Inspired by a wild beehive, this meeting facility sits over an inactive volcanic caldera. This is two hours into the build and, once completed, it will have smaller areas for informal break-out sessions.
IBM and Cisco found that many good ideas come from people mingling before and after virtual world meetings. This facility is built with that in mind with a “cafe” spot at the top and smaller “hives” for groups of 2 to 6 along the top of the caldera.
This is built on our new grid and, as you can see, it looks just like Second Life. That is because it uses the same viewer and OpenSim for the grid. The advantage in using Reaction Grid over Second Life is cost and politics. The cost is a fraction of Second Life (and I can speak to that well, since I own 12 sims in Second Life). The politics is more subjective.
Reaction Grid is put together specifically for business and educational use. This grid is our own private grid and we are able to hypergrid to other grids. There are many OpenSim grids out there including IBM.
Microsoft just pulled out of Second Life 2 weeks ago to come over to Reaction Grid and it is easy to see why. If you don’t need to buy clothes or go dancing at a club and your purpose is to use virtual worlds to supplement your meetings, then it may be worth investigating.
We (iliveisl – i live in simulator lands) are just getting our feet wet and will be offering packages for Reaction Grid tailored to eLearning and meeting use.
See the flickr set of this Reaction Grid build by Ener Hax for Level 2 Venue (website is early in development).
