The Prologue... Long, long ago in a world far away...a
building, well, a 'virtual building',
takes shape. After many laborious hours
of painstaking work and after re-building
his beloved creation for the tenth time,
San Marco considers that maybe he should
have stuck to real architecture, at least
as an architect he didn't construct
buildings himself, he just designed them!
A few days
later....a poor myopic traveller happens
upon this pile of virtual bricks...
DigiGardener: Very nice site
in Alphaworld!
San Marco: Thanks, although
I don't think its all that great. I
am actually an architect though you
wouldn't know it! But wait! this
voice from afar talks of a strange
land...a place called Sherwood Towne where there are
many avatars who live and build
together.
Hear Ye! all
AlphaWorld Community Builders! We will be
meeting at Sherwood planning and building
a Forest to begin real cyberspace
community! A firsttime ever (as far as we
know) experience!
WHEN: Sunday March 24,
1996 starting at 12:00 noon Pacific
Standard Time,
(9pm GMT)
we will interact for about 2 hours
WHAT WE WILL DO:
An experiment in
multi-avatar community, to construct both
our buildings and our culture!
A fun-filled day including:
o A tour of the site:
a lovely natural setting of woods, lakes,
bordered by an ancient
aqueduct left over by our long fallen
cyber ancestors.
o Discussion of the content and layout of
the town:
planned and unplanned sections: huts,
gardens, parks, the building
supplies yard, the dump.. what does a
town need? should it be Robin Hood's camp
or a real village?
o Discussion of the culture of the
community:
town charter, roles: Robin Hood, the
Sheriff of Nottingham, do we need a
village idiot? What should be in a town
charter?
o Lets build something together!
** Using the common Avatar DigiGardener
**
Suggestions so far: a rough hewn
encampment (primordial human settlement),
a ChaoticCastle, a XanaduPalace (send us
your suggestions!)
We will report on all of this on the web
site and post screen shot pictures of our
activities.
DigiGardener: Oh by the way San
Marco, we are getting ready to build
Sherwood towne and could use the skills
of a trained architect, would you be
interested?
San Marco checks his
calendar to make sure it isn't April 1st
and that he's not booked up for the next
two years or so....
San Marco: Sounds a great idea
Digi! I'm a bit short of time at the
minute. How about if I just stand there
and offer advice - preferably while
watching over the rim of a warm full
teacup?
DigiGardener: Ok San Marco, one
thought then, as an architect, you could
give us constructive feedback about the
design of our structures and community.
You could fly over the site as a kind of
inspecteur of aesthetic and function. You
could be a pioneer.. the first virtual
community building and planning
inspector!
San Marco: Well....uhmmm...
DigiGardener: Great San Marco,
thank you for your offer, you are hereby
officially made Sherwood Towne Architect,
welcome! You can start immediately by
looking at our web site under: http://www.ccon.org/events/sherwood.html and following the
Visit link to Hot Sites and looking at
some of the buildings people put up on
wednesday.
San Marco collects
his thoughts.... A group of avatars that
don't exist in reality, designing and
constructing a town that won't actually
exist in the strictest sense, in a
non-existent world......interesting.
"So they want
an article" thought San Marco,
quickly jumping into the bath to come up
with some ideas. After a brief cry of
"Eureka" (and a quick wash) he
puts figurative pen to figurative paper.
DigiGardener: Good idea San
Marco, yes, a monthly column would be
wonderful! We would link it into both our
Towne Crier monthly newspaper and our
Sherwood Guide and Towne Planning
sections! We would be happy to support
you in this!
And.. there is plenty of space in the New
Towne and Chaosville areas for an
architectural center.
After pondering this
for two months, San Marco immediately got
to work and produced Sherwood Towne's
first (and only) Architectural
Bulletins.
Birth
of TheU Competition
|
This is a
story of the birth of an idea and
one avatar's long road to the
virtual bottle... |
We
continue our journey in a car
travelling on a lonely highway
one evening in June 1996. The
occupants are on their way
home.... San Marco is driving
south on the M3 away from London
(and home) and...uhmm
basically, in completely the
wrong direction. DigiGardener
hasn't noticed - but then why
should he? - he's Canadian.
Unruffled (and unaware) Digi is
excitedly filling San Marco in on
one of his new projects - TheU -
A virtual University (See Footnote 1). To cover
up his embarrassment and to put
off the moment when he'll have to
inform Digi that the next exit
which will take them back in the
right direction is many miles
away, San Marco desperately
searches for an idea to divert
Digi's attention for the next 20
miles. Reaching
into the depths of his
consciousness and summing up all
the experience in his many years
of searching for ideas and
summing up experiences, he
ventures
tentatively...."ummm...how
about a competition to design
TheU! :o)". Okay, not a very
big idea at the time I grant you
but it was enough, he thought, to
keep Digi from noticing that the
exit which would take them back
in the right direction was still
all of 19.85 miles away.
Digi,
like a dog with a bone, shakes
the idea around, chews it over
and with 19.75 miles still to go,
exclaims... "Great idea San
- what are you doing for the next
two years? Oh...and by the way I
don't know whether you noticed
but we seem to he going in
completely the wrong
direction."
So began the
interminable sleepless nights,
thousands of e-mails, an extra 20
hours of work per week (on
top of the day job), purchase of
a new road atlas to ensure this
kind of thing never happens
again...oh and most importantly,
loads of fun.
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Footnotes:
1. Folklore has
it that the idea of TheU was
originally conceived by an avatar
called Johanna (apparently in a
weak moment and evidently one of
complete abandon). Johanna was a
close friend of Digigardener and
one of the founders of Sherwood
Towne.
2. Actually
just before the 'incident' on the
M3, DigiGardener had been
involved in brainstorming the prototype of
TheU.
3. (Editor's
footnote) The Do's and don'ts of
creating a web site in one
weekend:
Do add extra
caffeine to your coffee
Don't take sleeping tabs
Don't blink for more than one
second or sleep might set in
Don't create your own graphics
Don't ask anyone to prooof thhe
dra%ft
Do ask the kids to make loads of
noise to keep you awake
Don't do it on a weekend when
those boring Rinklehof's are
coming to tea (or maybe Do?)
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