Austin Tate [Ai Austin]

AIAI, University of Edinburgh

Open Virtual Collaboration EnvironmentAustin Tate (Ai Austin)

Open Virtual Collaboration Environment

• Web-based Collaboration Portal– Drupal CMS– Also explored Facebook, Google Groups, Yahoo Groups,

Ning Groups, Joomla CMS, Drupal CMS

• Virtual World 3D Space– Second Life– Opensim

• Virtual Collaboration Protocol– Standard Operating Procedures– FAQ and Tips– Protocol (Rob Cross, University of Virginia)

VenueAmphitheatre

I-Zone B

I-Zone A

Projectand

TeamSuites

Sandbox

Expo Pavilion

CentralPlaza

Hill TopOrientationArea

JOEGeoDome

Virtual Collaboration Environment AssetsVersion: 1.3Revision Date: 13-Aug-2009

Description: Freely available buildings, landscaping elements and textures to support the creation of collaborative and other facilities in virtual worlds such as Second Life and Opensim. A set of assets are available for use in Second Life (and may be used in Opensim). They are distributed under the open source Lesser GPL licence.

 The assets include:

•Central Plaza•Orientation Area•Amphitheatre (configurable for 1 to 4 sims)•Breakout Rooms•Expo Pavilion•Large Project Room•Small Project Room•HQ Building•Box of Landscaping Elements•Box of Textures•Box of Orientation Signs

I-Room/I-ZoneRevision Date: 4-Aug-2009

Description: A two storey building with central area and 4 work zones, designed for collaborative and brain storming style meetings. Can be used an as operations centre. Plenty of wall space for displays and gadgets. Each of the 4 corners can easily be converted to a small two storey block, or a larger double height block. The I-Room style buildings are used in the I-X/I-Room research on intelligent collaborative and task support environments at AIAI, The University of Edinburgh.

The OpenVCE approach makes use of modular components from many other open source contributors and communities, and are available under their respective licences. Most parts are available from their normal open source download site.