Barack Obama
Yearly Kos Second Life-Day 3: Presidential Forum
Overall Impressions from a Second Life Point of View
I am delighted with my experience attending the Yearly Kos Convention in Second Life. I’m not saying that there weren’t problems, but they didn’t overshadow the fantastic experience of attending this event virtually. This was by far the best event that I have had the pleasure of attending in Second Life. There were as many as 30 avatars in a single section of the Stadium at times and there was no lag at all. The attendees were attentive and did not distract from the sessions by chatting about inane topics. IMs and chat discussions were intelligent and stimulating for the most part, and it really added to the impression of attending the event live, in real time. They also had microphones at the SL venues that you could touch and submit questions to the moderators at the Chicago site. Even more impressive was the fact that they actually used many questions that were submitted through the SL interface. Totally awesome. I did not regret paying for this level of access to the convention for one second.
The Presidential Forum and Breakouts with the Candidates
Hillary’s breakout session was held prior to the forum with all of the candidates. Her breakout was streamed to the YKOS Arena in SL, and although the video was not as crisp as the Stadium venue, it was quite acceptable. Hillary was well accepted by the crowd, and she seemed relaxed and genuine. Here are a couple of snapshots from that session.
The presidential forum was held at the Netroots Stadium, and the audio and video quality was excellent throughout this session. The candidates present were Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Sen Dodd and Mike Gravel. The session consisted of two moderators asking questions that were submitted via the internet prior to the session, and taking questions from the audience. The moderators did an admirable job of making sure each candidate got adequate time to answer the questions, that candidates did not monopolize the floor, and that each candidate got questions that were specifically directed at him/her. The quality of the questions was remarkable, and it was obvious that the candidates realized that they were speaking to an extremely well informed audience. I will leave political analysis of the content of the forum to others who are more experienced at that occupation, but I did take some pretty good pictures of most of the candidates. Here are some of the better ones.
The last major event of the convention is tonight’s closing keynote speech by Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the Daily Kos at 7:30 Central Time. You can view that event on ustream.tv on my blog embeded on the August 2 post, or you can go to ustream.tv.
What a great convention, and a wonderful interactive Second Life experience!
Tags: Discussion
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Who is the brainchild who put Yearly Kos into Second Life?
I am not sure who originally got the momentum going. Jay Ackroyd might know. He has a diary on DailyKos about the YKSL site – http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/7/25/105242/744 (I believe his company, InWorld Studios did the YKSL venue.). If you go to his diary & click on his Uname it will take you to his profile.
I am not sure which Kossacks pushed for a SL component to YKC, but I’m sure glad that they did. It looks like Kossacks are going to keep using SL for future meetings and initiatives. See more info in my Kos diary – http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/4/19742/46081 – look in the comment labeled Further Plans. There are slurls and info there.
Lu,
I (Drew Frobozz in SL) first blogged about running YearlyKos in Second Life back in August ’06 (http://civicminded.corante.com/archives/2006/08/second_life_targets_existing_b_1.php), and proposed it to the YKC Organizing Committee (of which I’ve been a member for the past two years) shortly thereafter. The idea was received positively, and at about the same time, Jay Ackroyd (Jimbo Hoyer) and Jordan Bigel (Dire Lobo) of InWorld Studios independently approached the Organizing Committee with the same idea. Jay and Jordan became the lead developers and implementers of YKSL, and they did the vast majority of the great work involved. This team was complemented in latter months by a slew of great volunteers including amazing folks like Tom Ballantyne (IF Mastroeni) and Jane McMahon (Jane2 McMahon), who worked day and night both in SL and on-site in Chicago in the weeks before YKSL to make it come off. It has been an honor to work with them, and wonderful for me personally to be able to “attend” YKC from Dubai where I was, to my chagrin, on a trip commitment I couldn’t change. I think we have a crackerjack team now to make next year’s YKSL far bigger and even better– hopefully FREE of charge this time if I have my way, and with sufficient sponsorship raised early enough to support that.
Best,
Andrew Hoppin (aka Drew Frobozz)
Andrew/Drew – thanks so much for stopping by and leaving that history. Many kudos to you and the team that had the vision and the commitment to complete such a successful endeavor. I hope to meet all of you soon in SL.