has obviously already experienced the wonder of flying and is ready to go way way deeper into the possibilities of VWs.  (Which by the way, the immersive workspace partnership with RRR does.)

So this morning I was thinking about this, thinking about what might surprise me in VWs.  What I might stand up in front of an audience of 200 and declare with wonderment.  Then as I am on the phone with our COO, not listening to how I need to put in my expense report and post contact information in HighRise, I came across this article in Yahoo News:

Article Link

And I had one of those VW *whoa* moments.

So this woman is involved in the VW experience of Maple Story, very similar to Second Life, and is divorced by her avatar husband.  Spurned, upset, enraged really, the woman accessed his avatar account and permanently deleted it.  In essence, she committed “virtual murder”.  The crazy part is – she is arrested, charged and jailed for the act.  Technically the charges are “illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data” but practically she “done him in”.

I am somewhat ashamed to be so giddy over a virtual murder.  But certainly not, that while Linden Lab’s CEO was a tad less than awe inspiring, Virtual Worlds never will be.

Oh, here is a photo from the conference.  Yes, that is a guy snoring soundly in the right corner of the photo.  I won’t mention who it is, but suffice to say it is appropriate that “Sheep” is in his company’s name.  🙂

–Amy

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