When Rhetoricians Attack!
I made it to the Games Forum's last panel (on using games and virtual worlds for education) and got to watch a pridful moment for rhet/comp folk. The talks were all interesting (Sarah Robbins is always charismatic, entertaining and the best Second Life eductation proponent one can ask for) but the question and answer period was my favorite part. Our own Morgan R, Cat, and someone else (apologies for the loss of memory) asked some pointed access questions that had been across the board not covered in the actual talks. This may be all my own perception, but the access questions really seemed to throw the more techy, science, programming guys for a loop. Oh, they had answers, and I don't recall them being bad answers, but I sensed a moment of "crap, I wasn't expecting that" crossing their faces.
I didn't enjoy this in a "gotcha!" sense (ok, well maybe a bit), but in a grander sense it pointed out what can be so great about multi-disciplined conferences. All of us have our own concerns, specialities, and areas of interest. There are so few times when these different disciplines can get together and share ideas. In the best possible world, the sciences and the humanities are asking each other questions and pointing out these different perspectives. Dig it.
In other interesting news, Sarah Robbins is currently working on a project to develop tour guides of sort for blind people to visit Second Life. The blind person's avatar would be linked to the avatar of the guide (so they can walk and teleport together) and they are developing a training program for the guide to be able to explain what the visual aspects of the world look like. Add that now Second Life is fully voice capable, and this looks like one of the first steps into making this virtual world accessible for those who previously had few options.
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Word MP! The energy at crossdisiplinary conferences is well worth noting, and makes me wonder why we have such... defined boundries anyway. I guess it would be hard to stay on topic if we could study anything... like rhet comp does... damn. Anyway, excellent observation on the good things that emerged from the clash of pomo-culture-liberal-arts-hippies and the sciencey-computery-make-some-stuff folk.
I think that one of the best parts of confernces is the bar afterward, and not jsut because of the beer (though it was needed). At the bar you get to find out about what is happening behind peoples various presentations, what's going on with the politicics, the funding, the difficult parts of any project. Cool.
The conference certainly rocked pants, and it was most excellent to get to hang out with the folk from IU. All very neat people doing cool work.