Welcome to Aunty….
Remember way back…before gui browsers… when the Australian Broadcasting Corporation only had a couple of pages on its Internet site? (It looked nothing like the earliest archived page I can find - 23 October 1996) .
When I was first trying to get libraries interested in this new-Internet-thingy, I would always show the ABC web page, and the Library of Congress page - partly because there wasn’t much else outside univeristies, and partly for the gravitas it added to the idea of the Internet.
Well..last night I visited the brand new ABC Island (you can visit if you are a member of the ABC Friends group in SL). It’s in the same neighbourhood as the Australian Film Television and Radio School’s AFTRS’ Virtual Island. I sat with joKay Wollongong around an outback fire on ochre ground, contemplating the bare landscape. In the picture, you can see an RSS feed of the latest news headlines in the ground, plus the tour pod, showing that 156 tours have been made in the last day.
Later I took a tour of the island. It gave a running commentary of what is planned for the terrain… an Underground section for emerging bands, a place for building competitions, storefronts for various ABC departments, plus - of course -a place where you can receive ABC TV and radio.
More information is at Second Life Insider. Abi Goldflake (SL name I hope), who is co-ordinating the project is discussing it with interested Australians here on the SLOz forum. No press release yet - I think they are wisely waiting until there is more there.
I hate it when people cut big wads of a quote into blog posts, but I think it’s worth it for Abi’s outline of how ABC Island fits in with the ABC charter:
Under the ABC Charter our functions are:- ‘to provide within Australia innovative and comprehensive broadcasting services’ (and broadcasting is now taken to include all new media services too) - we see SL as very innovative and a real opportunity to do something new and engaging for our audiences
- ‘broadcasting programs that contribute to a sense of national identity and inform and entertain and reflect the cultural diversity of the Australian community’ - this is why we want our island to have a strong Australian feel and to be a place where Australians can come and find fun things to do which are distinctively Australian
- ‘broadcasting programs of an educational nature’ - this is where the information/education side might come in. I take Wolfie’s point about the Teen Grid (that’s perhaps a separate project for us) but in general the ABC attempts to provide content which educates audiences in a broad way.
- ‘encourage awareness of Australia and an international understanding of Australian attitudes on world affairs’ - SL is perfect for this - there is such a large international user base (particularly from the US at this stage) and there is real potential to provide a showcase for Australian talent, content and issues.
- ‘to encourage and promote the musical, dramatic and other performing arts in Australia’ - again, the creativity of SL means there is real potential for the ABC to provide innovative musical and artistic content - whether it’s existing ABC content presented in a new way, or, more likely, content created by SL residents
So I think the Charter gives us a great starting point for some of the things we can do in SL. If you wanted to sum up our objective I’d say it is to develop a sense of Australian community based around content, creativity and innovation for Australian and international visitors to the ABC island.
