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!

© 2007 Life is an Ongoing Process.