The Virtual Worlds Research Discussion Group kicks off its weekly seminars for 2009 on Monday 19th Jan (Tuesday 20th in Australia/Pacific) with a presentation by Don Wen titled 'A study of Avatar Personalization Systems in Three Virtual Worlds'. This week's presenter Ming-Hui 'Don' Wen is a researcher at the National Chiao-Tung University, Taiwan. During 2008 he visited PARC (Palo Alto Research Centre), California, where he worked with Nic Ducheneaut and Nick Yee to survey attitudes to avatar customization. Information about Don can be found at http://www.donwen.info . A paper about the research will be presented later this year at CHI, Boston (www.CHI2009.org). Abstract In virtual worlds, users project themselves into the environment via a virtual body (avatar) which they control and whose appearance is often customizable. However, considering the prevalence of this form of embodiment, there is a surprising lack of data about how and why users customize their avatar, as well as how easy and satisfying the existing avatar creation tools are. In this paper, we report on a study investigating these issues through a questionnaire administered to more than a hundred users of three virtual worlds offering widely different avatar creation and customization systems (Maple Story, World of Warcraft, and Second Life). We illustrate the often-surprising choices users make when creating their digital representation and discuss the impact of our findings for the design of future avatar creation systems. Date/time/place Seminars are held weekly at alternate locations - Monash Island 50/132/72 (slurl http://tinyurl.com/5ocz8a) and Meadowbrook 72/502/22. Don’s meeting will take place at the Monash site. Meetings are usually on Monday at 2pm (Second Life time, west coast USA). This is Monday night in Europe and Tuesday morning in Australasia and the Pacific. A timezone converter can be found at http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html About the VWRDG seminar series The Virtual Worlds Research Discussion Group meets in Second Life to present and discuss research about virtual worlds. It is organized by Greg Wadley (Uni of Melbourne), Deb McCormick (Monash Uni) and, Sabine Lawless-Reljic (San Diego State). Usually we follow a seminar format: research presentation followed by audience discussion. However we sometimes vary this and are experimenting with how best to organize virtual seminars. The group welcomes all researchers and others interested in discussing virtual worlds. Information about the group, and past and future presentations, can be found on at http://vwresearchersgroup.pbwiki.com . We welcome enquiries from people interested in presenting to the group.