I just came across a pretty interesting fellow by the name of Eric Gordon at Emerson College in Boston.
He’s interesting for two reasons
* He was struck by the use of backchannels at conferences, and now has a grant to develop a suite of tools for orchestrating public events. The project is called The Digital Lyceum — http://digitallyceum.org/
*He also has a project called Hub2 that is “a pilot initiative funded by the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) that employs emerging 3D virtual world technologies to enhance community engagement in the urban planning process. It is designed to work alongside the BRA’s current community outreach methods, while providing residents with a deeper engagement with the design process and greater accessibility to the ideas emerging from within the community.” See: http://hub2.org/ideas.html