My friend Jamie Sue, on the swing dance website that I administer, made an eloquent statement about why she loves dancing to the blues. I have to quote it in its entirety: I love blues. Blues music reflects a lot of my life view. It lives big and loud. It’s passionate and large. It’s about…
Initial thoughts on Season 3 of “So You Think You Can Dance”
I can see that this is going to be a really interesting third season of the Fox show "So You Think You Can Dance." Through the wonders of TIVO, I got caught up on the last 12-hours of show last night in about three hours. I cried 2-3 times already, and applauded at the TV…
Quick video of virtual broadcast of iCommons panel on “I versus Commons”
Here’s a quick video of Jonathan Zittrain answering a question I posed to him from Second Life. Namely: How do we win the fight for free culture when the hardware / OS layer is being increasingly locked down by Microsoft and Apple for freely creating, sharing and re-mixing our content? The context was a panel…
Larry Lessig speaking today at iCommons Summit, streamed in-world
Tireless advocate for free culture, enlightened intellectual property policies and an open internet, Dr. Lawrence Lessig will be speaking today at 11AM PST at the iCommons Summit in Dubrovnic, Croatia. You may know Larry as the CEO of the Creative Commons. For those who can’t jet over there, Larry’s talk will also be streamed into…
Two Joans too many: the problem with mixed-reality events
This evening, I spent some time watching a mixed-reality concert featuring Joan Osborne in the Rockefeller Center Peacock Room in the NBC sim. It’s a lovely space, there was a lively and fun crowd, and Joan sounded great. But I think there was at least one too many Joans. I’ve decided that I don’t really…
MacArthur initiates conversation on role of philanthropy in virtual worlds June 22
On Friday, June 22, Jonathan Fanton, the president of the MacArthur Foundation, and Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Labs, will come in-world for a conversation on the role of philanthropy in virtual worlds. Given the enormous investment that MacArthur is making towards all sorts of research and innovation in the use of new media for…
Microsoft announces global competition for youth to develop climate change game for XBOX360
On Saturday evening, the non-profit Games for Change and Microsoft announced at the G4C Festival at Parsons Design School that they were launching together a new initiative to around the theme of climate change. Entitled "The XBox360 Games for Change Challenge," this project will challenge college students around the world to come up with the…
It’s a shame when folks throw out a perfectly good cat
Cat’s gonna cat.
Panel on Funding Perspectives at Games for Change
Connie Yowell, MacArthur Foundation Here are my notes from a panel on funding perspectives at the Games for Change festival today. Lucy Bernholz, Founder and President of Blueprint Research & Design, moderated a discussion with three large funders: Microsoft, the National Science Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. My general conclusion is that this is such…
Discussion on “Media Policy and Games” at Games for Change
Alex Quinn, the new Executive Director of Games for Change, (center) moderated a panel with Adam Green of MoveOn.org (left) and Ted Castronova of Indiana University (right), on the intersection of public policy and games. Adam talked about how activists working on Net Neutrality were looking to expand their outreach to the gamer community and…