Some time ago I was invited to a Virtual Worlds -workshop in Denmark, to which I in fact attended a couple of weeks ago. The workshop was organized by the Virtual Worlds research group at Roskilde University (http://worlds.ruc.dk/) and the workshop gathered experts on virtual worlds from all over the world. It was a very productive and interesting workshop. Great opportunity for meeting old friends, networking and meeting others interested in virtual worlds. There were also some very interesting keynotes (that are available at http://nordicworlds.net/?p=437).

What was interesting and almost surprising was to realize how much is being done in Scandinavia. A lot of interesting research projects are being done or are about to start in especially Denmark, Sweden and Finland. The problem (as often with research in general) is that we really don’t know what the others are doing. We should have more collaboration and joined meetings to discuss research and to get to know each other.

This problem, or this challenge, led to the idea that we should and we will organize meetings in world and take turns in organizing. The first meeting will be organized by myself on EduFinland islands at the end of summer. The goal is to gather researchers from Scandinavia to meet, network and learn more about what we all are doing. More information about the meeting will be posted here and on http://edufinland.fi in good time before the meeting.

I was invited to Lisbon, Portugal, to give a talk about Library 2.0 and virtual worlds at the “Videojogos e Web 2.0: Desafios para a formação dos bibliotecários” conference that was arranged by the Goethe-institute in Lisbon on May 20th. It was a very interesting conference with some international speakers (and simultanous translation ). It was also very interesting to hear about Library 2.0 in Portugal. It seems that there is great interest towards the “phenomenon” but that not much has been done yet, as was the situation in Finland a very short time ago. Currently in Finland it seems that there are many pilots on the way, however, it may be too early to say anything about the experiences and results from these first attempts to enter the world of Library 2.0. I also have a feeling that we are in Finland moving from Library 2.0 back to “Library”, as tools on the social web are becoming well-known tools, part of the every-day work.

While in Lisbon I also managed to have a quick stroll around the beautiful city of Lisbon.

You’ll find more photos here.

PS. More about Realidades Virtuais (the project/initiative at Goethe institut that organized the conference) at: http://virtual-realidade.jogos.sapo.pt/