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In a conversation with Bryan Person last night, we were discussing why I was even setting up this web site, since I already devote a large amount of time to the Financial Aid Podcast. The essence of discussion was simply this:

Your show is you. You are not your show.

Your show is you. Unless you’re podcasting with someone else or a team, as in the case of the many couplecasts out there, or shows like Scriggity that have a team behind them, your show is you. You provide the visual, verbal, and textual personality behind your show, and without you, there really wouldn’t be a show, or certainly, the community that currently enjoys your show might have their appreciation be altered or decline without you. Some shows have made the transition successfully to new personalities, such as Rocketboom, but for the most part, if a host discontinues podcasting, the show simply fades away.

You are not your show. There are a multitude of topics I’d love to be able to bring to the Financial Aid Podcast if it were a personal show, but it’s not. I refrain, because of the divisiveness of it, from discussing politics in any great depth. Religion, taxes, belief systems of any kind, food, recipes, and so forth – all have little or nothing to do with financial aid except as analogies and metaphors, and all are things that at one point or another, I’ve wished I could post something about, but couldn’t because the Financial Aid Podcast wasn’t the right forum for it.

That’s what this site is. Don’t get me wrong – the Financial Aid Podcast will continue to be my flagship media focus in virtually every way, but when I want to go off topic, here is where I’ll be. For example, I think the George Foreman Grill is a lousy grill. It really is. What it’s good at is making grilled sandwiches, panini, etc., but as a grill, it has a hard time with anything thicker than a slice of bread.

The idea behind this site came from two sources – Mitch Joel for encouraging me to create a digital identity independent of the podcast, and C.C. Chapman, who already manages several distinct digital identities, and whose template I’m more or less copying.

I had an interesting thought today while attending Coffee with Crayon. If you haven’t gotten it already, I strongly recommend picking up a copy of The Timeless Way of Building, by Christopher Alexander. It’s a fantastic book, nearly legendary in some circles. It is to architecture what Gavin de Becker’s Gift of Fear is to self defense books, a landmark piece of work. One of the central tenets of Timeless Way of Building is this: space is defined by how it’s used. The patterns of human behavior are remarkably consistent across cultures, across languages, across boundaries of every kind. A space is defined by how we use it, which is in turn driven by how it makes us feel. A sunny window evokes a different emotion than a featureless wall.

Here’s the funny thing in Second Life. A lot of the conventions of design don’t necessarily apply, or are at least not optimized for the virtual world, but are still necessary. For example, couches and chairs aren’t necessarily required because avatars’ legs don’t get tired like our flesh and bone counterparts. Doors and walls actually impede flight.

So here’s the thought of the moment. Why put these things in? Because they’re First Life cues to help us understand what the space we’re in is supposed to do. For example, in this morning’s chat, we were discussing different spaces in-world, and why some spaces were more conducive to conversation than others. One of the immediate takeaways, architecturally speaking, is that big, open spaces where people can not only fly in, but see from a distance a gathering crowd, makes a difference for sociability. Visual cues from First Life, like sofas, couches, and chairs arranged in a pattern that is representative of what you’d find in a similar First Life space almost hijack our minds into believing that a space is less or more conducive to conversation. Crayon has done this brilliantly in the lobby of their headquarters.

If you’re in-world, what First Life cues combined with Second Life functionality have you created to maximize the familiarity and comfort of your space in-world?