| 15:00 |
Carl Metropolitan |
Welcome to Q&A With the Deans. This is Caledon Oxbridge's combination open staff meeting and question and answer session. We will first have short reports from the deans on any thing they need to mention about Oxbridge, then move on to taking questions from you all. These questions can be about Oxbridge, Second Life, or anything we can answer. Let's get started! |
| 15:01 |
Carl Metropolitan |
Phrynne is our Dean of Commons, and responsible for a whole lot of stuff. Let's start with her today. |
| 15:02 |
Carl Metropolitan |
(One of the things she's responsible for is all the beautiful landscaping we now have changing from season to season) |
| 15:02 |
Phrynne |
This week I've been working on updating notecards for the Faculty Info Kit, which is updated periodically. |
| 15:02 |
Phrynne |
It has a lot of information for staff on how things work, and the Foreign Language notecard, with info to help people who don't speak English well or who want to find others to talk with in their own languages. |
| 15:03 |
Phrynne |
It also has a long list of notecards that are given to visitors on how to do everything from fix cloud states or goth boots to finding General-rated regions. And much more. |
| 15:04 |
Phrynne |
And along with that I've been hanging out in the plaza, helping people, and thinking about what sort of plants to update the grounds with next. :0 |
| 15:04 |
Phrynne |
And that's all. |
| 15:04 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
Or how to behave civilly. |
| 15:04 |
Phrynne |
Yes, that too. |
| 15:05 |
Carl Metropolitan |
I don't really have anything to say today. |
| 15:05 |
Carl Metropolitan |
I have achieved near success in becoming a useless figurehead. |
| 15:06 |
Phrynne |
But decorative! |
| 15:06 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
We are registered for an exhibit at the SLnB, however? |
| 15:06 |
Carl Metropolitan |
Moving on to Wordsmith, someone else who does the work--- |
| 15:06 |
Carl Metropolitan |
I signed us up for it. |
| 15:06 |
Carl Metropolitan |
I have the exhibit ready |
| 15:06 |
Jorge Serapis |
Vivat Rex Carl! |
| 15:06 |
Carl Metropolitan |
(it is the VWBPE exhibit with small tweeks) |
| 15:06 |
Phrynne |
that's an excellent exhibit |
| 15:07 |
Menta Black (mentadent) |
VWBPE??? |
| 15:07 |
Phrynne |
Virtual Worlds Best Practices... something |
| 15:07 |
Rowan Entilles (rowan900) |
how soon we forget |
| 15:07 |
Carl Metropolitan |
If any of you all are involved in organizations that you think should be represented there, go to http://www.slcommunitycelebration.info/ to sign up your group and read the rules |
| 15:07 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
Well, I haven't done anything noticeable this last week other than sit on Phrynne's troll bridge in SL and nod off a lot in RL. |
| 15:07 |
Fidget (fidgetswidgets) |
Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VWBPE) |
| 15:08 |
Carl Metropolitan |
VWBPE = Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education |
| 15:08 |
Rowan Entilles (rowan900) |
that is it! |
| 15:08 |
Fidget (fidgetswidgets) |
jinx |
| 15:08 |
Menta Black (mentadent) |
thanks |
| 15:08 |
Carl Metropolitan |
Nodding off is vital. |
| 15:09 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
It's been a week of the thrice read paragraph(s) for me -- nodding off before I get to the end (allergies). |
| 15:09 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
Seem to be coming out of that, however. |
| 15:10 |
Carl Metropolitan |
I have some stuff to discuss with Lindal about adding LMs to the non-English language signs, and making sure the LMs are up to date. Larky gave me a current list. |
| 15:10 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
I did instruct Brace on the use of the ad boards. Now to get her info on past and current sponsors. |
| 15:10 |
Carl Metropolitan |
Let's move on to questions. |
| 15:12 |
Rowan Entilles (rowan900) |
is attendance in the area of oxbridge tracked? when does it peak? when does it become minimum? |
| 15:14 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
Marion Questi tracks first day and first week avatars on sim. There's also a warning script that goes off when the occupancy reaches 18. |
| 15:14 |
Carl Metropolitan |
Wordsmith also tracks class attendance, too. |
| 15:14 |
Rowan Entilles (rowan900) |
are we seeing more people than usual ? |
| 15:15 |
Rowan Entilles (rowan900) |
visiting oxbridge? |
| 15:15 |
Phrynne |
According to the statistics from last week, yes. |
| 15:15 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
You're thinking of photonic bodies on sim at any time, Rowan? |
| 15:15 |
Rowan Entilles (rowan900) |
it has been my subjective impression too |
| 15:15 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
And the week before. |
| 15:15 |
Carl Metropolitan |
I think so as well. I wonder what is going on. Maybe LL adjusted their Destination Guide algorithm |
| 15:15 |
Rowan Entilles (rowan900) |
i turn around and there are maybe three new people walking by me |
| 15:16 |
Rowan Entilles (rowan900) |
running usually |
| 15:16 |
Rowan Entilles (rowan900) |
so i feel i have to be more aware on my feet |
| 15:16 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
"Newcomer traffic continued its upward trend, reaching levels not seen in 3 years. The First-Day count rose 2% to 363 from 357, while the broader First-Week count was up 5% to 588 from 559." |
| 15:16 |
Rowan Entilles (rowan900) |
it is getting more hectic |
| 15:17 |
Rowan Entilles (rowan900) |
well this is good |
| 15:17 |
Edmund Broek |
Would it be possible for the statistics mechanism also to capture default language of newbie visitors? |
| 15:18 |
Carl Metropolitan |
Good question. I don't know if that's available via any sort of API here. |
| 15:18 |
Carl Metropolitan |
But I bet Wordsmith does know :) |
| 15:18 |
Edmund Broek |
The tutor translator knows the languages of those nearby. |
| 15:18 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
I doubt that Marion's would do that without considerable rearrangement, but it would be possible to do that. |
| 15:19 |
Carl Metropolitan |
Maybe there is an open source translator we could steal that code from? |
| 15:19 |
Phrynne |
We don't keep count of anyone over a week old, do we? |
| 15:19 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
The tutor translator knows the registered languages of those nearby, as does the avatar language hud. |
| 15:21 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
Apart from it being interesting, is there a specific purpose? |
| 15:22 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
(This is me prioritizing.) |
| 15:22 |
Carl Metropolitan |
Jorge and Lindal and Phrynne have been talking about some sort of multi-language posters for the orientation path. Such a tool would tell us what languages should be looked at first. |
| 15:23 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
Spanish and Portuguese. |
| 15:23 |
Carl Metropolitan |
That is what I would think, based on my observations, too. |
| 15:24 |
Jorge Serapis |
Most European residents speak English as either a primary or secondary language. |
| 15:25 |
Jorge Serapis |
It's been my experience that residents from the Americas that don't have English as their first language are restricted in their use of it. |
| 15:25 |
Carl Metropolitan |
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlGetAgentLanguage |
| 15:25 |
Edmund Broek |
So such statistics would be more useful in identifying second-tier languages, because the highest frequency ones are already known. |
| 15:25 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
Señor Jorge, brought that up to me a few minutes before we started (tutorial boards). |
| 15:27 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
The scripting to change textures wouldn't be difficult. I think those are mesh boards, which could have up to 8 faces. I don't know how many faces Ravelli used in creating them, but the remainder could be used for flags. |
| 15:27 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
That would require mods to the original mesh, however. |
| 15:28 |
Carl Metropolitan |
My main concern is that we don't do anything that make the tutorial harder for our typical english speaking user. |
| 15:28 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
In addition to creating and maintaining the multi-language versions. |
| 15:28 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
Easy enough to include a timer that sets them back to English. |
| 15:29 |
Phrynne |
We don't want to turn into the Tutorial of Babel, with a different language on each sign. |
| 15:29 |
Rowan Entilles (rowan900) |
hahhaha |
| 15:29 |
Phrynne |
A timer would help avoid that. |
| 15:29 |
Phrynne |
We do often get people with different languages here at the same time. |
| 15:29 |
Carl Metropolitan |
Here's another free script that could be used as a base: |
| 15:29 |
Carl Metropolitan |
http://www.outworldz.com/cgi/freescripts.plx?ID=460 |
| 15:30 |
Jorge Serapis |
Agreed. That's why I put the idea in Lindal's ear and leave it to you guys to hash out the details before greenlighting it (or not). :-) |
| 15:30 |
Carl Metropolitan |
I suggested to Jorge that a HUD for non-english speakers might be the easiest way to do it. I'm not sure, though about teaching them to use the HUD |
| 15:31 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
Actually, that's out of date, Carl. There's a direct query call to get the keys of everyone on the sim and then another such to get their language without using sensors. Far lower impact. |
| 15:31 |
Phrynne |
What about some sort of HUD in the signboard that reads the language of the person nearby and switches the sign to match? Not my idea, Tasha's. |
| 15:32 |
Phrynne |
Maybe as a takeoff on the Avatar Language HUD that Word made, that we use so we know what someone is speaking anywhere in Oxbridge. |
| 15:32 |
Carl Metropolitan |
Okay. An object lesson in not trusting script design to someone who knows nothing about it :) |
| 15:32 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
That would mean sensors in each board. Plus nearby can mean several boards. |
| 15:33 |
Phrynne |
too confusing, I guess |
| 15:33 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
Better to have flag buttons. |
| 15:33 |
Phrynne |
buttons indicate intention better. |
| 15:34 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
Although a general touch could be used, also. |
| 15:34 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
Along with looking up the toucher's language. |
| 15:36 |
|
Phrynne nods. |
| 15:37 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
I think we want to avoid a sensor in every board or having to add a prim for every board. |
| 15:37 |
Phrynne |
I hadn't considered the possibility of someone flying past and changing all the signs. |
| 15:37 |
Jorge Serapis |
I think a mehcanical solution would be the best one. |
| 15:38 |
Rowan Entilles (rowan900) |
very likely, as many new people fly around over them |
| 15:38 |
Jorge Serapis |
For example, if two residents are nearby, which one does the board decide to display? |
| 15:38 |
Rowan Entilles (rowan900) |
heheh we don't want to make the signs explode in a conniption fit |
| 15:38 |
Carl Metropolitan |
This is why (if we do something like that) we should consider a HUD that displays the translated signs to the individual user |
| 15:39 |
Jorge Serapis |
So then practially, the signs wouldn't need to be rebuilt. |
| 15:40 |
Jorge Serapis |
The HUD would be the active participant, and a sensor nearby would trigger the appropriate language display. |
| 15:40 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
For that matter, for a general touch they wouldn't have to be rebuilt either. |
| 15:41 |
Carl Metropolitan |
Let's pause this discussion to see if there are any other questions we can help people with. |
| 15:41 |
Jorge Serapis |
So the HUD could detect the native language and queue up the appropriate textures.. then the sensor could say "Ok... display 001, display 002.".. and so on. |
| 15:42 |
Rowan Entilles (rowan900) |
i am unsure if i have up to date landmarks for places to send portuguese, spanish, etc, speakers |
| 15:42 |
Rowan Entilles (rowan900) |
i know that there were many changes seen in them lately |
| 15:42 |
Phrynne |
Rowan, check with me or Tasha on that. |
| 15:42 |
Rowan Entilles (rowan900) |
okay good |
| 15:43 |
Phrynne |
Tasha has been doing research on them. |
| 15:43 |
Carl Metropolitan |
I got a set from Larky a few days ago. Let me pass that to Phrynne |
| 15:43 |
Phrynne |
Gracias, Carl |
| 15:43 |
Carl Metropolitan |
if you have those, just hit "delete" |
| 15:43 |
Phrynne |
nods |
| 15:46 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
Other questions, comments, etc? |
| 15:49 |
Fidget (fidgetswidgets) |
No, thank you. As always I learn a lot by coming here. I have to go nap now. Safe Journeys one and all. |
| 15:49 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
tc, Fidget. |
| 15:49 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
With no questions or announcements, it appears that we can adjourn. |
| 15:50 |
Phrynne |
Safe travels, everyone |
| 15:50 |
Rowan Entilles (rowan900) |
take care Elf |
| 15:50 |
Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) |
Bedtime for me, then |
| 15:50 |
Wordsmith Jarvinen |
Thank you for coming. |
| 15:50 |
Carl Metropolitan |
Goodnight everyone. |
| 15:50 |
Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) |
Be seeing you |
| 15:50 |
Rowan Entilles (rowan900) |
and you |