Virtual Worlds -- Virtually?

Today I'm covering the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds conference here in Washington. Sure, it's being held just a few miles away from Nextgov's offices, but I decided to try attending the conference about virtual worlds virtually. I had high expectations for this experience -- after all, isn't Second Life, one of the more widely used platforms for virtual interaction, cool?

In the end, the "virtual" attendance component was just live streaming video (and, to be fair, the conference hadn't promised anything more), so I'll have to wait a little bit longer to create my Second Life avatar. But a minor technical glitch -- at a tech conference, no less -- did catch my ear and provide a few laughs.

I launched the conference webcast between two of this morning's sessions and discovered that the organizers had not turned off the stage microphones. Participants in the next panel were milling around on stage, and their conversations were being picked up for all to hear. A few snippets:

• "Aren't you gonna be spiffy?"
• "I wouldn't even make you sleep on the couch!"
• "We're starting at 10:10 whether people are in here or not."

Someone must have realized that this was happening, because the next break brought complete silence. Such are the perils of virtual life.