I sent the following e-mail to WTA-talk with the subject "TransVision 06 virtual avenues". If you know of any other mailing lists which would be appropriate for it, go ahead and spread the thing.

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As a reminder to all - TransVision 06 is rapidly drawing close. Held on August 17-19, some of the most important speakers of the transhumanist scene will be coming together to hold presentations on varying subjects. This is an event you don't want to miss - and since not many of you have a chance to come to Finland to join it in flesh, here's a recap of the ways you can participate virtually.

This year the theme is Emerging Technologies of Human Enhancement and we'll be looking at recent and ongoing technological developments and discussing associated ethical and philosophical questions. Some of our speakers are William Sims Bainbridge, Aubrey de Grey, Nick Bostrom, James Hughes and Natasha Vita-More.
WEBCAST. There will be an online streaming video directly from the conference. Watch each of the speakers in real time! Detailed instructions on this can be found at http://www.transhumanismi.org/tv06/stream.php . You can also find the conference program at http://www.transhumanismi.org/tv06/program.php ; it's given in Finnish time, UTC+3.

STATIC WEBCAST. In case you miss your favorite presentation or otherwise can't access the live stream. As time allows, saved video files will be made available for regular HTTP download shortly after the presentations. Other extra material, like slideshow files from the speeches, will also be made available on the TransVision website. For more information on this, watch http://www.transhumanismi.org/tv06/virtua.php .

VIRTUAL DISCUSSION. There are two ways to discuss the event in real time together with other people from around the world. The official TransVision IRC channel is #transvision at IRCNet, accessible through an IRC client or alternatively through the webchat interface at http://webchat.xs4all.nl/index.php . The IRC room will also share its chat space with an area in the Second Life virtual environment - anything said in either medium will also be relayed to the other. The Second Life environment can be found by booting up the SL client (download one at http://www.secondlife.com ), finding the "uvvy" region at its map and teleporting there. SL will have some extra features that the IRC space won't, including some slideshows and a possibility to watch the streaming video from there.

Regardless of the program used to access the chat space, it will be a fun way to follow and discuss the event in real time. People in the chat can submit questions to any of the speakers in the real event and have them relayed onwards, and any new files that get uploaded to the site will be announced to the chat ASAP. See http://www.uvvy.com/index.php/TransVision06_in_SL and http://www.transhumanismi.org/tv06/virtua.php for chat details.

WEBLOG. As announced earlier, http://community.livejournal.com/transvision06/ is TransVision's official weblog community. Information about the conference gets posted there, and we are encouraging all participants to post their TV experiences there afterwards. If you want to read detailed event reports after the fact, this is the place.