On Tuesday evening the AIMIA “Future of Virtual Worlds” (Part 2) was held at the The Shelbourne Hotel in Sydney. Over 60 people attended from a variety of business, government and technology groups – either the first time or to find out more about SL.

The wide variety of community representation meant the panellists; Chris Collins (Business Analyst and Developer, Linden Lab), Abigail Thomas (Head Strategic Development, ABC Innovation) and Nick Abrahams (Partner, Deacons’ Technology, Media & Telecommunications Group) had an attentive and questioning audience during the panel discussion that followed their respective presentations.

The technological development’s indicated by Chris in regard to the “look” of SL through new sky rendering along with “Spatial Voice” heralds some important changes to the way poeple interact in SL. The “Spatial Voice” innovation alone should see some changes to both demographic use and the interactions of SL residents provided bandwidth issues can be resolved. to this end Chris indicated that Australia can expect a hosted server “real soon now”.

Abigail Thomas’ presentation on the success and development of ABC island was likewise well received. The island itself ranks as one of the top Australian visitation sites across SL. Abigail explained that the development of content by SL residents in the ABC Sandbox area was the most popular of the areas curently being used, moreso than the other areas that have been set up to reflect various ABC popular shows such as JTV.

(L to R: Nick Abrahams, Chris Collins and Abigail Thomas)

A highlight of the night was Nick Abrahams. An exploration into the legal ramifications of ownership, activity, authority and jurisdiction, his entertaining look at SL and the law was indicative of how virtual world technology is both a pioneering area in technology, opportunity and behaviour. He covered the recent sex and child protection issues as well as gambling and money laundering and it seems fairly apparent that the concept of SL as a game is well and truly over. With the impending regulation from world-wide authorities to curtail illegal activities, the problems of jurisdiction and legal liability is one that this technology has now pushed to the fore of policy discussions for governments.

Nick Abrahams was positive in his view of the direction that this would take and indicated to the audience that perhaps the nature of SL and its technological development in concert with regulatory authorities, would mean that those wanting to take part in illegal activities may find this difficult due to the nature of the community that SL is inspiring and the globalisation of communication.

Tuesday’s event was moderated by SLOz’ very own Lowell Cremorne. AIMIA’s first venture into conducting this kind of information gathering over a series of presentations and panel discussions was a positive for both SL and the many people that attended. Whilst there may have been some present not too sure what it actually is all about, there is a definite interest in wanting to be part of SL.