GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

To create a fundraiser and public education opportunity that would launch
the LA-VRML Users Group.  The concept of a Barn Raising was chosen as the
inaugural event with the intention of conjuring up the spirit of community
among potential VRML mentors and sponsoring companies throughout the
greater Los Angeles area.

I. BEHAVIORAL/CULTURAL GOALS

1. To introduce the uninitiated to the Electronic Café, its philosophy, and
its history and to celebrate 20 years of innovation in bringing people
together through media. For those who have participated in the e-café
community, to provide them with multiple layers and views of the e-café.

2. To create a social space in cyberspace that parallels the social space
that e-café creates: the bringing together of people in remote locations
through telepresence and social computing. To extend the e-café community
to the desktop, opening its doors through media to those who do not have
physical access to a local e-café venue.

3. To be fun, playful and highly exploratory and totally interactive; to
encourage collaboration and social interaction; to expand upon the existing
e-café spirit and culture in a virtual environment.

4. To be accessible to as wide an audience as possible; this includes
access to a) People who have never heard of Electronic Café as well as
e-café old-timers; b) People who may conceivably be visiting their first
VRML site; c) As broad a range of technical capabilities as possible to
allow for maximum accessibility. To provide layers and a different points
of entry so that visitors can chose the experiences which best suit their
personal and technical capabilities.

5. To provide visitors with experiences in:

              -Musical Collaboration
              -Art Collaboration
              -Dance Collaboration
              -Structured Improvisation
              -Social Interaction
              -Telephony
              -Telepresence
              -Fun and creative stuff to do for kids of all ages
              -An experience of the physical structure, its contents and its content



II. CONTENT/INFORMATIONAL GOALS

As a VRML museum, there is particular information that the site will
convey, as follows:

1. Satellite Arts Project-1977 and the launch of telepresence
2. Hole in Space-Beam me up Scotty...people socialize across space using
analog video
3. Olympic Arts Festival-1984 Orwell vs. Kit & Sherry; the Electronic
Café is born
4. MCI Global-1995
5. The e-café goes Viacom
6. Loyola Composite Image Space
7. Electronic Café International-The Global Network; 15 active
installations (they're bigger than MacDonald's.
8. Celebrations & Events-New Years� Eve and other notable events
9. Awards-NII, Interactive Media Festival/ARC, Tokyo Video, TeleSpan "88
(10 yrs. of leadership), Space Communicators.
10. Video Archive-A library of videos showing notable e-café events.
11. The VR SIG (IICS-LA?)


III. TECHNICAL, CREATIVE & "LEARNING CURVE" GOALS

This is a grand experiment; although the goal of "barn raising" is to get a
group of the top VR and VRML people together to build the infrastructure
and some of the experiences of this site over a two-day period, it is as
much a learning experience as it is a production process. Therefore, there
are certain technical objectives we would like to meet, which we hope will
serve to turbo-charging everyone's learning curve by giving them a hands-on
production experience with VRML and by doing so in a venue where there are
lots of folks around to help steer the process in a variety of ways. This
is a perfect example of what I call "autodidactic communalism," the idea of
getting together to teach ourselves and each other; we are all students and
we are all teachers in this venue.

In this spirit, the technical, creative and learning goals are:

1. To push the VRML envelope not quite to the snapping point, but close.

2. To create multiple points of entry based on different technical
capabilities, with the core site being the "LCD" (lowest common
denominator) version 28.8, low bandwidth, minimal computation capabilities
on up to the high-end SGI or higher-end custom browser scenario.

3. To take advantage of the available expertise and try as many things as
we can.

4. To utilize a variety of different production tools.

5. To learn how to create optimally for VRML, concentrating on techniques
that will result in the most cohesive implementation of our concepts taking
into account the extreme technical constraints and inherent instability of
a new technology.

6. To experiment with the integration of different tools, such as VRML,
JAVA script, and other programming languages.

7. Mentors with expertise in various specialty areas will be provided to
guide the process and there will also be brief tips sessions for the whole
group so people can get up to speed on some of the basics of creating in
VRML. And, most importantly:

8. To make something really cool and have a blast doing it.


 CONCEPTUAL OVERVIEW

The overriding metaphor/conceptual paradigm for the e-café Virtual Museum
is PORTALS. Following in the spirit of Kit and Sherry's 20 years work in
using media as a portal between remote locations, we will use the concept
of portals as points of entry into various modules isolated worlds,
informational packets, activities, etc. These will be PORTALS OF BOTH TIME
AND SPACE, taking you to other places, as well as other points of time that
span the 20 years since The Satellite Arts Project, and the global terrain
of the e-café network of venues and events over the years.

The following are some specific conceptual ideas that relate to this
concept and which can be utilized and created for the e-café site:

Interface -Start with the "e-café basic" which will be a low-bandwidth,
all-browser model of the café using optimal techniques that allow anyone on
any computer with any browser to access the core site.

-Use all objects, screens and devices in the room as portals to
information, worlds, experiences, activities, etc.; there will also be
portals within portals; in other words, each module may also have portals
to other modules.

-All modules should have a portal back to the e-café, hopefully something
more exciting that a logo floating in space. Maybe we use the insignia
globe as the portal back into the Santa Monica ECI.

-Click on something once to get it to do activate an animation or behavior
in the current world; click on it twice to travel through that portal to
another module.

-Create a ski map or trip tick which lets people see all available options,
but the options best for their platform are highlighted or mapped in some
way so they can see which experiences are optimal for their technical
capability.

-Indicate objects which are currently live; eventually, all objects in the
space can be made live.

-All video monitors will show a still graphic or video clip (depending on
your browser specification.) When you click on the screen, it will change
images; when you double click, it will take you to a module about whatever
it was you were seeing on the screen.

-Other objects can be ports of entry to various other modules or
activities; e.g., all the globes in the room click to the e-café world
network globe; click on any phone in the room, including the refrigerator
magnet phone, and get a live audio link to other site visitors.

Experiences:

-Module: 3D Timeline with portals to specific project or event modules

-Awards Sculpture Garden-giant models of awards in garden; click on one and
go to project module

-Interstitial Audio-Various audio clips and quips that play while graphics
are loading

-Module: e-café 84 media table-Click on equipment to see the images or
media that were created by each piece of equipment

-Module: e-café Global Network-a psychedelic globe that shows all the
e-café sites around the world; create a timeline interface that enables you
to click on a given event, see which sites were involved, and then go from
there to the specific module for that event; this can be accessed by
double-clicking on any globe in the room.

-Module: Thomas Brothers Guide/e-café 84-Use a 1984 Thomas Brothers� guide
as a portal into a map of L.A. which provides an overview of all the sites
that were linked together for the Olympics project; if we can get access to
a model of LA, we could VRMLy drive from site to site.

-Wall of Fame: The Celebrity wall in the café-click on a person and hear an
audio clip of them talking about the café; or click on an image, such as
Biosphere 2, and go to a module about the e-café that was set up inside the
air-sealed greenhouse.

-Avatars: People can inhabit the space as avatars; let's figure out some
cool way to represent them other than the usual. Maybe we could represent
people as video sprits or 2D video ghosts (low-res, scanlines or whatever)
to create a sense that people are being represented through media.

-Collaborative Worlds: There will be a series of collaborative worlds that
will let people get together and dance, make music, and do collaborative
art and storytelling together.

-Structured Social Activities: Visitors will have the option of
participating in some kind of experience which is a cross between dada,
happenings, improvisational theater and a game. These may occur on an
ongoing basis or at a given event.

-Events: The space needs to facilitate events; we should also try to come
up with a concept for the event that will launch the site at SIGGRAPH.

-Persistent Objects: If technically feasible, we would like eventually to
create a way that people could move objects around in the space in a way
which other people could see, and in which the object would remain where
the visitor had moved it until another visitor did the same.

-Graffiti Wall: (in the bathroom) The Graffiti wall will feature quotes
about e-café from various guests over the years; you should be able to
write on the wall and leave your message, or double click and go to a text
archive of guest comments.

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