john-norris.net

I am doing a bit of research on diabetes education and wanted to quickly check in with some folks about their experiences. This isn’t what the research is about, but I thought they could offer a few pointers of what to look for.

My first thought was Second Life, so I went in-world. There was no sim that I could find where folks with this issue would be hanging out, although I did find the SL Diabetes Support group’s info pretty easily. I also stumbled upon some informational posters set up on Health Info Island. They were pretty simple, tho nicely done, and had info on the support group. However, I ended up not finding anyone that I could chat to live.

So back to the web, a bit of searching and I find Diabetic-Talk. I end up getting a lot of live help on good ol’ IRC.

Why? I’m guessing that IRC has been around for a long time, doesn’t take much PC resources, has a brief (but can be somewhat stiff) learning curve, simple/free to set up on a server, and just works. I’m guessing that in the future we’ll find this to be true in the virtual worlds, but not quite yet.