This week has been chock full ‘o activities surrounding the Rational Software Developers Conference. As my About page alludes to, I’ve been doing quite a bit of work around running events in Second Life for IBM developerWorks and IBM Rational, so this year is not different. Alongside the real world conference, we have been running events in Second Life directly related to this year’s theme for the conference, “Where Teams are R-Heroes”.
The week started off with our welcome event on Sunday, where we introduced the heroes in all their glory in Second Life. And now, we still have a few in-world events left for the week. So allow me to invite you all in world to check out what’s going on this week:
The SL URL for CODESTATION is http://slurl.com/secondlife/IBM%20CODESTATION/130/95/40
On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, there will be a Meet the Expert sessions at 10:00 am and 2:00 pm Eastern (New York) with each of the Heroes.
Schedule for 10 am ET :
Monday 10am ET - Fee-Chur: The Developer; who can turn anything into code. “It’s not a bug, it’s a “feature!”
Tuesday 10am ET The Gatekeeper: The Release Manager; who can shift shapes to deal with everything internal and external; from bugs to leaks to patches to infinity and beyond!
Wednesday 10am ET The Time-Inator: The Project Manager; who can bend the time-space continuum… sometimes
Schedule for 2pm ET:
Monday 2pm ET R-Tek: The Architect with the power to grok future applications just by drawing a picture on a napkin
Tuesday 2pm ET Hawkeye: The Analyst; whose super A-ray Vision lets her see opportunities hidden in complex problems
Wednesday 2pm ET Gotcha: The Tester; with the power to clone herself to meet impossible deadlines…
ibm, rational, secondlife, virtualworlds
ibm, rational, secondlife, virtualworlds
So, Nick and I have come quite a ways with the book over the past few months. One thing that we have noticed is that the technology we allude to in the text becomes a “moving target”. By the time we capture our thoughts and ideas around a concept, it changes. I guess rapid development is like that. Staying ahead of the curve can be a magical art to master as it seems. Nevertheless, next month we are going to have a meeting of the minds with respect to repositioning the text so that we aren’t “out of style”. Make sure to keep up-to-date with our progress over at PlatformSL.com.
book, secondlife
book, secondlife

I’m excited to announce that my first book, Platform Second Life, is now available through the Manning Early Adoption Program on the Manning website. I like to think of it as the “book beta” site. This is certainly a proud moment for me, being that this is my first book authoring venture. Many thanks to my co-author, Nick Chase.
book, secondlife
book, secondlife

Join me at the Dr. Dobbs Island! I will be speaking at Grid Talk to announce the opening of the IBM developerWorks Island.
developerworks, ibm, secondlife
I am pleased to announce that the IBM developerWorks island is open! I’d like to invite all of you to drop by and take a look! We’re waiting for you to join us! Help us build an in-world community, while we build out the rest of the island. We’ve created a small briefing area in the southern part of the island, as well as a welcoming public sandbox area. For more information visit the IBM developerWorks community topic space on Second Life:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/spaces/secondlife
See you in SL!
Oh, almost forgot here are a few pics:

IBM developerWorks Rotunda I - Web Briefing Area

IBM developerWorks Public Sandbox North
One last thing- I have yet ANOTHER blog that I am maintaining:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/secondlife
developerworks, ibm, secondlife
The island development is underway. We are currently in preparations to open up the IBM developerWorks island for public access. We’ve had an island in Second Life for close to a year, where we’ve held a number of exclusive in-world events. But now, we are ready to move forward with building an in-world community.
One of the issues with user-generated content based virtual worlds like Second Life is the level of participation. Often times residents are unable to build, script, or terraform simply because they do not own or rent land. It’s also possible that they may not have affiliated themselves with estate owners either- which means that they are stuck with using the public sandboxes, which in some ways can be quite frustrating. developerWorks is truly giving Second Lifers a way to be a part of something- something that they can say they help establish. It reminds me of the “Home for Habitat” program, where people volunteer to build houses.
On December 17, be sure to drop by the IBM developerworks Island. You will probably find me there hanging out!
developerworks, ibm, secondlife