Reality Enters Virtual World

The event was set to coincide with a speech from outgoing U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who was prepared to speak in New York about how the international community can help stop the terror and genocide in Darfur. The Second Life event was set to educate and inform residents about the struggle in Sudan and what could be done to end the crisis.

Bill Lichtenstein is founder and president of Lichtenstein Creative Media. A former producer for ABC News 20/20, World News Tonight and Nightline, he said shortly after the fire that the emergency could be drawn as a parallel in Second Life.

"Because of the fire, we were unable to attend the event," Lichtenstein said. "Everything was disrupted. It's such an aberration for this to have happened. It was like an event in real life where someone couldn't make it because of an emergency."

In the real world, photographs of Darfur, taken by Haviv, were projected onto one side of the Holocaust Museum during Thanksgiving week. The replication of this in Second Life includes those same photos, as well as video of the real-life event screening. Residents of Second Life were still welcome to visit the virtual Museum and experience the photos and video footage until the yet-to-be rescheduled launch. Haviv and Heffernan also fielded questions from attendees about the Darfur conflict for nearly an hour.