NMC Campus Observer

NMC Second Life Campus Opens

CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) : May 1, 2006 03:44pm

We are a bit behind on our press coverage of the campus opening on April 20, 2006, as we are finalizing the design of the NMC Campus Observer. But now we are ready to share some media from the event. Scroll all the way to the end of this article for access to an enhanced podcast coverage of the day in music, speech, and images.

More than 150 individuals logged in for one of the two scheduled times of events, at at times, we were having 70 avatars roaming the island, thus testing the limits of the system. Luckily, there were no serious reports of lags or slowdowns.

From the event description:

The New Media Consortium is pleased to announce the Grand Opening of NMC Campus, an educational gathering space in the virtual world of Second Life! Designed and built expressly to provide a space for insightful interaction, collaboration, learning, and experimentation, NMC Campus features casual and formal meeting areas for a variety of group sizes; a museum; a library; classrooms; and more. The Grand Opening celebration will feature live music performances, a panel featuring the Second Life architects of Electric Sheep Company, building lessons, and tours of the campus.

First time arrivals to the campus entered at the Teleport Hub and were then directed to the location for the start of the events.

The campus maps are key elements for people new to the NMC campus. They act as interactive transporters, so a simple mouseclick on the building labels (1-8) will “teleport” them to that location. As a new user, you may be surprise to arrive in a location and watch your avatar fall down! Just be sure to walk quickly as the next person transporting there might just end up standing on your head.

Participants first met in the Lev Gonick Ampitheatre where NMC staff Larry Pixel and Ninmah Ash provided opening remarks.

In the Gonick Ampitheatre, campus visitors can use their movie controls to watch a video on the center screen, and random photos are displayed on the side screens. When used for other events, rpesenters will have complete control in what media is displayed on all screens.

Open remarks were broadcast to users via a TeamSpeak server, a shared audio channel. This was a first experiment with this service that allows audio communication to take place in different “channels”– it worked passably, but we suffered some loss of audio quality.

After the 15 minute remarks, individuals were invited to explore, to chat/talk to each other, and to move to the other optional events. Some chose to ride the elevator up to the “Sandbox” where Cory Edo of the Electric Sheep Company (the architects and construction experts who built the campus) gave a hands on tour on how to use the Second Life tools to build objects.

The Sandbox is an open area on the campus where visitors are invited to build objects, learn from each other, and to contribute any works they like to shared library. Cory has left a few boxes of extra object textures that builders may want to pick up (they are free). Look soon for a new podcast featuring this session with full audio.

NMC Staff Lyncan Demar met folks outside of the Perez-Greene Plaza where he offered a guide tour of the campus, including stops in the Sculpture Garden, Malcom G. Brown Library, and Aho Art Gallery.

And over in the Huntley Hall, avatars were enjoying the sounds of live music by Johnny99 Gumshoe (see more on Johnny99 and access to his opening song):

Participants in the second session of the launch were also treated to a panel discussion by employees of the Electric Sheep Company as they shared information and answered questions about their project building the NMC Campus.

It was quite a day, certainly not the last. Stay tuned the NMC Campus Observer the details on upcoming events.

Story filed under: Audio / Video, What's Happening

See all stories by CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine)