This is the spot to be in order to watch all the Metaverse U talks live as they happen. Check the Agenda for the timings and bear in mind that we are on Pacific Standard Time. Should you be unable to be here for the live portion then we plan to post all the videos to the web over the coming months. Enjoy :) 
 

You can also choose to watch the stream from this url:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/metaverse-u-conference

A quick little update:

• I am happy to reconfirm that you will be able to watch a live stream of all the Metaverse U talks. It is going to be web based and easy this time. Will update this blog with the details.
• Secondly our conference tag is metaverseu (aka #metaverseu in twitterish :))

Only two days to go!

We are just about one week out on the conference and happy to report that things are coming together nicely. Being on the downslope of another hype curve we wanted to highlight what will feel is the most vibrant part of our space: The open parts of our virtual ecosystem. So our goal was to be bringing together some key people at the intersection of virtual worlds and open source. We feel that has worked out. As of writing nearly every spot on the Agenda has been filled so I wanted to give you a brief overview of what you will find on there.

We have a good selection of the open platforms represented. Some key speakers from this space are:

A new link has appeared in the left hand side menu. We are now open for registration. The price is $50 for everyone. This buys you two full days of Metaverse U incl. meals and coffee which is pretty much what we spend on one person. The reason we reduced it to 10% of last year's cost is that we felt that anyone with input for the conversation should not be unable to attend because of registration cost. In these though economic times more than ever. It feels good and right to thank the sponsors who enabled us to make this choice and I intend to do this in a later post.

At last years Metaverse U we estimate that we had upwards of 400 people through over the two days. For this iteration we have booked a space with 150 spots so there is some chance that we could sell out. Bottom line is that if you know you want to be there then waiting until the last minute might not the best strategy :)

I am very happy to announce that the next Metaverse U Conference also will take place at Stanford University. We have booked a great that holds about 150 people so we are aiming for something more focused for this second iteration of the conference.

The main purpose of this conference is to define a strategy for advancing open source platforms and explore their potential in a broad variety of contexts, including scientific research, education, private enterprise, and cultural programming. Our mission statement is as follows:

The Metaverse U conference will explore the cutting edge applications of virtual worlds and the open platforms that drive them.

We are using sponsorships to keep the cost of attendance down to $50 for two full days of conference. Should this present a barrier to anyone then let us know and we will figure it out. We also realize that not everyone who should be a part of this conversation has the opportunity to make it to Stanford so we plan to have a free live video stream for a remote audience.

We are in the process of building the agenda with speakers and topics. There is still lots of room for your input so please write us with any ideas you may have. For the right speaker we would also consider remote options.

We plan to open registration on April 15th.

Hope to see you there!

With 12 videos live on our Conference Videos page we are really starting to get there. Savvy people have already sniffed the new ones out and it is really to good see that they are being watched. With this we only have the 4 conversations to go and our full conference program will be shared. Stay tuned!

If you look at the left hand side menu navigation you might spot the new Conference Videos entry. When we are done uploading you will be able to go there and find video of every talk and conversation from Metaverse U. As of right now we are 3 steps closer to done with the addition of the talks you can see after the fold.

We are finally ready to start sharing the footage from the two full days of Metaverse U. It has been a large task but I feel it is totally worth the effort and I am now looking forward to seeing the afterlife our little conference will get. This video is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution which lets you both share and remix, so feel free to nuts :)

The premiere video is our own Vladlen Koltun of the Stanford Virtual Worlds Group who outlines a vision for how we may improve the content creation tools for the metaverse. As a specific example he demoes and explains Dryad, a tool for intuitively intuitively creating beautiful trees: 

This is very exciting. With 58 videos uploaded our Metaverse U YouTube Group is really starting to get interesting. Feel very free to join in the conversation. You can go read Building a time capsule to find out how. I felt it was a bit of a scoop that I got to ask Randy Farmer the four questions. If you don't know why that felt like a big deal then check out this & this:

When I blogged about Building a Time Capsule I thought we had gotten a pretty interesting idea. Now with the first 20 videos uploaded to our open YouTube Metaverse U Group I am very happy we did this. I think it paints a pretty interesting picture of our time to see a number people answer those same 4 questions.

Here is a Beth Coleman from MIT who also spoke at Metaverse U:

 
If you find her interesting then go check out the other 19 videos.

Ps. Some of you have written and asked when the conference videos will be online. We are working on it and are getting ready to start uploading in the near future, so watch this space for updates.