If the Second Life Community Convention held last weekend in San Francisco is any sort of barometer, the people who get involved in online worlds are as socially adept and gregarious as anyone else.

The convention brought hundreds of Second Life residents together in person for a few days of panel presentations, field trips and parties. One of those panels was about sex, and I had the opportunity to kick it off with the five-minute version of my "how to have great cybersex" workshop.

Then Rhiannon Chatnoir revealed the truth about weddings and marriage within Second Life, setting the stage for Valadeza Anubis to discuss the benefits and dangers of exploring dominant and submissive play in-world.

If you?ve had avatar sex in Second Life, you probably have Stroker Serpentine of Strokerz Toys to thank. Stroker, famous for creating avatar genitals and sex animations and other complex in-world sex tech, accepted the microphone in his turn and began simply, "My name is Stroker Serpentine, and I am a pervert." The audience roared its approval.

Finally, qDot Bunnyhug, who is known outside of Second Life as robotics engineer and "intimate interfaces" blogger Kyle Machulis, presented the first open-source interface for controlling sex toys from within the virtual world. (Check out a demonstration of the interface here.)

"I created the first Second Life sex-toy interface in July of last year and had it running within three days of creating my account," qDot says. "Actually, it?s why I started my Second Life account."

He describes that first attempt as "really bad," and says it limited you to changing the vibrator?s speed just once per second, which resulted in a stuttering effect in the vibrations on the other end. "You could update the values once per second, and there were ways to smooth the transition between the power levels, but it still didn?t feel quite right," he says.

Yet he had proven to himself (and to horny geeks around the world) that the concept was viable.