Kami Harbinger

It's hard for newbies to get into SL. They're given the standard substandard run through Orientation Island, then dumped in the toxic wastelands of Ahern. Much like Kansas farmgirls getting off the bus in New York, they tend to fall into lives of debauchery and stripping. If only there was some way to tell them you're more experienced, and willing to help out!

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So I've made a little freebie gadget: the Volunteer Mentor Armband. This has no relation to Linden Lab's own "mentor" program, which is about perpetuating the Orientation Island situation[0]. Instead, it's a way for established Residents to bring newbies up to speed and into the culture of SL, on their own.

Come by my shop and pick one up--it's completely free and open source--and wear it when you're feeling helpful. When you put it on, it'll give you instructions, and it contains an instruction notecard.

Use '/411 mentor' to show the hover text, or '/411 nomentor' to hide it. By setting one or more topics with '/411 topic +SOMETHING', you can focus on what you're good at instead of trying to be everything to everyone, like the "official" Live Help and Orientation Island people do.

Orientation Island[0]: Orientation Island's not a bad idea, but it's a very passive education, so only self-motivated learners will ever learn anything there; the people who need it most will never do so. And it's so understaffed and overloaded that there's no chance of getting the help you need. I recently created an alt, and never once saw a mentor.

For a while now, I've been thinking about store presence. It's important to have someone in your shop or club or whatever, even if you're just sitting around building, because that green dot draws other green dots, and they can ask you questions and see demonstrations of your products, and soon you have a wild party of commerce. Camping is the lowest form of this, but something to draw people to your store is essential.

Products don't sell themselves, which is why we have salesmen. Advertising helps, but an empty storefront doesn't sell very much. For a few months earlier this year, I wasn't in-world much, so I didn't sell nearly as much as I had grown to expect. Even now, lag in Jiminy is getting insane, so I can't often work there, and I may be moving soon.

Let's say you're obsessed, and spend 8 hours of every day in-world (as I do on the weekends). SL is world-wide, so that's 16 hours a day that you're not there when potential customers are. You might be able to hire someone to be a salesman; it's a reasonable job for a newbie you can trust, but training them consumes time you may not have, and people wander off, and don't really want to do "Second Work" for a few L$ an hour... Not to mention the minimum wage laws, which may apply here.

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So I came up with a cheap technical fix. THE KAMI ROBOT! The Kami Robot is a simple scripted agent that monitors for chat and responds or hands out notecards, can detect people to greet them, can page you if something important comes up, and can even sell items or accept tips. It can be a receptionist, a bartender, a salesman, or that weird guy at the tavern in every RPG that hands you the Spatula of Destiny.

Now sure, any scripter can spend a few hours or days and write one of these from scratch, that does some specific set of tasks. What separates the Kami Robot from all others is the magic of "Robot.cfg". A notecard with events and commands, simple enough to be written by any non-technical person, will control your Robot's every behavior. Here's an example of a rather surly receptionist:

listen/robot/say/0/I'm not a robot, you're a robot!
listen/kami/say/0/Kami Harbinger's not in right now. If it's urgent, slip me L$10.
money/10/msg/owner/%u has an urgent message for you.
touch/say/0/Don't poke me, or I'll poke you.

The Kami Robot is available now for the low, low price of L$1000! If you'd rather not use my last-minute-design shiny robot body, you should be able to just pull the script out and drop it in something else.

If response to this model is good, I'll be making a 2.0 version (with a free upgrade for any Kami Robot 1.0 owners) with some simple animatronics and a range of more charming humanoid bodies.

Coincidentally, C.C. Chapman in Managing the Gray #21 mentioned a friend volunteering as his secretary for a day, and that it worked great; people were constantly coming by and asking questions. That is the kind of interaction you want, but can't always provide.

"Good design, as far as I am concerned, embodies these six points:
relevant, intelligent ideas;
function,
expression (semiological appropriateness and aesthetic originality);
appropriate use of technology and materials;
minimal impact on the environment (throughtout the full product cycle);
and high quality (including maintenance and durability).
Good design can also alter human behavior and create new social conditions."

-Karim Rashid, I Want To Change The World

I'm still just skimming it, but it's a fantastic book; the objects he makes are weird and alien, but comfortable and organic. Certainly it raises my bar for what I'd consider attractive building in SL.

I just had a moment of self-awareness; the me-of-20-years-ago just looked out through my eyes and freaked out. I'm sitting in a cafe, listening to Japanese pop music, writing a videogame in a virtual world, using a bottom-of-the-line laptop that's more powerful than any but my latest workstation, using a wifi network that's as fast as most company T1s I've used over the years. The me-of-20-years-ago would say it was too cliché and cheesy a cyberpunk moment even for me to write, and I was Cyberpunk Boy #1 (I read Johnny Mnemonic in OMNI when it came out...).