I found out about this event because of an announcement posted of Facebook, I saw it on a Saturday and by Monday the event was oversubscribed – so I guess it proves regular checking of vitals is essential.

I travelled up to London with Rob and we got the London Knowledge Lab without incident. Registration was easy and they gave us registrations for their wireless, I am always grateful for wireless access allows me to keep up with what is happening at the ranch, and this time it allowed to me watch the microblog posts on Twitter by “peepo”.

The first session started promptly, with a quick introduction by Shelia McNeil (Strathclyde/CETIS). Andy Powell (Eduserv) was the second speaker, he spoke well and sued a metaphor of T shirts with slogans to ground his talk. It was a really good way of getting the message across. He took us to EdServ island, and it appeared much better with a guide than when I visited on my own.

Lawrie Phipps (JISC) than spoke about the Emerge project, I hadn’t realised that Emerge had an Island – I will have to visit this soon.

Hugh Dennard (Kings College London) presented the Theatron project, this was really brilliant. They have SL versions of a number of theatres with the ability to link to original photographs and change sets. I really must visit this place:  http://slurl.com/secondlife/Theatron/183/23/48

The Modelling4All project (Ken Khan, Oxford) seemed tame in comparison – that may be unfair to them as they are only starting but I had difficulty seeing how the work that was presented could be repurposed to work in SL.

Lunch time gave an opportunity for networking; I met a guy from the College of Estate Management which is based on the University of Reading campus. I invited him to an event we are running next week.

After lunch there was a talk from the London Institute of Education, Dianne Carr and Martin Oliver presented different aspects of their work, they have done work involving looking at social context in the World of Warcraft. One of their projects looked at couples in real life and WoW, they had managed to interview 3.5 couples, which to me didn’t seem to be a lot of data.

Daniel Livingstone (Paisley) then talked about SLOODLE, a cross between SL and Moodle, he showed us some of the interesting things on their island. He taught a class last year (their second semester) the class size was 11 students. I’m going to visit their island as well. I know that Rob has the SLURL, as at that time he had my tablet and was occasionally seen on the background of the presenters’ screens, those shiny particles do catch people’s attention.

The event ended with a discussion, there were some different views expressed. I managed to raise the issue of learners which I felt hadn’t had sufficient mention during the day.

All in all it was a good day – well worth attending. I am really looking forward to the Reading CoP3D events we have got planned.

Afterwards I met up with Joe (my London-based son) he said his colleagues had asked why I hadn’t attended the meeting virtually, a good question, I think that for this event face to face was good, but I guess the organisers need to think about also holding things fully virtually.