The discussion about water sims encircling the CDS and/or connecting the CDS to Etopia has been around for some time. While there is significant agreement that this would be a very good opportunity for the CDS, to this moment the CDS has not yet been able to gather the necessary financial momentum for this expansion.
Some weeks ago, Sudane felt that the time was right to prepare a document that would present the case for a spatial connection between the CDS and our closest neighbour, Etopia. The current term having started, she brought the document to me, and also shared the document with Etopia and the VWEC. The document, which can be read here, presents a very strong case for the development of a spatial continuity through water regions, that preserve the territorial unity of the communities while fostering a closeness arising from the sharing of a common space. I won’t repeat Sudane’s arguments here, I strongly recommend that you read the document.
The reception of the document was enthusiastic: the VWEC too feels the need for a closer connection between its different communities and projects, and took the document to the attention of LL to strengthen their own case.
Still, from the point of view of the CDS, our main concern was still present: we cannot, now, support the expense of a number of additional regions, even if they would be very cheap Openspace regions that technically could be available to us as a community that rents a number of private islands.
I now need to introduce to the presentation a new player. As you all may know, Sudane, Gwyneth and I are part of the core team of Beta Technologies, a SL Solution provider which has done acclaimed corporate and research projects in SL since 2006. The remaining member of the core team whom some of you may already know is Jeff Brooks (in SL).
Beta Technologies has made a very significant project in 2021-22 called LOCUSPROJECT Amiais@SL for the University of Aveiro, Portugal. This project faithfully recreates the built environment and natural surroundings of the hamlet of Amiais, Sever do Vouga, in Central Portugal, and adds an interactive layer to educate about the intangible heritage of the place. It is live and freely visitable in Second Life.
In fact, the ACRL Virtual World Interest Group (which is an integrant part of the VWEC) will organize a visit to the project on 15 March 2023. That visit is open to you all and more information on it can be found here.
The LOCUSPROJECT Amiais@SL being completed in June 2022, it was at risk of deletion and loss of all its content since the European Union funding for it was exhausted.
Now, Jeff Brooks manages Arts Resources in Collaboration, Inc. (ARC), a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization that specializes in preserving cultural content, and decided to bring in his expertise and experience to preserve the LOCUSPROJECT Amiais@SL through a new branch of ARC called VP-ARC.
VP-ARC will exclusively address the problem of the preservation of virtual world content, specifically SL and OpenSim/Kitely, and will use its +40-year expertise in developing actions for funding and fundraising, while exploring new ways to keep the preserved content alive, by using the strengths of the virtual world, namely the ease in creating community and PR content.
After a process of some months, VP-ARC now acquired the ownership of the LOCUSPROJECT Amiais@SL from University of Aveiro, only lacking the final acknowledgement from LL as to the transfer of the estate owner account.
It is the intention of VP-ARC that LOCUSPROJECT Amiais@SL joins the VWEC -- this has already been greenlighted, and only awaits the above mentioned transfer to proceed.
All these processes undergoing, Sudane and I consider that they can all merge together, resulting in the following proposal:
As can be seen, VP-ARC proposes to move the 4 Amiais regions to the vicinity of the CDS, filling in the 1-region gap with 3 water regions (tinted aqua in the map). These water regions would be charged to VP-ARC and the CDS would incur no cost for them. There is the possibility of placing a fourth region in the future (tinted blue). It is not necessary on this phase, but it would make for a more correct entrance on the Amiais river, while also providing a more stable border to Friedsee region, which may suffer from land issues derived from its extreme terraforming.
They would extend North to touch Etopia Oceania, and this would provide a physical waterway between the Amiais regions, the CDS with an access from the Locus Amoenus region, and Etopia Oceania.
As you may know, when SL estates propose a spatial continuity, LL requires that all the estate owners agree on the continuity.
Therefore, we have already shown this map to Etopia, to gather a first impression.
We now present this to the CDS RA, and to the CDS community, for your opinion, which we hope will be favourable.
We believe that the CDS will have much to gain from this spatial continuity. Etopia is a vibrant project on its own merit. Amiais is considering the establishment of its own community surrounding the project as a novel way to extend the life of research projects in the virtual world. The CDS, and indeed all three entities, can profit from the extended community life, visibility and cooperation.
