I appreciated your time and your point of view. As you will know sometimes we need to show people the extremes in order to engage in a conversation about where new things fit.
The fact that I blend creative and ‘playful’ with serious business really is the key.
I do not expect that everyone will want to exhibit traits about who they are graphically with such extreme examples, though that applies in regular life too. Some people tend to be more outgoing others more introvert.
So that leaves us with an interesting balance, which is the one I am trying to get people to consider. If everything we did in a virtual environments was a 100% replica of real life then we woudl be losing a lot of the creative energy that we tend to have squeezed out of people with office drudgery.
Second Life is but one example, an open, free thinking environment. Without it we not not be in a position to have the conversations about any of this.
As I explained in the meeting, its about context. You adjust to the social norm of the group your are interacting with, just as in the physical world.
The virtual adds an extra layer of communication potential.
We can talk at length about the balance of being “serious” and being “playful”. Innovation does not come from pure logic and being serious in my experience. Equally we do not have to be frivolous and playfull all the time. There is a balance to be had.
You might like to look at this a more serious piece I wrote on how the workplace may change, this is merely one thread in a very large cultural change.

I think you may be stumbling over concepts here. Take “playful” and “serious” I write my blog in a very playful way – you may have noticed – but I’m quite serious about it.
Play and exploration are very close because curiosity can take a hand in both. There are people in China who are being paid to play games to rack up virtual world money for other virtual world players. Are they playing or working?
I’ve enjoyed my job for the last decade at least. Was I working or playing?
But frivolous is frivolous and distraction is distraction and unproductive is unproductive.

I think we are probably talking about the same thing, but its shades of approach. Very often people seem to fear the false dichotomy between work and play (to paraphrase Dr Jim Purbrick). Some people still consider that to write a blog at all, and then to approach it in a playful fashion, as something that is frivolous in its own right. That is something that both of us do and accept and would presumably recommend to anyone to find a voice for themselves and share it on a blog?
I used to have people ask why I enjoyed my job so much (even before being a metaverse evangelist) some people took it that I must have been having an easy time of things or were jealous that I enjoyed what I did. It was as if this it is not allowed. Work is supposed to be drudgery. So I am glad that we have the same approach in that sense too
The gold farmers in China on World of Warcraft are creating things that are of value to others, many of them may not be enjoying it as playing a game, but I am sure some are. This is a factory, a production line for credits/gold, not always about role play and exploring interesting and rewarding quests. So that mirrors working life anyway. You and I enjoy what we do and have chosen to do what do, many others do not. The real or virtual part of that does not really come into it.
Programmers turn out lines of code (virtual product), some enjoy the experience, some take it as a creative past time, others its just a job.
So when I operate in a particular metaverse or Web2.0 I may use some of the things that let me enjoy my job. Using graphics, sound or a particularly expressive movement fit in there as much as quoting someone famous, cracking a joke, breaking the ‘rules’ and not presenting a powerpoint presentation in the order it was created.
Dressing as a sci-fi predator has its place for me and is contextually suitable, just the same as I do not wear a suit and tie here in Hursley. As a branding statement it works, it is memorable and far more memorable than a bad photo and jeans and tshirt would be. Of course I back this up with my actions, its not all graphical fluff. You mentioned David Bowie before, maybe as a fan maybe not, well my predator avatar as epredator is my own Ziggy Stardust, it’s what I use to perform, as a stage presence, though still a projection of me.
Hence it seem to have some value and has helped eightbar become a known force in the future of metaverses. Here is one of my other terranova posts on performance in the metaverse(yes I am proudt to have guested on that blog)

There’s a common thread between us in that we are both reasonably free to research virtual worlds in any way we choose. So, to a certain extent, whether you are dressed as the Predator or not (great movie by the way, it’s just a shame that Arnold survived), is almost irrelevant in your context. If I had you’re job I’d probably have done something different, but equally wacky.
I’m familiar with acting – having spent some time in that activity over 10 years ago, so I suspect I have less than most to learn by role playing – which is what disguise can help with. Then it becomes educational – but I’ve believed for a long time that education should be games-based. Disguise can also help with confidence.
What concerns me most is that these virtual environments really do have great potential (as the posting suggests), but the level of distraction is very high. Ultimately it’s a signal/noise problem. Second Life has way too much noise – it needs to be reduced.
Nevertheless, avatars are valid and they need to be identifiable and many of the Second Life capabilities: chatting, build stuff, presenting products in 3D, doing presentations, advertizing. They all have some validity.
I read your post on performance with interest. Performing in a virtual world, when compared to a real world is a performance with information removed. The problem is that what is removed (facial expressions, bodily movements) may contribute to the performance. At the end of the day, a webinar is a performance in a virtual world.

interesting article and comments. signal–noise can also be viewed as texture (http://xyzzyxyzzy.net/2007/10/23/textureor-why-the-secondlife-grid-is-hard-to-beat/) — and texture is really what makes life interesting sure, there’s a lot of “interesting” stuff (no, haven’t had the experience of a naked woman rushing past me, neither in SecondLife nor in real life: would be interesting though

without enough texture we are bored. sure too much texture will make us turn away — i guess it’s a matter of taste (as the monkey said when he took a bite out of that piece of soap)…

What a brilliant thought/brilliant comment!
All signal and no noise makes for very unhappy boys.
But texture! That’s is astoundingly on the money.
I tip my hat Dr Schofield.

Now look what you’ve started Mr Hughes….

I agree a webinar is a performance, with even more things removed. What we do with metaverses is turn the dial up on what can be done, removing the awkwardness of video cameras but not managing to replace all those things we need in real life.
As for the texture comment by Dr Schofield, well that is the good thing about exploring these boundaries, new things spark up that help us understand and define things
So chalk one up for interesting subjects, face to face meetings, people willing to blog and discuss openly, and of course Dr Schofield.
Our virtual lives also take the rough with the smooth it would appear.
What an enjoyable thread

Initially the desktop on the PC was a featureless flat space, but wall paper, then screen-savers (which once had the function of preventing screen burn), pointer styles and colour themes emerged. This was texture. It could also be frivolous, (remember the flying toasters) but nevertheless it wasn’t high noise.
I’m guessing that the desktop will morph into a room with the pointer morphing into an avatar.
It will all make sense when it happens. The norm will be 3D representation rather than 2D. We’ll slip into 2D for 2D applications.
When you think of it, the computer interface is missing a dimension right now. Games abandoned 2D quite a while ago.
That’s all I have this morning….:-)