Echolocation

Today I gave my first conference presentation for Computers and Writing Online 2007 in an Internet-based "MOO," a multi-user object-oriented domain, with a java interface in which the first challenge was how to load the virtual slide projector and the second challenge was locating the "room" in which the presentation was supposed to take place only through entering text commands. (I'm embarrassed to admit that both activities took the better part of an hour each.)

I came to the conference room early in order to catch the very interesting presentation of Christyne Berzsenyi of Penn State about the highly purpose-driven discourses surrounding on-line dating. During my own presentation, I was very grateful to Keith Dorwick of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and agitprop author Kevin Moberly of St. Cloud University for their help during this disembodied experience, in which I talked about games for first-responders designed for training for possible terrorist attacks. I'm a relativey fast typist, but I found it hard to keep up with the questions and comments of the audience, who also included Michael Day and grad student Lei Lani Michel.