NWN's Post-Summer Open Forum: What Should We Be Blogging About on New World Notes This Fall?

I was going through my Summer photos (hence the poke on a Pringle chip above), when I suddenly realized, Hey, Summer is over. A good time for an open forum with an open-ended question:

What should we be blogging about on New World Notes this Fall, and why?

And yes, self-promotion is OK, possibly even encouraged -- as long as you include a lot of useful links, especially SLurls if it's Second Life-related.

Comments

[FredTheGamer]

Samsung, Sony, Facebook (Occulus rift) all have a thing in common, they're making virtual headsets and Samsung might beat the competition to market. Maybe 2015 is the year of immersive technology.

Gamification.. we're a generation of gamers (we've been for over 2000 years) - a LOT of research and interesting material about this topic out there. I have a very wellpaid job, have the latest gadgets to help me do my work better, using systems ticking away millions of dollars each minute in profit (no, I'm not trying to impress anyone). But when I get home I try to help my son with his math homework, and I realise that the school system is still stuck in the old way of thinking and the latest technological breakthough is the pen and erasor... Wow, no wonder the Girls and boys (it's generally the boys who suffer most in the school system, you can see that on the grades). Reality is broken, gamification might be the solution to fixing it

A lot of truly amazing unique user created content exists in the virtual worlds such as minecraft and Second Life. I myself don't have time to wander around so much, I'm either there doing what I consider "work" making things for my own and others, or being social catching up with old friends, would be great if you could pick out some of those highlights, I bet the sim owners would gladly participate in a short interview. You might Think this is a so-so idea, but imagine people who don't have a lot of SL experience, would that not be a great introduction to know what's out there.

Cloudparty is being closed down by Yahoo, what is happening with the Open Sims alternative SL, are they withering away too? We need you to tell us!

Firestorm, we all use it, can we learn more about this team? Who are these mysterous coders who seem to enjoy doing work for free just to give us all a better SL experience?

Charity events in SL making real change in the real World. Art and Theatre plays, it's what actually got me interested in SL (and that is the truth)

How about a interview with one of the oldest Churches in SL, weekly sunday prayer meetings, done in a amazingly professional way. I bet the creator behind that would not mind telling us more about the challenges and why he is doing this.

Psycholoy and mental Health, in SL. I got curious about that aspect and found there are people coaching and informing people 24/7 about mental Health issues and giving support for depressions, bi-polar and other mental conditions, is SL the perfect medium, do they feel they make a change?

Oh and I love Iris way of describing things, and her articles, even though I'll never pick up Sims 4 and start playing it, I enjoy reading about it. I'm not that into fashion trends either but her news about the latest trends on the virtual catwalks gives me a feeling about what is happening and what is trendy, and I really enjoy reading that.

Well, just a few examples, but most importantly: Keep up the good work! I might sound like I don't agree with what you write here but I enjoy reading it, I just don't like to be bashed over the head with what I SHOULD think or not, so less bashing us because we don't agree with some of the posts and more neutral reporting on those topics and the comments will be more constructive.

[Doogle]

When you want sponsors again Hamlet you might start to blog about opensim worlds and projects because that is where the future is. The betrayal by Linden Lab towards the customer base has not been received well, hence the reason why you do not have advertisers anymore. You wrote: "Well who cares that Second Life will get closed and a new world will come in its place". Your advertisers seem to care for example, or all the people who make a living in Second Life seem to care.

Maria Korolov is getting advertisers because people are fed up with Linden Lab and their abuse. Virtual worlds are going into the direction of the internet now. People get their own servers and build their own sims and projects just like people pulled their websites from dictator hosting companies in the 90's and put their sites on their own machines.

[Orca Flotta]

But hey, is nobody thinking about us folks in the southern hemisphere? Spring's just about to start like next month or so, so the summer of '14 lies still ahead of us. \o/ YAY! \o/

[irihapeti]

what Orca said \o/

[2014]

no more Occulus rift

[Pussycat Catnap]

I've tried to push your hand on what you post and your agenda in the past.
...
I will probably try to do it again in the future, because that's my nature...

But You should just be writing about what you are personally passionate about.

Your regular commentators treat your blog like a forum and a back and forth - self included. But it is your blog.

It a very communicative one, but still a blog. So its your agenda, your issues, your concerns, your passions.

If we get frustrated because you're covering some topic more than we want, or not enough... then we can go start our own blogs (hint: I have done just that some years back) and see how much interest we can get for our ideas (I got not as much as I would like, but happily more than I expected, and I have since learned I can up this by simply being more vocal and/or spreading word - to anyone else out there thinking of starting a blog... also, Google starts to pay attention after you hit certain breakpoints in legit comments and or posts).

Do what you feel inspired to do. I am pretty certain you have no shortage of that. I gather both Hamlet and Iris have a lot of topics they enjoy exploring.

(I have always been baffled at how the two seem to have no interests in common...)

I would say that Iris has been the 'guest blogger' for so long now, might be time to add her to the masthead / author credits. :)

[Hamlet Au]

"is nobody thinking about us folks in the southern hemisphere?"

Yeah, sorry for the Northern centrism! Though TBH about 90% of NWN readers are up here too:

http://www.similarweb.com/website/nwn.blogs.com

[Arwyn Quandry]

I agree with pretty much everything FredTheGamer said. I like seeing things that are focused on how people interact in SL and less on non-SL gaming. Gaming is cool and all, but I'm reading NWN for Second Life, not gaming stuff that I could go to a thousand other blogs for.

More things on roleplaying groups would be nice. It's not just Gor anymore. There are some impressively immersive sims with great plots out there. Take a look at Godswar: The Hundred, a group that's been running through 3 iterations for almost two years. I'd also love another thing on Mischief Managed, the highly detailed, exclusive Harry Potter sim. Maybe something on the family/kid community, though that might be a little niche.

Iris' fashion posts are some of my favorites, so keep them coming. She covers creator issues really well.

[Hamlet Au]

"Godswar: The Hundred"

Links please?

[Arwyn Quandry]

Just noticed the self-promotion bit in the top post, so I'll be shameless in encouraging you to visit Godswar: The Hundred.

It's an entirely original sim concept based around the idea that the Gods and mythical creatures are real. The lore is incredibly deep - you can be there for months or years and not know everything about the story, which was originally written by the owners as a tabletop roleplaying campaign. It had two previous versions, New Babylon and Lost Vegas, but the current version is based on alternate timeline at the very beginning of the story, where 100 people are discovering that they have supernatural abilities and being drawn into a battle that will end civilization as we know it. And yes, they die - it's a permadeath sim with an advancing plotline driven by the players, all grounded in a real-world roleplaying system (Tri Stat dX).

If you're looking for a contact to talk to there, the owners are Alarich Meinster and Kelearis Shenzhou, but one of the oldest admins, Zhantee Fallen, gives most of the tours and deals with visitors. He'd probably love to chat.

Website: http://godswar-sl.enjin.com/
Visit: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Charmed/130/128/23

[Desolation]

Please stick to games and virtual worlds. Can we leave the politics out of it? I'm thrilled when I learn about new things like SLGO ( I used it all the time now) but when I have to weed through things like the war of the sexes or race I just want to leave and never come back.

[Cube Republic]

I've been trying to make mesh trees for years and I think I've finally cracked it. I'm releasing them at home & garden expo which opens the 16th September. They take full advantage of the SL materials system.

[Gealya]

I've been gradually learning that the SL base avatar, prims, sculpted prims, mesh, fitted mesh and mesh avatars are really not as distinct as I once thought. For people in SL who do not know much about computer graphics, like me, it would be nice to learn more about the ways in which graphics technologies have evolved in SL, the ways in which they are evolving in other areas, and how other areas are likely to influence SL as well.

I have noticed past blogs about the materials/lighting viewers, mesh body parts and the newbie mesh avatars. It would be nice to learn more about the applications or transitional technologies that pertain directly to SL. I realize that my enthusiasm for graphics technologies may be more than most readers of the blog may tolerate.