Cafe Fireball – Flame On!
Info Island II will soon have its first café.

The Faculty of Engineering at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada is launching Café Fireball on Wednesday, February 21 at noon SLT. Please join us for welcoming speeches and a tour of the cafe (and, of course, excellent Canadian coffee).

The Moroccan-style building, located on the scenic shores of Info Island II (thanks to Lorelei Junot), will provide a place to grab a virtual java and chat about such topics as sustainable development, biomedical engineering, nanotechnology, and other pressing (or not so pressing) issues of the day. It will become, we hope, the official and favourite cafe of the Info Island environs.

It will also provide a place for avatars to collect information about engineering programs offered by McMaster.

“Cafés are popular, real-world destinations where people gather to relax, meet others, read, and study,” said Lucy Sheung, Manager, Faculty of Engineering. “We chose a multicultural theme to celebrate McMaster’s diversity and to recognize the many engineering breakthroughs that have come from the East.”

The first floor of the two-storey building houses the virtual café while the second floor and roof feature exhibit areas. Two espresso machines have been installed in the cafe, the designs of which were chosen to reflect the industrial design component of engineering. One is an antique Victoria Arduino espresso machine and the other a more modern Italian design. Visitors can help themselves and then enjoy their coffee beverages as the lounge, meet or explore the space.

The second floor features a “difference” engine as a tribute to Charles Babbage, a Victorian mathematician who developed the blueprints for a gear-driven computer. It was never built but is considered the first programmable computer devised. Babbage’s difference engine was to be steam powered. McMaster’s features an environment-friendly wind-powered clockwork device that captures the offshore breeze. The engine is also a reference to how McMaster offers engineering with a difference. It provides an interactive guide to the programs and options in McMaster’s faculty of engineering program.

The upper levels of the café also provide visitors with additional information about engineering programs and initiatives offered at McMaster. A podcast listening station allows avatars to listen to Radio Fireball, a podcast series discussing life as an engineering student at McMaster. University researchers and students will also have space to set up displays showcasing their work. Look for more exhibits on mechatronics, computer science and other engineering disciplines coming soon.

“Second Life is a leading edge social networking tool that is suited to international recruitment, especially for students interested in 3D gaming environments, programming and graphical interfaces,” explains Sheung. “It gives us not only an innovative outreach tool, but exposure to a rich new learning and education medium for our students and faculty.”

Café Fireball can be found on InfoIsland II at 235,220,35.

For more information please contact Mediium Helvetic (Wayne MacPhail wmacphail at gmail.com) or Opal Koba (Lucy Sheung, sheungl at mcmaster.ca).

This entry was posted on Friday, February 16th, 2007 at 5:57 am and is filed under Relaxation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.