Welcome to The Tech Open Source!

Over the past few months, we've been interviewing and consulting with some of our core partners and members, looking for ways to refine and improve the program and its online tools. One of the messages we've had to continually  communicate in the program is that there are many more ways to create using your talents and tools than had been  emphasized clearly. In short, the program isn't virtual at all, but its purpose is to create real stuff for the real world.

In fact, from the beginning, the official title of the project has always been "The Open Source Museum Project". The words "open source" refer to both the open sharing of plans and computer code, and also to the way of working in which contribution to any project is open to anyone, and innovation can be advanced through that visibility of the work and ideas. The program focuses on all these aspects. It's important that individuals looking for open source opportunities can find the program, and understand its purpose clearly.

So, in order to open up a whole new host of opportunities, Welcome to The Tech Open Source!

There will be many new opportunities ahead as we continue to be a conduit for new methods, talent, and tools for the museum industry.

Second Life Rocks
Second Life (tm) remains the most complete collaboration environment online today. As a tool for prototyping exhibits and exhibition spaces it is unequalled. The Second Life community is still the most talented and thoroughly creative community on the internet today. Since the beginning, we've always emphasized how Second Life is the most complete vision yet of the host of tools developed around the earliest roots of the Internet, guided by Doug Engelbart and his team.

It often happened that institutions and individuals had projects which lent themselves to open source development, but didn't necessarily need to develop them using 3D models, or even use real-time collaboration. The open source program needs to be able to accommodate these situations - without confusion. Therefore, it's important to get the point across quickly via the name. This flexibility will definitely increase the opportunities to develop projects using Second Life tools.

Second Life Rocks - keep using it!

A Note About Usability
As you may know, many people who start in Second Life don't have the time or inclination to learn it thoroughly enough for it to be useful to them. They might say that it's simply too difficult to use, and give up. Over the years however, I have come to understand that this simply is not the case that it overwhelmingly difficult.

At The Tech Museum for example, we have an exhibit in wich anyone can walk up and sit down at a Second Life instance. There are 8 stations and within moments, kids get the idea, exchange avatar names, and interact with the other users. The sims even include building tools! It's incredible to watch people in literally less than 1 minute sit down and use a virtual world. This is also the only exhibit I know of that has a "10 Minute Time Limit" sign posted. You can't tear people off of it once they start exploring.

Our guiding mentor for this project, Doug Engelbart, has also written and presented extensively on the subject of new computer tools and their adoption. Considering that Doug Engelbart invented many of the core computer components we use today, his insight means a lot.

Doug used the comparison of a trycicle to a biclycle to illustrate that ease of use does not mean high-performance, and high-performance almost always requires learning. This is even more the case with computerized tools, because they are so new to the human experience. With sophisticated tools there is a high "effort-to-performance ratio" which is available only to those who stick to it and learn. 

In short, we all have to learn new skills if we want to have the advantages of new tools.

URL's, Projects, and Such
All the previous URL's for your projects on The Tech Virtual will redirect automatically to The Tech Open Source. Yay technology! You may want to update any references you make in your work to reflect the name change when you get a chance.

Going forward, The Tech Virtual will refer to the Second Life locations The Tech, The Tech 2, and The TechTG islands as well as the exhibition of this work created in 2008, The Tech Virtual Gallery.

The Tech Open Source also has its own physical space, The Tech Test Zone resulting from its 2011 Request, which was originally titled "Places and Traces".

If you see any remaining signage or references that are out of date, please let us know at the new contact email opensource@thetech.org.

Welcome to the new opportunities and new communities that we will be able to connect to through The Tech Open Source!