In the words of the organizers:

In modern Sweden, Midsummer’s Eve is celebrated on the second to last Friday and in June. It is arguably the most important holiday of the year, and one of the most uniquely Swedish in the way it is celebrated. The main celebrations take place on the Friday, and the traditional events include raising and dancing around a huge maypole. One typical dance is the so called “frog dance”. Before the maypole is raised, greens and flowers are collected and used to cover the entire pole.

Sounds a bit odd huh? Well it is very odd indeed and now you got the chance to celebrate this in Second Life. Right now, in front of the SecondHouse of Sweden you will find a traditional Swedish outdoor dance floor, a maypole, market booths and much more.

Tina (PetGirl) Bergman, Ewa Aska and Jesper Printz are organizing this event for everyone in Second Life.

The celebration starts at 01.00 PM SLT and continues through the whole magical Swedish Midsummer Eve night, a night when the sun doesn’t set.

Ikaros String (DJ ) starts the party incl ring dances at 1 PM (22.00 CET) – 2 PM (23.00 CET)
Bara Johnson – a fantastic Swedish live artist recongnised from both RL and SL will play at 2 PM (23.00 CET) – 2.30 PM (23.30 CET
Noma Falta is a musician playing blues and soulful rock in virtual worlds and In-person around the globe. 2.30 PM (23.30 CET) – 3 PM (24.00 CET)
Jesper will live dj right after Noma 3 PM (24.00 CET) ’til late.

Hearty Welcome to Midsummer’s Eve in Second Life!

Tina, Ewa & Jesper

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Swedish%20Institute/71/212/30

I thought it appropriate to comment on the fact that the blog hasn’t been updated in a while. Stefan Geens, a.k.a. Belmeloro DiPrima, who used to run this blog has moved on to work on a Chinese version of www.sweden.se. He is still present in Second Life and at the SHoS though, just not responsible for organizing events and other activities.

Coinciding with Stefan’s focus on other tasks, we also had to decrease our presence in the form of SHoS guides. And as you all know, people brings more people (in RL as well as SL), and consequently, less people brings less people.

As the Second Life hype has subsided, we have worked harder to find Swedish partners interested in doing SL events, and also to achieve the level of public (and media) attention that we require in most of our activities on and off the web. Looking back the past year, we feel that the Virtu-Real installations, the US election event, the RL/SL E-learning seminar, the Pride festival and the Swedish national day celebrations – to mention a few – where all good examples of such collaborations.

Stay tuned for news about an event that will take place soon at the Second House of Sweden.

Except for some lag and crash problems the Lucia celebrations of 2008 turned out to be a great success.

Or let me rephrase that: Because the Lucia celebrations turned out to be a great success, we had to deal with lag and crashes. Having events in SL can sometimes be a dual-natured experience, since the popularity of the event (read “too many people”) will cause instability problems for the sim and its visitors. This time, not even the blue dragon Linden who showed up could do something about the lag issues (he was jokingly begged for help by some of the visitors). However, it was nice to see that the event was so popular that we could barely fit everyone.

This year’s Lucia, PetgirlBergman, fainting before the big performance. She was back on her feet in time for her grand entrance though.

We would like to thank Petgirl Bergman (who also wore the Lucia crown for the evening) and the Swedish People in Second Life for all their work and congratulate them on such a successful execution. Myself (Nex Canning) and my colleague Ylva Yedmore were able to focus on enjoying the performances and the celebrations, with no griefers or other mischief to take care of. Thank you also to all of you who showed up to enjoy the celebrations into the early morning of the 13th. (Also, thank you Tina for the pics as my computer didn’t properly render the Lucia outfits, or much else for that matter.)

Send a short email to tokyo@virtu-real.net. Leave the subject line empty. In the body, write a message of up to 30 characters.

Within seconds of sending it, the message starts raining out of the sky at the Virtu-real installation at the Second House of Sweden, like so:

Who gets to see your message? Anyone visiting the installation in Second Life at that time, but also visitors to the Swedish Embassy in Tokyo, where two screens on either ends of a real-life installation look into the virtual space in real time.

In the Second Life part of the installation, there is also a screen that lets you see into the real-life embassy in Tokyo. As I was writing this article, some schoolgirls in Tokyo had discovered that if they danced in front of one side of the installation and then dashed to the other side, they could see themselves dancing on the screen inside Second Life, due to the 10-second lag for buffering. They were having a grand time, doing this over and over again.

In the meantime, here are some screenshots to whet your appetite:

After last year’s huge success, Lucia visits Second Life again in 2008!

Every year on December 13, Santa Lucia arrives in Sweden to announce the Christmas season. This year, she will once again visit Second Life as well – and the festivities start Friday evening, December 12.

The Lucia celebration features a procession led by a woman representing Saint Lucia, who — dressed in white robes, with a headdress of candles — repels the darkness with a halo of light. The procession is accompanied by the singing of traditional Swedish songs.

The Lucia event in Second Life gives participants an opportunity to meet a real Swedish Lucia, listen to her entourage of singers, see a Christmas tree, visit Santa, receive Swedish freebie gifts, and dance to Swedish and international music, including live performances.

By tradition, the identity of this year’s Lucia is a well-protected secret until the December 12.

When: The procession will be held twice: First, on December 12, 1pm Second Life time (4pm New York time, 10pm Stockholm time); the procession is then repeated four hours later at 5pm SLT (8pm in NYC, 2am in Stockholm on 13 December)
Where: Second House of Sweden, on the Swedish Institute sim

http://slurl.com/secondlife/swedish%20institute/70/212/30

Organizers of this year’s Lucia event in Second Life are Ika Cioc, Ewa Aska, Charlotte Rhino, Belze Fraker, Cur Waydelich and producer Tina (PetGirl) Bergman.

All residents of Second Life are very welcome to attend.

Quality of Life – the Design of Swedish Innovations, December 8, 2008 – January 14, 2009
Swedish Embassy, Tokyo, Japan, and Second House of Sweden, Swedish Institute Sim, Second Life

Tokyo, Japan – With their latest new media architecture installation, architects Daiki Kobayashi and Michael Matèrn, continue to stretch the boundries between real and virtual space. They will be part of “Quality of Life – the Design of Swedish Innovations”, an exhibition at the Swedish Embassy in Tokyo, opening on December 8.

The young Swedish-Japanese duo, known by their alter egos of Mr Kobayashi & Mr Matèrn, together form the architecture firm studio un/real. They work together with +TEAM, a creative platform for architects, designers and other creatives.

“We really try to give the visitors an experience of a unique atmosphere of being in between the hard, vector- produced digital computer world and our soft and very tactile DNA-based everyday life,” says Kobayashi, the Japanese half of studio un/real.

The site specific installation, the second of four commissioned by the Swedish Institute, a public agency promoting Sweden abroad, plays with the perception of 2D and 3D space. Through an interface of body movements and mobile phones, visitors can interact in a space in between the real and the virtual.

“The Virtu-Real concept is basically about trying to merge virtual and real life in a spatial way. When you physically move in real life, you also move in relation to the virtual world, thus creating a new kind of spatial interface,” explains Matèrn, the Swedish half of studio un/real. By using the traditional methods of perspective painting as a textile 3D collage (instead of on a flat canvas plane), it is the inevitable continuation of concepts such as Murakami’s Superflat ideas and the post-modern database.

This 3D-goes-2D surface is then hardwired into an online virtual world. As visitors become the ‘Final Artist’, using both digital and analog tools and codes, the installation reassembles the whole event into a representation of the ultimate database: Virtu-Real.

Although only an addition to an existing exhibition space in the Swedish embassy in Tokyo, the installation creates a new way to interact with the virtual online world of Second Life and its users. By walking around this 4 x 14 meter interactive textile collage, visitors can not only look into, but actually through the online virtual space and back into the real embassy again.

Visitors can also send text messages from their mobile phones into the virtual continuation of this space and communicate with exhibition visitors inside Second Life, who can text back into real space. The messages sent into Second Life will be displayed as 3D objects in the virtual world, at the same time the text messages sent from inside Second Life will be projected onto the surface of the installation in the embassy. Video streaming will also allow visitors in both Second Life and the real-life embassy to see each other. With the use of traditional Scandinavian arts and crafts material, such as felt and paper, for the real life exhibition space addition, studio un/real + TEAM designed, engineered and constructed the installation on site in a true database spirit.

Press photos available for download as of December 8 at: www.studiounreal.com/tokyo
(preview 3D-rendering available for download as of now at: www.studiounreal.com/preview)

Sponsor: Kvadrat Sanden
For more information about the members of +TEAM, see: www.studiounreal.com/TEAM
Press contact: Mr Matèrn
Email: mrmatern@studiounreal.com
Phone: +46 (0)70 5511 441
www.studiounreal.com

Press contact – Japan only: Mr Kobayashi
Email: mrkobayashi@studiounreal.com
Phone: +81 909 3535 682
www.studiounreal.com

In Second Life, Second House of Sweden has just been given a similar function. With the help of Second Lifer Tina Dahl (thanks for the map and the megaprims!) and the fact that you can now render HTML with Javascript in Second Life, we’ve added a Google Map of state electoral results, updated live as results come in, to the facade of our virtual building:

So if you feel the need to celebrate (or commiserate) virtually with friends around the globe as the next president of the US is chosen tonight, feel free to use the facilities of Second House of Sweden:-)

Update: It worked! Google’s KML geospatial markup language loads well on web pages rendered in Second Life:

Svarga, a classic Second Life fantasy, with really high build quality. Jump into the buggy for a guided tour, or fly around yourself.

Sculpted Earth, by Magnuz, a Swedish SL developer. Walk around a model of Earth with magnified height data. Walk into the globe for more.

3D Map of Sweden, also by Magnuz. Walk around it for different perspectives. Click the map to get a menu of options.

Sistine Chapel at Vassar College: At this university’s sim, find the recreation of the Sistine Chapel nearby.

David Rumsey Maps: The world’s largest map collection shown in 3D. Fly across the landscape and into the globes for more.

The International Spaceflight Museum is the only place anywhere where you can compare relative sizes of rockets. Also check out the Lunar Lander module, and the Science on a Sphere video.

Virtual Briefing Hub: Turn on video, click on some of the available buttons, and watch the map appear.

Second Sweden, the largest Swedish presence in Second Life. Run around Gamla Stan, or find the skyscraper of the Swedish state real-estate company HSB.

Kamimo Island, a collaborate e-learning experiment that includes Sweden’s university of Kalmar. Try the sandbox if you want to have a go at building something yourself. Don’t worry, you can’t do anything wrong:-)

Greenies! Buy a decoder ring (L$99) at the entrance with your Linden Dollars to access this sim. One of my favorite sims.

Lauk’s Nest, where you can enjoy the view or try some of the instruments. This works best when you have some friends with you.

Last, but not least, the Second House of Sweden. Welcome to Sweden’s official representation to Second Life. Check out the exhibitions, but don’t miss the Raoull Wallenberg immersive radio play at the back of the embassy.

These places are a subjective choice, of course; there are many more impressive Second Life destinations, and the above list is not meant to be a “best of”, but I do think it gives a good idea of what Second Life can be used for. If you have your own favorite places that you think are must-see, do add them in the comments.

The topic is Bernard Schlink’s The Reader, which you will be able to discuss in English, Swedish, German, Spanish, Italian or Portuguese.

When: Meet at 2pm CET (Central European time), September 26, for an hour-long conversation.

“LiteraTour” is a Grundtvig project within the EU “Programme for Lifelong Learning”. Participants are adult learners and staff in language schools and libraries in Belgium, Sweden, Germany, Spain and Greece.

The two main speakers were D.I. von Briesen, discussing the integration of Moodle and Second Life for elearning (presentation), and Angele Giuliano discussing tips and tricks for creating a successful elearning experience (presentation). Several web meeting tools were also demoed, including Adobe Acrobat Connect, the free DimDim and WiZiQ.

Thanks to everyone who participated.

Just a quick reminder: We’ll be live streaming the eLearning 2.0 Conference on Friday September 5 from Stockholm into the Second House of Sweden auditorium. The sessions start at 9am and will finish around 6pm, Stockholm time (midnight to 9am, Second Life time).

eLearning 2.0 is being organized by the Swedish Association for Information Specialists (SFIS) and will be conducted in English.

Here’s what the schedule looks like:

Friday, September 5
8:30am: Registration. Coffee and sandwich.
9:00am: Introduction to eLearning 2.0
9:15am: Conference tool kit: Second life, Jaiku, Facebook
9:45am: Web Conferencing Tools – overview for education and effective meetings (Mats Brenner, NSHU)
10:00am: The Best of Both Worlds! Moodle + Second Life = Sloodle (D.I. von Briesen)
12:00pm: lunch
1:00pm: Let’s Web Conference! (Part 1) Angele GIULIANO. Tips and tricks for successful web conferencing
2:00pm: Adobe Connect (Dan Lidholm, WeZupport)
2:20pm: DimDim (Sundar Subramanian, Co-Founder of DimDim and Director of Business Development)
2:40pm: WiZiQ – A free virtual classroom tool that needs no downloads! (Marc Cruthers)
3:00pm: Coffee & Visit to Kista Science Tower
3:30pm: Let’s Web Conference! (Part 2) Tips and tricks for successful web conferencing
4:30pm: Conclusions / end discussion / evaluation

I’ll be moderating in Second Life, if the need arises, making sure that participants in Second Life can take part by asking questions to the real-life moderator. It will be a laid-back affair, and take place all day long, so drop in and take a look or spend a longer time on those sessions you’re interested in. Alas, the only food and drinks you’ll get during breaks at the Second House of Sweden will be virtual:-)