TransVision06 in SL Report

From Order of Cosmic Engineers

The TransVision 2006 annual conference of the World Transhumanist Association, Helsinki 17-19 August 2006, organized by the WTA and the Finnish Transhumanist Association, was open to remote visitors in the virtual reality world of Second Life. This year the theme of the conference was Emerging Technologies of Human Enhancement. We looked at recent and ongoing technological developments and discussing associated ethical and philosophical questions. We held a mixed reality event between the Helsinki conference hall and Second Life.

See the conference program with speakers' bios and abstracts. The PPT presentations are available in PPT and PDF formats. Some presentation were also available in PPT -like format on dedicated screens in the virtual conference hall in Second Life. Some videos are available.

The main technical challenge was making available effective Real Life - Second Life interface tools. We had a SL chat - IRC gateway and live streaming video from Helsinki displayed in Second Life. Unfortunately the video stream itself was not very user friendly as it required special codecs and obtaining permissions from a website before watching it in SL. See our instructions page made available before the conference and frequently updated as the event unfolded.

The virtual conference was a success, with more than 40 participants in Second Life able to watch the real time video stream from Helsinki, ask questions to the speakers via the IRC to Second Life chat interface and discuss the presentations. The common IRC - Second Life chat window was projected on a wall at Helsinki (see a few pictures below).

First day

Of course at the beginning nothing worked, most people could not watch the webcast because of the Quick Time problem with the H263 codec. Also, the SL chat to IRC gateway died because of IRCNet problems.

Then more and more people got the video stream working, and David, who wears a Lucifer avatar in the picture below, managed to repair the connection to IRC. With the connection to IRC enabled, participants in Second Life could text chat with participants in IRC and ask questions to the speakers.

See the complete IRC log

In the pictures above, on the video screens: James Hughes and Aubrey De Grey.

At 6pm Helsinki time we had about 15 people in the Second Life conference hall.

Some well known members of the transhumanist community signed up in Second Life to attend the virtual conference.

In the pictures above, on the video screens: Ari Heljakka (Ari is the main organizer - we should thank him and all other Finnish transhumanists in the organization team), Riccardo Campa, Jose Cordeiro.

Second day

The PPT presentations were available in PPT and PDF formats. Participants in Second Life were adviced to look at the presentations in an appropriate viewer as the slides were not shown in the webcast (only the speaker appeared). Some presentations were also available in the conference hall in Second Life (picture above).

In the pictures above, on the video screens: William S. Bainbridge, Danila Medvedev and Giulio Prisco.

Third day

Ben Goertzel gave a talk on AGI by prerecorded video (image below).

Then Ben took questions from the audience by Skype videoconference (image below).

Philippe Van Nedervelde gave a talk by Skype videoconference (image below). At this conference we used nearly all remote communication tools in combination: Second Life, IRC, Skype, Skype videoconference, webcast, online PPT presentations, and PPT presentations in Second Life.

Then Philippe took question and came to the virtual conference hall in Second Life (he is the guy with the red shirt in the images below).

The image below shows the IRC - Second Life chat screen projected on a wall in the RL conference hall. The original picture (larger size) is on Flickr. You can see many other TransVision 2006 RL picture in the Flickr picture set.

In the meantime I was busy repairing the intentional damage to uvvy island done by some stupid person with nothing better to do. At some point the hacker came and started shooting people with a teleport shotgun, and I kicked him out for good. Note: this was the first terror attack against the World Transhumanist Association - I hope it was also the last. Afternote: I talked to the guy who is not such a bad person after all.

Anders Sandberg is in the image below.

Round table (image below).

The closing lecture by World Transhumanist Association's Chairman Nick Bostrom is shown in the image below. The event was successful, with more than 40 participants in Second Life able to watch the real time video stream from Helsinki, ask questions to the speakers via the IRC to Second Life chat gateway and discuss the presentations. On the one hand, the virtual TransVision 2006 conference gave the possibility to "attend" the conference in virtual reality to many people who were not able to attend the conference in brickspace and, on the other hand, it demonstrated the potential of virtual reality and Second Life for major conferences and events. The lessons learned will be used to design other, even more ambitious, mixed-reality and VR-only events.

In the RL picture below taken on the first day I am showing the Second Life setup to four members of the Finnish organization team. The original picture (larger size) is on Flickr. You can see many other TransVision 2006 RL picture in the Flickr picture set.

The RL picture below shows the first round table: James Hughes, Giulio Prisco and José Cordeiro are shown in the picture. The original picture (larger size) is on Flickr.