Updated: Post-Conference News Round Up

After a few days of wishing I could be in more than one place at once, below is a rundown of some of the events, news, and sessions from Virtual Worlds Fall Conference.  If you've got more coverage that you think we should add, just send me an email with a link.  I'll hopefully be adding more from others and myself throughout the week. Updates are posted at the bottom.

I wasn't anywhere close to being able to hit all the panels, booths, and meetings that I would have liked to, but here's a sampling of what I was able to see. InDuality is doing some amazing things putting virtual worlds into a browser; on the Entertainment in Virtual Worlds Panel Turner's Blake Lewin noted that "This social networking stuff is flipping everything on its head. The entertainment value that comes to it is brought to you as an experience. It’s not storytelling.  It’s interacting"; he followed up in his own session, explaining Turner's virtual worlds initiatives in Kaneva; HiPiHi's Xu Hui explained his goals, saying that “The great hope for virtual worlds is in Asia and how Asian virtual worlds will cut out the social ills of others." I've included links to more stories below with blurbs from other writers.

Wagner James Au is simplifying things at GigaOM by posting his top five highlights of the conference, with links to more stories, here: Big Tech Doubles Down on Virtual Worlds, Less Hype, More Hard Experience, HiPiHi Rising, Third-Party Second Life Viewer Swallows the Web, The Virtual World Industry Gets a Convergence Culture.

The Cisco blog has a couple of interviews with conference attendees (Jim Bower, founder and CEO of Numedeon, Julia LeMoine, VP Fidelity's Center for Applied Technology, and John Burwell, VP Forterra) on what virtual worlds means to them and where they see the industry going.

Christian Renaud  of Cisco also has the notes and references from his keynote here. My report on the keynote may be found here. Mindblizzard's also covered the keynote as did WorldsInMotion. 

Nic Mitham from KZero was a part of a panel on demographics and numbers in virtual worlds where he predicted a growth of 43.4 million registered accounts across 7 major worlds.  He's posted his slides here and a visual illustration of his projections here. Sentient Service offers a thorough report of the panel as well.

SLNN.com has a write-up of the case studies on the Eros LLC lawsuit in Second Life and on Turner Broadcasting's efforts in Kaneva here. My report on Turner's efforts may be read here.

The panel on virtual currency at the end of the conference was packed, but SLNN.com has the summary here, noting that  "The general feel of the panel [...] was that virtual businesses and their platforms have been making so much money that they need to understand government regulations and international business practices."

Giff Constable from the Electric Sheep company  has notes from his panel on community and human togetherness here: "One of my favorite comments from the session came from Betsy [Book, There.com Director of Product Management], who said that virtual worlds might see a similar behavioral evolution as social networking, where early adoption focused on exploration and discovery of new people, while later adoption now sees more focus on maintaining pre-existing relationships." WorldInMotion's take is here.

IBM's Metaverse Evangelist Ian Hughes has written up his thoughts on the conference at the eightbar blog. "One of the most striking things I am taking away is some words that our very own Sandy Kearney used," he wrote. "In here leading into the business track presentation to kick us all off she referred to the fact we had moved from the information age to the conceptual age. Just as we had problems adjusting from industrial to information ages where the nut and bolt did not map to the bits and bytes, the conceptual age requires a different mentality and approach." My report on Kearney's kickoff is here. Mindblizzard's take is here.

UgoTrade 's Tish Shute has an excellent, long write-up of her take on the conference combined with interviews with Anthony E. Zuiker, Sibley Verbeck, Philip Rosedale, and HiPiHi's Xu Hui here.

Daniel Terdiman has a report at CNet on companies efforts to distinguish themselves from Second Life. Prokofy Neva has a similar report at Metaversed on Second Life's presence--in spite of not hosting a booth--at the conference.

Virtually Blind's Benjamin Duranske has posted his take on the conference:.

Clickz has a report on marketing in virtual worlds that centers on announcements and displays from the conference, including a success story from There.com: "Following a 10-week period of virtual events with bands like Korn, Yellowcard, Mims and the Beastie Boys on There.com, the company said they saw 17,500 visits to the CMG virtual area, with 2,600 visits to the company's minisite. It also sold 1,258 pieces of virtual merchandise from the events, according to Michael Wilson, CEO of There.com."

Joi Podgorny has notes from Christian Lassonde's talk on Designing Sticker Virtual Worlds Builds.

The Hollywood Reporter has a story on media companies' entrance into virtual worlds that centers on some of the main announcements of the conference: "We view virtual worlds as being very meaningful entertainment experiences for the public and we see them as absolute and clear opportunities for Disney," [said Disney Online EVP Paul Yanover]. "And so we are definitely looking at building new businesses in that space."

WorldsInMotion covered the session on "The Asian Market--What We Can Learn": "For every virtual world being produced that we hear about, there’s probably three or four we haven’t heard about,” [said Jeffrey Pope, senior manager for the Far East region for Sun's Project Darkstar], noting that he just learned of a virtual world being developed in India. "Some of the technology coming out of Asia... there’s a lot of creativity coming out of the smaller companies, in what they create for second life. [It’s] more artistic, creative things."

WorldsInMotion also checked out the session exploring under the hood of Multiverse.

CNet's Stefanie Olsen has a pair of articles up on children's worlds. The first covers Disney's fireside chat while the second tackles the larger interest from VCs in kids' worlds.

Prokofy Neva has two more posts about the conference up at Metaversed. The first tackles business in virtual worlds with a focus on two panels, one on virtual goods and the other on virtual currency: "At the first VW 2007 conference in the spring, the volume of deals was estimated at $5 million -- later this was revised to $7.5 million with more contracts following as a result of connections made at the meeting. Now the figure estimated conservatively for VW Fall was $20 million, a mixture of investment directly in worlds themselves, in metaversal development agencies, and tools to make the worlds." The second takes a look at what will happen when Second Life floods with CSI fans.

Updated: Joi Podgorny has added notes from another wall-to-wall packed session. This time it's for the Virtual Worlds Visionaries panel.

Nabeel Hyattt of Conduit Labs left feeling excited.

MPGOD.com offers a general take on the conference from a more game-based perspective: "So far in virtual worlds there isn't the sizzle of Halo 3 to share with an audience, the mind-blowing poly-count of a new PlayStation 3 game to show, or any of that classic gaming sexiness. --just the promise of a new Internet that marries classic and new media in a way that may eventually rethink how we see television, moves, music, the Internet and online games.

CNet's Stefanie Olsen takes a look at whether kids worlds are ready for advertising based on conversations and panels at the conference along with real-world regulations: "Executives at these businesses, and their investors, agree that virtual worlds are engaging enough to children to provide an unprecedented opportunity for marketing. But in a nascent industry with relatively no standards for advertising, media watchdogs, educators and even some gamemakers are worried."

Sentient Services has updated its blog with a variety of information on the conference, including a general wrap up, a partial transcription of the visionary panel, Christian Renaud's keynote,  a transcription of the panel on Togetherness and Community,  notes on advertising in virtual worlds,  and a transcription of the panel on narrative in virtual worlds, and more. I can't link to the individual posts, but you can find all the conference material here.

Susan Tenby has posted her takeaways--largely about interoperability--at Netsquared.org.

Next Generation Mobile Content has an extensive wrap up--with photos--of their experience at the conference.