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Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria

It’s not my typical topic for the blog, but as I happened to attend the press presentation of “Lord of the Rings Online Expansion: Mines of Moria” I want to tell about it. Well actually I want to concentrate on the fact that the expansion was presented at Soup City in the Hafencity in Hamburg. The nice part was that Soup City didn’t look like the name would make you think (whatever that makes you think) but was decorated with medieval stuff and 3 warriors guided the door. They were wearing swords, real chain mail, helmets and stuff. At the end of the presentations Jeffrey Steefel had a sword fight (watch it on youtube) with one of the warriors, which was pretty cool. I had a chat with him about character customization in general and a pink glow for my sword in particular.

Oh maybe I should say something about the game now right? The mines are one big world – not dungeon after dungeon after dungeon – and “real”, which means that every place you can see, really exists. That’s cool, especially as I tend to fall down everywhere. I’ll be in a lot of trouble – as I now can fall for a long time… anyway I think they are really proud of that themselfes too. There are two new classes the runekeeper and the warden, the level cap got increased from 50 to 60 and they’ve improved the weapon system. Now you can level your weapon, name it and add additional features. If you don’t use it anymore you don’t have to sell it or throw it away you can get back the pieces of which it was created and reuse them in other weapons. Well if you want to know details look it up on the MMORPG related blogs.

...Camp = Macbook

Last Weekend the ArtCamp Hamburg took place at the University. One thing was exactly like on every other “whatever”camp – except the Women’s BarCamp. Everybody had a Macbook. Does this picture look somehow familiar to you? Jup, business as usual. The big difference here was the kind of conversation. They tried to define art.

The ArtCamp wanted to deal with Art and web2.0. The attendees had very different backgrounds. From a “real” artist to marketeers who wanted to promote their product. This was cool, but on the other hand I think one of the big problems was, that due to this wide range of interests it was hard to find a common base.

So we heard about products like: MyGall.net or Crow’n'Crow, which thought they are totally ultra innovative, but if web2.0 is about sharing and collaboration they might be web1.3. But they both have a community! Which makes them web3.0. This brings me to the next problem we had. There seems to be even more confusion about words like webx.x and especially semantic web than I expected.

LOMU at ArtCamp

So before you attend a camp about Art and Web2.0 make sure you have some idea about what it might be, or post ahead that you need a basic introduction. Well it was the first Camp of it’s kind and I still enjoyed being there.

As nobody exactly knew what to expect and I doubt anybody got what he/ she expected we’ll be better prepared next time. Especially me because I have to admit that this time I talked and networked, but I didn’t help to get the whole Camp idea going. So as I liked the idea of the ArtCamp next time I’ll push to get what I was hoping for. Collaborating and sharing online in some big chaotic art project.

Lori presented Microsoft’s Photosynth and it’s actually really cool. My first try isn’t, but I’ll get there. I totally recommend LOMU – local organized multitude. If you happen to be in Hamburg check if there’s some happening organised by them at the time and join them. Or your own LOMU project in you hometown.

It’s was great and it can get a lot better too.

Addition: I just created a new and much better Photosync. Check it out. It’s my favourite area in Hamburg – where I used to live and go out.

OMD08 - Nach der Messe ist vor der Messe

The OMD08 is over and to me it has been the best so far. It seemed like there where some problems at the entrance at the beginning but Twitter saved me. And when I arrived the queue was gone.

I liked the 360° Concept. Which means they tried to cover every aspect of Online Marketing. But on the other hand it was too much. Next year they will split it in two. We’ll see how this works, as the decision wasn’t based on what would make the visitors happier.

As I live and work in Shanghai I was really excited to catch up with the German Online Marketing folks and even happier to see that I still know a lot of people. After the first day you had to decide weather to go to the expensive official OMD party (which proofed to be pretty boring year after year) or the Layer-Ads OMclub counter party, where the cool people are and everything is for free. Guess where I ended up…

Today included a lot of talking again but I have to admit I was also a bit in the “give-away-hunt-mood”. I’m really looking forward to next year. I posted some of my OMD pics on flickr and you can find a lot of OMD pics here (a picture of me too but you have to sign up first *sigh)

I’ve talked about Viscape and how they use Social Media as a Online Company. Paulo Coelho is not necessarily connected to Social Media, as a famous Author he could as well sit in his house and use an old school typewriter and the publisher would do the rest for him. Well maybe the publisher adds some helping/ typing fingers, but still it is Paulo Coelho and assistants (who are Paulo Coelho enough to write in his name).

Alex mit Paulo Coelho by Alex Wunschel alias Podpimp

- So I know him as a writer and read two of his books. He’s not my favourite but I can see why people love him.

I know his name which makes him pass my selective attention filter. I saw his articles or pictures of him frequently every now and then, but as I signed up on Seesmic he was there too. And this time an assistant would have earned an academy award for this impersonation. As I’m looking this up Mister Coelhos last activity was 9h ago a reply to Loic le Meur. Do I need to say more? I will just in case. :)

The next thing that surprised me was a picture the Podpimp alias Alex Wunschel (the best german Podcasts ever: “Der Blick über den Tellerrand” and “Pimp your brain”) posted on Flickr. As Alex used a Creative Commons Licence I’m allowed to use it here.

Finally I did the search for Coelhos online activities AND? He’s pretty much everywhere and he offers everything. It’s amazing. I’m really impressed. He has a website – of course, he has a blog – of course. He has a site where all his communities are listed and – as I mentioned before – he’s everywhere. He offers free texts, free postcards, conversation, answers question, …

I just signed in to Friendfeed to follow Coelho there and the last thing my contacts (Matthew Bennett) posted was: “Great Guardian article about Paulo Coelho and how he’s making the most of digital + print to create a new experience: http://ping.fm/axosL”. As there’s a journalism professor continuing the story I’ll stop here to reduce redundancy and pass over to the Guardian.