Last week the VWBPE team announced major news on the blog that the CloudParty platform will no longer be part of VWBPE 2014 onwards. This year the conference will be held from 9th to 12th April 2014 without CloudParty. As many know already Yahoo have acquired CloudParty and the service will shut down on 21st February 2014.
It’s not surprising to hear this because as one door closes another door opens for another platform to be part of the VWBPE conference. Other possibilities could be Twinity, There.com, Onverse, World of Warcraft, Active Worlds or Kaneva etc.
It is with regret that one of the key platforms VWBPE has been using as a principal venue, CloudParty, has been recently bought out by Yahoo and is now due to close (see link). While this potentially means wonderful things for the people at CloudParty and their future success, for the rest of us, we now need to pick up and move forward. This, too, is part of best practices. Learning to let go and to move on. How to bear the burden of attachment to friends, dedication to projects, and a desire for improvement, which now will need to transform to new states of being.
For the VWBPE Conference, this means we will no longer have a CloudParty track as the platform will be taken down prior to our April conference dates. People who have submitted proposals for this platform will be contacted to make other arrangements. But in the face of loss comes the face of opportunity to make new connections. To rethink the way we do things. To be reborn from the ashes and hopefully soar higher than ever before.
In this conference, we want to hear your stories on how you have addressed the transition from CloudParty to other platforms. To show us how we can extend the reach of educators to imagine a world without boundaries, without CloudParty. To reach out beyond self-imposed constraints and open the doors to new ways of thinking, imagining, expression, and building.
Upcoming Dates for VWBPE 2014
- Registration opens: 1st February
- Call for Volunteers: 15th February
- Acceptance Letters: 15th February
- VWBPE 2014 opens: 9th April
- VWBPE 2014 ends: 12th April
Will you be applying or attending this year ? Please comment and share your views!
Daniel Voyager 
Daniel, hello from Hamburg! Thanks for the heads up. I did not know New There was there, and taking registrations. Have you been There, recently? Or in Twinity?
I thought, both of them were long gone. But I also learnt from your post that Twinity is still around. At least their registration web site is! I tried to get in, but it’s only PC, and I am on Mac. So I did not get beyond choosing an avatar.
One of your wonderful excursion reports would be much appreciated!
Looking forward!
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Thanks, Hanno and hello to Hamburg! 🙂
I logged into There, Twinity, Cloud Party and Active Worlds today. See my snapshots here > http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielvoyager/
It’s like a ghost town on all the virtual worlds I’ve logged into today (see above).
There.com requires a subscription for either a trail period and monthly basis. It used to be free in the past.
Twinity is still very popular today and there are many great Real Life locations to visit. There is a rewards system, events and people to meet. It’s only PC only and not MAC which is bad.
Cloud Party there are loads of places to visit but people wise its empty mostly. It’s closing next month which is a shame.
Active Worlds has revamped their new user experience but it takes to load anything.
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