Saturday, July 12 - 5 PM PST (SLT)/8 PM EST

Google's quiet introduction, this week, of the Lively virtual world platform may mark the beginning of a new era for the exploding virtual worlds industry. The locus of greatest attention in that industry — and the domain of greatest innovation — has long been Second Life, which just celebrated its fifth birthday. What do Second Life residents, stakeholders and media think of Lively? Does Lively represent a challenge to Second Life's vision, or a powerful endorsement? Will communities of residents and business stakeholders on these platforms remain separate, or mingle? What does the near-term future hold for both platforms?

In this informal panel, hosted by multi-platform metaverse developer World2Worlds in Lively, Second Life, and on the web, you'll hear first thoughts from major media minds on the Second Life/Virtual Worlds scene. Panelists include:

John Jainschigg (SL/Lively: John Zhaoying), Director, Internet and Community Laboratory, Ziff Davis Enterprise, Inc. (moderator)
Rhonda Lowry (SL/RL), VP Emerging Social Media Technologies, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
Eric Reuters, Special Correspondent, Second Life, Reuters, Inc.
Mitch Wagner (SL/RL), Executive Editor, InformationWeek, UBM TechWeb

To attend:

On the web, via streamed video: World2Worlds Realtime Page (http://www.world2worlds.com/index.php/w2w-realtime-page). 

In Second Life: World2Worlds (slurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/World2Worlds/131/189/35). Audio only.

Via streamed audio: World2Worlds Audio Server (http://jjainschigg.serverroom.us:7586)

In Lively: World2Worlds CoffeeOffice 2 (http://www.world2worlds.com/index.php/livelytm). Since Lively currently doesn't support streamed audio, to listen "in Lively," you'll have to pop the video page, above, and leave it running in the background, or plug the audio stream URL into your audio stream player. Please note: we have created two Lively rooms for this event. The main room, World2Worlds, is reserved for speakers, colleagues, and significant others only. The 'rollover' room, World2Worlds CoffeeOffice 2, is open to all.