Public Works Center in Disarray

So, my public works center in Second Life is in disarray – It all started after I attended the International Technology Expo (ITE) in Second Life on Silicon City. I had gone with my alt to listen to a builder’s panel discussion about meeting a client’s expectations in Second Life. One of the panelists, Keystone Bouchard, is the person who inspired me to enter Second Life when I saw his presentation of this virtual world at Autodesk University in November of 2007. Well, yesterday’s presentation was no different – his comments, and those of the other panelists, about building in Second Life - drove me to immediately return to my center and start “renovating.”

I was happily building away when I heard a strange sound, looked around, and noticed pictures flying through the air near my center. I send an IM to the sim owner, Doeko Cassidy, who immediately responded by showing up and removing the offending device creating these pictures. So my efforts at improving my center were interrupted by some jerk causing problems for no good reason – in a way I guess that is a lot like real life. 

Well, I decided to leave my center for a while to look for objects I needed to decorate the place and by the time I returned, half of the place was inaccessible – the island was offline. Now today, Sunday, the whole island is completely gone!

Because I have the center spanning two sims, I still have a portion of the building available, and I have copies of everything that was in the other sim except for a television. But I am left wondering if the island and building will be returned and why it was taken off line. I guess that is the essence of the problems with Second Life – you can spend hours creating and working on your space to have it all disappear in a flash with absolutely no explanation. Can you imagine a whole block of your community disappearing into nothing and not having to address this with your citizens? Well, all of you in public works could imagine the scene at city hall if an incident like that could actually happen. In Second Life, things disappear all the time, and it seems that no one is ever given an explanation of why. I have faith that with backups the island can be restored but still cannot help buy wonder why it happened and wish that someone would at least give the “owners” of land on that sim an explanation.

In any event, I am still in renovation mode and will work on the remaining portion of the center in order to provide an even better resource for those who are able to visit the center. I have also set up a display for an event I plan to hold through the month of May so look for the upcoming announcement.