Sem584's Weblog

Final WEEK!!!

sem584 — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 18:50:03 +0000

Well this week was a lot of fun. It was also pretty crazy. For some reason I thought that we were going to be getting judged at 7PM instead of at 11AM. So it was kind of interesting. Our video kept working for an hour at a time so Austin had to keep reloading it right before we would have visitors which made things really stressful. Yet, all in all our project came out really well. Andrea Parker fixed the roof on the top story of the auditorium so that it lined up a lot better, but this created a large gap. So I decided that we could decorate the top of that area with a christmas themed room. The goal was to make it look very welcoming because after all we wanted our place to not only be for the management of Austin Safeplace, the visitors in SL, but also the victims of Domestic Violence who can use our project as a gathering place. This was something that we just recently thought of and I think it adds a ton to our project. I’m talking about the garden as well and I think it really made our place a lot more calming and inviting.

So even with all this magnificent work we somehow lost. But I’m not harboring any hard feelings because the winning project was pretty awesome. I even ran back and played it again after class but don’t tell anyone that. Overall this was a great semester and I really got an understanding of virtual worlds and how they will affect our lives today as well as in the future. Now we must finish our movies and we’ll be good to go. Thanks Joe for a great semester!

Week ending 11/21

sem584 — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 01:30:09 +0000

This week was great. I think I can say that we have basically finished our build. We are just focusing on little tiny details that most people probably won’t ever notice so at this point it is pretty much complete. We don’t need to meet as much with our group members because we got so much done so quickly. I really enjoyed working with my group on this build because everyone was always seeking to help out. I don’t know if that’s because they knew we would be grading each other or what but whatever it was everyone has been really helpful and friendly. Austin met with the Austin Safeplace people last friday and that went really well. I logged on from Houston because I was out of town but I was able to show them how easy it was to be at the meeting no matter where you physically are. Pretty amazing how that works. Needless to say they were pretty impressed. As far as suggestions go, they really didn’t have a whole lot to offer. They gave us a new logo to use. I think when we show them the final presentation on December 3rd we should give them some ideas on how they can manage the area. I was thinking they would only need to have one person check in for a few hours a week. They were resistent to our idea of making a message board system that people can use to message their organization because they were worried about spam emails and stuff of that nature. With that in mind we scrapped that idea. They really just want people to call the hotline so they can handle the issues people have just as they always have. I think it will be pretty amazing if they do decide to use our project for good because I feel that it will really help to reach out to a totally different audience. Seeing as how Second life from what I’ve seen and heard actually has more women users than men, this project will be able to reach a mostly female audience which is what they really want to do and they can do it at a cheap price.

Here is a picture of the new logo.

Pre-meeting post

sem584 — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 07:19:50 +0000

Tomorrow we will finally meet with our nonprofit organization, Austin SafePlace. Detroit Skytower, aka Austin, is going to be the only team member that will be able to meet with them. The other team members are all busy and going out of town including myself. However, when he meets with them we are going to be online so that we can show them how people will interact with the project. I also think it is going to be even better because we will be spread out in different cities but we are going to show them that we are all going to be connected as if we were sitting in the same room with each other. Hopefully they will be able to give us some much needed feedback on our build.

We really got a ton of work done this week. I’m really proud of all we’ve accomplished this week. We were able to finish the exterior of the build as well as the upstairs conference room and the auditorium. The group members that I previously was a little worried about really helped out this week and stepped up when it was time to volunteer to accomplish certain tasks. We bought a help desk today so when people visit our place they will be able to ask Austin SafePlace questions about donating, or even some women or children in SL who need help will be able to speak with a member of Austin SafePlace. I bought a donation box script that pays me currently so I’m going to need to set that up so it pays them instead, unless…… jk. Austin also made the easels that will give a notecard to people containing information about safeplace when clicked. However we need to get a script that when touched will give people a notecard. This shouldn’t be too difficult though. We are really looking forward to hearing what they think about our project so far. I’m wondering if they will be able to see the potential that this place has to offer their business at an extremely low cost to them. I think we are going to stress that they will be able to help people from all over the world and will only need to have one employee of SafePlace that spends time in second life every now and then. Because 2nd life sends an email to people that receive an instant message when they are not logged in it isn’t even necessary to be online for hours every day. It would simply be as difficult as checking your email.

Here is what the reception area of our place looks like currently:

Week ending 11/7

sem584 — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:42:35 +0000

This week we had another unfortunate event. One of the teammates that didn’t show up the week before and apologized afterwards did it again. Missing meetings isn’t the problem because with 3 team members we can still get stuff done, the problem however is not telling anyone before or during the meeting that you will not be attending. I think he simply forgot about the meeting but two weeks in a row is a little ridiculous. So when we worked together on Tuesday during class time we really got a lot done. I helped to decorate the inside of the building before we met because the last few meetings we’ve had haven’t really gotten a whole lot done. I decided on a style for the floor and then when everyone saw it they liked it. In the past we would all just comment on the different style and never truly choose and decide on one of them so it was nice getting this done. With this in mind I helped to split the group up into individual tasks so there wouldn’t be that level of questioning yourself. Then I emailed the group the list of tasks to have done by our next meeting this coming sunday night. Here is the email:

Hey everyone,

This meeting we’ve decided that:

1. I will finish the auditorium’s seat ball thingys
2. Digit will work on the outside of the building as far as textures and columns
3. Snake will get the notecards and easles in order so when they are clicked people will receive a notecard explaining the topic on the easel.
4.Detroit will work on the inside of the building like the ceiling, furniture, and the theme on the inside of the walls.

Lets get this stuff done by our meeting on Sunday

Cya’ll Thursday,

I think this is the easiest way for everyone to see clearly what is expected of them by the end of the week. This should help get things done much quicker and will probably lead to better quality in our project because everyone is responsible for their individual task which makes it easy to see who did what. Joe you really helped us out with the easel idea that’s gonna make things a lot better for the downstairs reception area. Thank you. Here is a picture of our class meeting on thursday where we were getting a lot sorted out in our own team chat as well as explaining to the class what we were doing. This was helpful because it made me feel like everyone was on the same page as we were which is a big relief.

Post week ending 10/31

sem584 — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 19:22:18 +0000

This week was a little less productive but we definitely settled some important matters with our team. We have scheduled to meet every sunday night at a specified time but we ran into some difficulties this week. Only Andrea Park and I showed up to our meeting. The other team members did not give any notice prior to the meeting to let us know they would not be able to make it to the meeting which was in second life. Andrea and I did get some work done but not nearly as much as if we would have been able to run our ideas past the other two members as well. We did as much as we could but it seemed as though we were wasting our time. So I decided that I should email the team members and deal with this situation as quickly and as head on as possible so that we don’t have to encounter the same situation in the future. The following is the email that I sent out:

Hey guys we had our meeting at 7pm this Sunday but only Digit and I showed up. We need to do a better job of showing up to the times that we all agreed on because it is pretty rude to the other team members. Instead of getting a lot done the meeting falls apart and just wastes our time. So in the future please show up and if you can’t make it to the time we agreed upon please let one of the team members know in advance. Sorry if it sounds like im being an a-hole but this was our second meeting and I feel that if we can address this problem early on then it will serve our team better in the future. I’ll cya’ll in class on Tuesday.

After I sent the email it wasn’t long before I heard back from the two team members who didn’t show up. They both sent emails individually apologizing to the team and explaining their situation. They both stated that they realize it is unacceptable and will not happen again so I am confident that it will not. I’m glad that we were able to deal with this so smoothly and sooner rather than later.

I built the auditorium on the side of our main building this week as well. I need to change how the pieces line up because when they overlap it can cause seizures and I had no idea of this previously. Here is a picture of the auditorium:

The Beginning

sem584 — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:37:25 +0000

Our team really came together this week. We’ve just begun working on our project and it is actually pretty exciting. The ability of Second life to allow us to be so creative has really shaped the way our group is looking at this project. After BlueWave’s presentation we realize that we had to make a plan so that our imaginations didn’t just run wild trying one thing after another, although this would have been fun, it wouldn’t have gotten the job finished on time. We split up our project management plan so that we could each work individually and then bring it all together. This worked out really well. I helped to split up the parts and then the teammates picked which part they wanted to work on. Everyone finished on time and we emailed each other everyone’s part. Thomas put them together and submitted them on behalf of the group. The biggest concern we have with our project is the communication with our nonprofit, Austin SafePlace. Austin emailed them with a letter that he came up with and we all approved. They have not responded yet but hopefully they will soon. We are starting construction this week which is going to be a lot of fun.

Also, this week I was contacted by Ronnie Rhode a woman who builds nonprofits in secondlife. She gave me a great article about the importance of second life and how it can impact real world ventures so that we can convince our nonprofit to work with us. She has also said that she will help us with things like scripts for the tip jar and other scripts in our building which is going to be a huge help because none of our group members are too familiar with that kind of thing. I am going to be helping decorate the inside of our building with things like a conference table for the meeting room upstairs. I plan on asking Joe for a copy or a place to get the table that he already has because it is professional and spacious which is important for showing our nonprofit company around so they can see the value in working in Second Life.

This is the professional table I was speaking about.

Austin Safeplace

sem584 — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:08:53 +0000

I completely forgot about the post this last week. I am sorry but I have no excuse so I figured it was better late than never. My group has decided to do the Austin Safeplace project. We already have a draft of the email we will be sending them and it was made by Austin. He volunteered to make it and then sent it to all of us for changes to it. We all agreed that it would be best to keep the email short and professional because we are worried that if we go into too much detail the people reading it will not understand what we are proposing. To combat this problem we are simply asking who out of their organization would be the best person to contact. Hopefully this person has heard of Second Life so they will understand what we can do for them. Of course this is probably not the case so depending on their response I may need to head over to their organization with one other person from my group and show them what we are proposing and sign them up for second life. Austin Safeplace is an organization that fights against domestic violence. They provide online training material and courses for people all over to learn how to combat this problem. We are going to help use this material and implement it into second life. This should help them raise awareness and possibly get people to see more of their organization because second life users will be able to meet with someone who works for Austin Safeplace in second life and ask them their questions simply by logging in or learn in their virtual classroom that we hope to build for them. I think that our project is very manageable. The only obstacle I see to the success of this project is the ability of our team to convince our nonprofit organization that what we are doing is good for them and to gain their support. I found a place that we may want to copy somewhat and it is called Project Jason. I took my group there and showed them what I liked about it which was the video screen and the walls that had materials supporting the nonprofit organization. Here’s a picture of project Jason’s video screen.

Week 5 project

sem584 — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 07:10:45 +0000

Our project went by very smoothly. I helped to delegate the roles that each member would play. We needed several different things for our project and each team member went about getting a certain piece. Every team member helped out and contributed to the team which made our project awesome. Then we brought everything together with a day left to work on our project and decided what else we would need. With one day left, we built many different things that helped to stylize our tailgate party. EZ Flowin’s job was one of the most difficult because he took the task of finding games for us to play. We tried to have traditional tailgating games like washers and horseshoes, but we knew they would be extremely difficult to find in Second Life. He came up with a different solution and got a bunch of casino style games which ended up working out quite well. I think Finch Windlow did the most because he put the trucks down and then just kept coming up with more to help out the project. He was really a great team member because he added a ton of the smaller stuff which made it look more complete. I made the tents, stands, banners, smokers, bought the dance ball, and bought the coolers. I really put a lot into the project but I never felt bogged down because it was actually quite a bit of fun. Oh ya and I think one of the reasons everyone really wanted to do their part to help out was because we spent that class day talking about working in teams. Thanks for that.

The nonprofit commons is a great source for choosing who we will work with for our projects. There are a lot of nonprofits in second life but I can’t help but wonder how many more there are in austin. It would be nice if we could choose from the ones here but until then it is going to be interesting putting our ideas together to see how we can help the second life nonprofits that are spread out all over the world. I’m really looking forward to this final project and I’m glad that we are going to be getting started on it so early. Sorry I had to miss class for being sick but I feel like I made the right decision. Also that video you made was awesome, I already showed some friends that couldn’t believe I was actually working in my “video game class.”

Lost count of which week it is

sem584 — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 05:43:14 +0000

This week was awesome. After meeting up with my group I realize that this is going to be a great project. I definitely took charge of our group without coming across as an a-hole, hopefully. I helped to split the group up into what we will be doing for the project. One of our members, don’t know his RL name but its finch windlow lol, came up with a great idea for us. He threw out there that we could do a tailgate. I immediately weighed this idea against the readings. If we did this right it would be a great 3rd place. The way we plan on going about this is to make it fun and have a lot of things that encourage communication. I’m going to make a huge smoker for the bbq, other members will make goal posts, cooler that gives a beer object when clicked, flags, trucks, a video screen showing vince young highlights, and games. We plan on having games like washers or dominoes. This is the key for our place to be fun when the class visits. If we can get a game of dominoes going or something like that which about a quarter of the class can play then I feel our place will be a lot of fun. We may have a dance floor as well depending on the size of the space. We’re going to bring it all together sunday and see what else needs to be done. The group has been doing a great job so far of being willing to take a part of the project and go attempt to find a solution on their own. This is going to be an easy project if we can continue to work together this smoothly.

Class today was great because it definitely got me thinking about our final project as well as this one. When I went and saw the various nonprofit organizations, it gave me some great ideas. I saw a streaming video about one of the organizations and its clarity was surprisingly good. I plan on instant messaging the creator so that I can tell him i’m a student and ask for his help for our tailgate video screen. The alley flats program was much cooler than I thought previously to be honest. The floating blue question marks were a perfect way to give information about various parts of the project.

Here’s a pic of the blue question marks at the alley flats project.

Group Tours

sem584 — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:41:53 +0000

This week we were all given an assignment that involved taking our class on a 15 minute tour of an area in second life. I thought this would turn out to be awesome because we don’t really know that many places in second life and since our home island is so cool (jet skis, windsurfing, go karts, and what not) we haven’t really been exploring. Well I know I haven’t been as much as I would have been had I not lived on the class island. Anyway I thought we were going to get to see all there is to see in second life because we were split into 6 groups and we would each go to the top places in SL. However, this didn’t exactly happen. Some places that I thought would be totally sweet ended up being way too laggy and the places I thought would be kind of boring ended up being pretty fun. For example, my group chose to take our class to a water park. This place had it all: jet skis, tubes, slides, and even battling bumper boats. Yet, when our class came it was awfully painful how laggy the water park became. This served as a rude awakening to the fact that second life isn’t perfect and is far from it. Then a group took us to go see a car museum. I love cars but I truly thought it would be really lame. When we got there the cars weren’t very clear because the graphics needed to load but after a short time they all looked pretty good. There were cars from all of the different eras so it was a fun learning experience. I ended up having a great time at this place and at the science museum as well. Another group took us to do a hot air balloon ride and see all of the different types of islands which sounded great in theory. When we did it though you were too high in the air and it was kind of boring. Second life was also in the midst of crashing and the whole project was scrapped. I felt bad for this group but I can’t help but wonder if they remembered what happened to our group when they were designing their tour.

This is me in a bumper boat at the water park

I was the member of the group that chose the water park location. We decided to meet before the project was due to discuss which destination we should choose. At the meeting it became apparent very quickly that I was the only one that had found a place that would be useful, and actually the only place at all. This narrowed our options significantly so we went with mine. This was kind of frustrating because I knew that I did all of the work, but I was also kind of glad that we would be able to go with my idea. So overall working with my group was almost more of a hassle than working alone.

The water park was definitely not a “living structure” because every time I have been there it has been almost empty. When we did have a large group the lag was unbearable so few would ever return. It was discouraging that almost all if not all of the groups chose a destination that wasn’t “living” because I really would have liked for someone to show me a place that I can revisit many times and not be bored. I tried to find the Dublin that the author speaks of, but I could only find a place called Dublin 2 and Dublin 3 and this made me wonder if I was in the right place at all. This is another reason why second life can be so frustrating. With a more user friendly was to find where the really cool places are, second life could explode among the entire population. I know they are trying to do that with the showcases tab in the search function but in my opinion its just simply not good enough.