How to Join

From Mica

Anyone can participate in MICA activities, either as a professional member or as an affiliate. Membership is free. Professional members are scientists, educators, or technologists, expected to contribute in some constructive and tangible way to the activities of the Institute, and they are elected formally by the Advisory Council. Affiliates are members of the general public who may be interested in attending some of our talks, open discussions, etc., but have no formal obligations.

You have to have a SL avatar; if you don't, go to Second Life to join (it is free), and contact one of us with your avatar name, so that we can ease your entry in VWs and perhaps provide some mentoring.

Then download and install a SL browser (client). We strongly recommend that you do not use the official SL browser, as it is often buggy, and incompatible with everything else. The browser of choice of the OpenSim community at this time is Imprudence. Other third-party viewers are listed here.

Take a look at these short documents first:

• SL Quickstart Guide (PDF)
• Getting Started in SL (PDF)

Then check out these:

• Lorraine Stanton's SL intro guide (PDF)
• The official SL wiki
• SL Basic Resource Toolbox
• SL Shortcut Keyboard Guide (PDF)
• Creating your new Avatar in SL (PDF)
• Also, take a look at our Links page
• Lorraine Stanton has several useful videos for the beginners: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and more

Within SL, you can join the MICA - VW Astrophysics group. Please also send an email or IM to Spike MacPhee (SL name Paradox Olbers) (paradox.olbers_AT_gmail.com) to be added to the email list, announcing the events, meetings, etc.

If you are a professional astronomer or a related scientist, and would like to give a seminar or a journal club talk in SL, please contact Enrico Vesperini or George Djorgovski.

Mailing Lists

There are several e-mail lists used by MICA. They are all run through google groups, and you can subscribe to them there.

General Groups

• MICAmail@googlegroups.com -- general mailing list used for announcements. Should be low traffic. Open enrollment, but only managers can post.
• micasimulations@googlegroups.com -- for the N-body folks
• micaprofessionals@googlegroups.com -- Mailing list for professional members of MICA. This is for folks who want to receive notifications of professional seminars, but don't necessarily want to get the announcements of the more popular-level events.
• compscivr@googlegroups.com -- Mailing list for the Computational Science discussion group. Contact George Djorgovski if you'd like to join.

Restricted Groups

• micacouncil@googlegroups.com -- for the MICA Advisory Council (members only)
• micaexec@googlegroups.com -- for the MICA Executive Council (members only)