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i had my first full fledged second life experience today.  i had signed up a while back out of sheer curiosity, didn't get it really, and just fell by the wayside.  today i saw that brad abrams was presenting a silverlight session "in second life" i figured i'd check out what this experience is going to be.  after all, he was presenting on visual studio island and i figured, cool.

to be fair, i'm not a gamer, or alternate world-ist at all, so i absolutely entered this with preconceived notions.  but nonetheless i entered...as a noob.

so off i went to the teleport.  i checked in early to see what was going on.  some people in the auditorium were mulling around.  the anonymity freaked me out...all these freaky names and not knowing who really was who.  i don't drink, but i felt like dropping a few f-bombs and pounding some jack and coke while i was in there as long as nobody knew who i was ;-).  but seriously, i just layed low and tried to figure out the system.

the session was starting and two moderators made themselves known and told everyone to turn off feature x, y, z.  i had no idea how to do some of the things they asked, but some fellow second lifers helped me out.  the session started.  remember, this session was about .

brad started out talking (the audio was very clear for me and i could hear him perfectly).  i enjoy listening to brad talk so was curious how this was going to go.  then he started with the presentation.  this is where i started to lose interest.  not because of the presentation, but the medium.  it appeared that the deck and other demonstrations were played back using some type of media file.  it took a while to advance, render clearly, etc.  i even felt like brad was pausing a bit to wait until it rendered.  i really wasn't enjoying the experience at all.

so i decided to leave.  what i thought was my stand up button i accidentally clicked on either a few keystrokes or whatever, but the next thing i know i was flying.  great.  so i tried to go "down" but that resulted in me moving backwards (in the air) and then i moved the other way, which put me in front of the presentation screen :-).  crap.  then suddenly i see a message on the little chat window (that fades away rather quickly).  "TAKE YOUR SEAT OR BE BOOTED AND BANNED!"  um okay, i'm trying.  then

boom.  banned.  i was exiled to some random place.  when i tried to return to the island, i couldn't.  i was greeted with border patrol and a "no entry" fence.  mother flipper.  i was pissed.  on top of my already horrible view of presentations in second life, i was even given the chance to enter the island -- the whole island -- not just booted from the auditorium.  argh.  i decided to chat it up with the person who booted me.  i learned that they were hired moderators and had a little chat.  i identified myself and said that for a noob, that left me with a horrible experience and had i been someone curious to microsoft and the topic i would have been more pissed at microsoft.  she proceeded to tell me that they had a lot of people deliberately causing trouble in the room and have to take action quickly because there is a lot going on.  well, i say you need more moderators then.  or guess what...that's the point...it is a virtual world and people want to be able to do what they want -- including cause trouble.  i don't know, maybe i'm getting old, but i really was just way turned off by the whole experience i had.  i don't believe i'll be going back to second life.  if there was more of a QA session i think that would have had a better interaction, but the overall experience left me blah.  i hope our other customers/noobs aren't treated like that...virtual or otherwise.

sorry for those that like it, that's cool.  hey i like foodtv and people think i'm an idiot, so i'm cool with that.

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