Launch!

Centre for Information Literacy Research launched in SL: 1 (v. good); No of people attending: 12 (v. good); Drinks consumed: lots (good); No. of times computer crashed when about to start welcoming speech: 2 (v. bad)

Am recovering from general hysteria induced by hosting first virtual gathering. Generally counted a success and already some nice coverage of event. Art Fossett blogged about event here on his blog and there are excellent photos from Peregrine Juneau here on flickr

Have prepared press release and since have not said on this blog what Centre actually IS , here is the link to the Centre's website: http://www.shef.ac.uk/is/cilr/ . Centre also launched in RL this week and hasn't physical office, is more a focus for information literacy activity & liaising with other researchers. So to have SL office is v. nice as well as giving justification for designing roof gardens and buying launch-party outfits (although as see in pics in end am wearing old butterfly skirt, though with newish top and latest batch of jewellry).
Good things were that 4 other people from my Department attended, plus Maggie Kohime from the library. 2 people (Art and Peregrine) attended from Eduserv (who donated office space). Also were 4 people from outside including IH. Managed to give speech welcoming people (more on that in a moment), Art gave v. elegant speech and I presented gift box. Then were some interesting conversations. Party lasted about 1 hour which is longer than had thought.

Will talk in future posts about various features that installed in office last night in flurry of activity. One of these was the bear poster (Pegegrine has good photo on flickr) of which was rather proud, which instructed people how to copy freebie bear. Bear (illustrated here) is blue in colour with CILR written on ears, "I love information literacy" text hovering over it and a notecard inside with basic info on the Centre plus some useful links etc. on infolit.

Half way through party when drink etc. had oiled wheels of conversation emerged that in fact must have got permissions wrong as people weren't able to copy bear, thus detracting from its cuteness. Will need to investigate this but couldn't fix immediately as bear is formed of linked objects. Lesson here about perils of tinkering with SL scripting when actually have zero idea of how it works and am merely cutting and amending in line with helpful tutorials found through googling on web.
Other major embarrassment was that computer crashed TWICE, of course waiting until was about to begin welcoming speech. Was trying to paste in lines from prepared MS Word script and machine couldn't cope with all activity on screen plus that. When got back in computer evidently had enough, since was only inworld for 3 mins before got dreaded screen of death.

Was saved by colleague who had logged in computer in lab so was able to continue from there. If am going to organise any other events will have to use that from beginning.

Anyway, have other snippets to blog including Embarrassing Photos of Colleagues, but will save that for another time. Visitors had v. good ideas for discussion topics & people kindly saved transcript of session so can pick through it in detail at leisure.

1st photo shows Ishebel, plus Nigl and Yuxuan from my Department (Nigl's photo is also on the sliddeshow behind him). The 2nd photo shows Art's speech, the 3rd photo shows the bear and the fourth the conversation after the launch.