Week 3 - Struggles

Unfortunately, we weren't able to meet this week within Second Life. I'm a part of the Red Team along with Rachel and Chenming. Over the weekend, I looked for them through Facebook and Instagram with little success. I messaged some people who I thought might be them, however, they would tell me that I got the wrong person, or they wouldn't respond to my message. As I was searching, I realized how difficult this situation is because none of us know how we look or have any sort of contact with each other besides Second Life. There's also a possibility that they don't use these social media platforms, or they use an alias or a nickname. I didn't realize that this might be an issue until I was manually searching for them. I can't imagine how much of a struggle this is for people who work on team projects over the internet daily.

It might've been more difficult for them to find me since I'm using an alias for class and on my blog, but I don't use the same name other websites. I was quite busy this week, but I did send them a private message on Second Life to ask them what they think of an idea of a group chat on another form of social media so that we can easily contact each other, especially since none of us seem to play the game frequently. However, I sent this message quite last minute so neither of them saw it before class which is completely understandable. I definitely should've tried to send that message earlier just in case they managed to see it before class.


I think the reason why we didn't meet up is that it was hard to get into contact with each other which is essential for a team project. If none of us can communicate with each other that means that we can't start or work on an entire project together. In retrospect, I wish that I realized that searching for my team would be this difficult so that I could've asked them directly after class about the possibility of making a group chat. I'm hoping that from this week onward, we'll be able to sort something out with regards to meeting up and discussing the project within Second Life.

I will definitely make an effort to message earlier in the future so that we can easily arrange when to meet up to discuss the project. This experience made me realize how it can be challenging to work with people that you don't directly know in person. I thought that it might be easier because of how interconnected the world is through the internet, but even in 2020, it can be quite challenging. I'm hoping that it'll be easier once we get into contact with one another. In a way, I'm happy that I experienced this despite it being a bit of a struggle because I now realize the importance of contact in the online work-space and I hope that I won't repeat these mistakes again in the future.