The Second Life Hobos have officially launched their Visitor Welcome Centers, a combination of content, objects, and services developed to help newcomers discover the advantages of Second Life as quickly and as easily as possible.
The main welcome center is at Cookie (138, 114, 21). We have the most recent version of everything at this point. And most of the objects there will be free to copy, except when I forget to set the perms right. The content is offered under Creative Commons License (attribution only).
The most valuable item in the content is the Starter Kit. This is a notecard with a large collection of embedded notecards that provide most of the content. You can get a copy of the Starter Kit by walking into the Visitor Welcome Center area.
The embedded notecards carry instructions that we have identified as needed, based on several years of operating the Hobo Railroad Infohub. Mentors may find the kit a useful item to give to newcomers. Note also that if you have copied any of the cards to your inventory, you can find them by searching on the keyword: Hobo
Another feature of the Visitor Center is the quickjoin poster for Hobo Helpers group. When people click on the The quickjoin poster, they get a link in chat that lets them immediately join the (open enrollment) Hobo Helpers group. The Hobo Helpers group consists of experienced people (not necessarily in the SecondLife Hobo group) and people who want to request help. In that respect it is like the Mentors but it differs in that communication is via group IM. Thus we Hobo Helpers can go on with our regular activities and only provide help when someone asks (via IM) and we have the time and knowledge to help. In addtion, the newcomers can request help from any location and from any available Helper. Note also that this arrangement lets newcomers help each other.
My opening blog about the Visitor Centers is here:
http://rezzable.com/blog/thinkerer-melville/hobo-welcome-center-notice-lists
There are videos for beginners here:
http://thinkerer.org/SLintChan/SLinChLev1.htm
To offer suggestions or get more info, contact Thinkerer Melville