Top University Greatly Curtailing Second Life Footprint - Western Australia One of Last Major Schools Active in SL

Sad news for the state of metaverse art and virtual world education: Due to budgetary/administrative changes, The University of Western Australia (UWA) in Second Life is being greatly scaled back -- in the next couple weeks, declining from five sims to just one. Jayjay Zifanwe, who's been managing the UWA's presence in SL for over seven years, has the details, and some mournful thoughts on this end:

The SIM that will remain for at least another year is the Uni of WA sim, which is our flagship sim housing Winthrop Clocktower and the Reflection Pond, The Sunken Gardens and The Somerville Theatre. Everyone, do come..reminisce....look through the blog posts here, find yourselves. It is all of you who made all of this possible. I normally am known for long drawn out presentations and speeches perhaps, but, this time it is too hard for me to think of what else to say... except ... THANK YOU EVERYONE.

Fittingly, the 3D art installation known as The Last Ocean, inspired by a theme of "death of a virtual world", will be open to UWA visitors for these last two weeks -- click here to visit by then.

On a big picture basis, this is easily the most prominent and active presence of a major university that's still in Second Life. (UWA has been ranked among the top 100 of universities in the entire world.) No doubt there's dozens of semi-dormant sims owned by smaller schools still on the grid, but thanks to Jayjay, UWA has always been the most active in recent years, at least from public-facing point of view:

To take just one example, UWA has sponsored an annual machinima contest with hundreds participating and tens of thousands watching the entries. Here's a couple of my own favorites:

But I should probably close with this inspiring talk by JayJay IRL:

More about his virtual world work here. I have a feeling we'll see more from him soon (UWA in Sansar, say?), but in the meantime, hope you go here to wish him and his group of dedicated volunteers well.

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Comments

[sirhc deSantis]

They have done an amazing job over the years, a lot of memories. Silly thing is, I never saw Lost Ocean - time to rectify that one.

Urge all to go take a long look around while its still there.

[Iggy]

Gone, gone. Sad to see UWA scaling back.

I can recall all those sims that the U Texas system had.

I need to read more about this. We closed for budgetary reasons (LL's 2010 backstab-bump in tier) but I wonder what the administrative changes more. Our technologists, who supported our island, long ago moved on to other technologies. I don't think they even think of SL any more.

[Val Kendal]

Their support for the arts in SL was huge, this is very sad indeed.

[Jay Jay Zifanwe]

an 11th hour reprieve ..... and all of the 5 sims are alive through mid 2017 (in part thanks to a lot going on behind the scenes including SL residents making direct offers to UWA senior management to help keep the sims alive).

while all 5 sims are still there, 1 of those have transferred ownership to the University of San Jose although in operation will remain as it has been in the location it has been