Held at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in the beautiful capital of Pennsylvania, LEEF is focused on gaming, simulation, and virtual world uses for education. I presented a brief overview of the reasons and process of developing the Hurricane Shelter Simulation Course we developed at CUNY SPS for the NYC Office of Emergency Management (see other posts below for more info). Posting on this to come.

Key learning points from this conference:

Imperial College London uses SL for medical training and proofs of concept, trying out a new infusion pump. They have also conducted a critical incident simulation around a dirty bomb scenario at a sporting arena.

Doug Maxwell of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM) presented on Design Principles for Virtual Worlds (see Defense Gametech below; I heard Doug speak there as well). Some of his key points:

• Try out different VWs to get a good idea of what affordances they offer.
• Make sure that you differentiate between orientation and the actual training.
• Where are you going to draw your content from? Make sure to pay attention to IP rights.
• Who is going to create this? Do you have in-house labor,  students or developers, to build the 3D objects?

Doug spoke about theor MOSES Project and Big World (EDGE).

James Neville of Siterma, the World in 4D, gave a very thought provoking presentation Entertainment and Relaxation in Virtual Worlds

• We expand when we relax and we grow when we expand.
• We relax in the presence of novelty.
• In a virtual world novelty needs to have sufficent detailing, different people, and a variety of conversations.
• Theme is a gel; it is the net unifying idea that influences your operation, experience, & conduct.

In brief, in order to be entertained:

• To be entertained in a virtual world it needs to have novelty, detail, other people (who can entertain them).