OSCC Keynote 2

This presentation from Infinite Metaverse Alliance® (IMA) and Thales Group discusses research and development progress towards improving open source code for: SceneGate 1.x, Future SceneGate 2.0, DreamGate, IMABox, and EchoVoice projects. The work of IMA and Thales is in general directed toward broadening use of the Metaverse for Public, Education, Industry and Government sectors but the community as a whole benefits from open source.

Frank Rulof & Lisa Laxton

This session will delve into how virtual world use was impacted by expanded online instruction during the pandemic. The expectation (based on a 2020 survey of educators) was that faculty would expand their use of virtual world learning activities during the 2020-2021 academic year. Still, faculty plans to increase their use of virtual world learning simulations did not take into account student interest in virtual world learning simulations during the pandemic.

Student attrition in combination with the Zoom class webinar scheduling demands on students during the pandemic led to lower undergraduate student interest in virtual world learning activities. One bright spot in the realm of student interest in virtual world learning was observed in a class of graduate students studying how to teach online. As a related topic, this session will explore how to better position the OpenSimulator virtual world platform to play a larger role in the expected continued expansion in online instruction.

By Kay McLennan

As a follow-up to the 10:30 presentation, Andrew and Cynthia will provide guided tours and explanations of the Barbara Truman Planetarium.

Search the grid map for “Planetarium” or click on the map signage to teleport.

The Barbara Truman Planetarium honors our dear friend, Delightful Doowangle, and her love for virtual worlds. Delightful devoted her life to virtual world simulation research, education, and Team Science. She supported the OSCC Organizing Committee and was the Community Manager for the Military Open Simulator Enterprise Strategy (MOSES) project. Join us as we reflect on how she continues to inspire us at Virtual Harmony.

Andrew Stricker / Spinoza Quinnell , Cynthia Calongne / Lyr Lobo

The Metaverse as a Distributed system: How we can react to Facebook’s conversion to Meta, and what their commitment combined with other technologies now available means for the future of the Metaverse. Businesses need different solutions than end users do. At the same time, we need those different systems to interact smoothly while addressing the privacy and security issues of today’s popular systems.

By Michael Christopher

As WordPress is one of the most popular CMS, I wanted to fill the gap and create an easy to setup front-end. While there were some attempts in this way, they were not ready to use solutions, more like pieces of puzzle to bring together. So started the development of W4OS (aka WordPress For OpenSimulator). The plugin is now tested and published, and allows showing the grid status, user grid registration and even the choice of initial avatar. Next goal is to add web grid profile, user region controls, some admin features and integrations like 2do HYPEvents calendar or web assets server.

By Magic Oli

Moderated by Maria Korolov

Panelists
Ann Cudworth / Annbelle Fanshaw, Cynthia Calongne / Lyr Lobo, Dauna Kiser / Ghaelen D'LarehDauna , Maria Korolov

Presentation of the International Spaceflight Museum’s Mars Base / Universal Habitat analog astronaut / colonist training facility. Will discuss the features of construction virtually, but will focus on how people interested in either learning more about colonizing Mars, or who want to begin training to colonize the Red Planet at some point in the future, to use the ISMs facility to begin that training process. How the facility portrays three phases of colony construction, how current technologies will be used to realize this construction using In Situ Resource Utilization of resources already present on Mars to drastically reduce the cost of both travel to Mars and to make living on Mars not only survivable, but to grow and thrive into a self sustaining colony capable of making mankind a multiplanetary species.

By Mike Lorrey

A professional appearance for your avatar is essential for educators networking in virtual worlds. This workshop will help attendees change their avatar’s appearance so it reflects who they are. The focus is on traditional (non-mesh) avatars and clothing.

By Beth Ghostraven

Panel discussion moderated by Mal Burns.

Panelists:
Mal Burns, Adam Frisby, Evo Heyning, Dale Glass

Going over the OpenSimulator Growth and Statistics
With Maria Korolov from Hypergrid Business

The Barbara Truman Planetarium honors our dear friend, Delightful Doowangle, and her love for virtual worlds. Delightful devoted her life to virtual world simulation research, education, and Team Science. She supported the OSCC Organizing Committee and was the Community Manager for the Military Open Simulator Enterprise Strategy (MOSES) project. Join us as we reflect on how she continues to inspire us at Virtual Harmony.

By: Andrew Stricker / Spinoza Quinnell , Cynthia Calongne / Lyr Lobo , Francisca Yonekura / Frankie Antonelli, JJ Jacobson / JJ Drinkwater

The Virtual Worlds Education Consortium began in January 2021 in Second Life and meets quarterly. As the metaverse expands, VWEC strives to explore evolving virtual spaces and has a VWEC Pavilion in Kitely to share resources for educators. Without collaboration and networking, newcomers in virtual worlds find it difficult to navigate to high quality immersive learning experience and often ask “where is everyone?”. Participants will discover the Virtual Word Database, VWEC Directory, and numerous educational opportunities in Kitely and other open sim environments.

By: Becky Adams / Elli Pinion, Kevin Feenan, Renee Emiko Brock / Zinnia Zauber, Valerie Hill / Valibrarian Gregg

Kisma shares her experience from a totally real life based painter to an art teacher using Zoom and now using the Metaverse. Learn the trials and outcomes she has gone through over the last 19 months in virtual art communities and how being a non-digital artist has impacted her full acceptance as a virtual artist, how do we overcome such a bias?

By Kisma Reidling / Juliette SurrealDreaming

Built across an inlet on the river Mersey and opened in 1715, the “Old Dock” revolutionized cargo handling at the port of Liverpool, bringing prosperity to the city through the Triangular Trade albeit at a tragic cost to the million-plus enslaved in Africa and transported by Liverpool ships to endure the hardships of plantation life in the Americas. This reimagining of the “Old Dock” focuses on the years leading up to the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and diverse sources are used to present a partial build alongside the stories of some of those who lived and worked there.

By Graham Mills

An island called Sustainability Hub has been developed to teach sustainability and agenda 2030 in middle schools during pandemic. The project was carried out at the University of Camerino, Italy, in the virtual world Techland (http://techlandgrid.it:8002).

By Michelina Occhoni / Michelle Techland

Welcome to the 9th annual OpenSimulator Community Conference. This year’s event features presenters across the globe who will be highlighting the user projects and core development work of the OpenSimulator platform. We will kick off #OSCC21 with an overview of the latest features in the OpenSimulator software update and conversation with Core Developers of the platform. Crista Lopes, Andrew Hellershanks, Ubit Umarov, Melanie Milland

Find out where the platform is headed and learn more about the developers who make the software happen!

While virtual worlds might be emerging pedagogy for many, as veterans we have an dystopic opportunity to show other educators how deeper learning can take place in immersive environments. Come join us for a discussion on how to showcase your worlds and once again open the portal to the creative, educational, technical, and experiential metaverse.

Chris Luchs / Abacus Capalini, Kae Novak / Kavon Zenoka

This panel will discuss the spontaneous social architecture and journey of the Virtual Harmony community. The Virtual Harmony community offers 12 Open Simulator grids supporting its work with small communities, immersive 3D courses, and learning simulations. Speakers will share their journey in the virtual community. Highlights will include an overview of Virtual Harmony’s Gemeinschaft framework for resiliency in times of dissociation.

Five areas of the Gemeinschaft framework to be discussed by the panel are: kinship and fellowship, psychological and spiritual nourishment, creative ideation of art-of-the-possible, collaborative design and creation of virtual habitats for Gemeinschaft, and harmonious healing and resiliency from co-living in Gemeinschaft. The concept of social dissociation will be briefly described along with healing recommendations.

Andrew Stricker / Spinoza Quinnell, Barbar Truman / Delightful Doowangle, Cynthia Colongne / Lyr Lobo,
Elizabeth Stricker / Algernon Loire, Francisca Yonekura/ Frankie Antonelli, JJ Jacobson / JJ Drinkwater, Kathy Flitter / Lyn Skylark

We’ve been escaping into virtual worlds for decades. With the resurgence of VR, now is the time to go to the next level. Let’s take a look at what is needed out of the software that will ultimately empower us to live our lives virtually.

Kalila Lakeworth

Andrew Stricker / Spinoza Quinell

Panel discussion moderated by Mal Burns

Adam Frisby, Caitlyn Meeks, Kalila Lakeworth, Lacie, Mal Burns

Too Laggy? Then check out this presentation by Bluezy Bleac on understanding “lag” and how to deal with it. He will be explaining the things that cause lag, the reasons behind each, and possible solutions for each of them.

Bleuzy Bleac

A presentation about A Dimension Beyond Inc. and how they have taken a different path on hosting OpenSim, Halcyon, and cybaLOUNGE grids. We will get into the in’s and outs of hosting DreamGrid OpenSim Grids.

We will talk about selling hosting in different ways and the in’s and outs of the different ways. A Dimension Beyond decided to do hosting differently and we will explain how it works. We will also share experiences in hosting Halcyon and cybaLOUNGE.

Myron Curtis / Darkeagle Darkstone
& Steve Lavigne

My owl says, “This presentation must be a keynote.” That is not true, it has to be THE KEYNOTE. In case you arrive on time to listen to the keynote from the beginning then you will know for sure what to answer when you are asked next time, “What do you do for a living?” Then you can answer, “I MAKE AMERIKA ART AGAIN.” And when the person shakes their head or even worse gives you a sign of stupidity, it will be time to tell the naked truth, “I USE OPENSIMULATOR.”

This presentation is based on social science. This presentation uses an AI. This presentation is Art. This presentation is disruptive. The “K” in Amerika stands for a reason, a reason that will be uncovered. In fact, this presentation is all about you. You, being a person who may have heard over the years, “Oh … Really? You still work with Opensimulator, isn’t that like old SL?” In fact, the person might be thinking: “How boring.”

Kisma Reidling / Juliette SurrealDreaming & Reiner Schneeberger / Art Blue

Storytelling is a wonderful means of getting our language learners excited. Recreating such a story in a virtual world would provide a great setting for roleplay and fanfiction. Yet, how difficult is it to recreate scenes of Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter or King Arthur and his Round Table in OpenSim? What about character creation? Changing avatar outfit, clothes and accessories?

When creating the scene, what building skills are required and when it comes to storytelling, what skills are required to come up with a captivating story? These main three challenges will be addressed in an EVO session and we hope to recreate collaboratively a story in OpenSim. Organised by TESOL America every year in January / February thousands of language educators mingle online to learn from each other in a free-of charge 5-week workshops. This year we invite participants to join us in creating story – and perhaps it is the story of EXCALIBUR…..

Heike Philp

Moderated by Maria Korolov

Planned Panelists:

Lisa Laxton

Mike Lorrey

Open Simulator is an open source project written and maintained by volunteers. But the people writing the code cannot test every facet of this huge project. They depend on “reporters” to try everything out, verify when things are fixed and report new issues. Any of us can be reporters but to be effective there are procedures you should go through. Don’t just whine “X doesn’t work! Fix it!” You should go through several steps to submit a good bug report. It is not easy! I’ll go through the steps with some war stores of experiences I have had reporting for OpenSim. I hope to encourage more people to help improve OpenSim by reporting bugs and I hope to show you how to improve the quality of your bug reports.

Kayaker Magic

Decentraland is a decentralized virtual reality platform powered by the Ethereum blockchain. Within the Decentraland platform, users can create, experience, and monetize their content and applications, accessed by common web browsers.

Michael Lorrey / Mike Lorrey

With the sudden need for more virtual environments, everyone is scrambling to investigate alternatives. Open-source virtual worlds provide great opportunities but are best discovered through professional networking. The Community Virtual Library shares a plan for networking across the metaverse.

Becky Adams / Elli Pinion, Valerie Hill / Valibrarian Gregg

Panel Discussion – moderated by Mal Burns

Our group has been developing applications for the Opensim virtual world platform for a number of years. We describe our goals, the design approaches that emerged, and our development processes. We share the best of our lessons learned. These stories from the trenches will be useful to individuals who (1) are interested in the behind the scenes aspects of our effort, (2) are looking into starting their own adventure in developing serious virtual world applications or (3) are interested in how we are facilitating virtual learning environments.

Ann Nowak, John Mela, Kevin Cozens / Andrew Hellershanks, Ludovic Lotoah, Ramesh Ramloll, Sue Caxton

The presentation looks at the history of swimming places in and along the River Mersey in the north-west of England. It shows how they developed from humble horse-drawn bathing machines via an innovative floating pool moored mid-river to what was the largest aquatic stadium in the world in its time. Swimming pools frequently occupy a cherished place in personal and shared memories and this suggests possible applications for virtual recreations.

Graham Mills

Isabel Valverde

“Hybrid Tech” means combining tools in optimal ways by playing to their strengths and mediating to their weaknesses, relative to the use at hand. In this session hybrid tech will be demonstrated via presenter narrative and audience participation using laptop and mobile devices to access Augmented Reality, Web 2.0, and Web3D applications and environments, all from within the OpenSimulator environment.

James Neville / Sitearm Madonna

We are going to Amerika. This was the call many of our ancestors followed and it is again to become the call. Let us give this call a voice. [You will hear, “We all living in Amerika. Amerika ist wunderbar.” ….] You heard Rammstein is singing: Amerika ist wunderbar. America is wonderful. We have this kind of a wonderful America for you. It is called AMERIKA.ART — Amerika Art is the new format for an immersive art show. It happens in virtual and in the real place, the village Amerika, Germany. Let us look at this place in the way Google calls Actual Reality. Then the concept of the immersive Art challenge will be outlined. It leads to a new term for the arts: Actual Virtual Reality and to a come together at the AVRDays 2022. The call for AMERIKA.ART starts in January 2021 and the presentation, the Grand Opening, will happen in May and June 2022.

Kisma Reidling / Juliette SurrealDreaming
Reiner Schneeberger / Art Blue

LISA LAXTON & FRANK RULOF
This presentation from Infinite Metaverse Alliance® (IMA) and Thales Group discusses development of a new open source viewer for the OpenSimulator community focused on improvements in usability, accessibility, and interoperability. Development is driven by inclusive “design thinking” while adding capabilities for the future to address gaps in development aimed at the needs of new users and those with different abilities that may be digitally marginalized.

RACHEL UMOREN - Each year, there are 2.5 million newborn deaths, most of which are preventable. One of the top causes of neonatal mortality is when a baby does not breathe at birth. Newborn resuscitation training reduces newborn deaths, but knowledge and skills from in-person training rapidly decay, sometimes in a matter of weeks after training.

VALERIE HILL / VALIBRARIAN GREGG & ALYSE DUNAVANT-JONES - This presentation will share an overview of open sim projects developed by the Community Virtual Library. The CVL Hypergrid Resource Library, located in Avacon and Kitely, as well as several other projects will be highlighted.

Shocking Title for an OpenSim Conference I know, but let me tell you about my OpenSim Journey. This presentation will showcase the work I’ve done and then try to get answers for the depressing decline in schools and teachers interested in OpenSim collaboration and creation. Let’s talk about OpenSim and please change my mind.

KAE NOVAK & CHRIS LUCHS - Join us for an exploration of the liminal state or in-between state that exists between the metagame and players in games and virtual environments. This liminal state has now extended to transmedia experiences to include the LitRPG genre. This panel will discuss the exploration of the liminal state where a player (learner) can take advantage of the duality that facilitates deep learning and creativity.

ANABEL ORIGIN - Language Teacher & Lecturer
Our objective is to illustrate an example use case for the RezMela system.
We will focus on a few built creative scenes that can be shared by students in order to achieve specific gaming and learning goals.