The Hobo Visitor/Newcomer Welcome Project

The Hobo Visitor/Newcomer Welcome Project  (by Second Life Hobos) is developing content, equipment, and services to  help people get familiar with Second Life or with new  parts of it.  All of the content  (including equipment) is offered under Creative Commons license, attribution only.  You are free to use any of it, in whole or in part, provided that you credit the source as SecondLife Hobos.

There are two main elements to the Welcome Project:

1. The Hobo Starter Kit.  The kit is a notecard with an extensive collection of help information in embedded notecards.   It is organized into several sections.
2. The Hobo Helper group.  This open enrollment group offers a quick-join poster that lets newcomers join without using search and provides IM help for people in the group.  (I will save the detaiils on this for a later blog.)

The Hobo Starter Kit is given by a poster like the one in the picture.  There are posted at Hobo Island, Hobo Railroad Infohub, and Cookie Welcome Center.    . 

Things newcomers want or need to be able to do

This is a specialized set for people who will intially use Second Life as a communication and networking tool.   This set is particularly suitable as a starter for objectives such as business, education, entertainment, writing, and the like.  This set defers attention to building, scripting and other technical matters important to the infrastructure of Second Life.

• Join a group
• Organize information as you get it.
•  Keep records of  IMs and chats in text
•  Zoom and roam your camera
•   Move, go places
•  Safe Places
•  Change your appearance
•  Voice -- How to use voice
•  Get, give, shop, buy
•  How do people earn money in SL?  (TBD -- I am still working this problem)
•  Keyboard Commands
•  Places with help and free things for newcomers
• FAQ -- Misc. questions people ask

Amenities in the Virtual Village

We think of Second Life as our Virtual Village.  When you consider moving to a new neighborhood, you want to know about the amenities.  Here we have provided information about the some of the amenities. 

• Libraries in SL
• Art galleries and artists
• Science and Technology museums
• Theater, video, literature, writing, and play writing
• Education

Services for business, education, entertainment

Content and contacts for these services. (TBD -- I am still working this item)

Advanced -- Building and scripting

Free objects, mosltly scrripted.  All with full perms so you can mod the objects and the scripts. 

Web resources and outreach

Additional information is available in this SL Intro Channel

We offer introductory videos.  This web page aggegates videos (mostly by Torley Linden) that cover the most basic and essential info needed the beginner to start functioning in SL. The videos are all embedded in the web page, so people have them all together in one place.

We have a direct entry page:  How to get into Second Life without really trying
That page will bring people dirctly to the Cookie Visitor Welcome Center.
The page will bring people to the Hobo Island Welcome Center as soon as that center is finished.

As part of our outreach program, we invite other groups that offer services to newcomers to use the current content our project, to subscribe to our free update service, and to offer suggestions for improvement.  The current content is avalilable in the  Cookie Visitor Welcome Center.  You can subscibe to updates by clicking on the panel (near the top of the Newcomer Help sign) that says
Hobo Services
Click for notices
This is a mailing list, not a group in SL.  It will not take a group slot.