Rob Knop's Gratuitous Second Life Page

Since August, 2007, I've been working as a "productions operations engineer" for Linden Lab, the company that created and runs Second Life. I was a Second Life resident for quite a number of months before that. Before you read any more, you should know that a basic Second Life account is free! Drop by the Second Life Web Page and give it a try. Have some perserverenece... the new user experience can be a bit rocky, but there's a rich virtual world waiting for those who get through it.

The Meta-Institute of Computational Astrophysics (MICA)

This is an entirely in-world astrophysics institute, founded primarily by Piet Hutt of Princeton, together with some collaborators of his (who work on N-body simulations) and some other astronomers. It's notable because it's not the metaverse extension of a real-world organization, but one that exists entirely in the metaverse. Most months, I give a popular talk as a part of a series entitled "Dr. Knop Talks Astronomy".

The Second Life Shakespeare Company

Between MICA and this, it should be clear that those who claim that "Second Life is not a game" are right. The SLSC does in-world performances of Shakespeare's plays. They've done a couple of miniproductions of single scenes from Hamlet, and a staged reading of Twelfth Night. The miniproductions included full blocking, with costumed avatars on a beautiful set moving around, as well as using animations in-world to produce a true virtual live stage play.

Talk Slides

I've given a couple of talks about Second Life. Here are the slides from a subset of them:

• "A Geek's Gentle Introduction to Second Life" (PDF - 6MB &mdash ODP - 5.6MB) : talk given at Hypericon iV, 2008-06-29.