Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Talking about the book at the Virtual Worlds conference Thursday

I got to the Virtual Worlds conference this morning and one of the first things that happened was that Tonda Bunge and Chris Sherman, the two main organizers seemed very interested in helping me promote the book.

I thought that was really nice of them, particularly since I had written a blog entry for News.com on Tuesday that was a bit critical of the spring conference in New York and of this event's selection of panels.

Around mid-day, it turned out that a panel session had been canceled and so Tonda asked if I would like to speak about the book. I was a little taken aback.

Months ago, when this show was first announced, I talked to Chris about doing a panel here, and he seemed cautiously interested. I never did get around to putting together a proposal, though, since I was speaking at the Austin Game Developers Conference (which went on in early September) on the topic of making money in virtual worlds and since I was also concentrating on doing the same panel for South by Southwest next spring.

So to suddenly be asked, out of the blue, if I wanted to speak specifically on the book was really great. I said yes, of course, even though I don't have any kind of ready presentation or multimedia or anything.

But, hey, I can wing it. After speaking to Giff Constable's entrepreneur's group last week, I'm feeling good, and I'm pretty sure I can talk publicly about this without looking like a fool.

Even though Prok is here.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi, Daniel, I'm glad you were able to um muster erm the... testicularity?...to enjoy your time at VW 07 despite me being there.

I do think it is important for you to realize that social media is, well, other people. You, as a journo for old-fashioned push media of the kind where readers only get to put comments -- and not even that often -- is well, old-fashioned.

New media enables people with viewpoints and perceptions different than yours to get a fair shake, too. I realize it's hard when it comes after you, but better get used to it.

I do continue to marvel -- no, out and out *boggle* -- that you can write a book about entrepreneurship in Second Life without having the cooperation of Anshe Chung. I do hope that you managed to write about ACS even without "cooperation" -- which I don't know how hard you tried to get.

I say this as an occasional critic of ACS but I surely do appreciate what they have achieved in SL, and I'm a happy customer.

Prokofy