Agent's first week
This first week has been about getting to meet you and learn about your interests and history.   I've been really impressed by how passionate the UcanTu exhibits are and it really shows a deep care about their impact. These are such amazing projects that are so rarely heard about elsewhere, it's like a seminar in itself on these technologies.  There's definitely a class-like camaraderie that really lends itself not only to learning but to creating as well.

It truly is a unique time in history and participating in this design process is really one of the best examples of leveraging the virtual world tools we have. Thanks for being part of it!  Later this week we will probably have some news about what's next after UcanTu.  Lots of exciting things coming up!

Please contact me anytime at rketner@thetech.org or as avatar "Agent Heliosense" in Second Life. 
See you @ The Tech!

Hello Tech Virtual!
My name is Bob Ketner and it's been just over 24 hours since I started as the Virtual Community Manger here at The Tech Virtual.  Seeing the results of the current exhibits on display on the museum floor is certainly impressive.  It really shows the possibilities of realizing exhibits through this process and proves one thing solidly - the process works. 

Another thing that I've noticed right away is that we're just in the beginning stages of building this collaborative group.  You have the distinct advantage here of working with talented designers from all over the world on some of the most fascinating and relevant topics today.  Not only that, you will be using the most advanced collaborative methods available - working literally years ahead of other methods used in industry and business.

* Breaking News *
The deadline for UcanTu exhibits has been extended to August 7!
That means you have 9 more days to finish (or even start) a UcanTu exhibit.
If you haven't done so already, please create a profile (http://thetechvirtual.org/createMember) on the website. 

Then, take a look at the list of projects on which you can base your exhibit at:http://thetechvirtual.org/projects/ucantu/

After you've created a profile please feel free to introduce yourself and mention any specific interests you may have.  Short on ideas?  Just drop in to Parkside Hall (http://slurl.com/secondlife/The%20Tech/65/130/37/) and let's brainstorm some!   You can reach me at rketner [at] thetech.org or in Second Life as "Agent Heliosense".

We're all in for an exciting time and I'm really honored to be able to have this opportunity to work with you.   I can't wait to see what you develop and contribute in this highly interactive space.  Let's go!

Parkside Hall Exhibit Workshop

Probably the most popular exhibit in the Virtual Test Zone gallery is called Mashup Masterpiece.

Mashup Masterpiece exhibit and its author, Marie Crandell

The exhibit project now called Mashup Masterpiece  began with the following “big idea” on the project’s Webpage:

To enable the audience to experience the role of the painter - through visual aids, animation and audio stream - to step into the shoes of the painter and 'paint' an existing painting by a real painter.

The idea then went through the following evolution from design sketch (left) to Second Life prototype (center) to finished exhibit (right).

         

(click on any image for a larger view)

The notion of audio narration was dropped during the SL prototyping stage as the exhibit was quite full already.   In moving from SL to the gallery, the surrounding studio “with a dusty wooden floor with paint splattered over it, …quiet and enclosed, but with a peaceful feeling” was dropped for lack of space.   In SL the finished painting was stripped down through nine color stages and the images loaded in reverse so that the painting 'appeared' before your eyes.The finished exhibit achieved this effect by adding a spin browser to dial through the stages of the painting and a Photoshop-like palette of tools and colors  for visitors to “paint” their own version.

The author of Mashup Masterpiece, Marie Crandell of Plymouth, England is an accountant who has formerly worked as a professional classical dancer and journalist.  She had been in Second Life since December, 2006, and it took her about 100 hours over a four week period to build her prototype.  This profile is quite typical for  our award winners: talented professionals with a year’s  prior SL experience who spent a month building their virtual exhibit.

You Can, Too!
You can create a museum exhibit.  You can inspire others.  You can make a difference.  You can win fame and fortune (well, perhaps a little anyway).

The Tech Museum in San Jose, CA (RL) will award  prizes of up to one million lindens for the best interactive exhibits designed in Second Life for our upcoming exhibition called "UcanTu." 

UcanTu

The UcanTu exhibition showcases 12 award-winning examples of "technology benefiting humanity" (for more details and a complete list of the technologies, see http://thetechvirtual.org/projects/ucantu/ ).  Each of these technologies benefits health, education, environment, economic development or equality on a global scale. 

THE CHALLENGE

Your challenge is to develop an interactive exhibit that highlights one or more of these award-winning innovations in a way that explains its importance, makes it relevant to the lives of museum visitors, and makes it understandable how it works.  The purpose of your exhibit is to inspire visitors to realize they can make a difference ("You can, too") in their community and the world, either by supporting these particular innovations or by coming up with ideas of their own.

PRIZES

- For exhibits selected to be part of the RL UcanTu exhibition:
L$250,000 per team member, up to a max of L$1M.

Note: Only exhibits that are truly engaging and novel will be considered for adoption.  Be sure to discuss your concept with Rob or Bean by email, or talk in-world to Stephe, Shakini or Lydia on the Main Grid, or to En or Copernic on the Teen Grid to make sure it is not one we are already considering.

There will be five additional prizes, awarded independently of the prize above:
- Most Inspiring Exhibit: L$50,000 per exhibit

- Best in Show (Adult): L$50,000 per exhibit
- runner up: L$5,000 per exhibit

- Best in Show (Teen): L$50,000 per exhibit
- runner up: L$5,000 per exhibit

For more details, see http://thetechvirtual.org/help/faq/prizes

DEADLINE

Hurry, the judging will take place on August 7.  Winning exhibits will be selected by senior exhibit designers from The Tech Museum. 

HOW TO ENTER

To enter the contest, you must:
- submit your exhibit idea in text as a project at
http://thetechvirtual.org/projects/ucantu-projects.
- create a virtual prototype here inside an exhibit frame.

Once you have your idea and are ready to build, get a frame for your exhibit.  Create a sign that gives the basic info on your exhibit (title, idea, your name) and any help you are looking for.  If you have not already described your project on
http://thetechvirtual.org/projects/ucantu-projects, please do so.  This is a collaborative effort and we encourage you to find other partners and build exhibits as teams.  You can join the team for an existing project by going to its Web page and clicking on 'join this project' (just make the exhibit is located on the same grid as you).  Please be respectful of others and their exhibits - if you would like to contribute to someone else's exhibit, contact them and ask to join their team through the Website first.

GUIDELINES

First of all, read the Introduction to the UcanTu exhibition at
http://thetechvirtual.org/projects/ucantu/ucantu 
Then observe the following guidelines:

   1. The exhibit should highlight one or more of the Tech Award-winning technologies listed here, in a way that makes them meaningful and accessible.
   2. The exhibit should be inspiring.  It should make visitors realize that the tools to make a better world are not out of reach, but all around us.  It should make them want to get involved in their own communities and in the world ("You can, too!").
   3. The exhibit must be interactive, and it should not rely on docent explanations or a lot of documentation for visitors to understand it.
   4. It should be educational.  It should convey an understanding of a) how the featured technology actually works, b) what global problem it addresses, and c) how it provides a solution.
   5. If there is a connection that can be made with Silicon Valley (companies, local uses for the technology, individuals involved, etc.), that is a plus.
   6. It must be feasible to build the exhibit in real life.
   7. The exhibit concept must be licensed under Creative Commons (you agreed to this when you joined the Website) and the virtual exhibit should be full-perm.
   8. If you need to contact one of the Tech Award laureates, talk to Rob or Bean first.  We may already have what you need.

MORE INFO

For more information,
consult http://thetechvirtual.org/help/faq/ucantu-faq or
email rstephenson@thetech.org, or tblaine@thetech.org.

That is to say, it opened the Virtual Test Zone gallery with the world's first exhibits that were developed through an open source process, under a Creative Commons license, and prototyped in Second Life. Although other museums have experimented with letting visitors modify, evaluate or contribute content to their exhibits, the Tech is the first to throw the doors of its content creation process completely open to the public.

And what, you ask, of quality? Well, the exhibits in the Tech Virtual Test Zone answer that decisively. These seven exhibits are innovative, engaging and first-rate. To sense this for yourself, take this video tour. Credit for this goes first of all to their authors, whose exhibits were selected from a large field of contenders. Credit also goes to the acumen of Nina Simon, the Curator-pro-tem of the exhibition, and to the skill of The Tech's remarkable engineers, for turning bits to atoms. Simon and the engineering staff reinterpreted the virtual exhibits into steel, wood and plastic, transforming some of them almost beyond recognition. For a side-by-side comparison of virtual and real exhibits, see this page.

To celebrate this milestone, The Tech organized a Summit on Digital Democracy in Exhibit Design on the same day. The program had two keynote speakers. First Peter Friess explained how, when hired as the Tech Musuem's President, he was charged with renewing its galleries on a regular basis because, in Silicon Valley, visitors expect to see the "latest and greatest" innovations. He explained how he came up with the idea of "open sourcing" the curation process to meet this business need.

Opening of the Virtual Test Zone gallery	Summit attendees in SL watch Philip Rosedale watching them

Then Philip Rosedale, Chairman of Linden Labs, spoke. He described how building a Star Trek-style door for his childhood bedroom provided the inspiration to create the Second Life virtual world. In Second Life, the residents or "avatars" are encouraged to build whatever they like and provided free tools to do so. Every object they create can be scripted, to make the world dynamic and interactive. These are the very qualities that make Second Life ideal for rapidly prototyping museum exhibits. The keynotes were being streamed into the virtual Tech Museum in Second Life. There was standing room only in both real life and Second Life, and between the two about 130 people attended the Summit. As Rosedale spoke, he referred frequently to this virtual part of his audience. Occasionally he read aloud the chat comments coming from Second Life, displayed on a flat panel monitor at the front of the auditorium: "You tell 'em, Philip, I'm in-world 18 hours a day and it's my regular job."

Rosedale had strong praise for The Tech Virtual:

What's happening here at The Tech is just incredible ... in terms of the evolution of virtual world technology.
All intellectual production will soon move into cyberspace... I can't thank you guys enough because you're doing it. You're proving it. You're making the point, this is exactly the proof point that you look for.
I can't tell you how excited I am to be here and see what's been built at The Tech.

After the keynotes, one of the exhibit designers, Marie Crandell, recorded a video tour of the Test Zone gallery, demonstrating the exhibits and interviewing several of the other designers. At the end of her tour she was joined by Philip Rosedale and Nina Simon, who provided more details about some of the exhibits. Commented Rosedale: "It is so amazing that this happened so fast - I just can't believe it. I thought it was going to be, like, two to three years."

see keynote video	see video of gallery tour

Dear Tech Virtual exhibit designers,

I cannot fully express in words the extent to which you have inspired, impressed, and overwhelmed me with good feeling over the last eight months.  I came into this project in November with one question in my mind (well, one BIG question): Can a group of creative amateurs create exhibits that are as fun, content-rich, and unique as those designed by museum professionals?

You see, I'm not just a community person.  I want wonderful diverse people working together AND high-quality products.  I knew that this project could only be considered a success by the museum world (and in my own heart) if we could create exhibits that truly represented a step forward.  At the end of the day, when the exhibits are on the floor and kids are banging on them, the process by which they were created is just a charming footnote.  If the exhibits aren't good enough, the process won't survive.

I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was.  You have answered my questions and doubts with a resounding YES.  YES your creativity is as valuable as "professional" expertise.  YES your exhibits represent new thinking about experiential museum exhibits.  YES you are generous, smart, energetic people and I feel blessed to have worked with you. 

I'm moving on to work with other museums on participatory design experiences.  I will carry the lessons you taught me everywhere, and hopefully you will be an inspiration not only to The Tech, but to museums all over the world.  You can see more of the lessons I learned from this project here.

You can find me anytime at Museum 2.0 or nina (at) museumtwo (dot) com. 

With affection,

Nina

The novel strategy of open source museum development has borne its first fruit, the Art, Film & Music exhibition which is opening next month.  All six winners from the recent SL to RL competition will be included.  To celebrate, the Tech will host a Summit on Digital Democracy in Exhibit Design on June 4, 2008, the day of the opening.  The event will take place at The Tech in San Jose, and will also be streamed live to The Tech Virtual Museum in Second Life.  Keynote speakers will be Philip Rosedale, Linden Lab founder and Chairman, and Peter Friess, Ph.D., President of The Tech. A panel of leaders from the museum and technology worlds will consider the following questions:

• How can external experts and amateurs play a role in exhibit design?
• How useful are virtual worlds for museums?
• How to build and manage an online community.
• How to foster inter-museum collaboration.

And You, as a member of the Tech Virtual community, are invited!  Remember the date:

On March 31, our panel of judges toured the 31 exhibits in Parkside Exhibit Workshop.  This week, the judges are deliberating on which exhibits will be included in the virtual museum and which will be selected for the $1000 prizes for best SL-only, most educational, best in show, best teen exhibit, and best collaboration.

The awards will be announced on Thursday April 10 at 10am SLT in Parkside Exhibit Workshop.  The teen award will be announced on April 9 at a time TBD.  After that point, winners will have until the end of April to box and prepare their exhibits for inclusion in the museum, and we will ask other exhibitors to take down their exhibits.  The goal is to have a largely open workshop by the end of April when we commence design on future exhibits on new themes... soon to be released!

Thanks to everyone who has participated in the exhibit design so far!

The two latest winners are Richard Milewski's Reprojecting San Jose and Nick Chen's MIDI -- the Golden Age.

Reprojecting San Jose explores the transformations involved in transforming flat photos into a 360 degree panorama. The Second Life prototype allows the viewer's avatar to climb up into a circular display to experience the panorama from the correct point of view. The exhibit also provides the visitor with a kit that includes instructions and a cool panoramic HUD (heads-up display) that makes it possible to take one's own panoramic photos.

Reprojecting San Jose
(click for larger view)

MIDI -- the Golden Age is an exploration of the Music Instrument Digital Interface, a standard that has lasted 25 years and is still going strong. The Second Life prototype consists of five different shapes that represent different instruments and, when touched, change color and play a short sequence of notes. There are also spots that activate several of the instruments at once when touched. In the accompanying text, Nick explains that as a digital interface MIDI can be controlled by many interfaces (including the Wii) besides a keyboard, and can control things besides musical instruments. On the project's Website, Nick includes a video showing how MIDI can sequence and manipulate video clips as well as musical notes.

Both projects are individual efforts by creators who have built their careers at the intersection of the arts, technology and education. This was the first experience of building and scripting in Second Life for both winners, and interestingly both winning exhibits are reworkings of their authors' earlier attempts.

Richard Milewski (Richard Blackhawk in Second Life) is a San Jose-based photographer and technologist. Richard's photography Website is Studio San Jose, where he specializes in panoramic photographs of urban scenes. The former InfoWorld Editor-in-Chief wears many other technology hats as well. He serves as Chief Technology Officer for the Greaves Group, a K-12 educational consultancy, and is principal of RamPage Publishing and AVWX.net, which provide cellphone access to weather maps and data for civilian aviators.

More Judging

There will be another round of judging on Monday, March 31. Actually two rounds, by two different processes. There will be a third round to select exhibits for the Art, Film & Music exhibit opening at The Tech in real life, similar to the previous rounds on March 1 and March 15. Probably only one or two more exhibits will be selected, because our engineers will be hard-pressed to complete even that many exhibits in time for the June 4 opening. The second round of judging on March 31 will be entirely different, determined by jury of a dozen distinguished experts from the worlds of museums, art and technology. The jury will choose exhibits to become part of the permanent collection of the virtual Tech Museum, and will in addition award six special, $1000 prizes. The jury will have a week to deliberate, so these awards will not be announced until the second week of April.

Today we had a small group, in part due to the time change in the US, which was not evident to our friends in the UK (sorry, Lydia!).

We discussed:

• International Museums Day (May 18), with Carla from ICOM
• Anne's gifted free exhibit that changes sound when you move it (in the back corner of the exhibit workshop)
• upcoming judging this weekend.  You must notify us by 4pm today if you want to be judged.  Judging results will be announced on MONDAY.
• Upcoming staff transitions: Nina/Avi will be moving to focus more on the RL exhibition fabrication in April/May, and Rob/Stephe will move into more virtual museum management.  I will start blogging about the RL fabrication (and share some images of the RL exhibits as they are created) in April.
  
• Opportunity to create machinima for the June RL exhibition... we'd like to feature YOU and your work on the walls of the RL gallery in machinima (video) loops.  Please join the machinima project to get involved and start capturing and uploading content.  All content must be received by April 31 to be included, and we are looking for people who want to create footage as well as those who might want to edit it.  I will try to find an expert who can offer a class sometime soon to help people who are new to machinima but want to get involved.
  
• How to promote collaboration and reward participation in ways other than with contest money.  This was a freewheeling conversation, with people commenting that the RL build opportunity is the really compelling draw, but that people like to be compensated for their time.  There were requests to see the workshop become more collaborative in terms of sharing scripts and objects. 
  

The Tech Virtual Museum Workshop, launched in December, is Museum Director Peter Friess's grand experiment in open sourcing the museum's content development process. His idea, that is, is to fill the halls of a major museum with exhibits conceived entirely by outsiders, prototyped in Second Life, and licensed under Creative Commons for all to use. Although other museums have tinkered with having visitors participate in the process of developing exhibits, or used Second Life as an alternative presentation medium, none has dared this radical step before.

Is There a Language of Science?

There seems to be. Mars and I continue to work well together, despite our different backgrounds. It's a 'professional' relationship - we pretty much show up, work on the project, and go away. And in that sense it's a great relationship.
One of the delights of being an engineer (I'm a graphics programmer in RL)is the noticably low level of office politics. Not that there's none, but there's less than in any other enterprise I've been involved in. Who needs to create an enemy when there's the code base?
Or, in our case, waaaay too many quats and Euler angles. Little did we know when we started this just HOW MANY of these 3D rotation problems we'd have to work ourselves.
  Rob  actually sent me a script for this post, so I'll try to follow it. As we explained somewhere in the wiki, Mars and I met just 1 day before we started building. I ran into him at the planetarium at spaceport Alpha (if you haven't been, GO!) He showed me the virtual tech, and we decided on the spot to try to speed build an exhibit in 4 hours.
Well, 4 hours was enough to design, but not to build. So we've been building ever since.
The combination of wiki and SL works pretty well. The wiki is a bit too 'pull'. Sometimes I wish we just had a whiteboard in the exhibit to write on. Since we're on different time schedules, we often need to pass information like 'don't move this or that'.
Second Life isn't an ideal tool for prototyping. There are too many restrictions imposed by the rather clunky nature of SL. For example, things need to be bigger in SL than in RL, since everyone is 'clumsy'.  I'm used to working with CAD tools that, while they lack the immersive reality of wandering around inside it while you work, make up for it with far greater power.
Rob's last question was why we are doing this. I can certainly only speak for myself, not for Mars. My motives are a) It's fun! Any engineer who doesn't have fun with their skills isn't a good engineer. My goal as an engineer is 'to make software that makes my users smile'. b) it's a good way to learn a new technology. I've seen a lot of interesting things I can do in SL now. c) It's a good way to meet new folks and make useful contacts.

Howdy - Rob's asked Mars and I to start contributing to the blog.

This has been a sort of amazing week. In 5 days we've gone from not even knowing each other to having built this amazing contraption.

 One of the new criteria is showing the spirit of Silicon Valley. Well, I think these amazing exhibits show exactly that spirit.   One part networking, three parts creativity, 99 parts hard work. 

Mars continues to be amazing. I had to go out for a couple hours. I came back, he'd built this great airplane gimbal lock demo. It's fun working this way - I leave, I come back, something has changed.

Today, we discussed several things:

First, some new clarification about judging, courtesy of guidance from the president of the Tech Museum.  We now have clear criteria that each exhibit must have (go through the SL-to-RL process, relevance to theme, core educational lesson, spirit of Silicon Valley) to be considered for RL creation.  We also defined judging dates: Feb 29, March 15, March 30.  To have your exhibit judged on a given date, send a message to Avi Marquez / Nina (nsimon@thetech.org) to that effect.  You do not have to be present on that date, but you do have to have your criteria covered either on your webpage or in your SL exhibit.

We also selected a new exhibit frame for the exhibits that is lighter prim-wise (thanks to Lydia Milner for the clean design).  If you own a project, please swap the exhibit frame at your convenience.  You can find the new frame in the front of Parkside Exhibit Workshop.

We also talked about possibilities for the green screen exhibit.  Finally, we are now featured on the menu at Buck's of Woodside, a famous Silicon Valley restaurant.  Enjoy the link, or if you can, go see the real thing (I still haven't gotten a chance to...)!