So I’m sitting here in Aspen getting ready to fly back to San Francisco and just thinking about the event. Overall, I was blown away by how well it all worked and people really seemed to enjoy themselves. Going into it, we were pretty nervous because (as Mark Wallace said to me), “comedy is such a high bandwidth experience. With the impending release of realtime voice capabilities in Second Life (and the inevitable debate about that), I thought I’d jot some thoughts about doing comedy in SL.

The general format of the event was as follows:

1.  People arrived and we had drinks and hung out for about 15 minutes.

2.  Hyla Matthews, the standup comedian, welcomed the crowd, did about 5 minutes of schtick and then introduced some videos of comedians from the Festival in Aspen

3.  Hyla did more schtick, this time walking into the audience for some live interraction.  Intro to more videos, this time selections from the film festival component ofthe Aspen Event.

4.  More schtick, this time focusing on Second Life jokes, which seemed to work really well.  Intro final videos from This Just In.

The toughest thing, by far, was the 17 second delay from when Hyla said something on the Skype call and when it was heard in Second Life.¬† Hyla really struggled with this — trying t get straight who was haring what and when.¬† In so many ways, comedy is about split second reactions and when the audience said something in chat, a 17.5 second reaction just doesn’t quite feel split second.¬† Behind the scenes, we did a lot of work to make this easier for Hyla and less apparent to the audience.

The other thing we noticed was that without the immediate feedback from the audience, Hyla couldn’t tell whether people were laughing or she was getting “crickets”.¬† One great idea that came up was in the future to have Laugh-Meters that the audience¬† could click to register overall amusement.

In general this was an amazingly enjoyable and eye-opening experience.  It also makes me realize just how game-changing the addition of real-time voice will be for day-to-day interraction, collaboration and work, and for entertainment.

This just went out in Second Life to members of our Inside Millions of Us Group (open enrollment, btw). It’s the announcement of a very cool event we’re putting on live this Thursday March 1st at 2PM SLT with HBO from the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival.

“Pack your skis, put on your parka, and join us for some side splitting laughter as HBO and Millions of Us present the Second Life premier of the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival brought to you by HBO.

Each year, with a mission of discovery, innovation and tribute, the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival presents cutting-edge new talent to the industry and features appearances and performances by some of the biggest stars in comedy at the height of ski season in Aspen, Colorado.

Please join us for an exclusive roundup of entertainment including live broadcast from Aspen, Colorado and footage from the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. The event will be hosted in HBO’s Virtual Comedy House, near the snow-capped mountains of Playground Island.”

The event will be hosted by the hilarious Hyla Matthews of This Just In, appearing as an avatar and presenting a variety of exclusive material from the festival.

Event starts at 2 PM SLT on Thursday, March 1st. Please IM Baccara Millionsofus to RSVP or email baccararhodes@gmail.com

Here’s a slurl.

The build is by Versu Millionsofus and it’s great. Also, this was PM Eliana Sur’s first gig as an MoU’er. She came from Wired, where she was one of the mad geniuses behind NextFest and she rocks. Well done Eliana, Versu and team!