This is what I found in my e-mail box today:
"Dear Create Programme applicant,
The Orange team has reviewed all applications and is happy to inform you
that your project has been selected for implementation on Orange Island.
Congratulations!
(.....)
We are very happy to welcome your talent on Orange Island!
- The Orange team"
I am very happy to be an orange,
Cezary Fish
Z radością informuję, iż zaproszono mnie jako prelegenta na konferencję Media Standard 2008. Konferencja odbędzie się w Warszawie w dniach 5-6 Marca 2008 w budynku Agory przy ulicy Czerskiej 8/10.
Na konferencji postaramy sie przeanalizować jak nowoczesne firmy i koncerny medialne odnajdują się w dobie postępującej "internetyzacji" mediów. Zaprezentujemy nowe trendy, przedstawimy wizje rozwoju tego segmentu rynku.
Odpowiemy na pytania:
- jak wykorzystać potencjał interaktywności, multimediów, web 2.0,
- jak planować rozwój mediów tradycyjnych przy wykorzystaniu internetu,
- jak wykorzystać potencjał reklamy interaktywnej?
Specjalnie na tę okazję przygotowałem prezentację "Cały ten zgiełk, czyli tajemnice medialne Second Life obnażone".
Jeszcze raz serdecznie zapraszam,
aHead CEO - Cezary Fish
The incredible sunset over eLab City
Tom Novak's office at night, next to the main office building of the UCR Sloan
The main office building (view from the sea towards eLab City West)
The research part of the city. Movie Theatre entrance, Cubicle Laboratories on the right, The Research Tower Building in the back.
The Movie Theatre closeup
Alcatraz Club and eLab Gardens behind it
The scientific offices of the eLab City - designed by Cezary Fish| UC Riverside’s eLab City development in Second Life allows people to be someone else in another world while researchers study consumer behavior. In the first half of 2008, consumers can make a new life for themselves in an online community offered through eLab City at UCR’s Sloan Center. |
| “A number of reasons exist for the popularity of Second Life environments,” said Thomas Novak, Albert O. Steffey professor of marketing at UCR’s A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management and co-founder of the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing. “While there is an element of escape to virtual worlds, there are also very positive motivations like the desire for a creative outlet and for new forms of social interaction.” Most academic simulations in Second Life are “virtual campuses” oriented to classroom instruction and course support. There are, however, no academic Second Life projects devoted to studying how consumers behave in virtual worlds. eLab City will be a platform for the academic study of virtual consumption. Modeled as a “live-work-play” community, eLab City will provide a working laboratory and subject pool for academic research. Pre-built residential apartments will be provided – primarily to students - for fixed periods of time at no charge with larger units for management. eLab City will also virtually house a consumer lab, office space, library, conference rooms, survey space, resident-run shops, a cinema, concert stage, and an exhibition hall for art, design and fashion shows. The opening show at eLab City’s exhibition hall in Spring 2008, “Virtual Virtual,” will feature original work by noted digital artist Peter Stanick. eLab City itself is being developed for the UCR Sloan Center by the team of visual artist and composer Cezary Ostrowski aka Cezary Fish (aHead agency, Poland) and film editor Nadia Hennrich. As an academic research facility and platform, eLab City combines a panel of Second Life users, survey and experimental research capabilities, and tools for unobtrusively tracking user behavior given informed consent. “It’s a working laboratory and a subject pool for academic research,” Novak said. The UCR Sloan Center is currently collaborating with the London office of GMI (Global Market Insite, Inc.), a provider of global market intelligence solutions, to develop eLab City’s online academic panel of Second Life residents. A second project conducted in collaboration with GMI uses automated “survey bots” to approach and interview Second Life residents. Through the UCR Sloan Center, eLab City will provide a vehicle for companies to sponsor cutting edge academic research. Similar to the early years of the commercial Web in the mid 1990s, companies today are struggling to understand how virtual worlds will play out in the coming years. eLab City hopes to offer some answers. The list of areas of study is almost as immense as the possibilities for the players. Novak hopes to study peer/social influence, decision making, virtual consumption, group behavior, merchandizing, branding, research methodology and social capital among others. “True physical attractiveness and social skills don’t impact first impressions online, but what about virtual attractiveness and social skills? This is one aspect of research we will be studying,” Novak said. Although Second Life is sometimes referred to as a game, Second Life does not fit the standard definition. It does not have points, scores, winners or losers, levels, an end-strategy, or most of the other characteristics of games, though it can be thought of as a game on a more basic level because it is played for fun. Novak said that Second Life provides an excellent platform for study because it’s the most socially and economically complex virtual world environment to date. Link: http://elabcity.com/ Source: University of California, Riverside P.S. aHead CEO Cezary Fish wishes to thank Nadia Hennrich for her great input during the planning part of the project. |
| |
Soyuz Mission by aHead CEO - Cezary FishThe NASA Learning Technologies (LT) Project Office supports projects that deliver NASA relevant content through innovative applications of technologies to enhance education in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Research and development in each of the STEM areas are at the core of the LT mission. LT seeks to enhance formal and informal education in STEM fields with the goal of increasing the number of students in those fields of study. The LT is currently evaluating the development of a NASA-based massively multiplayer online educational game (MMO).
Persistent immersive synthetic environments in the form of massive multiplayer online gaming and social virtual worlds, initially popularized as gaming and social settings, are now finding growing interest as education and training venues. There is increasing recognition that these synthetic environments can serve as powerful “hands-on” tools for teaching a range of complex subjects, including STEM-based instruction. Virtual worlds with scientifically accurate simulations could permit learners to tinker with chemical reactions in living cells, practice operating and repairing expensive equipment, and experience microgravity – making it easier to grasp complex concepts and quickly transfer this understanding to practical problems. MMOs help players develop and exercise a skill set closely matching the thinking, planning, learning, and technical skills increasingly in demand by employers today. These skills include strategic thinking, interpretative analysis, problem solving, plan formulation and execution, team-building and collaboration, and adaptation to rapid change.
The power of games as educational tools is rapidly gaining recognition. NASA is in a position to develop an online game that functions as a persistent, synthetic environment supporting education as a laboratory, a massive visualization tool, and collaborative workspace while simultaneously drawing users into a challenging, game-play experience.
How to Respond
• Visit http://ipp.gsfc.nasa.gov/mmo , then click on RFI submissions o Submit by February 15, 2008 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time • Five (5) page limit, 12-point font size, 1 inch margins • Authorized document formats include Adobe (.pdf), Microsoft Word (.doc), or Rich Text Format (.rtf).
Point of Contact
NASA Learning Technologies Project Office at http://ipp.gsfc.nasa.gov/mmo
