An interesting evening in Second Life

I spent an interesting evening the other night talking to some new (and old) friends from Canada, Raleigh, NJ and California. No, we weren't at a conference.....it
wasn't a conference call - I attended my first Meetup (see http://meetup.com) in Secondlife. The topic of the discussion was "Distributed Agile" (yes, I know,
sounds riveting - but what can I say, it's a passion).

Anyway, it was Wednesday night around 8:30pm and I had just finished teaching Astronomy at Pace University. I was tired and really wanted to get home,
but since Pace is about 5 minutes from my office in Hawthorne, I took the plunge and drove back to IBM to attend the virtual event - thinking I'd only stay
or about a 1/2 hour. The SecondLife Agile meetup is hosted by a good friend (and ex-IBM'er) Bill Krebs (AgileBill as he's known in Secondlife). When I got there
things were just getting started....We stood in a circle and went around the room introducing ourselves. The one interesting thing I noticed is that the Voice over IP really (and I mean REALLY) makes a difference in these social settings. They made an overt effort to not make this meetup a "stand and stare at a powerpoint" - it was all about milling around, chatting and using the spatial nature of secondlife. very interesting !



What I noticed was that my speaking cadence was much more measured, like I was having a face to face discussion with someone, not just speaking as another voice on a conference call. It was VERY MUCH a social experience. Yes, we sat around on beanbag chairs and chatted - and as
crazy as it sounds - it really felt like I was in a social setting (a party) chatting about various topics I loved it - met some new people and ending up talking and discussing topics ranging from the use of Second Life to how Agile works to what it means to be in this new medium.
By the time I knew it - it was 10:30 - and I had to pull myself away - definitely engaging and definitely worth attending again !