The group I chose on meetup.com that I would be interested in attending events for is the Arizona Young Professional’s Social Group. They have several events posted per month that have a lot of attendees registered so it seems to be a popular group to attend events for. The first event I would be interested in attending is the new members mixer on Friday September 30, and 7 pm, at Duke’s Sports Grill on Scottsdale and McDowell. There are currently 166 people expected to attend and I have been to that bar before and like that place so it would not be too far out of my comfort zone to go meet people that are my same age and working professionals in the Valley. I really liked to ease of searching for events on meetup.com and the diversity of options that are shared.
I chose to create an avatar on Second Life. To learn how to explore on the website there are blogs, forums, classifieds, groups, and you can link it to your facebook so that other friends can find you and not just strangers. I read the quick start guide for an overview and the information under the “what is second life?” and then just played around with different ideas. I had to watch the video about how to customize my avatar because it was difficult to figure out where to go to do so, but I like that they had instructional videos for many of the different actions you could do in the second life. I was very surprised to see how many different options there were to explore in the second life and the volume of events they had to offer for avatars to participate in and meet other people playing. I really liked the diversity of options and interests, you can meet people, use it to express creativity, for educational purposes, or even use it as a business venture to make money. I prefer to talk to people in real life - I have always worked in face to face customer service - so to me these types of online programs are very far out of my comfort zone. I really cannot relate to the want or need to interface with strangers/friends in an online environment, but I find myself to be outgoing and I easily interact with people that share my interests on a regular basis. However, if someone did not know how to find others with common interests to their own this site would be a really good opportunity to meet those types of people because it is organized really well in gathering individuals with common interests.
The content displayed on this week’s module resonated well with me. I do not belong to any of the avatar type websites, but I do have a lot of experience with websites that rely on user generated recommendations to improve the quality of their service, like Amazon, Netflix, all of my iPhone Apps, and most of the several websites I use for online shopping. The power that these websites gain by relying on feedback from their users is astonishing and very smart. I also like how Anderson spoke about how anyone with a webcam can become famous now (a few shotty YouTube video stars come to mind...) because of user generated feedback on the websites like YouTube. Going “viral” is easily attainable by the use of these types of websites. Content shared on YouTube can be educational and help spread seminar type information to a large amount of people very easily. The example of sharing paralysis and being a support beacon for other families who may be struggling to find hope from disabilities is a positive example of how sharing information can be helpful. I know religious organizations have had luck with posting sermons to share their beliefs to large groups of people. I myself have used YouTube to search a LOT of “how to” type clips because I can easily learn from watching and repeating. The ease of gaining access to this information is a double edged sword, which is the caution from a majority of the content, because it can be used for harmful purposes as well.
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