Ivan's musings, a blog by Ivan Sokolov

Becoming more real in this virtual world

This post is about how to add a face and a display name to your presence inside Aliveworld and why. 

If you click on "Edit Profile" at the top right of the screen, you will find a series of pages to add information about yourself, all of which is optional. The first page to open is "About" where you can give yourself a display name. This will replace your username that otherwise shows up in all the people lists and wherever you appear on the site. Some share their real names, some use pseudonyms and some don't use this feature and stick with their user name. Having added a display name, click on the "Site Options" and check the radio button for "Enable Display Name".

On the "Avatar" page, you can upload a picture or yourself or representing yourself in some way. Ideally pictures should be 80 pixels by 80 pixels, but you can upload almost any shape and size up to 312px by 387 px and the system will resize for you. 

My personal take on why is that it is easier to relate to a face with a name than to just an unusual username. This site is rather different from the many anonymous social networking sites on the web. It is a place to get and give support with real life changes and to benefit in both directions requires an element of confidence and trust in other people, both of which comes more easily if the other people feel real to us rather than fictitiousSmile

 
Published Mar 12 2008, 10:09 PM by Ivan Sokolov

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Comments

 

Aliveworld Members Blog said:

When you're active in Aliveworld, being able to find others you can talk to about the changes you're

March 17, 2008 10:42 AM

About Ivan Sokolov

I have been involved in change management in some form for thirty years, starting out in family counselling and communications skills training. For a while I combined co-Directing (with my wife) the UK's first major parent education charity with training members of the helping professionals in communication skills. I was a founding member of the Community Building in Britain group that introduced the Scott Peck Community Building workshop model to the UK and was one of the first trained facilitators for those events in the UK in the early 90s. I was a partner in two successful organisation change consultancies during the 90s, was an early pioneer at taking spirituality into business management, as well as developing effective use of collaborative development workshop models in organisations large and small. I balanced corporate consulting with consulting to voluntary organisations and community groups, including facilitating large scale processes such as Future Search conferences and Open Space events. I have trained extensively in Client centered counselling and consulting, NLP, Gestalt psychotherapy and various models of group dymanics. I have a MSc in Change Agent Skills and Strategies from the University of Surrey. I have written extensively on various aspects of change, development and communications over the years and been involved in the publication of books and magazines both in print and online. I emigrated to New Zealand in 2000 with my Kiwi wife and 3rd son, leaving behind two grown up sons by my first marriage. I have been involved in Aliveworld since shortly after its inception and have worked full-time at bringing it to fruition for five and a half years.