Sun Holds News Conference In Second Life 134
mikesd81 writes, "Internet News is reporting that Sun held an in-world news conference in the online game Second Life. From the article: 'Tuesday, Sun became the first Fortune 500 company to hold an "in-world" press conference to show off its new pavilion in Second Life, the popular 3D online world. Sun said it plans to invest in the Sun Pavilion as a place for developers to try out code, share ideas, and receive training.' Sun hopes to reach millions of Java developers, as opposed to the 22,000 that show up at its JavaOne conference each year." Good luck with that goal of "millions" — the total population of SL is under 800,000. And, who knew that Sun has a Chief Gaming Officer? Good quote from him in the article. He said Second Life isn't a game, "It's an amazing platform for global communications."
Cost a factor? (Score:4, Interesting)
'Tis true, about the global platform (Score:1, Interesting)
What value does SL bring to reaching developers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Come on, Sun, tell us how it does things that can't be more efficiently served with a website and forums?
Re:Is it a game? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been lurking around SL lately just to figure out what all the buzz is about and would say it's a platform in which you can create and manipulate objects, avatars, and buildings. Interaction via "game physics" occurs and keeps the environment manageable.
It's immature right now -- and maybe it always will be -- but I can see the potential. It's not a bad way to meet up with others to collaborate or teach/learn.
Sun isn't the only company seeing value there. I understand Adidas/Reebok are setting up store there...
Lets hold a press conference on an unsupported OS? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why didn't they just hold it in Microsoft Netmeeting?
Re:What value does SL bring to reaching developers (Score:4, Interesting)
So you see no advantage to going to conferences or classrooms as learning experiences? Let's just shut down all the colleges then. Pheonix U online should be just as good as Harvard or MIT.
Oh, wait, now maybe there is some advantage to the classroom/conference format. OK, now if you want more people to show up, you have to get a bigger meeting space, arrange dates for when it's not in use by some other organization, arrange for people to travel to the location, arrange for places for them to stay, and figure out a way to pay for all of that.
But if we can get all of the advantages to a real-time, interpersonal learning environmet with top notch presentations and leading experts, but with none of the travel, hosting, or cost issues, isn't this exactly the kind of value added service we (that being technology advocates) have touted the web as providing for so many years? Yes, it comes wrapped in all the other silliness and baggage that is Second Life, but had Sun released this as a stand alone client/learning environment, and Second Life didn't exist, everyone would be hailing this as proof that tech can provide most of the benefits of a real life meeting, while avoiding the static and overly artificial interaction of webpages and forums. In fact, once VoIP is fully integrated, and dynamic expressions become easier and clearer (a frown while someone is listening to you, or the tone/type of clapping after your presentation provides a world of useful information back to a speaker) this could replace 80% of the gain I get from attending conferences. That loss would be more than offset by using this to allow me to attend far more learning and idea sharing forums.
SL Hyperinflation (Score:3, Interesting)
If they're giving everyone a constant supply of money in their weekly stipend, isn't that just like a country's central bank printing money? How does the price of goods not spiral out of control?
Is it just because they're constantly pulling money out of the economy through land rent, that they can do it?
What about Croquet? (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.opencroquet.org/ [opencroquet.org]
Open Crouquet is shaping up pretty well and dosn't come with half the hassles, you don't have to worry about users gate crashing your conerence ( Conference is closed... coz of AIDS! ), you can run Croquet on your own hardware, and it can be customized to suit your needs..
Maybe someone should mention this this to Sun?
Re:Lets hold a press conference on an unsupported (Score:1, Interesting)
Apple doesn't make vehicles. And you can bet if they did, Steve would drive one everywhere.
And sometimes when the CEO of McDonalds goes to lunches with business clients, sometimes he goes to restaurants that don't serve Big Macs!
That's because if you eat Big Macs all the time, it'll practically kill you [supersizeme.com]. The McDonalds corporation is all about feeding cheap crap to people who don't know better, not about making quality products.
Hell, I work in an architecture firm, but I live in a house that someone else designed.
Architecture firms tend to do projects, not mass-produced houses. And single-run houses tend to be expensive, while most people live in more affordable housing. I'm sure the people who design Bentleys don't drive Bentleys, and not because a Bentley is incapable of driving them to work.
I must think I'm crap!
If the only reason you didn't live in a house designed by your firm was that it was technically incapable of housing you, then yes, that would be true. I sincerely hope that the houses you design are livable, though.
They're basically saying, rather than roll our own online "environment" for this project, we'll just use a pre-existing one, and save our company some money by not doing a lot of extra work. That seems to make sense to me.
Hey Schwartz, great idea. I've got some more for you. Why roll your own operating system? Ditch Solaris, and save tons of development money. And if you didn't waste time on that SPARC architecture, you'd save more money and even more extra work. That UltraSPARC T1 can't be cheap to develop. Makes sense to me!