For the last few years I’ve been talking about the emergence of Second Life - to quote my friends at Rabble.ca, it is a rich, virtual online world populated with 1.2 million citizens worldwide. Everything, including non-profit storefronts, libraries, campuses, and yes, nightclubs and strip joints, is built by the folks who live a second life online.

But Second Life is not something that can adequately explained to anyone on the outside – you have to experience it for yourself. I did just that last night when I dropped by the Rabble.ca treehouse last night to talk about Wikinomics. It was really an awesome event.

It was so much like reality in many ways, and so much better in others (for example, I may look slightly younger in my Second Life than my first one). As you can see in the pictures, I did my presentation from a chair while others gathered in the gallery around me. My slides were on the screen behind me, and the discussion was both educational and entertaining. It came up that my wife was the chair of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and we spontaneously decided to brainstorm how to get them on Second Life – and I have a lot of venue offers for where this could take place. Like most good events it went longer than expected, the mingling after was fabulous, and I even threw in a little virtual book signing in the end.

But words really can’t do it justice – you have to go there and see it for yourself. Better yet, you can go there, create something, and have others come experience it with you.

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