A Sexual Health SIM in Second Life® (University of Plymouth)

A senior consultant at the company (McKinsey), which generally shies away from making public statements because its clients include major high street brands, said that any consumer-facing business “absolutely” had to be “experimenting in virtual worlds” if it wanted to get the attention of under 30s.

(…)

“What’s happening with Second Life right now is exactly what happened with the web in the early days,” Mr Rosedale (Linden Lab) said at an event in London this week. “People would say ‘the internet is a horrible place for brands, there’s all this stealing of property, and pornography’, and now what you find is that the web is used relentlessly for information-sharing purposes. We’re seeing exactly the same thing in Second Life.”

(…)

About $1.5 billion has been invested in companies developing technologies for virtual worlds in the past year and a half, according to a report published this week by Forrester, the analyst firm. Driven by the near complete penetration of broadband, an increasingly technology-friendly workforce, and cheap computing tools, the 3D web would be “the next major wave of the internet’s evolution,” the report said.

Read the full news article online at
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/
tech_and_web/article3803056.ece

Related posts:
http://sl-sexualhealth.org.uk/?p=142
http://sl-sexualhealth.org.uk/?p=141
From the blogosphere: Christianity gets a Second Life stage to discuss Sexual Purity - itsReal

Yesterday’s seminar was a big success! Very many thanks to our guest speakers, Fr Johann, Fr Joshua and Prebytera Anna, who have made this event possible, to GOARCH for the great ‘Sexual Purity and and Healthy Relationships’ video clip, which we were able to show part of in-world at the beginning of the seminar, and of course to all our audience yesterday, for their stimulating questions and thoughts, and the very lively discussion that lasted more than two hours. Special thanks also go to SL:Gentle Heron, who is a sex educator for people with disabilities, for bringing unique insight to the discussion yesterday. More than 25 avatars attended all or part of the seminar–the total number of unique avatars who have visited our SIM yesterday was >30. The total visitor-minutes on our parcel yesterday was 1690 or >28 hours, as shown in the offical Second Life parcel traffic figure this afternoon, reflecting all day yesterday (1 May 08)–the official visitor-minutes figure for the day before yesterday, i.e., 30 Apr 08, was 24 (see screenshot below). The 1st of May 08 figure of 1690 visitor-minutes is the highest figure our SIM has ever achieved in any single day since project launch in July 2007! More details and colour snapshots of the event will be posted in a follow-on post on this blog. Meanwhile, if you haven’t already done so, you can visit our SIM now and grab your free copy of the event’s goodies bag, which was offered to all participants yesterday; just touch the big pistachio ball located beside our “PowerPoint”/Video Viewer in-world to receive your copy.

Click to enlarge.

We will also be posting in due course access statistics of this blog you are reading now. So far visitors from more than 75 countries around the world have accessed content on this blog! Thank you all of you who are following us in-world and/or out-world for your continuing support and interest!

Fathers Johann Barak and Joshua Tuchs (these are SL avatar names), who in RL are two Eastern Orthodox priests in USA, together with Presbytera Anna Hirschel (again, SL name–she is also in RL Eastern Orthodox and based in USA) will be holding a 60-90 minute seminar at our SIM in Second Life this Thursday, 1 May 2008, at 1:00 PM PDT/SLT = 9 PM BST (GMT+1) about ‘Sexual Purity and Healthy Relationships: A Christian Orthodox Perspective for the 21st Century’.

Our three speakers will hold an open discussion along the lines of this video:
http://realserver.goarch.org/ram/en/sexual_pur.ram - we will be showing a short segment of it in-world at the start of the seminar. They will be responding live (in text and voice) to your questions in-world. Fr Johann Barak, Fr Joshua Tuchs, and Presbytera Anna Hirschel believe that Orthodox Christianity has a strong and very important and practical message for the whole world, especially these days with the very recent announcement of the US CDC that 1 in every 4 American teenage girls has a sexually-transmitted infection (HPV) that can lead later in life to cervical cancer
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7290088.stm).

Join us on Thursday, 1 May 2008, at 1:00 PM PDT/SLT = 9 PM BST (GMT+1) at
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Education%20UK/18/36/22

I have posted two new personal thoughts / opinion snippets at http://healthcybermap.org/sl.htm under ‘Thoughts / opinion’. Please read them and post your comments here. (Read previous comments.)

April 2008:
Why 3D?
Web conferencing: 2D vs. 3D (or both), or ‘Why conduct events and meetings in Second Life?’

Previous snippet–July 2007:
Comparing the 2D Web to 3D multi-user, immersive virtual worlds

Videos MPK20 Demo Quicktime, 4:58	Wonderland Phone Quicktime, 2:16	Interview MP4, 10:34	Tutorial Streaming video

Yesterday, 16 Apr 08 at 12:00 noon PDT, MB facilitated an open Sexual Health Discussion held at the Dreams Third Annual Community Fair.

Click to enlarge.

Other news: We are featured on p.16 of the latest March 2008 issue of SLang Life magazine -
http://www.slanglife.com/files/No3_table_of_contents.pdf

Now available at UOP Sexual Health SIM:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Education%20UK/8/50/23
and in our booth at DREAMS Fair. A very simple script written by MB, using llListen and llSay. Makes good use of the built-in (internal) Mozilla Web browser. Can be further refined, e.g., to prevent it from listening to objects–no longer the case, to parse/filter avatar messages in various ways (for example, to replace spaces between search keywords with %20), and/or to use llLoadURL instead of llSay–done, etc. Currently set to listen on the public text chat channel, but can be easily modified to listen to a specified channel (avatars will then need to type /<channel#> before the search keyword)–done.

Click to enlarge.

Other news: MB will be talking about Sexual Health at the DREAMS Community Fair 2008 on Wed 16 Apr 08 @ 12:00 pm PDT/SLT.

Quoting http://www.intute.ac.uk/blog/2008/03/28/dispatches-
from-the-virtual-frontier/

“Intute’s search terminals continue to be popular. (…) There are 80+ distinct search terms captured in the database, the most popular of the user entered terms (ie, not just the default terms initially loaded into the terminal) are ‘STD’ and ’sexual health’ which come from the Plymouth University Sexual Health project in SL.“

 
Read more at http://www.intute.ac.uk/blog/2008/03/28/
dispatches-from-the-virtual-frontier/

Second Life is a trademark of Linden Research, Inc.

Thanks to SL:The Sojourner and her community/SIM for assisting people with stroke, Asperger Syndrome/autism, social phobias, and other neurological/mental difficulties, we have been offered a free space at DREAMS 3rd Annual Fair, 11-25 April 2008. Visit us at
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dreams/219/85/25 (follow the red arrow to the red beam)

Our booth at DREAMS 3rd Annual Fair, 4-25 Apr 08 (click to enlarge).

There will be lots of entertainment opportunities; a like-real, fully interactive amusement park; great games, visuals and music; other interesting health-related projects to learn about in the exhibition; and an excellent scientific programme (see below – as at 3 Apr 08).

Dreams Community Fair 2008 Schedule
April 4-11, 2008 - Booth Set-up
April 11-25,  2008 - Fair Presentations and Events
April 26, 2008 - Booth Take-down

April
F11     - 3:30-4:00 pm PST - Opening Remarks
              4:00-5:00 pm PST - Ideaman Concert
              5:00-8:00 pm PST - Dance for Life and Health with DJ Ricken Flow
             
Sa12     -  12:00 - 1:00 pm PST -  Intro to Sculpted Prims - Vlad Bjornson
                 2:30-3:30 pm PST - Gemini Glitter - Ouchies
                 4:00-5:00 pm PST - Overview of Free Sculpty Tools - Vlad Bjornson
                 5:00-6:00 pm PST - Survivorship - Marymac Dougall
                    
Su13     - 12:00-1:00 pm PST - Spaceman Opus Concert
                 1:00-2:00 pm PST - Grace McDunnough Concert
                 4:00-5:00 pm PST - Alphabet Soup of the Arteries - Ren Stonecutter
                 5:00-6:00 pm PST - Mental Health - Avalon Birke
                
M14     - 12:00-1:00 pm PST - Disabled SL-Peoples Association Discussion - Arcadian Meili
                 3:00-5:00  pm PST - T1 Radio Rock Block
                 6:00-7:00 pm PST - Speed Build with Golda
                
T15     -   1:00-2:00  pm PST - Tringo with Soj
                2:00-3:00 pm PST - Understanding Depression and its Link to Suicide - Amaya Summers
                6:00-7:30 pm PST - TongRen Therapy w/Tong Ren Writer/Support for Healing
                7:30-8:30 pm PST - Improving Memory as we Age - Arwen Gadsby
                
W16     - 12:00 pm PDT/SLT - Sexual Health - MB Chevalier
               5:00-7:00 pm PST - AS Meeting with Ariel Miranda
               (5:00-6:00 pm PST) - The Role of a Neuropsychologist - Arwen Gadsby

Th17     -  1:00-2:00 pm PST - Art and Museums in SL - Arria Perreault- Confederation of Democratic Simulators
                 3:00-4:00 pm PST - Coming of Age in SL Discussion with Tom Bukowski
                 5:00-7:30 pm PST - T1 Radio Mady’s Music Marathon
              
F18     - 1:00-3:00 pm PST - Brainacs - Basic Scripting - Deevyde Maelstrom
               3:00-4:00 pm PST - Women and HIV - Lizzette Zenovka
               4:00-5:30 pm PST - Warbot Construction - Deevyde Maelstrom
               5:30-7:00 pm PST - Brainiacs - Warbots Competition
             
Sa19    -    12:00-1:00 pm PST - Blue Angel - Poetry Reading - Persephone Phoenix
                  1:00-2:00 pm PST - GimpGurl  Community Info Session  - Aleja Asturias
                  1:00-2:00 pm  PST - The Show Must Go On - Osprey Therian /Enjah Mysterio
                  2:00-4:00 pm PST - Motorability Dance - DJ Amanda Shinji
                  4:00-5:30 pm PST - Crohns & Colitis - KirstenAnn Beck

Su20      -    8:00-9:30 am PST - TongRen Therapy w/Tong Ren Writer/Support for Healing
                   12:00-1:00 pm PST - Fighting Spirit Discussion - Poppy Zabelin ACS/Relay
                   3:00-4:00 pm PST - ACS Caregivers Discussion - Marissa Goodliffe
                   4:00-5:00 pm PST - Stroke Prevention and Early Recognition - Ren Stonecutter
                  5:00-7:30 pm PST - T1 Radio Play Something

M21       - 6:00-7:00 pm PST - Speed Build with Golda

T22        - 1:00-2:00 pm PST - Tringo with Soj
                 5:00-7:30 pm PST - T1 Radio Play Something
                 6:00-7:30 pm PST - TongRen Therapy w/Tong Ren Writer/Support for Healing

W23     -  5:00-7:00 pm PST - AS Meeting with Ariel Miranda

Th24    -   6:00-7:00 pm PST - Micala Lumiere Concert

F25     -   12:00-1:00 pm PST - Medical Ethics - Avalon Birke
                1:00-4:00 pm PST - Linden Dunk - Mia Linden
               7:00-8:00 pm PST - Understanding Depression and its Link to Suicide - Amaya Summer

Second Life is a trademark of Linden Research, Inc.