Back about a year ago the VP of my old job stumbled onto Second Life. Another web developer that I worked with did a write up of it. At first I looked at it and thought Second Life was lame, and I couldn't believe that people would spend money to own virtual land there. At the same time my old company was going through a lot of changes, and I was kind of looking for a niche where I could be protected from my aggressive co-workers. Well, I started playing around with Second Life. It turned out to be a wild, somewhat dark experience. Yet I saw potential there. The beginnings of what could be a virtual environment that could be used to possibly bridge the gap between ground university training and online education. I was excited. Initially my boss gave me the thumbs up, then later tried to take the whole thing away from me, then relented and let me develop out a virtual campus in Second Life.
I initially wanted things all to myself, and saw myself as more of a manager of in-game subcontractors then dealing with my co-workers. But I relented, and for some reason decided not to be greedy and allow the full team to be involved. This turned out to be a huge mistake, as I didn't really have the power to direct the team, and they all looked at the project as kind of a fun joke, which really frustrated me.
Anyways, I had dreams of grandeur. I mastered the Linden API and started developing a web application where students could create avatars, events would be managed, test would be administered, in-game out-of-game web communication between the web site and Second Life would happen. Secondcampus.com was created and the guts of the web application were ready to go.
But as I started, I was dogged by other projects that I didn't want nor care about, co-workers who had hidden agendas and ego's that I couldn't nor wanted to manage, a corporate shake up, and a slow willingness by my educational company to use the virtual campus that we created.
In the end I decided to jump ship and take a web development job that was 100% telecommute that would allow me to move closer to my girlfriend. I made a hasty exit from my company but I left the keys to my Second Life kingdom behind me so others could take the reigns if they so desired.
Nothing happened. I checked sadly ever so often to see if anyone had done anything with our island. Nada. Then one of my former co-workers contacted me about not being able to post a blog on the old second campus blog site. I told him how again, and it the process removed myself completely from accessing the blog. Then I waited. He posted, another self glorifying post about how this developer had done something with a technology similar to second life. Then nothing. The whole exercise was so this developer could shout to the world his greatness, then his interest in keeping the blog going died.
Then the same developer contacted me about Second Campus. I though again maybe some activity. Nope, he just needed some web space to host a video that they had put together about the virtual campus. The video didn't really say much, just some fly by's. Again, another look what I did, not real interest in development.
I had given my company info about how to transfer the domain over, but no interest occurred until later. Well tonight the last step was taken, the secondcampus.com domain name is transferred, but my company elected not to keep the web host, so as of tomorrow SecondCampus.com will most likely be, along with my dreams of the virtual classroom, a memory.
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