[HMDS] Completing the Island Build
February has arrived. Within days the essay contest will launch, in both SL and in person. Teachers around the country will use Global Kids’ lesson plans and other materials to guide their students through the application process. At the same time, GK Island will do the same in the teen grid.
The island, however, is far from complete. Will it be completed in time? Will it survive the move intact from the main to the teen grid? And once it does, will anyone come?
The Magicians are working, and working hard. From their distributed locations around the globe, they toil day and night. Slowly but surely, that tiny volcano model begins to take shape and gain clarity in a fully realized form.
At first, I was confused about how to supervise a build in a virtual world. Were I contracting for a web site, the designers might send me demos, or provide a development URL. But in SL, the land is the land. It was like contracting for a house. And if I wanted to observe their work I had no choice but to visit the site.
The Magician’s can not build most of the island in some other context and then port the pieces over to combine like some jigsaw puzzle. They have to build it here, raisin all sorts of issues. For example, how does an embodied team collaborate and construct a confined space out of, and within, thin air?
One solution they used was analogous to scaffolding, something temporarily constructed for the build. But in this case, they didn't need a place to stand but a place to sit.
This is one of their platforms. It housed chairs and couches where they could meet and talk, smaller objects in development to be touched, and three pylons that rendered game-specific attributes. Best of all, like a magic carpet, they could transport it to wherever they liked.
Individual Magicians might grab me during one of my sneak peaks to show off something in development. They never wanted to bother me but I couldn’t have been more excited.
I had no idea what the final product would look like. It was like baking a cake I had never eaten. Sure, I had their tiny model with the mini volcano, flowing lava and three earth thrones. But it was so generalized, so abstracted, I had no idea what to expect. How much detail would there be? How would it all fit together? I provided the core ideas and the Magicians then developed a vision, but one to which I had no access. Until it was completed, these brief demonstrations were my only hint that we were on target. Beyond that, I was driving by trust and fear.
Kim showing me the final build of the envelope that would be used for sending in completed essays:
Alex showing me the Thinker position for taking the Earth Throne quiz:
The bats. Their eyes blink!
Working in conjunction with the Save Darfur campaign, The Magician’s donated their time to create official versions of their wristband awareness campaign, with dispenser’s like this:
Amazingly, within just a few weeks, the island was completed, and on time.
“I'm taking lots of pics,” Gus Plisskin told me, after turning on the sun and watching the first sunrise on GK Island. “I'll miss this place when it goes to the Teen Grid.”
That is Gus’ silhouette in the far distance. I had to admit I was lucky. In 48 hours, he and everyone else on the main grid would be prevented from ever seeing GK Island while I, on the other hand, would never be able to leave.
Before we moved the island to the teen grid, we wanted to open it to visitors, to show it off, for the first and last time.
It was time for a party.
A launch party.
But how do you throw a party in SL?
