Trying to escape the infamous pitfall of changing the subject of a thread, I'd try to discuss this idea in a separate one.
On this thread, Aliasi Stonebender has announced that she'll be able to start hosting a few classes in Neualtenburg. Some of you may remember the excellent series of classes of pet scripting done by Catfart Grayson a while ago - he had a regular audience of around 15 people or so, who met every Sunday, 6 weeks in a row, to learn how to script pets. And, of course, very irregularly, I sometimes host a few classes for utter newbies. A big advantage of Neualtenburg for hosting classes is it's nearness to a telehub, of course
And for the newbies, we still have enough "open air" space available (always better to navigate if you're pretty new and a bit confused why the million textures in Neualtenburg take so much time to load).With more people willing to teach classes in Neualtenburg, I think we could try to organize a bit ourselves. The idea of "The Neualtenburg University" is not to try to "compete" against the other established Universities in SL, like The Learning Center - but just a cool name to describe a group of Neualtenburgers willing to semi-regularly organize some classes. Having, say, the same spot and a regular schedule for classes will be a fantastic way to attract new people. I remember my newbie days when I used to hover around The Learning Center, University of Second Life, or the Ancient Earth University, just in hope to learn a bit more. Of course I happened to visit those places a bit more while I waited, and stayed around after class just to look around and chat with the residents. The same could definitely happen in Neualtenburg, even if we don't get that level of organization
but just a small group of volunteers hosting regularly.That said and done, I just have three courses ready to teach - one for SL Basics, one about Jobs in SL, and one simple scripting class for handling touch events to retrieve notecards. The scripting class is my weakest one - if I have more than 6 people attending, I simply cannot manage to help them out properly in just one hour (after teaching my first scripting class, I was in awe of Hank Ramos, who a year ago did scripting classes for over 30 people -- sitting on a corner of 4 sims -- and didn't miss a beat, conveying loads of information and still having 10 minutes free for questions & answers...). I found out that my Euro hours have very low attendance during the weekdays - it has been very hard for me to attract more than half a dozen people, compared to discussion events, which easily get around 20 or so. The weekend classes, though, are always a big success.
Finally, the space. Sudane has gently allowed anyone who wishes to do some presentations/classes to use her space near the city walls, which has a "schedule" of events and a slideshow presenter. The only two disadavantages to that space is that it's far more difficult for new users to find it and navigate towards it - so I should set up a teleporter to that directly, near our teleport hub. Also, you need to get in touch with Sudane for her to invite you to her group, post on the event list, and leave the group afterwards, due to the way event announcements are handled. So, it's easier to do classes on "public spaces". The Marktplatz and the Kirche are too laggy for me and most newbies, so I tend to use either the empty lots either of the Schloss or the Museum, drop my ready-built amphitheater on it, drop a teleporter near the telehub for the newbies to get to those places quickly, and that's it
The Schloss, being at the edge of a sim, is particularly well suited for doing classes - if you view your audience with your back to the edge, everybody else, while watching you, will have pretty high frame rates that way.I wonder if we could use the Schloss as the space for a University
In my country, most private universities are built inside old abbeys or former army barracks Well, this is just a "brainstorming" thread. I could also use it as a basis for the campaign for the upcoming elections
"Plans for the next term, if I get elected again, will be promoting the educational facilities in Neualtenburg... [...] we will get extra stipends to teachers and instructors, and consider to offer grants for students to encourage their recurring return to further classes.... [...] basic classes will be free, more advanced classes will have a minimal fee, a practice that has often failed in the past, but due to the high quality of our teachers, we think we could set up a fee of, say, just L$ 5, for the materials that will be handled by the teacher to the students [...]" LOL 
