Development of a Social Proxy for Support the Meetings in Second Life

This paper describes the process of developing an application called Social Proxy, including specification, implementation and programming model. Social Proxy is a minimalist view of the presence and activities of participants in online interactions[2]. The application was developed to support collaborative meetings in Second Life, 3D collaborative virtual environment chosen as the setting for this work. Our Social Proxy is called SP HUD, a component that provides a third person view allowing a clearer view of the group´s activities. Thus, we are able to see all the avatars present in the shared space and know the interaction forms of each participant. Social Proxy is a component that is part of a larger project and this paper we present the activities performed, the challenges encountered and preliminary results.