Warning: this is a long post. Danger of extreme boredom
Introduction:
Once upon a time there was a little and young avatar called Anna Begonia. She was in her early twos, and like all young and inexperienced avatars, she thought she was “old” and “experienced”.
One day a white fairy-avatar appeared by teleport in front of her and said: “Anna, We, the Muvenationers, have a mission for you”.
Anna had heard of the Muvenationers and knew that they were a big international guild of Educators, so she waited a bit nervously to hear what her mission was.
The white majestic fairy avatar said: “You have to prepare a workshop, a hand-on workshop” and teleported away.
“A hand-on workshop? What the hell is it?” – Anna Begonia used sometimes very strong expressions, but we have to be indulgent since she was rezzed from simple, anonymous pixels and never knew what a avatar-father and an avatar-mother are, poor thing.
She then noticed that the white fairy-avatar left a “link”, a magic object that gives you information if you click on it. She clicked, and after some deciphering and turning around in the cyberspace she came up with the information she wanted: instructions!
Following instructions she started to explore the wide territory she was living in, also called The Metaverso, looking for Workshops: she had to understand what was a workshop to be able to deliver one.
In her wandering she learnt that:
1)workshops are something where sometimes a person called “instructor” does not show up,
2)that they can be cancelled at the last moment with strange excuses,
3) that they can be places where everybody is sitting down and one person is standing in front.
She also noticed that usually your view is blurred by a huge amount of green text, able to hide half of your screen in few seconds and that sometimes, for some mysterious reasons, avatars sitting around are popping out. This phenomenon increases with time and with the difficulty of the workshop.
Now, after much observing, she was ready to carry out her mission: to organise a workshop herself.
She had to admit to herself that the task the fairy-avatar gave her was not an easy one and that she needed to reflect and look inside her pixelmind to find out what she wanted to do and what, of what she knew, she could pass on to others.
To do so she retired on a very high, isolated and bare square: her skybox. There she searched, she searched deep inside herselfand, why should she deny it, also in her inventory.
After many hesitations and change of mind she decided that she was going to lead a group of adventurous Muvenatoners on the path of “Texturise-Link-add-Script”, a path she was familiar with and found very useful indeed. Along it she had organised more than one activity or event. In addition, to her it seemed an easy walk for all ages : there was no prim twisting or script climbing and she was quite confident that she could lead all the fellow avatars of the Educators Guild without too much danger.
But as we all know, if youngster avatar think the know all when they know nothing, half experienced avatars, as Anna was, think that all they do is pretty easy and that everybody can do the same.
We will see later the consequences of her ill judgement. Let’s focus now what actions she took to prepare for this perilous trip.
First of all she thought on the disposition of things and people: what was the right distance to avoid avatars stepping on each other feet and at the same time keep the group unite; how to be sure that everybody could see what she did in the difficult parts and follow her example.
Then she turned to some magic, usually known as scripts,to prepare an enchanted rope of green words able to lead everybody on the same direction and some large projecting images to give visual instructions and aid to those who were less used to walk on uneven surfaces.
She went along the path infinite times to be sure to remembered all the twists and turns of it and that no dangers or wild animal was waiting for them hidden inside the prim-forest.
At last the big day arrived and she thought she was ready.
Avatars start appearing: greetings, chit-chatting, the usual. She send out a last telepatIM, and then they started. Everybody positioned in its place, ready to listen to instructions. Anna wasn’t very nervous. She had prepared but she knew by experience that the result will not be as she had planned. It never is.
She began pressing the magic green words producer and the Muvenationers started to follow the thread. Yet very she noticed some flairs in the words thread and she tried to stick here and there some blue words to keep it flowing.
In addition the path, that when alone seemed easy and even, revealed all its difficulties. More than once the group had to stop to wait for those who could not keep the pace. The better trained were getting nervous while those who hadn’t much practice in the healthy sport of building looked sweaty, tired and confused.
Time was passing. She knew she had to hurry up: the worst enemy of all Metaverse residents, Real Life, was outside there, hidden in the woods, ready to strike.
She could already hear her whisper: “Stop struggling with edit windows and textures tabs! What for? You can be free: just pretend to crash. Come, come back to me. Crash and you will be free.”
She had to go on, uncaring of those who were every time further behind. As she pressed the pace she saw them falling, leaving around heaps prims and shattered textures dripping unused scripts.
Now the party was formed by only a few brave Educators, some deeply wounded, with only half the prims needed, others tired but in better conditions. But only one, it was evident now, would been able to fulfil the task.
… * …
Anna Begonia asked me for feedback and my opinion, and here I’m, reflecting on what I observed from the other side of the screen. Ah! I always forget to introduce myself: I’m the other half of Anna’s brain, or soul, call it as you want.
First of all I have to reassure you: Anna is ok, this little defeat is nothing compared to some other big Waterloos she went through.
The mistake, both in past occasions and now again, is always the same: expect that everybody knows what one knows and don’t obey to the first law of wise organisation: keep it simple.
The trail she choose was not a Sunday walk, there were too many different skills involved, each of which is an occasion for someone to get stuck.
The mistake/s in the Speakeasy notecard helped as well. She’s still wondering how it could have happened: she read it many times but one can never check too much instructions.
In any case, let’s be positive! One avatar managed to do it and we are satisfied with that by now.
)
) was offered for free by an enlightened educator. I wanted to start a personal project and needed Italian learners: the best way to find them in the vast immensity of the metaverse was to publish the weekly meeting time and day in Events, and wait to see if someone dropped by. I could not use my little quiet office for that purposes or the quietness would have disappeared soon after. Here again I found a nice community of educators and I really enjoyed my stay. Unluckily, we had a bad griefers attach and it was decided to let in only those belonging to the group. A very understandable decision, but I wanted something open to everybody, where everybody was always welcome to come and have a look, or take part in the activities.
