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A future for all the script kiddies and geo hackers in second life

A few days ago we issued a press release (I know, how old school ;-)) on a new feature on the Siemens Innovation Connection in Second Life.  I had been meaning to blog about the addition for a few weeks, but just got caught up in other things.  Maybe this will be the one time that traditional media ever beat a blogger.
Anyway, I wanted to post something quickly on what we added and why.  First off, for those of you with avatars, you can go take a look here

. What you will see is a chair attached to a large screen.  If you sit in the chair you get a set of options that allow you to configure your very own Razor scooter and ‘print’ it out for yourself to ride off into the virtual sunset.  The experience is supposed to give SL user’s who have know idea what Siemens PLM Software does a little glimpse.  If they walk away from the 30-60 second interaction with the basic idea that we help people make products, then it’s mission accomplished.
The reason we built this is simple: I don’t want all of the Gen Y, Millenials and even younger out there who are using SL and other online 3D communities to grow up thinking the only career path for them is to animate Shrek 13 (I’m sure it will be a wonderful movie) or to program Halo 11 (wonderful game play) to know that there is another option in design and engineering.  You will use the same skills you use in world like developing in 3D and working with others, and you have the chance to really help people – build the next artificial heart, solve the transportation issues facing the world today, even build a better mousetrap.
So stop by our sim and take a look.  But even better have your kids take a look.

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One response to “A future for all the script kiddies and geo hackers in second life”

  1. csven Avatar
    csven

    Stopped by the sim a couple of days ago after reading the press release. Reminded me of why I started that (very slowly developing) series on my blog:
    Sometime early last Fall, a bit prior to the fashion PLM stuff I’d read IBM was developing, I’d seen a dress-making tool inside Second Life being used by a woman I know and her daughter. They’re both adults but definitely not the “geeks” so many people seem to believe are logged into SL.
    While the *idea* of (CAD) tool migration wasn’t new to me, seeing it under these circumstances was a bit startling. These two really had no clue about modeling things in SL or anywhere else, but that tool allowed them to make fairly sophisticated pieces without much effort.
    One of the reasons I’ve been interested in some of the SL twitter people talking about their virtual airplanes is because I keep thinking what’s needed is a tool to build airplanes; similar to the dress-maker and Razor tools, but with a big exception. Instead of simply adding parts to create a whole, the parts are parametric. For example, add a big fuselage and you’re limited to bigger engines …which may or may not overcome the increase in overall mass thus affecting flight performance.
    There are some fun things that could be done along these lines. Nice to see you guys pushing things along.

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