Robin Ashford's Posterous http://robinashford.posterous.com The primary focus of this blog is my work & explorations in Second Life posterous.com Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:10:00 -0800 IBM World Community Grid Live in Second Life http://robinashford.posterous.com/ibm-world-community-grid-presentation-live-no http://robinashford.posterous.com/ibm-world-community-grid-presentation-live-no

 

IBM World Community Grid Presentation Live Now in Second Life
Great group from IBM World Community Grid (WCG) presenting live here on the rooftop of the Karuna Resource Center on their FightAIDS@Home project.
The group in attendance was from around the globe...this is what Second Life does best. How else could people connect and share like this (don't even mention web conferencing programs as they simply do not compare-read on to understand).
After the short presentation and Q&A time, the IBM representative mentioned in my previous post on the World Community Grid, Bettina Cutler (Skippy Leafblower in SL) and I took all who were interested inside the Karuna Resource Center to tour the World Community Grid exhibit on the second floor. People appeared to enjoy the tour and Bettina somehow managed to get everyone together for a group snapshot. After our time in the IBM exhibit room an interested group headed out to the back deck to look over the Facing AIDS exhibit created for AIDS.gov, which I posted on earlier here.
It was an informative presentation and a good time. I look forward to continued collaboration with folks from the IBM WCG, many of whom had not been in Second Life before this World AIDS Day event.

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Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:15:00 -0800 IBM World Community Grid: FightAIDS@Home Presentation in Second Life for World AIDS DAY http://robinashford.posterous.com/ibm-world-community-grid-presents-fightaidsho http://robinashford.posterous.com/ibm-world-community-grid-presents-fightaidsho

As I mentioned in my previous post, December 1, 2009 is World AIDS Day 09 (WAD09). And as stated earlier, in Second Life (SL), as in other worlds, we are busy preparing Karuna Island for this major annual event. In this post I'll share about another Karuna partner, The IBM World Community Grid (WCG) and more specifically, The World Community Grid FightAIDS@Home project.

As stated on their site, "World Community Grid brings together people from across the globe who donate their idle computer time to create the largest volunteer computing grid benefiting humanity." 

The Karuna Resource Center houses a permanent World Community Grid FightAIDS@Home exhibit in an upstairs room of the Center that people are free to visit anytime. This was one of the first exhibits I put together (with Bettina, our IBM reps great inworld help) after accepting the National Library of Medicine grant funded position as Karuna Consumer Health Librarian. I strongly believe in this project and have participated by contributing my idle computer time since first learning about the wonderful work being done by this organization.

As part of the Karuna Island World AIDS Day events taking place in Second Life tomorrow, our IBM representative, Bettina Cutler, Program Manager, Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs, IBM Asia Pacific, has arranged to have an IBM WCG representative along with herself give a presentation on the rooftop of the Karuna Resource Center in Second Life from 3-3:30 PM PT (SLT). We will also have a short 3 min. FightAIDS@Home video available for viewing on the rooftop throughout the day.

I'm looking forward to this event and want to encourage anyone with a Second Life account to attend. This SLurl (Second Life URL) will take you directly to the grassy Karuna Resource Center rooftop. Of course Karuna Island is open to the public 24/7 so feel free to stop by anytime. Events will be going on throughout the day for World AIDS Day, and there are always interesting places to explore, fun activities, and information resources.

Update: A Linden Labs blog post with new video has just been published further highlighting Karuna World AIDS Day events.

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Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:03:00 -0800 World AIDS Day Planning Meeting for Karuna Island in Second Life-Nov 21, 2009 http://robinashford.posterous.com/world-aids-day-planning-meeting-for-karuna-is http://robinashford.posterous.com/world-aids-day-planning-meeting-for-karuna-is

 

World AIDS Day Planning Meeting for Karuna Island in Second Life-Nov 21, 2009
  Excellent planning meeting tonight led by Jena Ball (SL Jenaia Morane), Karuna Island Project Coordinator, and Marty Keltz (SL Marty Snowpaw) from The Virtual Worlds Story Project (TVWSP). 
In attendance were RTI reps, IBM World Community Grid rep and more, all meeting to plan the World AIDS Day (Dec 1, 2009) events on Karuna Island in Second Life. This will be one of the best World AIDS Day events yet with excellent speakers, incredible music, storytelling, and live streaming video. Learn more about the event here: http://www.tvwsp.com/  
(Wish real life meetings were more like this snapshot.)

Links of some of those involved at this meeting and with this National Library of Medicine HIV/AIDS funded project :


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Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:23:50 -0700 Snapshots from the Karuna Resource Center in Second Life-July 2009 http://robinashford.posterous.com/snapshots-from-the-karuna-resource-center-in http://robinashford.posterous.com/snapshots-from-the-karuna-resource-center-in

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Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:50:10 -0700 World Community Grid Karuna Resource Center FightAIDS@Home Display Sign http://robinashford.posterous.com/world-community-grid-karuna-resource-center-f-0 http://robinashford.posterous.com/world-community-grid-karuna-resource-center-f-0
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This sign points visitors to the upstairs display room (snapshots posted in prior post-click "back to blog" link above). When touched in Second Life, the sign provides visitors an option to visit a World Community Grid (WCG) page where anyone can choose to join the new Friends of Karuna Team. The upstairs displays also give out additional information links on the FightAIDS@Home research project.

What is FightAIDS@Home?"

FightAIDS@Home is the first biomedical distributed computing project ever launched. It is run by the Olson Laboratory at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. We provide free software that you download and install. The software uses your computer's idle cycles to assist fundamental research in discovering new drugs, building on our growing knowledge of the structural biology of AIDS. In addition, this research helps us study the mechanisms of multi-drug-resistance that the "super bugs" of HIV use to escape the current anti-AIDS drugs. And this research helps us create, test, refine, and share the tools and protocols that thousands of other labs use in their research against other diseases.

source: http://fightaidsathome.scripps.edu/


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Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:56:56 -0700 World Community Grid Karuna Resource Center FightAIDS@Home Display http://robinashford.posterous.com/world-community-grid-karuna-resource-center-f http://robinashford.posterous.com/world-community-grid-karuna-resource-center-f

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