Australian residents and Second Life residents who are fans of Australia have displayed a huge vote of confidence for the move by the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, not American) to establish a presence in Second Life. Ideas have flooded in through various means: the SLOz forum posting, the ABC friends group and directly through Abi Goldflake, the ABC's representative in Second Life. The ABC Friends group itself - created only a week or so ago for the purpose of collecting together interested Residents - now has 60 members.

Since the ABC's own team had done a substantial amount of brainstorming before the fact and with ideas from residents coming in so fast, building on ABC Island was able to commence on Sunday, 28th January. At this point, an art director has been brought on board to draw the project together. It is estimated at this point that the project will be complete within a couple of months.

The plan is for the whole installation to be highly interactive; it sounds like the ABC have indeed chosen to provide content of interest to Second Life residents, and is not a simple branding exercise.

Even though building has already commenced, there is still plenty of room for additional input. The island is being designed to have interchangeable, modular parts, so that even after the building phase is nominally complete, it will be able to be altered and updated. In the meantime, if you have content or ideas to share, by all means, contact Abi Goldflake in-world, join the ABC Friends and/or post to SLOz.