Who are those people that you're interacting with in Second Life and ofther virtual contexts, really?  Is there a real person with honest intentions behind the mask, or are you perhaps encountering someone pretending to be someone else?

I would not find it rude at all to ask for more information about people's identity, if we are talking professional shop, or for other reasons. On the contary, I think this is the breaking moment of genuine interest, a step in the process of trust building. On the other hand, I would per routine discretely check the Profile of just anyone I am considering my offer of friendshop to include this or that person's avatar in my list (so that we can see each other online, and eventually get in touch later). This is not inappropriate or rude at all, it is a commonly known social contactability practice and suppsoed to be quite polite to know what people have shared about themselves in their own profile.
And, as my list of SL friends grew too long to remember one imaginary name from another , I also appreciate the way that you can save your own special notes on each avatar!

It would be interesting to examine to what degree it has been either positive or negative to build up this alter ego persona, for people who have serious intentions about using SL for their professional life.

NB! This post was inspired by a new conversation in the MUVEnation course started by David Winograd (rwho is new to SL and perfer being know by his real name)  and with a reaction from Anna Begonia whose first name is new to me: Antonella Berriolo. Anna claims that it would be rude to asl people in SL about their real life identity, and does not mix her RL and SL friends while David is worried because he is used to a codex where you would be responsible for your contributions.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3175/3046043075_973e98b854.jpg

 I don't know if he had been taklen there by the course leaders Rosie /Shirley and Pat P. they are also developers at the neighbor island Emerge of the JISC project. What I fould was a powerful training camp with all the nice advice you could ever want for the first few weeks in world. For me, the note collection will serve as reminders t helping me to catch up after half a year away, and a lousy memory.

How to change appearance and dress yourself up, where to get useful freebies (in an economy where most beginners are free riders and terribly poor, this comes in very handy!) How to use camera controls, take snapshots - and how to measure your height. This is where I I stumbed into an emergency! I touched the tall talking box, got the expected measure (an am 1.78 meters which is 20 cm taller than in RL ) - and then I touched a second time. Now the box attacked me, and it lookedfun because I am wearing wings these days. I knew I had a note about how to get rid of a box in your face from the helpful Emerge handbook, so I just wanted to send a snapshot to myself before getting out of the box - and then - FREEZE! 

. Sorry if I made a fool of myself  but these things do happen once in a while; I am sure I did not tell the beasty box to become part of my outfit. The picture looks silly. I will have to get back in world and control that I have not really stolen this piece of useful inventory from the Emerge training camp.

I did practise my camera skills again, see my Flickr album for evidence.

Another useful thing that I will remember from today: send a postcard with a snapshot to yourself or another recipient, from in world, and it will have the SLURL on it!

I plan to make a field trip to visit SLeducation UK island II where you can practice many useful skills as group work.

After a painful failure in a session this Sunday, where I was supposed to perform such building skills in presence of two of the course leaders who really did their best to help me out, but in vain, I felt more confused than comfortable, and decided to brush up this knowledge. I also felt an urge to practise my obviously poor camera control navigation skills.

After a building class 101, and some hours of hard work on my own land, I was able to teleport back to the MUVEnation island and proudly, in solitude, place my little frame with an image of myself, and an edited script that tells when I am noline, or away, which was the easy part of the exercise. I felt so good about having at last aquired a result that I arranged a photo opportunity, with myself floating in the air in front to the board, besides my portrait, on a red chair. Also, I was carrying a poster on a stick with the same frame, to demonstrate my extra effort on fluency in joining more objects. Just for the picture; the extra poster was taken away, and the chair that I forgot to bring with me back home, was automatically returned from the parcel owner.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3063/3041706345_5f7af36149.jpg

Not only on the technical level – how to walk in which direction without bumping into things and people, step by step. I had not yet noticed the posters with help and advice, and I knew nothing about right clicking on objects or people to get more information. I also needed to find my friends!  I knew that many of my online playmates (from Webheads in Action) would already be in world, but I had no overview of the place and nowhere to go. I felt lonely! Then, I found out that I could make myself look different – that was still on the Orientation Island. I could make myself fat or tall, thin or short. I could change the texture of my clothes, and the shape of my trousers. I spent a while on my appearance, and logged out after some exhausting, but fun hours all alone in this puzzling but also tempting world.

I knew for sure I had to come back, and the next Sunday there was a Webheads meeting going on, in our brand new club house. Somehow I found my way to the sim. And walking around a lot, I also found the very house – I was excited and felt almost at home. Until I discovered that I could not get inside! From the windows I could see some people standing in the room. I tried to knock on the door. This happened back in the days when we had no voice - well, actually this was about two years ago. I felt excluded and unhappy; it was very emotional. I ran around the building and tried to find an opening. All of a sudden, someone inside caught sight of me, and started chatting. This was a dear friend, Anne, Daf or Rita I think (they are all present in MUVEnation). It was a matter of membership! You had to be a member of the group called Webheads, to get permission into the house - a privacy setting coded into the door as an object.

Now that I was allowed inside, I had a feeling of belonging. We all made friends (again), and there was a poster exhibition with familiar faces from Webheads homepages, I had a strong sense of belonging and the visual appearance of my already known friends was remarkably strong, compared to other synchronous meeting formats - even without the convenient affordance of voice chat.

 A really significant difference that still striked me, was my instant emotional engagement; I felt like part of me was represented in this avatar already, and that my playmates were also very present this way.

We - so far, I've been exploring the Moodle, the PBwiki and some blog posts about this project, and also made several personal brush up visits on my own, to Second Life. Now I'll make my homework (yes, we have mandatory postings in our blog :-). And, try to see when there will be a meeting scheduled that will match my calendar. Alternatively, I might take the initiative and invite some people to join me for somebrain storming on my own little granted land - it certainly needs a makeover!

Just to make sure I'll get back, for now I'll make this post as a note to self about following up with my thoughts and reflect and revise my personal  multistrategies / lack of effiicient consistency. Promise :-)

This is a difficult choice. I might feel a sort of obligation and belonging to the Eduspaces as community, just because I have many like minded friends on my list here, dating back from the early days of elgg. On the other hand, Twitter and Facebook have fulfilled such needs lately. And, I'm not really following what others are blogging about - no matter how many feed readers I've been testing this never turned into the daily habit.

However, I've decided to give this a second try, once more. No promise.