University of Hamburg in 3D: Lesson learned

Abstract

Virtual worlds are difficult to classify. On the one hand, they caused one of the biggest hypes in the last years and were seen as the solution to push social networking and collaboration to a new level. On the other hand, the run for virtual land and designing the most impressive installation slowed down quickly and people got unconfident about the benefits. Even though many companies withdraw from virtuality, the number of worlds grew and many (research) institutes started to populate one of the largest playgrounds. In this contribution, we are going to share our experiences, but also claim the need for a sophisticated methodology to support development projects, increase the security, protect the property, close the gap between the worlds, and create a common database of knowledge and experience for other to read about lessons learned in (successful and failed) projects. All projects done on the University of Hamburg Island in Second Life would span beyond the page limitation. Thus, this contribution can be seen as a movie trailer: Receiving an overview of the student projects with references to publications with more details. In this spirit, grab the popcorn, lean back, and enjoy the reading.