Bettina Tizzy Helps Launch Bionic Exoskeleton Which Helps Make Paraplegic Walking Possible in Real Life

eLegs from Berkeley Bionics are an exoskeleton for people otherwise confined to wheelchairs, an awesome peacetime application of technology originally designed for military use. They were recently unveiled in this impressive and moving video, which quickly went viral last week:

As it happens, the unveiling of eLegs shares a strong if indirect connection to the Second Life creative community: Working as an outside consultant, a publicist named Beverly Millson helped Berkeley Bionics with the rebranding, marketing, and PR of their product. In Second Life, Beverly is better known as Bettina Tizzy, founder of Not Possible in Real Life (or NPIRL), a group and a blog that made incredible strides to promote virtual world-based art to the wider world. Bettina has been scarce from Second Life lately, partly because she's been using her talents to promote this other means to help the disabled.

"Lighting a fire is easy when you are passionate about the topic," Bettina tells me by email, "and by golly, how could I not be when it comes to eLEGS... or the ingenuity and virtuosity of our dazzling virtual creators?" She also credits Julie Gomoll and Studio B Films for helping with the eLegs logo and video, and cites their collaboration as just as important to the process of promotion:

"That's the final but most important trick," says Beverly. "[F]ind and foster relationships with people who are masters in their field and implement what they know like their lives depended on it." Virtual worlds are a proven means for giving the disabled a way to connect with the outside world, and while I'm sad to see Beverly spending less time in the metaverse, it's fitting that she's involved with another technological innovation that provides them another option to break free.

Comments

[Jon Brouchoud]

Very, very cool. Congrats Bettina!

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

Possible in real life. Thank you Bettina.

[Julie Gomoll]

I have the pleasure of working with Beverly on the marketing for Berkeley Bionics. She's right - so much of it is about the relationships, and it's made so much easier when you're working with people and products you can really feel passion for.

Berkeley Bionics is fortunate to have Beverly. And if I do say so myself, we make a great team :)

[Bettina Tizzy]

Thanks for your kind words, Hamlet! I sorely miss my SL friends and all the virtual content creators who have knocked my socks off time after time with their groundbreaking work, so it's great to have this forum to tell them why I've been absent.

And thanks so much for helping us to get the word out about eLEGS. There are thousands and thousands of people in SL who are paralyzed in some way so I'd love to coordinate an in-world presentation about it.

@Jon and @Ignatius - Thank you <3

@Julie To infinity and beyond! Love what you do.

[Jenn Forager]

Bettina-
Metanomics would love to have you do a presentation about eLegs. Please get in touch with me at [email protected]