(03-08) San Francisco -- At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, John Jainschigg, Director of Online Technology for Dr. Dobb's Journal, announced Dr. Dobb's Life 2.0, a new initiative aimed at providing software developers with a resource for events, training, and business development within the Second Life virtual world.
Second Life is a virtual environment often erronously described as a massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). But Second Life is decidedly not a game. In Second Life, players own land, form social groups, conduct business, and essentially construct the entire world around them via 3D editing tools and the Linden Scripting Language (LSL).
In the Second Life environment (or "in-world" in Second Life parlance), Dr. Dobb's Life 2.0 will comprise:
- A common center and resource for Second Life and real life developers and communities.
- In-world persistent resources for events, training, demonstration, expos.
- Regular in-world events, simulcast and archived online.
In Second Life, Dr. Dobb's Life 2.0 will center around Dr. Dobb's Island, a parcel of virtual real estate where there are plans for:
- In-world event and training centers.
- Dynamic demonstrations of code and objects.
- Interactive tutorials.
- Developer Certification and Global Employment Center.
- Business Resource and Best-Practice Center.
Online, the web-based counterpart of the in-world resources will be www.life20.net, a new web resource that will provide community, blogs, news and features pertaining to Second Life, and specifically software development within Second Life. There will also be complete documentation of the Linden Scripting Language, downloads of open source code, and a real-time interconnect to Life 2.0 and Dr. Dobb's Island events. The site is slated to officially go live March 19, 2007.
The premier event for Dr. Dobb's Life 2.0 will the Life 2.0 Summit, held in-world on Dr. Dobb's Island, April 28-May 4, 2007. The event will feature a two-day LSL/Building Bootcamp for advanced developers; four days of expert panels covering the Second Life platform, economy, and security issues SL/Web interoperability, UI design, and more. This event will be simulcast to the web via video and a chatbridge.
"Second Life is the most powerful engine yet evolved for identifying, motivating, training and perhaps ultimately employing a new, global generation of cross-disciplinary developers who use software to touch the world in new and tangible ways," said Jainschigg.
Jainshigg's presentation was simulcast to Second Life attendees from around the world who "convened" on Dr. Dobb's Island, and to real-world attendees meeting in a conference room at Moscone Center in San Francisco.
