Now that we have the raw video feed from the inauguration on DVD, here is the part where Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt inaugurates the Second House of Sweden. Taken on May 30, 2007 at the Swedish Institute in Stockholm:
Entries categorized as ‘Second House of Sweden’
Inauguration of Second House of Sweden (the video)
July 4, 2007 · No Comments
Categories: Announcement · Second House of Sweden
Showing off Second House of Sweden
June 3, 2007 · 1 Comment
OK, a bit late, but here are some screenshots from Second House of Sweden, as promised.
One really cool feature is the Geoglobe, a virtual inverted globe onto which we’ve pinpointed the locations of every real-life Swedish Embassy, with direct links to each embassy’s web site. Here is a YouTube demo featuring Belmeloro DiPrima, my avatar:
Categories: Field trip · Second House of Sweden
Launched. What now?
June 1, 2007 · 2 Comments
In the interests of radical transparency… :-) :
I’m going to be on “vacation” June 4-22 — in fact the first week will involve working with International Polar Year at the International Society for Digital Earth annual conference in San Francisco. I will however be reachable via stefan.geens@gmail.com, which I check often. Karl Peterson will be taking over responsibility for Second House of Sweden in the meantime: karl.peterson@si.se.
I realize that that this is in fact a crucial moment in the launch of a sim and its long-term success — it is important that the initial momentum generated by the media attention be sustained through regular events on the sim. Exhibitions impress, but people do not tend to come back to them again and again. The Swedish Institute, in the end, is really a immersive platform for social events that involve Swedish themes, aimed above all at an international audience.
We’ve worked hard on getting the sim ready on time, but the one thing we have not had the time to focus on much is what kind of regular social interactions we can engineer. Regular office hours is a must, and in addition to the 5 hours per day that we can manage in-house, we are going to hire and train friends of Second House of Sweden to help out. But that’s an essential, default service.
In the next few weeks, the easiest thing for us to do will be to have film showings using the live streaming web account that we have with Qbrick, so that we can make the viewing experience social, with discussions about it afterwards.
I think the most obvious thing to do would be to invite the Open Society Archives in Budapest and the Jewish Museum in Stockholm to present the Wallenberg documentary that we have the rights to show. OSA is obviously already in Second Life, and the Jewish Museum could definitely be helped by us as they are nearby in Stockholm. This kind of event could generate some interesting commentary, as it is transcends technology — it is not about technology at all, and the technology is meant to become transparent here — so there is none of that self-referentiality that tends to characterize such in-world gatherings. This is how Second Life should/will be used in the future: for the enhanced social interactivity that it allows, completely oblivious to physical distances.
I hope that in the coming week we will also be able to announce a series of film showings of Swedish short films, and even long films. Here at the Swedish Institute we have the in-house contact network to set something like that up — and many young directors would love to get the exposure.
What we will need help with, however, is getting the word out. Alerting Swedes in Second Life is very easy: Both Second Sweden’s Johan Howard and Tina (Petgirl) Bergman have a very effective mailing list and/or blog. The group “Second House of Sweden” also reaches a good audience, but what we’re still lacking is a good contact network among Second Life blogs, where new event information gets mentioned. Does anyone have suggestions on who is best to contact with this kind of information? I think we should perhaps hire a SL media consultant for specifically this task, as it would take us a while to build up this knowledge, time which we don’t really have.
In addition, there has been one report of an avatar wearing a Nazi uniform showing up in Wallenberg’s office and behaving obnoxiously. The way you dress is very much a speech issue, and Nazi uniforms in this context are a form of hate speech. Such behaviour is very much like leaving a comment containing hate speech on a blog or article online — it should be taken down/banned as soon as it is noticed. Second Life poses an interesting twist on this: If there is a Nazi in Wallenberg’s office and there is nobody there to notice, does the Nazi really exist?:-) One thing is for sure: He does exist if somebody else is there to see him, and for such cases there should be a reporting mechanism which everybody else can use to alert us to such abuse.
I’ve created an gmail address for such alerts, soshos(&)gmail.com, which then forwards to all those who have the ability to ban people on the sim. Hopefully, at least one person will be online when the email gets sent, can log on, and then take action. We’d then also have to make signs letting people know they can help. Several Swedes — including Natalie Moody, Tina (Petgirl) Bergman and others from the Swedish Resource Center — have expressed a wish to help out with this; a kind of Swedish Community Watch. Giving everyone the gmail address should be the easiest way to do this, I think. We can set up rules that send sms messages and such. I do want to stress, however, that this is also very much a learning experience for us; there isn’t much prior experience out there on how to handle hate speech in virtual worlds.
On the opening day we also had some Danes protesting “the intrusion of reality into Second Life”. They stood outside the embassy with a big banner; a lively debate ensued among all present. This kind of protest is entirely welcome at Second House of Sweden, and not just because it gives us a chance to show that we believe in a broad freedom of speech in Sweden:-)
Categories: Second House of Sweden · Update
Footage of the inauguration
May 30, 2007 · No Comments
I see Johan over at Second Sweden was prescient enough to record the cutting of the ribbon today, and was kind enough to put it up on his blog via YouTube. Here’s what it looked like — acting by Olle Wästberg and Carl Bildt, cinematography by yours truly:
Categories: Second House of Sweden · Update
Launch day - and Second House of Sweden is live
May 30, 2007 · No Comments
What a day this was! This morning Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt came to the Swedish Institute in Stockholm and inaugurated the Second House of Sweden at a press conference that was broadcast live into Second Life.
We had a really good setup: Bildt and the rest of us each sat in front of our own laptop, each of us controlling our own avatars in Second Life. Behind us, a large screen either showed a closeup of us in real life or else what my avatar, Belmeloro DiPrima, was looking at in-world. Whatever was on the screen behind us was also being broadcast to the auditorium at the Second House of Sweden, where in-world journalists and other invited guests were able to watch the proceedings. The same feed also went to Second Sweden, where more people watched.
All this provided plenty of opportunities for wonderful feedback loops. The feed into Second Life has a delay of 12 seconds — that’s just the way it is with Quicktime Streaming Server — and if the camera was pointed at the screen showing my avatar looking at the screen in Second Life — every 12 second a new iteration of the screen would appear, slowly fading into infinity; real life, Second Life, real life, Second Life…
But enough geeky wonder:-) We also had two music acts (Natalie Moody and SL Art Ensemble), and one comedy act when Bildt maneuvered his avatar to the ribbon-cutting place. He’s quick-witted alright, Bildt: When a Norwegian journalist asked him a question he ended by promising to visit the Norwegian virtual embassy… in a few decades.
And then the embassy was opened to all-comers. The only hiccup was that the account-creating tool that we have on Sweden.se wasn’t working for Internet Explorer, though that got fixed a few hours later.
And tonight, we had our first protesters. Some Danes stood outside the embassy with placards denouncing Sweden for entering Second Life in an official capacity. What was interesting is that an entire crowd outside Second House of Sweden started arguing the question; and luckily for us, most found the Danes’ arguments unconvincing:-)
With hindsight, I think the press conference today was actually a bit daring — a technical high-wire act that could have gone wrong in so many ways. But since it didn’t, nobody needs to know about this:-) And after not having had much sleep last night, I am going to get an excellent night’s sleep tonight:-)
I’ll add some photos tomorrow — but you could always go look for yourself in the meantime. Search in-world for “Swedish Institute” or use this SLURL.
Categories: Announcement · Second House of Sweden
May 30 is launch day for the Second House of Sweden
May 20, 2007 · 8 Comments
Suddenly a lot of news:
- The inauguration of the world’s first virtual embassy in Second Life is almost here. On May 30, at 9am Stockholm time, we’re going to be holding a press conference, or rather, three press conferences: A real-life press conference at the Swedish Institute in Stockholm, a simultaneous press conference in Second Life at the Second House of Sweden, and finally, a press conference set up by the Open Society Archives in Budapest. (Why the last one? Read on.)
- Sweden’s foreign minister Carl Bildt will be attending the press conferences in Stockholm and Second Life (hence the relatively short notice for the launch date — Mr. Bildt is a road warrior, albeit for peace:-))
- While this isn’t finalised yet, I’m hoping to be able to have live streaming video of the real-life press conference piped into Second Life, where it will be shown on the Second House of Sweden’s screen, and if it works out, at other Swedish SL locations as well. This would help solve the capacity problem we may have — Linden Lab servers can only really support about 50 avatars per sim/island at any one time before lag sets in, so the list of invitees to the inauguration is necessarily going to be way too short. (Yes, I still need to send out invites — I’m trying for later today.)
- The reason for the simultaneous press conference in Budapest is that one of the main inaugural exhibits in the Second House of Sweden is a re-enactment involving the legacy of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat stationed in Budapest at the end of WWII who helped save thousands of Jews from Nazi concentration camps. OSA Archivum (The Open Society Archives) have made a number of archival sources available and has been intimately involved in the process of recreating Wallenberg’s last day of freedom as an interactive multimedia exhibit. The net effect is not only educational, but engages emotionally as well, and I think it pushes the envelope for what you can do with a technology platform like Second Life.
Categories: Announcement · Second House of Sweden
FAQ: How real can a virtual embassy be?
April 10, 2007 · 1 Comment
Several people have asked how “official” the embassy will be in Second Life. Here are some typical questions: “Could we consider the Swedish Embassy in SL as an official representation of the Swedish government? Is the embassy going to charge a fee for its services? Who will work at the embassy? Will Swedes abroad be able to use it to do consular business?”
The short answer is that the virtual embassy in Second Life is not an official embassy, and you can’t do any consular business there, though it is a government project: The Swedish Institute, which is behind the project, is a government agency. One of SI’s mandates is to promote Sweden via public diplomacy using a wide variety of media, and the institute collaborates closely with Swedish embassies and consulates around the world to get its message across.
The virtual embassy, then, is SI’s public diplomacy transposed into a brand new media — an immersive 3D virtual world.
We actually did think about whether it might be possible to have some functions performed in-world, but the main impediment right now is that there is no way to guarantee identities and engage in secure transactions in Second Life. I’m sure that will change — in any case, avatars don’t need visas to visit Sweden:-)
Instead, the Second House of Sweden will fulfill the role of “embassy” in the more secular sense of the word: as an emissary of goodwill to a place. We will have people at the embassy during set hours of the day to answer questions about Sweden, and we will also have information about where to find the embassies nearest you in real life, as well as information about how to get a visa (if you need one). But the majority of the embassy will be dedicated to revolving exhibits about Sweden, and to providing a platform for events — film showings, seminars, concerts, all with a Swedish theme. Finally, there will also be some typically Swedish things for visitors to do… more about that later:-)
Categories: Q&A · Real Life · Second House of Sweden
Division of labor
April 4, 2007 · No Comments
Apologies all round for the lapse in posting, especially so soon after launching this blog, but I have plenty of excuses lined up. They’re not that interesting, so I’m listing them at the end of this post.
Work on the Second House of Sweden is continuing apace. What’s interesting is how the work is naturally ending up being divided into tasks that correspond to the different types of content we’re going to have:
That’s the main outline of how development is proceeding on our end. I’ve been meaning to put up a quick flyover of the model for all this, just as an teaser, and I promise to put something up in the next few days.
(The excuses, as promised: Most of last week I spent in Sweden, which was chock-full of meetings, the kind that don’t really work via Skype, and then last Wednesday, March 28, the Swedish Institute hosted a conference for Swedish organizations that either are in Second Life or are thinking of going into Second Life. On March 29 some of us at the Swedish Institute travelled to Budapest for a series of internal meetings, and I finally made it back to Cairo on Tuesday, April 3. Today, April 4, I finally (after a three week wait) got an internet connection delivered to my apartment, and you are now seeing the fruits of that.)
Categories: Second House of Sweden · Update
More FAQs: We’re in it for the long haul
March 20, 2007 · 1 Comment
Susanna sent me some more questions the media have been asking, so I thought I’d answer them here first before adding them to the FAQ page:
Is this a temporary project, or will you maintain the site indefinitely?
This is not a one-off project, like a website you just produce and then host passively. All indications are that much of the value of having a presence in Second Life comes from having a platform where you can host events — meetings, concerts, films, ceremonies, group tutorials and collaborations… And that the objects you build on your sim (”island”) should facilitate such interactivity, because that’s what draws visitors. If you build those, they will come, to paraphrase a bad movie.
What’s been the reaction to this project from the Swedish/International media and the public?
The reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. Swedish media & marketing watchblog Researcher.se compiled a little list of English-language articles written in the aftermath of the original announcement. Back home in Sweden, the subsequent month has seen an upsurge in curiosity about Second Life, and many more Swedish organizations — for profit, semi-public and educational — are mulling establishing a presence in Second Life.
Critical commentary has revolved around the suspicion that the Swedish Institute doesn’t quite know what it is getting itself into:
- That there are far fewer actual users of Second Life than what the headline number suggests, or
- that Second Life is hype — and certainly not a sufficiently serious or mature medium to be entering, or
- that the Second House of Sweden will most likely be just another sterile corporate-looking edifice commissioned by marketing people who don’t actually “get” Second Life, and that as a result the sim won’t see much organic use by actual residents.
For points 1 and 2, the answer goes something like this: Yes, we were well aware of the debate about active users while we were deciding whether to go ahead with the project (I do read blogs:-). Ironically, once concern we had was that the decision to go ahead with the project amid the hype might make it look like we were taken in by the hype, when in fact we were going in despite the hype, because we felt we really wanted to figure out now how to use virtual worlds as a place to tell people about Sweden. Second Life is the world that right now gives us the biggest bang for our kronor. (More about this in a post from January.)
For point 3, the answer is: Not if we can help it:-)
(There are a couple more questions to answer, in an upcoming post.)
Categories: Q&A · Second House of Sweden
Second Life group “Second House of Sweden” now open
March 19, 2007 · 6 Comments
The launch of this blog on the web today coincides with the opening of the group “Second House of Sweden” in Second Life — and anyone can join.
We’ll be using the group to keep members updated on the project’s progress, and when the virtual embassy is ready we’ll use it for announcements about upcoming events.
Categories: Announcement · Second House of Sweden
