Virtual Livingston Campus in Second Life used for planning

I was asked in an interview earlier this summer had the model of the future version of Livingston Campus had an impact on the decision process for the new campus. The answer is yes it has. The impact has occurred in several ways. The kick off event Rutgers Day allowed the Rutgers Community, and the community at large got walk through and see the first vision of the campus in context. Over the summer Upward Bound students got see many of the buildings that could be their dorms , student center, and dining hall if they choose to live on Livingston Campus.

The future version of Livingston Campus has been used in two key meetings about the business school being built on Livingston Campus. The model was used to provide context for the all of the 2D materials being discussed. The stakeholders in the process were able to see the building in context, understand the space around their building, and for instance get an idea of where the exits and entrances would be located. What are they likely to see in different vantage points. Begin to get an idea of the landscaping, and what it would be like to walk around the building and campus.

This effort also highlighted to me areas that would help expand that conversation. For instance the functional, and budgetary space requirements have changed, and the stakeholder will be making decisions that will revise the building and affect the interior of the space. Then the architects will revise their architectural plans. Once available, I'll be able to update the model of the campus and visualize the most current version of the building to help visually facilitate the conversation, planning, and impact of the new design, and eventually the interior when the plans are ready.

Whirlwind of Opportunity after the SLCC event

Lot's of new news to blog about. Attended the Second Life Community Conference and made some connections across all spectrum of projects, and communities. There is opportunity to build out a Higher Education Virtual Worlds Grid. This can be done with the needs of educators first and economy second. However, there are plenty of governance issues, and the standard intellectual property problems. Will VWRAP be able to help resolve them? Until that is know it's clear that grid by grid agreements and policies would be the way to go. A framework we could follow and implement would be nice. I'm hoping we can work this out. I'll blog more about this soon.

Also, for data portability issues and owner issues, it's clear that until a clean import/export process is updated to by Second Life, our content will be developed first in OpenSim and then ported over to Second Life. Lot's more news to come on that.

Lastly, for today, with 0.70 version of OpenSim it's much easier to run your own servers. I'm expecting to run multiple world designed for their use case. If it's a grant that needs to have all data private and firewalled, that can be arranged. If it's a new downtown, or a multi-campus project that can be arranged too without have to remove the previous worlds. Finally, it's really nice to be able to have object archive files that store a world that you can reload later.

So much more to talk about. Check back in. More news soon.

--Rick (Rk Jinn)