Last week, I was close to an equivalent of a panic attack. The deadline was approaching fast, and we still don’t have a structure: what am I going to do?
The first thing I did was talk to Arturo and Dennis about the situation, and they talked to me about the fact that there are builders and scripters all over Second Life looking seeking some tasks to fulfill—some of them do it out of joy and others think of it as a job and as a source of financial gains.
Well I looked round, and it was hard locating people at first. Then I realized the best way to search for builders is searching through the classified ads. I contacted about 10 people last week, and I finally contracted with a lady who owns a building company and a guy who like scripting.
The most difficult part of this process is that it is time consuming. It took a lot of time to first find these people, try to explain to them what exactly our group is looking for and finally negotiate a price. There was also the issue of trust. You don’t really know these people, and you don’t know their level of skill, so you have try to figure it out through your conversations with them. I hired a person who said he was capable of doing our building—which is a really complicated building—but I soon found out that he doesn’t have the right skills to fulfill this job. I asked the person if he can do the scripting and I found an experienced builder who is currently doing a beautiful job creating our structure—you can teleport to our space using the blue teleport right across the Fine Arts building.
All I want to say is that if any of you are having trouble with scripting and building, you can find people who can do the job for you before the deadline. Just be patient, careful and have your Lindens ready.
Good luck all, and I hope you guys check our building and give us your opinions on it.
4 comments:
Thus proving a point that second life is just like real life. You can hire people to build and script by searching the sl classifieds. And like in real life, finding the person's experience is just as difficult as in sl. Though I believe it could be a little easier, since (for builders) they could teleport you to one of their creations and you could even check if it was theirs by selecting it under edit and seeing the creator (and the scripter can give you one of the scripts that he has created).
Then again, unlike the phone book, the classifieds in SL are a lot more jumbled and harder to sort out (after all, the more you pay for your ad, the higher on the list it goes, which makes finding what you want a little harder).
It's funny, this is probably the first class I've had where it is acceptable (and even encouraged in some cases) to pay others to do your dirty work.
I've noticed that in graduate classes the focus is more on the data, results, and conclusions, what you learn from the project and how you can apply that. As opposed to undergrad classes where it's all about what you did and how you did it (at least, that's how it was in my engineering classes).
I think it was Arturo (Arturo, correct me if I'm wrong) that I overheard talking with someone in class awhile back. He said that this course isn't about learning SL, how to build in SL, or mastering scripting. It's about coming up with a useful research project, and SL just happens to be the VE/tool that we use.
So it's nice to see Dennis and Arturo realize that fact. A group that has a great idea but no scripting knowledge isn't SOL. Instead it's suggested that they find an outside source and contract them to script. Because it's not about the script itself, but how it's used.
Just like my part in my group's project. Since I have programming experience, creating a HUD system for people to submit real-time feedback to a guest speaker wasn't too difficult for me. But I also realize that this HUD system isn't the main focus of this project. It's just a tool that we use to gather data on audience participation, which is where the real meat of the project is.
I think the balance of "what you did and how you did it" and a focus on research is one of the hardest things to maintain. Many grad students enter grad school with the doing mentality, only to have themselves brainwashed into focusing only on research. Is research important? Absolutely. But research that is separated from doing can provide an unhealthy separation between theory and practice. Thus you end up with researchers and their theories in one corner while practitioners are in another, and n'er the two shall meet.
I would propose, to steal a term from UF, a scholarship of engagement. Engaged with our community, etc. yes, but more than that, research that is engaged with and has outcomes in practice. Otherwise, why do research? Is it really worth it for the masks group to say that people have significantly different personalities than their avatars? I mean, what are the practical implications of that for psychologists, teachers, anthropologists, etc.? And what if it came from this study that people with a particular avatar personality mix had particular buying preferences? Wouldn't that be one of many potential valid practical outcomes of the research study?
Out of curiosity, is there a going rate for scripting? Is it per hour, per job, or some other variable?
I presume payment can be made upon delivery, but do people ask for money upfront? Maybe a deposit?
It is interesting to consider the thought process involved in making such a transaction in a VE compared to online purchases on the web through a known vendor. I get the sense that procuring scripting and building services is like buying a used car. You hope you get what you expected rather than finding out all the problems once you've already made the deal.
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