I’m in Boston for the Digital Media Summit this weekend and today was the first day of the summit. I haven’t been to Boston in a very long time and when I was here before it was with my favorite aunt who lived near here and brought me into the city to see the aquarium and walk around a bit.. so it’s not like I’ve had experience navigating the city by myself before.
Yesterday when I arrived, I walked out of the train station knowing that my hotel was close. From the map I had, it looked as though my hotel was straight across the street and a little to the left of the train station.. so in the rain with my bags, I headed that way. No need for a cab, it was close enough to walk. If you’re headed the right direction, that is.
So, after a few minutes of fumbling around and carrying bags and getting rained on, I hailed a cab and told him where I was going. Thankfully he was a super sweet man and said “You could walk there!” I said “Yes, I KNOW I could.. if I knew where I was going!” We chatted a bit as we sat through a few red lights while he navigated me back in the right direction and he mentioned his granddaughter attends Penn State. Small world.
So, after I got to my hotel (staying at the Westin – VERY lovely spot, really enjoying it so far. KUDOS TO YOU WESTIN..) I dropped the bags and headed out for some exploration. Went to the mall next door and picked up a few items and some food and came back here and settled in for the evening.
This morning I grabbed the T and headed to Boston College for the Summit. The website I saw said that the “B” line would take you right there, but it took a long time. I had time to spare so I rode the B line and it was great because most of the time it wasn’t underground at all and I got to see a lot of the city out that direction. Loved it. Hopped off the train and onto campus headed towards Higgins Hall. There was a dude with a backpack in front of me walking VERY quickly.. I think he thought I was after him because he kept glancing back and then picking up more speed.. I’m not sure what he thought I was gonna do.
Turns out that when I got to Higgins Hall, he was also there. There were a few people standing around and asked if we were there for the conference. I smiled politely and said I was and they directed the newcomers to the refreshments. Lovely.
Then almost immediately everyone decided to head to another building with some demos going on so we tagged along with them. Saw some demos of Crysis and BioShock and those were crazy cool. I’d love to see Second Life with that amount of detail and graphics.
Then back into Higgins Hall for the morning of discussion with Aaron Walsh who’s the director of the Grid Institute and Immersive Education Initiative and an afternoon of demonstrations/discussions about the different platforms (SL, Croquet, and Wonderland).
The agenda for this summit is really that they want to devise a way to incorporate immersive educational experiences as sort of ‘modules’ for teaching. Not to build an entirely new world, but to create learning modules that are the same in all platforms and can be incorporated into the platforms with minimal effort and provide students with the same experiences. So for instance (an example Aaron used) if we want to learn about Ancient Egypt, we build pyramids, or tombs for students to explore, and we take that same experience or that same module and use it in SL, or Croquet, or Wonderland or WoW or whatever comes along next. That’s the plan. This summit is about how to make that happen.
Today’s sessions were really all about “Hey this is what we want to do and here’s why we should do it.. let’s make a plan” and I think that tomorrow is going to be about showing people the technologies a little more and giving them some experiences with them.
I have to day that today didn’t impress me. I saw a few cool things and that was fun, but I sort of think that for the most part everyone that was there today already *knows* that this needs to be done and that virtual worlds are really transforming who we are, and what we can do so I don’t feel like anyone needed to be ’sold’ on this idea. I’m really hoping that tomorrow is interesting and gives us some things to think about.
