NMI Island Going Under

As island disappearances go, this one is a subdued affair. The explosion that destroyed Krakatoa in 1883 was so loud people 1900 miles away heard it. And Atlantis sinking was so traumatic that Plato bemoaned the loss and people are still talking about it over 9000 years later. That is a heck of a reputation for something that might not have even existed.

The loss of the NMI Island is SecondLife is less an act of God and more the act of a bookkeeper.

UGA purchased the NMI Island in 2007. We wanted to explore the potential of virtual worlds. Over a thousand avatars (virtual versions of people) representing students and people from all over the (real) world teleported in to visit. We hosted a virtual tailgate Fridays before gamedays where alum could meet students – the firework shows were spectacular. In over 15 concerts, music lovers all over the plant listened live to bands playing in the NMI’s room 415 (forever afterwards known as Club 415). We built virtual versions of tourism destinations to give SecondLifers a taste of Georgia attractions – they loved the sky-diving available off of Georgia’s Hospitality Highway (GA 400). And I taught class on the island. In my 21+ years on the faculty, that had to be the weirdest teaching experience. Try focusing on your lecture when students spontaneously fly away.

Yeah, it was a great year of experimentation. We pushed the limits of what you can do in a virtual world and we learned what works (and what doesn’t). There is a lot of potential in virtual worlds like SecondLife.

But on Wednesday, 9/10, our experiment ends. You see LindenLabs, the company that runs SecondLife, is a for profit company. It costs $1700 a year for us to own our island – and that is with a 50% educational discount. Yes, I have one of the bravest deans ever. Dean Clark actually signed a purchase order for “One Island.” We discovered that you can sole source an island, but a continent will have to go out on bids.

Everybody is feeling the economic pinch these days and UGA is no different. With looming budget cuts threatening crucial services, an island is a luxury we just can’t afford. We didn’t renew so Linden Labs is pulling the plug on the NMI island.

And here is one of the most unfortunate aspects of virtual worlds. Unlike a web page that we can download and store on local hard drives, everything that we built only works in SecondLife. So we can’t save it. Frankly, that sucks. So everything from the 300 foot virtual Arch, to the flashing dance floor with a giant aquarium, to the incredibly realistic football field, to the beautifully executed virtual GA 400 will be erased.

So if you want to see it one last time, you better hurry.

Cloud Dissipating – WAGZone Gone

Sunday’s Athens Banner Herald ran a story on the discontinuation of the WAGZone (Wireless Athens Georgia Zone) – and they got it almost all right. “Life without the 'cloud'” http://tinyurl.com/6et9u9. The WAGZone was a wireless cloud over downtown Athens designed to allow anyone to access the internet from the outdoor spaces. When we built it in 2002, Intel proclaimed it “the world’s first municipal wireless service” and it was featured on CNN a bunch. Although the NMI built the WAGZone, the true hero in this techno-story is the government of Athens. Hey, anyone with a little bit of money who can read documentation can create a wifi zone. What made the WAGZone fly was the support of the Athens/Clarke County Unified Government. Then Mayor Doc Eldridge and now Mayor Heidi Davison both went out on a limb committing the use of poles, electricity, and maintenance workers. Municipal wireless networks all over the country are failing because they don’t have the type of progressive aggressive leadership we have in Athens.

For the NMI, the WAGZone was always an experiment. We were never interested in the technology itself, we wanted to explore what people would do with untethered content. We built wireless walking tours, automated photography systems (ArchCam was totally cool), and a radio station that you could listen to on your computer. With the lessons that we learned from the WAGZone, the NMI branched out into other areas of mobile media and now we work on rich media content (audio and video) delivered to cell phones.

Bottom line, the lessons of the WAGZone helped Athens and cities all over the country make decisions about how wireless can make their communities stronger. I think that will be the WAGZone’s lasting legacy.

This DBB (Tu, 9/9) – WSB-TV

In our last couple of Digital Brown Bags, we have been exploring how new advances in mobile media is changing television. The exploration continues this week (Tuesday, 9/9/08, 12:30P, NMI, Room 412 Journalism) with Bill Hoffman, General Manager of WSB-TV will be talking with us about how his operation is adapting to new media. Join us and share your ideas.

iDMAa Call for Participation (Savannah, GA 11/6 – 11/8)

Yeah, I know I have told you this before. But I am a professor – I repeat myself for a living. And I want you to join us in Savannah for the iDMAa Convention (11/6 – 11/8). The theme of the conference is “Ideas for the Future” and we are looking for people with ideas. That sounds like you, right? This is a great opportunity to share your views on any area of digital media that gets you going – music, video, gaming, virual worlds, mobile, animation, whatever. I get some of my best ideas at iDMAa – and I always meet a host of cool people. We have established a whole new way of participating called “Think Pieces.” These are informal and brief encapsulations of ideas designed to stimulate discussions. And we will be selecteingsome of these Think Pieces to be published in the iDMAa Journal – yep, that could be two lines on the vita. All of this in one of the coolest towns in the South, Savannah. You can learn more at http://www.idmaa.org/idmaa2008/. But don’t wait too long – the deadline for submissions is 9/19!

Call for Artwork Ideas at iDMAa (Savannah, GA 11/6 – 11/8)

An important part of every iDMAa conference is the Ideas exhibition. This year the Ideas Exhibition continues the conference’s future orientation with the theme “IDEAS08: Continuum Digital Media Arts Tomorrow Through Visions of Yesterday and Today.” There is still an opportunity for you to display your work. Learn more online at http://www.idmaa.org/idmaa2008/callideas.htm.