San Jose's Tech Museum of Innovation has announced the launch of The Tech in Second Life, an integration of the museum with the virtual world. It's built a replica of its facility in Second Life, currently empty to provide space for virtual exhibits and educational programming through an exhibit design competition hosted by The Tech Museum. The virtual exhibits made by the competition winners will be shared under a Creative Commons license and displayed in the virtual Tech.

The Tech is hoping to attract exhibition builders, craftspeople, museum curators to collaborate on the Tech's online platform. The platform will enable participants to find and work with others, access tools, participate in forums and view guidelines and tutorials.

The virtual Tech is accepting exhibits around the design competition theme of “Art, Film, and Music.” Additionally, the Tech plans to replicate a number of the winning exhibits in its real-world museum in San Jose. A panel of experts will review the virtual exhibits in Second Life and awarding prizes to the winning projects. The winners will be announced in connection with the 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge, produced by ZER01: The Art and Technology Network, in June 2008. The Tech will also support the competition by running building and scripting tutorials in Second Life.

Tech museum president Peter Friess said, “This is a unique and exciting use of Second Life and we are excited to lead this new initiative to revolutionize the way museums create exhibits. The Tech is using Second Life as an open source platform for content development, tapping into creative talent worldwide. I am looking forward to seeing the ideas and contributions that exhibition builders, craftspeople, and museum curators create during the course of this challenge.”