October 17-19 will see the US-based National eXtension Initiative host a Virtual Conference on-line and in Second Life.

The conference is billed as being for, “Anyone working to reach and interact with the public will be interested in this active and reactive virtual conference designed to build your knowledge skill set about the changing world of information today and for the future”.

It will be streamed live over the web (note that this website will remain static until the conference commences), and will also be broadcast in-world in Second Life at the NeVC’s open-air auditorium (SLurl).

The conference offers a relaxed pace to suit the working environment – those wishing to participate don’t have to spend the entire day glued to a live stream or in-world – and offers the opportunity for those best-suited to the time zone (East Coast USA) to share the eent with work colleagues.

Schedule of Speakers

All times SLT.

Monday 17th October

• 08:00 – Howard Rheingold: the internationally syndicated author of the weekly Tomorrow column, editor of best-seller The Millennium Whole Earth Catalogue and author of best-sellers Virtual Reality and The Virtual Community

Tuesday 18th October

• 08:00 – Robin Good: online entrepreneur and publisher of www.MasterNewMedia.org, an online magazine covering the effective use of new media technologies for business and communication, Robin has seen his work mentioned in over 100 books and his writing followed by nearly 10 million people worldwide in 2010. He introduced the concept of “news radars” in 2004, and has since expanded on the concept. On top of all this, he current curates multiple new topics at: http://scoop.it/u/RobinGood
• 11:00 – Paulette Robinson is the Assistant Dean for Teaching and Learning for the Information Resources Management College at the National Defense University and leads the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds, which is used by government, industry, and academia interested in virtual world use for confronting and solving common issues.

Wednesday 19th October

• 08:00 – Clay Shirky is the author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (2008) and Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (2010) and studies the effects of the Internet on society
• 11:00 – Steven Rosenbaum is the author of Curation Nation, which explores the emerging phenomenon of human organization and publishing of content. He is also the founder of Magnify.net and the creator of MTV News Unfiltered.

Each session will last 45 minutes, and will be followed by a short break, after which there will be some 90 minutes available for interactive Q&A via chat and Twitter. As well as being streamed live, each presentation will be recorded for later re-broadcasting.

Further information can be found on the conference web page (note that all times on the website are EDT, not SLT!), and by following #nevc2011 on Twitter.

With thanks to Rik at NPC, and Terry Meisenbach at The National eXtension Initiative.