Sophrosyne's Saturday Salon: David Brin
David Brin's appearance as Salon Spotlight Guest was the centerpiece of Yuri's Night celebrations in Extropia. Dr. Brin packed them in: we had a peak concurrency of 84, and stayed right around 80 for most of his two-hour appearance.  Thankfully, sim stability was excellent, considering the circumstances.

It was certainly an unusual event!  We got off to a ragged start, with many of the audience trying to talk at once - which works fine for backchat at events like Metanomics, where the speaker is in the Voice channel, but which completely overwhelmed our guest, who was in text chat,  struggling with the interface and the speed of threaded conversations.

After our shakedown, Dr. Brin got into the spirit of the thing in fine form, challenging us to look critically at internet-based communications tools, including those we were using, and led us in a rough-and-tumble exchange that left us all thinking, and hungry for more.

Many thanks to Dr. Brin for his time and engagement with us, and our thanks to Zeroe Auer, who created Dr. Brin's photorealistic skin, and Zada Zenovka, who built his shape.  He was looking fine!

Next week: Hamlet Au (Wagner James Au), founder of the influential blog "New World Notes," and author of the terrific new book, The Making of Second Life.


Photos by Boc Cryotank (Stephen Euin Cobb)