We’re extremely honored and excited to announce this years introductory keynote speaker, Ray Kurzweil. Ray Kurzweil is known as one of today’s leading inventors, as the developer of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition.

Ray Kurzweil’s keynote presentation at this years SLCC will focus on the benefits of virtual environments and virtual reality in the terms of enabling communications with others and the blending between human and machine. His keynote speech will take place within Second Life and at the SLCC on Friday, August 14th at 9am PDT. For more information on Ray Kurzweill and his work, visit his website http://www.kurzweilai.net.

Thanks and hope to see you there!

This workshop will look at how disabled users can enrich their lives through the use of Second Life®. Jameslarkin will share his story along with how Second Life ministers to some of the physical, psychological, and social difficulties faced by the disabled. The workshop will discuss technical needs of the disabled community, and see how they are adapting the interface for their particular disability. There will be a practical tips-and-tricks time, plus a discussion of what the future holds for people with special needs in the virtual community.

This workshop will explore some of the advantages of Second Life as a nearly ideal platform for offsetting the traditional challenges that poets face in developing and distributing their craft and demolishes barricades for new, emergent, and establishing writers. It will also feature readings by some of SL’s best poets, involvement from some of the most successful reading organizers on the Grid, and direct work with those interested in the mechanics of successful readings and workshops.

Manx Wharton is an awarded SL activist across visual art, design, music, and literary circles. His work explores and blurs the lines between RL and SL, co-opting elements of each to enhance the other. He and Kolor Fall have worked together and independently in various areas of SLRL arts and media “mash-up” since coming in-world in 2006. Manx is one of the most widely noted poets on the Grid, as well as a respected visual artist with in-world contributions ranging from RL painting to in-world site-specific happenings, including Repurposed: Your Leisure Lifestyle at SS Galaxy Gallery, the controversial The General Welfare at Burning Life 2008, the first SL exhibit of RL avatar portraits, Real Avatars, at SL5B, and the groundbreaking SOMARTS SLRL mash-up exhibit Synthetic Masquerade in November 2008. He is a member of Artopolis, The Virtuati, and The Plastic Collective.

The panel will explore how much of SL’s most intricate design work and broad artistic efforts focus on taking fullest advantage of the platform’s tools to create in-world art that would be impossible in RL. A growing and focused number of artists are starting to embrace the nascent opportunities of combining SL and RL media platforms to generate exciting and unexpected creative insights. As much of this work is formative and may not be widely known to attendees, substantial time will be held for panelist discussion and Q&A.

During this workshop, machinima production will be broken down and discussed at every step. This workshop will also include an opportunity for the audience to participate in the production of a brand new segment, filmed ON THE SPOT! So, whoever is ready, willing & able can play a role in the production.

The panels will be talking about the current uses of Second Life for healthcare/life sciences and any clinical studies within Second Life. In addition, there will be discussions regarding the benefits and challenges of using SL for studies and patient outreach initiatives – including software validation issues, FDA advertising/marketing issues, etc.

• the expression of real life religious values within Second Life
• the moderating of potentially volatile situations surrounding real life controversies/wars involving Jewish and Palestinian relations
• bringing people closer to their real life faith through Second Life
• the development of an active spiritual community
• the crossing from second life to real life media as being the representative in Second Life for the Jewish faith
• building and running a replica of a real life place that is sought out by people worldwide respectfully figuring out how to bring religion from real life into second life without alienating anyone of the Jewish and/or other faiths

Beth Odets started the SL Jewish Community in August 2006 with the building of the first SL Synagogue Temple Beit Israel, Second Life’s first Jewish site. She has appeared on NPR, Fox News, CNN, Jerusalem Post and hundreds of local and syndicated newspapers all over the world. She has also appeared in 2Life Magazine numerous times for her work in the Jewish Community.

Throughout the conference weekend, more than a dozen musicians, emcee’s and dj’s will be performing in real life as well as Second Life, with a Saturday night final (SL Musicians Ball) that will consist of over 6 hours of “Live” concerts in both San Francisco and Second Life. There will also be a number of tracks, panels, and workshops for musicians, venue owners/managers, and for those just generally interested in the “how-to’s” of the Second Life music world.

Along with Katydid Something, Lyndon Heart, Cylindrian Rutabaga, and Nasus Dumart, there are several volunteers assisting to pull together and “blow the roof off” of SLCC 2009! Keep an eye out for their specially designed 2009 SLCC Music Track posters, live and off-cite performances around the city of San Francisco, and upcoming press releases in local newspapers and magazines.