Lovers’ spat

I’m enjoying the Beyond the Hype Symposium so far. Interesting ideas, interesting people and it is going beyond “Blogging 101″. If you’ve not checked out the conference web site, please do as it is a very creative and appropriate use of a do-it-yourself Ning social network.

More on the content tomorrow when I’ve had time to blog …but this was the day technology and I had a lovers’ spat. We are hardly speaking after my laptop bricked itself with an unsaved report on it and one thumb drive was dead when I tried to back up once my laptop was working again.

Not to mention missing all the three papers in the afternoon because I was installing software in the library lab (admittedly this was human disorganisation by whoever was meant to arrange this). Big, big thank you to QUT librarian Marvin who just happened to be passing on his day off and lent a thumb drive, his in-house knowledge of their IT department, and his expertise so the workshop could happen. Thanks also to Lisa the student helper who had to reload a web page on the PCs every 10 minutes or so to stop them automatically logging out, as they reimage on reboot and we would have lost the software we just installed.

During my Second Life workshop Linden labs joined the conspiracy and the map function didn’t work so I couldn’t TP to Murdoch Island, and one person had trouble making an avatar. It had begun to seen absurdly humourous by the time the video drivers on the PCs started dying at a rate of one per 15 minutes – “oh, your PC’s gone too …just move and look over your neighbour’s shoulder”. By the end of the session we had 10 people huddled around 3 PCs and I was improvising with a “any questions” session rather than people immersing themselves in the environment.

Off to Day Two …