Everyone knows Maxito Ricardo (real life: Tom Peters).  He’s the person behind the scenes – and sometime in front of the scenes – in so very many of the conferences, programs and events in SL.  No wonder he was Volunteer of the Month in April 2010.

Ricardo became involved in SL through Lori Bell.  She sent a message to him saying that he had to get involved.  He became active in SL at the organizational level, and had meetings and discussions about what’s possible in SL with library services.  He attended a building workshop and decided he wasn’t made out to be a builder.  Programming turned out to be his strong suit.

Conferences are what he’s most proud of.  He does a lot of web conferencing in real life.   Virtual world programming is more like real-life conferences, but it’s very labor intensive and the fact that there’s a limit to avs on any sim is a real problem.  He has found that he and others may do a great deal of work to put a conference together, and yet only 75 people can attend.

He sees future meetings as a combination – you decide how you want to participate.  He is encouraged by the number of combo events (programs that take place in both SL and real life), and that people get it; the different groups bond.
Ricardo has been hired to do grant evaluations for Second Life proposals.  He does events ranging from small book discussions, project evaluation, conferences, all the way to planning the launch of Smarter Money Island.  In that effort, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FInRA) has partnered with ALA to raise financial literacy of Americans.  It has provided funding to create an island in SL that will teach young adults about financial literacy, as one part of a grant that attempts to accomplish the same results in the real world.

SL meshes nicely with Ricardo’s ‘day’ job.  TAP Information Services is his firm.  He established it in 2003, but started with SL in 2005.

As an academic librarian, prior to founding TAP Information Services, he worked for the University of  Missouri Kansas City, Mankato State University in Minnesota, and other academic research libraries.

He suggests that “Virtual worlds have a lot potential.  They seem to be going through a fallow period between initial enthusiasm and broad acceptance at the moment.  Who knows if Second Life will be maintained; someone else may come along.”  But meanwhile, we’re learning a great deal from the kind of programming and conference resources that Ricardo is giving to the SL community.