Virtual Worlds in the New Year

In 2007, media from BusinessWeek to The Today Show hailed virtual worlds as the next great communications platform—and criticized them for being nothing more than elaborate video games. As we move into 2008, more and more companies will be considering how to integrate virtual worlds into their business and marketing plans to provide consumers with an interactive brand experience and employees with new tools for collaboration, recruitment and education. 

We invite you to come together with the Seattle Social Media Club and Text 100 on the evening of January 31 for an interactive panel discussion about the evolution of Second Life and its new features, along with an in-world demonstration. Panelists include:

• Jeff Barr , senior evangelist for Amazon Web Services;

• Rob Lanphier, "open source busybody" from Linden Lab9s new Seattle office;
• Greg Tomko-Pavia, program manager for Linden Lab Studio Icehouse; and
  

• Brian White, author of Second Life - A Guide To Your Virtual World (three copies to be given away at the meeting!) and the organizer of the Seattle Second Life Meetup

We look forward to seeing you!

Contact: Deaira Irons, 206-267-2012, deairai@text100.com

Jeff Barr is senior evangelist for Amazon Web Services. In this role, he focuses on helping the Amazon Web Services developer community achieve success in building innovative and successful businesses using Amazon.com data and technology. He served as a liaison for O’Reilly & Associates technical guidebook, "Amazon Hacks." Jeff has held development and management positions at KnowNow, eByz, Akopia and Microsoft, and was a co-founder of Visix Software. He earned his bachelor degree in Computer Science from the American University. Jeff has been in Second Life since November 2005. He now conducts developer chats, presentations and other meetings on a regular basis on the Amazon Developer Islands.

Rob Lanphier serves as "open source busybody" from Linden Lab9s new Seattle office, working with the community in regular in-world office hours as well as via more traditional venues, and ensuring everyone has the tools they need to be productive participants. Prior to Linden Lab, Rob worked at RealNetworks, helping to craft two key multimedia standards (RTSP and SMIL) and coordinating RealNetworks9 open source initiative (Helix Community).  He has also held positions in network engineering, build management and MediaWiki custom development, has written several small open source utilities, and operates the election-methods mailing list.

Greg Tomko-Pavia, aka Periapse Linden, is the program manager for Linden Lab Studio Icehouse. An avid Second Life resident before he became a Linden in April 2007, he works with the studio on projects related to scalability and optimization. In 2007, Icehouse delivered a new messaging structure which allows the Second Life grid to upgrade without downtime, as well as a deployment solution that allows regions of the grid to run different simulators. Current projects include a new method of client authentication and a much faster virtual machine for running Second Life scripts. Prior to working at Linden he spent seven years under the canopy in the jungle known as the Amazon.com. Prior to that he was a programmer and producer of computer games, a high school teacher, and a "rocket scientist" for NASA9s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, CA. 

Brian A. White is the author of Second Life - A Guide To Your Virtual World and the organizer of the Seattle Second Life Meetup. Brian has been involved in 3D modeling and digital photography for more than 20 years as a hobbyist. He recognized Second Life and technologies like it as groundbreaking opportunities for innovation and the convergence of work and play, and just had to dive in. In real life, Brian specializes in taking early stage software products from concept to market. Most recently, as VP of Product Management for iConclude, a Madrona venture-backed startup, which sold to Opsware and subsequently HP in the spring and fall of 2007. Currently, Brian is VP Products for HP, focused on IT business service automation.