To some of you this might be extremely old hat, for others this might be fun to experiment with. During Blogwalk last week, Stephanie showed us one of the virtual world environments HumLab is experimenting with. It’s called Traveler, and available from Digital Space. I remember seeing this before, I think it must have at least 6 years back, but then the connection was way too slow to yield an interesting experience, and I didn’t see much use for it. This time I was impressed a lot more. Probably because it speaks to my geeky side a lot, and that always helps, but also because when Stephanie showed us this 3D-virtual world with real time speech, we immediately decided on an experiment with it.

Screenshot

In the coming weeks, we will try and recreate the Blogwalk meeting we had last week in Sweden, and continue the work we did. This as addendum to the wiki. Currently I am learning how to use the space, and getting comfortable in it. I will contact the others that were there in Umea to make sure they install it and set up a meeting.
I am specifically curious to see if Traveler allows us to use Open Space technology effectively, and/or for instance more common meeting formats.
The picture shows a screenshot of the entrance of OzWorld one of the virtual worlds available.
[Addendum: one of Humlabs interesting people is Jim Barrett, who works on narratives in virtual worlds. His blog is Soul Sphincter]