UNLV and PolyU meet up in SL

Yesterday I met up with colleagues who teleported in from the US and Canada to exchange ideas on what we are all doing in the world of Second Life. It was great to have Patti Shock and Mauri Collins from University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), Dan Parks (creator of MeCo Mansion and Virtualis Convention Centre) from Vancouver and Gloria Nelson (Gloria Nelson Event Design) from Wisconsin, visit us in Hong Kong.

They arrived at our virtual PolyU campus at 8 am (HK time) and around 4 pm (US Pacific time) for a tour, and then flew to our new ‘resort hotels’ on the island next door.

We then flew over to tour Dan’s remarkable and beautifully designed MeCo Mansion. Dan has created both an innovative setting with a range of communication and technology tools to use in Second Life. Later he showed us around the Virtualis Convention and Learning Centre, the largest public convention center in Second Life with state-of-the art virtual facilities with educational breakout rooms, a grand ballroom, exhibition hall and the Eisenstodt Learning and Community Matters Center.

Dan has kindly offered to let educational institutions use the Centre for training and educating students in the meetings, events and hospitality fields at no charge. We finished our tour by swimming in the pool on Gloria's yacht Victoria and watching the pyrotechnics from the cockpit of the yacht.

During the visit some of my colleagues came into the office to see what was going on, and found they knew each other from previous real world meetings in the US and elsewhere. We were able to link up with Karin Weber and David Jones from Hong Kong PolyU, Dan Hawkins (Washington State Uni) and other PolyU colleagues who wandered in during the 3 hours of discussion, chat and exploration. All in all, a very interesting and informative time spend in the virtual world...and now back to work!

See snapshots of the tour and also Patti's blog posting on their visit