The second day of MetaverseU had much more of the University in it. While the first day certainly had an academic bent, it also featured discussions of technology developments, products, and practices. TL Taylor led the second day with a discussion of online embodiment, ranging across game and social worlds. Jeremy Bailenson took a more quantitative approach, quickly running through 9 experiments and studies, looking at identity, avatars, and persuasion. (Amazing and fast!) Kari Kraus then took the stage to look at how people are approaching the preservation of virtual worlds.

The whole set of entries relating to Metaverse U is great and worth a look through, if you're into that sort of thing.

Liveblogging MetaverseU: TL Taylor, Jeremy Bailenson, Kari Kraus [Virtual Worlds News]

WHERE: Annenberg Auditorium, Stanford University
WHEN: Saturday the 16th and Sunday the 17th of February 2008
WEBSITE: http://metaverseu.stanford.edu

Stanford Humanities Lab (SHL) is thrilled to announce the Metaverse U conference at Stanford University. This two day conference will be held on February 16th and 17th 2008 and feature speakers from a range of disciplines spanning industry and academia. Our lab has worked in virtual worlds for some years now and have seen interest in the space grow exponentially in recent years. We believe that the time has come for an event to tell the interesting stories from the evolving metaverse. The current generation of spaces is part of a larger historical picture and many lessons have been learned over the years. Our ultimate goal with Metaverse U is to create a broad conversation about the pressing question of what the metaverse should be.

Metaverse U's list of speakers includes Raph Koster (Metaplace), Brewster Kahle (The Internet Archive), Jeremy Bailenson (Stanford University), TL Taylor (The IT University of Copenhagen), Cory Ondrejka, Tony Parisi (Media Machines & Web3D), Jon Brouchoud (Wikitecture), Wm. LeRoy Heinrichs (Stanford Medical Center), Rebecca Moore (Google Earth), Parvati Dev (Innovation in Learning), Byron Reeves (Stanford University & Seriosity), Kari Kraus (University of Maryland), Christain Renaud (Cisco), Mike Liebhold (Institute for the future), Daniel Huebner (Doppelganger), Vladlen Koltun (Stanford Virtual Worlds Group), Howard Rheingold, Henry Lowood (Stanford University)

For more information please visit: http://metaverseu.stanford.edu

Registration is open at: http://metaverse.stanford.edu/registration/register-now

Thie series is open to anyone who wants to hear from—and engage with—academics, industry leaders, regulators and influential virtual-world residents ....

... Events are only the grain of sand in the oyster. We hope to get pearls from constructing a way for people interested in metanomics to engage with the speaker and with each other in serious discusion before and after the session, and create an archive that future can serve as essential reading for future metanomicists (ok, that word doesn't work so well. Metanomists?).

We plan to accomplish this by having suggested readings before each session, inviting readers to suggest readings of their own, as well as questions for speakers. After each session, we will post archives of the event, along with post-event analyses.

It'll be taking place in everyone's favorite virtual world, Second Life, but will be available to everyone whether you want to venture into Second Life or not.

Metanomics blog [via Terra Nova]

Terra Nova is where I go when I get sick of the high-pitched squealing accompanying rumors of the nth Mariotroidelda release for the Wiiiiiii that's found on the majority of blogs on my feed. I think of the writers there as being the Algonquin Round Table of the Internets Too Point Oh, lounging about in a plush, yet masculine den and discussing Horde/Alliance ratios over port and cigars.

Ren Reynolds, one of the Nouveau Terran writers, posits that an adequate mapping system for the make-believe worlds we live in has not been achieved, and asks readers, the Internet, and god almighty for a solution:

Like other TNers and probably a good slice of our readers I'm all over the metaverse, sometimes in multiple spaces at the same time - Second Life, WoW, There, EvE, SWG and those 'almost-spaces' like Animal Crossing; heck I might even get a Cyworld account. [...]

I have this shadow in my mind you see. Like the cube is a partial shadow of a tesseract. I can feel the space of virtual spaces that I want to see mapped and made into a geographical metaphor. I want someone clever and creative to go invent a way to easily understand the relative positions in virtual spaces that we occupy. I know it's not just a list of IDs, or a flat diagram - I know what it isn't but I don't know what is is.

I find this immensely intriguing, the thought of visually mapping something so ethereal. It will take a steady hand and a solid mix of art, design and engineering to successfully create such a construct.

Any Kotaku Scouts that are so inclined are welcome, nay, encouraged to hit me up at that sidebarred email address with ideas along these lines, including rambling diatribes and ambling diagrams. Eliza Gauger

Or you could just read the rest of Ren's article and comment there [Terra Nova]