Academics with geek in their blood and geeks who hang out on college campuses might be interested in this new(ish) find: The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.

It’s not a gaming journal. Rather, it proposes to look at

developments in virtual reality and gaming both in terms of technologies and conceptualization

The Journal currently has a call for papers on Social Identity and Consumer Behavior in Virtual Worlds. Deadline is August 15^th.

After five months of development, Sweden finally opened its official Second Life embassy. The “Second House of Sweden” sits on a 158 acre island and is modeled on the country’s new Washington embassy. It will even include designer Swedish furniture. Says Foreign Minister and avid blogger Carl Bildt:

“Second Life is just beginning so we do not know its full potential. Ten years ago we didn’t know the potential of Google for instance.”

Indeed. This was before Bildt crashed his flying, scissor wielding avatar into a tree (the scissors were for the ribbon-cutting, you see). The embassy won’t have a political function, nor will it issue passports or visas. However, visitors to the virtual outpost can take in exhibitions and cultural events, as well as learn about famous Swedes. Olle Waestberg, the director of the Swedish Institute (a “foreign ministry agency tasked with spreading information about Sweden”), helped the foreign minister open the embassy simultaneously in both Stockholm and Second Life.

We should note that this isn’t the first official foreign mission in Second Life. The Maldives (pop. 329k) beat Sweden into the virtual world by a week, opening its embassy on March 22.

“They beat us to the gate,” said Olle Wastberg, a former Swedish consul in New York.

The Library of Congress might well be one of the first parts of the federal government to start incorporating interactivity and social media into its web presence.

Yesterday Kevin Novak, director of web services for the Library of Congress, spoke at a Web Managers Roundtable event in Northern Virginia about social media. Novak is trying to use the Internet to encourage participatory volunteerism and reach people in a way that maintains LOC’s relevance in an era of digital media.

LOC’s current and upcoming online efforts include:

• Using Flickr to post pictures of the LOC content and ask the general public to help collect information on different items of historical interest.
• Developing a pilot program in Second Life.
• Launching a blog – the first in the federal space, according to Novak – authored by LOC’s director of communications, Matt Raymond. To date, the blog entry that generated the “busiest” response asked readers to name their favorite books.
• Online collections that include webcasts.

Novak considers LOC’s web presence to be an experiment for interactivity on the federal websites. The unknown, the gray areas, the questions that we don’t even know exist yet – those are the sticking points, according to Novak. He mentioned a few of them at the roundtable:

What process determines who gets to write the official blog for a federal organization?

Is the LOC’s web presence a part of the public record?

Do constraints to online interactivity exist that the LOC hasn’t explored yet?

How does a federal organization achieve success online?

Ahh, the unanswered questions. 

This is our sixth in a series of interviews with industry professionals discussing the state of online politics. The Politics Online Conference is just around the corner; here we sit down with Jason Rosenberg, Strategy Architect for EchoDitto, discussing the utilization of the internet in politics, specifically in campaigns.

Special thanks, once again, to Capitol Hill Broadcasting Network for hosting IPDI’s Vlog posts!

This is our third in a series of interviews with industry professionals discussing the state of online politics. We are little more than a month away from our 2007 Politics Online Conference; here we sit down with Cheryl Contee, Vice President of Issue Dynamics Inc., to talk about how Issue Dynamics utilized technology in 2006 and where she sees web 2.0 taking political activism in the years to come.

Special thanks, once again, to Capitol Hill Broadcasting Network for hosting IPDI’s Vlog posts!

This is our second in a series of interviews with industry professionals discussing the state of online politics. Here, we sit down with Jeff Mascott, Managing Director of the Adfero Group, to talk about the impact of the utilization of technology on politics in 2006 and what we should expect in the years to come.

Special thanks, once again, to Capitol Hill Broadcasting Network for hosting IPDI’s Vlog posts!

As we gear up for the 2007 Politics Online Conference, IPDI brings you the first in a series of interviews with industry professionals discussing the state of online politics. Our first interview is with Matthew Zablud, Vice President at the Adfero Group.

Special thanks to Capitol Hill Broadcasting Network for hosting IPDI’s Vlog posts!

Last week, Congressman George Miller (D-CA) held a press conference to discuss the top six priorities of the new Democratic Congress. The location: virtual Capitol Hill, on an island in Second Life. Miller’s conference follows the lead set by former Virginia Governor Mark Warner, who in August 2006 was the first politician to travel into Second Life, the online virtual world that allows users to create and interact via avatars.

Nancy Scola, the mastermind behind Warner’s path-breaking foray into Second Life, contributes to this month’s IPDI newsletter on the social applications of Second Life.

She wonders what will happen if we loosen the reins a bit on our creativity and how to use the Second Life model for political action. Here are some of Second Life’s political advantages:

• Fewer logistical nightmares and more timely political events . – In Second Life, a laptop, a free hour or two, and an in-world venue quickly moves the event from conception to execution.

• Shadow political parties and shadow conventions. – The official meetings and conventions of state or national political parties are often unwieldy beasts. We might see the official party organizations holding open meetings every so often in Second Life. Or, if they choose not to, we might witness activists organizing parallel meetings in the metaverse, where time is spent plotting the takeover of the official party apparatus.

• Metaverse fundraising . – Not all too long ago, the cutting edge in raising money online was having a bat graphic that was colored in as the contribution dollars piled up. By doing away with many of the bonds of reality – time, space, physics, and (to some degree) social constraints – Second Life has blown the doors off of the old models of fundraising.

• Reaching out to early adapters . – Second Life opens up a wide range of possibilities for the execution of political advertising. At the least, we might soon see political ad firms setting up shop in Second Life, running virtual galleries to display their wares.

Click here to read Nancy’s article, “Avatar Politics: The Social Applications of Second Life“, part of the January 2007 IPDI e-newsletter. Want to receive the monthly newsletters in your inbox? Click here to join.