AvaCon Inc.^✦✔ @avaconinc

Join AvaCon, for a holiday party located on the AvaCon Plaza region in the AvaCon grid.

This is a chance for final end-of-year networking with other #OSCC20 attendees. You can also find out about the events, resources, and programs AvaCon offers, including the Free Virtual Land for Social Good Community on the AvaCon Grid

Tuesday December 15, 2020 3:00pm – 5:00pm
On AvaCon Grid – HyperGrid address: http://grid.avacon.org:8002

This presentation from Infinite Metaverse Alliance® (IMA) and Thales Group discusses research and development progress towards improving open source code for: SceneGate and Future Viewer efforts, EchoVoice server and bridge applications, and a platform agnostic IMABox solution.

The discussion is focused on the development work progress to provide modernized solutions advancing virtual world technologies for everyone. 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

Join AvaCon, for a holiday party located on the AvaCon Plaza region in the AvaCon grid.

This is a chance for final end-of-year networking with other #OSCC21 attendees. You can also find out about the events, resources, and programs AvaCon offers, including the Free Virtual Land for Social Good Community on the AvaCon Grid

To attend, you can login with your OSCC conference grid avatar account or another OpenSimulator account that is Hypergrid enabled, and then you can Hypergrid jump to http://grid.avacon.org:8002 . Copy the url, open the world map, and paste the url in the little search bar on the right! Click on Find and then on Teleport!

You can also create an AvaCon Grid local account at http://grid.avacon.org:8005/wifi/user/account/ and if you need more info on connecting, go to https://www.avacon.org/blog/avacon-grid/.

Tuesday December 21, 2021 3:00pm – 5:00pm PST
On AvaCon Grid – HyperGrid address: http://grid.avacon.org:8002

Mature Rating Appropriate for All Ages (G)
Public or Invitation Only Open to All
Region Name AvaCon Plaza
Parcel/Venue Name AvaCon Plaza

DJ Rachel Rose is a multi-genre, experienced DJ and former club owner in SL and several open sim grids. After high school she became one of the singers in a cover blues/rock band that performed from 2001 till 2014 at different joints in RL around Latin America. She has been a Dj at Rocking the Blues for more than 2 years, and says that she is the “dorky” DJ!

Animesh is the ability to put armatures into mesh objects and animate them in OpenSim. I’ll rez some examples of critters that are not humanoid and even some machines that were made for animesh. These critters and machines have advantages over NPCs, starting with anyone can rez an animesh as if it was a regular prim, while NPCs are usually restricted to estate owners or managers.

By Kayaker Magic

DreamGrid is a free, pre-packaged Windows-compatible virtual reality metaverse system that is easy to install, easy to run, and powerful.

Anyone with Windows can run their own grid from home or at work with DreamGrid. DreamGrid automatically configures many routers for the Hypergrid with Plug and Play in Grid mode. It takes just a few clicks to launch a new Grid. The new Smart Start feature can easily create, populate, and run 160+ free regions with 10’s of gigabytes of DLC even on limited memory PC’s in under a few GB of RAM. Opensim region modules include Gloebit, jOpensim, Tides, Search, Birds, and Auto-Updating teleport sign system, and the new Smart Start. Smart Start includes Smart Boot on demand, which uses far less memory and CPU that standard Opensim. There is an Endless Seas and Land function, a Smart AI land generator and a Landscaping Manager. DreamGrid is preset with streaming audio and video for region-wide sounds and video. It includes an extensive searchble map system that shows exactly where people have been in each region, every minute. Web Front ends include jOpensim, Wordpress, Custom or Diva web pages.

By Fred Beckhusen / Ferd Frederix

Art from across the Hypergrid!
Curated by Juliette SurrealDreaming

After the onset of the Covid crisis, many of us expected 3D virtual worlds to be an obvious solution for connecting people. We discuss the challenges that still stand in the way. We present some possible solutions.

Ramesh Ramloll

Healthcare workers need to practice their skills to maintain competence, but this requires facility space, equipment and supervision. On the other hand, the high penetration of mobile smartphones and cellular network connectivity in many countries around the world makes virtual reality simulation training feasible. VR simulations can be engaged at the learner’s convenience with game-based automated feedback that is ideal for episodic learning.

However, many healthcare workers in resource-scarce settings have never experienced VR training. This presentation summarizes the lessons learned in development and feasibility testing of VR simulations among healthcare workers in a resource-scarce setting.

Rachel Umoren

Can undergraduate instructors and students in different areas of practice cooperate online to instill cross-disciplinary communication skills at the same time as they more effectively teach and learn their own subject matter?

College students from Montana State University Billings and Peninsula College Washington State were brought together by their instructors, online, in an authentic industry modeling scenario where a consultant group is hired by a corporation to improve performance, based on discussion with subject matter experts and studying work processes.

Operator and Designer students came together to focus on A) Effective visual communication cues in a dangerous operating environment, and B) Learning to communicate professionally across technical specialties.

Andrew Sullivan / Andy Sullivan , James Neville / Sitearm Madonna, Renne Brock / Zinnia Zauber

2020 brought us a terrible pandemic but an opportunity to provide high school students with an alternative form of interaction and productive participation. Hear how high school students participated and benefitted from a virtual prom on Avacon Grid and how a group of educators, in multiple remote geographic locations, volunteered their time and skills to make it happen.

Randall Deich / Logansan Deich, Tanya Martin / Gridjumper

Session will detail the results of a recent survey of educators (to find out about educators’ expected virtual world and virtual reality learning simulation use during the current pandemic-impacted academic year). Spoiler alert — most of the educators surveyed plan to expand their use of virtual world learning simulations (while the educators foresee a reduction in their use of virtual reality headset-based simulations).

Also, this session will explore the topic of “right sizing” virtual world learning simulations – as guidance [for new and experienced users] on how to maximize student engagement and learning outcomes.

Kay McLennan

The on-boarding experience for Virtual worlds such as OpenSim can be so frustrating for new users that they may never realize the power these environments have for social learning experiences. We argue that by using a very simple browser-based environment such as Mozilla Hubs or Frames by Virbela, we can demonstrate the potential of immersive learning and collaboration to new users.

By progressively showing the increased flexibility in more complex settings that address the shortfalls of the simpler environments, we can convert the frustrated user into an enthusiastic supporter of OpenSim-based worlds. We will present the progression from simple to complex using examples from a SJSU iSchool course and the use of the e-Campus room in Mozilla Hubs as a blueprint for getting people hooked on Virtual Worlds.

A Marie Vans / Amvans, Bethany Winslow

This presentation will highlight some basic best practices that have emerged over 15 years of bringing higher education students into VR environments. Then, areas where additional support and community could help stand-alone educators (with little institutional support) bring open-sim environments to expanded audiences will be raised, seeking to operationalize wiki-like areas of communication that could bridge educators and technologist through important shared concerns.

Topics integrate areas such as: professional and child-focused avatar creation, security, IT components, working with IT departments, institutional buy-in, instructional design support, and the like. The plea is to find collective and communal ways to share, develop and leverage a knowledge base that can facilitate conversations at the interstices of the expanding VR environments.

Eileen O'Connor / Eileen OConnor

Faced with evolving pandemic safety classroom protocols and procedures, and the ever present possibility (or probability) of a rapid switch to all online learning, educators across the academic spectrum are recognizing the need for flexible, adaptable online collaborative technologies that can alleviate the effects of Chronic Video Conferencing Fatigue (CVCF) and restimulate learner engagement.

For the past three years the SUNY Empire State College School of Graduate Studies has hosted half-day residency events in Opensim virtual reality as a means to introduce new students to the graduate programs to their peers, the faculty, and a broad range of interactive, immersive, collaborative technologies which they may consider for their individual degree programs.

The 2020 residency, held in October, hosted over three times the number of attendees than the previous year from a variety of different degree programs, a clear indication of the increased interdepartmental interest in exploring online interactive immersive technologies. Each successive annual event has incorporated participant feedback from the previous year into the programming development of the following event iteration This slideshow presentation outlines the iterative steps and methodologies involved in the creation of a large, successful, immersive, engaging and informative event in Opensim.

Scott Dolphin

Talking about Statistic usage of Open Simulator in the last year.

Mario Korolov

Welcome to the 8th 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 #OSCC20 with an overview of the latest features in the OpenSimulator software update and conversation with Core Developers of the platform.

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

Crista Lopes, Cynthia Colongne /Lyr Lobo, Joyce Bettencourt / Rhiannon Chatnoir, Kevin Cozen / Andrew Hellershanks,
Melanie Milland, Robert Adams / Misterblue Waves, Ubit Umarov

Organized by Kay McLennan, Newbie educators as well as seasoned OpenSimulator educators are welcome — to swap experiences creating and using the OpenSimulator platform for learning simulations. Also, if relevant, seasoned OpenSimulator educators are encouraged to bring along any tutorial materials and/or teaching content you want to share with the group.

You’ll hear many genres of blues here including blues rock, electric, old school and contemporary
With Kith Whitehawk