Disclosure: I am a contractor for Cisco Systems and I develop their Second Life Virtual Campus. My opinions are my opinions!

Yesterday, Tuesday, June 24, I was at Cisco Live! SL all day. Lots of very well attended events going on throughout the days. Here are just three highlights:

11:00 am – John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, Q&A

There were avatars camped out of this sim busting event as early as 8:00 am, eager to hear from THE MAN. Held at Cisco’s Bandwidth Stage, which straddles two simulators. the capacity for avatars was 100 in order to have a good presentation experience. And there were over 100 avatars that attended the event.

Once again, Mr. Chambers demonstrated his considerable brain power and his ability to connect technology terms with users’ needs. The questions from the those attending were insightful and relevant.

It should be noted that the audience was polite and eager to hear from John Chambers. It is amazing to me that the “mainstream” press about SL events is the one time penis affair, while the numerous events like this that take place weekly get no press coverage.

I guess it is true bad news travels fast.

The audience before the arrival of John Chambers

12:00 – Tech Chat – How to Transform the WAN Edge with Cisco ASR 1000 Series Routers

This TechChat featured Michael Weir, technical marketing engineers with Cisco’s Midrange Routing Business Unit (MRBU). During the TechChat, Mr. Weir discussed the new Cisco ASR 1000 Series Routers and how they transform and extend the network edge with scalable services intelligence.

As a novice to this world, I was bit out of my league when it came to understanding all of the technology. But it was obvious from the questions from the audience that Mr. Weir knew his subject and was able to address their questions.

3:00 – Cisco Customer Appreciation Party

Two hours of great music and dancing held at Cisco’s Bandwidth Stage. Rich Desoto (RL = Rich Palmer) was at 3:00 and Cylindrian Rutabaga (RL = Grace Buford) came on at 4:00.

I am a huge fan of both of these talented artist and once again, their performances were outstanding. Lots of energy from the audience, including some jokes and pranks kept this party going. And after the show ended, an impromptu dance party continued as we listened to the wonder Kona Live Stream.

By the time I logged out at 5:30 pm, I was exhausted. But I will be back in world for Wednesday and Thursday Cisco Live SL events. See you there.

Cisco Live! Pavilion – Second Life

The final step in any development, is the deployment. The time that you release to the world your new offering. I always enjoy these moments and believe that they should be marked with some sort of celebration or at least a big cheer. But usually, with the normal day to day activities and the typical time pressures, these deployments are never fully acknowledged, let alone celebrated.

And with any deployment, there is the natural nervous anticipation of users reactions. Who will visit? How many will visit? What worked? What didn’t work? What can we improve? Are we getting the anticpated results, or is something else happening?

Plus there is the dread of something not working or not being accepted or worse, not useful. I always prepare myself for the negative reviews; that way, if it does happen, I am mentally prepared.

Deploying builds in Second Life come in various ways: the reveal of a secret, the slow build out, or the bang – here it is.

Meta Magic Studios’ latest project which launched today is the Cisco Live SL Pavilion which is in support of the annual Cisco Live mega event being held in Orlando, Florida next week. Cisco Live is Cisco’s annual IT and communications conference. The conference features Networkers, their premier education and training program, and other special programs designed to meet the diverse needs of today’s IT and communications professional from increasing technical proficiency to understanding the impact of technology on business. (There is one planned for Johannesburg, South Africa in December)

The Cisco Live SL Pavilion was a true collaborative effort with many talented people contributing and putting in an amazing amount of effort. Meta Magic Studio (MMS) began this project back in March when we were still called SL Brand. So today, I am going to take some time to thank some of them. (If I missed you, I apologize as I am writing this right before a meeting.)

From Cisco

Dannette Veale (Dannette CiscoSystems) – Main Cisco contact point for Meta Magic Studio on this project. This is not the only project Dannette is working on, but her organizational ability is outstanding. Not only was she able kept MMS on track, but she was able to provide an amazing insight and resources inorder for us to bring this build to life. Dannette was key in getting the budget, build “look” and all the numerous details that are required for a succesful build. And she was always very encouraging of MMS efforts and ideas – and was very understanding about our “technical” issues.

Tawni Unite (Tawni CiscoSystems) – I call Tawni the “slide person” for the Tech Chats, which means she has not-so-easy task of co-ordinating the various Tech Chat presenters and getting them to provide their power point slides early so that the slides can be convert to jpeg images so they can be viewed in Second Life. Not an easy task. I know that she has numerous other responsibilities, so please do not think this is all she does.

Alison Gemmell (Alison CiscoSystems) – Alison did not play a direct role in this particular developement, but she is always a great resource for MMS. She never hesitiates to help us when we are tyring to weave our way through the huge Cisco world.

Randy Sisk (Randy CiscoSystems) – While Randy has moved away from the day to day management of Cisco SL, he was there at the beginning of this development and helped co-ordinate the initial meetings and the ever so important budget, plus location of the build.

Dennis Mancini (Dennis CiscoSystems) – Dennis, who is Senior Art Director at Cisco, provided “visual” direction for the build and color scheme. He was able to describe via a simple sketch what the “look” and overall feel for the build. Hopefully we were able to deliver his vision.

Packet Sort Game Development

Lewis Moten (Dedric Mauriac) – I call him Dedric, and he is an amazing developer that MMS contracted with to develop the all important collaborative game which we call “Packet Sort.” While the game is simple in concept, it was no easy scripting job he undertook. The delivered product is an amazing use of the SL platform to show a complex concept of how the ASR 1000 Series Routers are able to distinguish video packets, voice packets, data packers and threat packets and then route them accordingly.

You can read about the game development on his blog – Cisco Data Sort Game.

Dedric’s Blog

Twitter and Other “Cool” Gadgets

Talia Tokugawa – Most of my conversations with Taila begin with “Hey T, do you know how…..” which is my lame way of crying out for help. And Talia delivers every time. This time we are getting a twitter board!

Talia’s blog

Musicians

There is going to be a customer apprecuation event held on Tuesday, June 24 at 3:00 pm SLT. Two great musicians will be apperaing on the Cisco Bandwidth Stage. At 3:00 will be Rich Palmer, known in SL as Rich Desoto and at 4:00 will be the ever lovely Grace Buford, aka Cylindrian Rutabaga.

Rich’s website

Grace’s website

Meta Magic Studio

Jen (Cheerie Beery) – Jen is our photoshop person deluxe and she is beginning to work with building. The doomed screens that are featured in the build are Jen’s concept, plus she has a great eye for details that I do not think about. She also made the silly Cisco Live hats by taking already developed sculpties and texturing them.

Dot (Dot Baum) – Dot keeps track of what we do so we can make a profit.

Myself – lol. I am the main wonk for Second Life at Meta Magic Studio, which means it is my head if it does not get done.

Photos of the development

Phase 1 – Initial Concept before Cisco input

Color scheme based upon Cisco Live doc.

After review by Cisco, the concept changed to more rounded platforms with less branding.

Phase 2 – Cisco Review Concept

Phase 3 – Kiosk Development

We developed a kiosk that was deployed at Dr. Dobb’s / CMP 4 – Hosting Life 2.0 Summit

You can see the windlight effect from the base glow. Also we have fully developed the “screen” concept that helped “frame” the build while remaining rounded / soft.

Phase 4 – Build Development

Taking the “round platform” concept, we wanted to create a “iconic” image that was both functional and eye appealing. We elected to go with this type of sphere versus a fully geodesic dome to cut down on the number of prims.

We wanted the sphere to be elevated over the Cisco Campus since it is placed opposite the EBC tower (sim 2).

Note the “Blade Runner” type of display boards that rotate pictures / textures. Originally we going to have the boards be free floating along an invisible track, but the scripting load was not worth it. Instead we implement a simple rotating script.

Phase 4.5 – Game Development

Phase 5 – Approval

Phase 6 – Deployment