Event Fail, and a TOS Violation by Philip Rosedale...Really.

There was a "Future of the Metaverse" event today and I showed up to add a common sense practical perspective of one who doesn't fall all over for VR hype.

Now, I know how these sorts of things work so I showed up 2 hours early to make sure I could get in..and I stayed in.  Yes, I took pictures, it's what I do. I got a picture of Philip's non-Linden avatar.

More after the break



The fun thing is that when Philip showed up, it wasn't actually Philip:

 [2014/05/15 10:32]  Philip Rosedale: Hi Jo. This is Emily right now

Now the reason I'm posting that is because of a joke my friend Zen made.

[2014/05/15 10:33]  ZenMondo Wormser: Allowing someone other than the account holder to drive an avatar is against the Linden Labs TOS. I suggest everyone start filling out Abuse Reports

I actually didn't notice the joke until Zen pointed it out to me, gut-busting funny in my opinion.  If anyone should know the TOS, it should be Philip freaking ex-Linden.  Jo (meaning Frau Jo Yardley of 1920's Berlin fame) laughed. Fake-Philip responded:

[2014/05/15 10:33]  Philip Rosedale: I am Philip's assistant getting him set up for the talk

 Really, Philip letting his assistant handle his avatar is a TOS violation, look it up.  Zen imagined some off-shore support tech handling AR's getting multiple ones about some "Philip Rosedale" and not knowing who he is...hit him with a ban.  Not that it happened.  I'm not going to TOS him for that...I mean he should have logged in himself and set himself up....it's not that  hard.

Here you can see some of the crowd that showed up... you can see my friend Zen (Sir Zenmondo Wormser) behind me.  As you can see, I'm sitting besides Pathfinder, the ex-Linden...who crashed a couple of times.

That fellow right in front, Christopher Benek, was one of the speakers...who didn't actually speak in SL, but more on that later. You can also see Draxtor Despres, who was filming, but probably stopped when the "later" happened.

And there's Frau Jo Yardley, who has an interest in VR/Oculus type stuff. She said her video card had failed and was relying on Intel Integrated HD 3000 graphics.  Poor Jo!  She had to turn stuff down she said.  And she had to take off her smoking HUD!

Mitch Wagner showed up too.

Later on I saw Kim Anubis, and we chatted a bit.  She had a nice tweed suit on, that I didn't get a pic of.

The event was a bust because two of the early speakers (including Philip) crashed and couldn't get back in.  I don't know why, the region wasn't maxxed out, and everything was working fine for me.  There was some local chat lag..which was unusual...everything else seemed fine.  Well as fine as large events get.  They switched to a Google hangout, which I find WORSE for having a discussion because the UI doesn't lead itself to that.

Now the part with Philip talking about High Fidelity and the WormSim guy were interesting, but the rest was mostly transhumanist-y VR hype and jibber-jabber.  Yes, I hate saying this but I think transhumanism is too much theory and sci-fi speculating and not enough practical thinking about...the now.

Here is the link to the Google Hangout the event had that should let you watch the presentations.

But let them Dream About Their Future, it makes them happy, even if I do believe they need to start thinking more practically.