Second Mars?

One customer that presented this week at the Innovation Leadership forum was Jet Propoulsion Laboratories.  They gave a great talk about what it takes to develop new ‘robots” (by their definition anything that moves without direct human intervention) that see some of the most extreme conditions immaginable with some of the most delicate scientific intruments available in tow.
It was a really fascinating talk, but the part I found most interesting was their focus on Second Life as a platform to collaborate.  Their new development model is “first send an avatar, then send a robot, then send a human”.  So I sent my avatar to check out what their island looks like.  Explorer Island is a really well done build and there is lots to do, including static exhibits of all the space probes that JPL has developed and even a chance to drive the mars rover.

(Pardon my shirt…I lost a bet and have to wear this for the next week in SL 🙁 ) 
Watch this space for more info coming soon.  After their talk, I had lunch with Tom Soderstrom (their IT CIO) and it looks like we will be teaming up to drive further down the road of CAD to SL interop.