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 #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

In this presentation we will share our experience and lessons learned in designing virtual simulations for learners in high and low resource settings and explore the challenges and opportunities for co-creating virtual simulations with globally distributed teams.

Matt Cook, Rachel Umoren

Kevin Feenan, founder of Rockcliffe University Consortium, will be discussing challenges facing virtual environments over the coming years. Over the past 10 years, the competitive advantage of environments like Second Life and Open Simulator have not kept pace with technological innovation in general. This presentation will look at how we got here, what the immediate pressures are to innovate, and what we can do to change things.

By Kevin Feenan

Pursue broad questions that are fundamental to any efforts in research writing. Who is the author of the text? What period was the text about? How do we interpret the ideas? Hermenetutics has been useful as a way to interpret texts since Antiquity and called the ‘hermeneutic circle.’

The critique is imperative. Why do writers write? The answer is that characters, setting, mood, voice, and themes dynamically bring us to a state of relaxation and vision to understand truths. Literature is inspirational. My intention is to provide readers with tools to research the use of social justice as a reason to write and a methodology of applying the social justice paradigm for writing.

By Maryann DiEdwardo

We present the latest iteration of the RezMela Composer application. It has been shown to facilitate and speed up content production using various innovative techniques. Firstly, it provides access to a curated list of objects that can be assembled into useful 3d structures or powerful experiences. Secondly, the Composer offers a unique user interface which speeds up common but laborious and time consuming content creation tasks.

By Rameshsharma Ramloll

This presentation will showcase work conducted by Virtual Harmony in the prototyping of AI-augmented 3D visualization in the metaverse for supporting interdisciplinary endeavors with cognitive sciences across education, industry, and the military.

Highlights will be showcased from efforts with developing and using an AI strategy and concepts virtual observatory hub offering a learning neural net supporting metaverse AI-augmented client-server visualization tool for visualization of data collected from interactive learning simulations.

Andrew Stricker / Spinoza Quinnell, Cynthia Calongne / Lyr Lobo

The Kitely-hosted virtual world project, “CheriNet Creative HQ” serves as a vehicle for the integration of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), artificial intelligence art (AI art), and PoS blockchains into 3D immersive virtual worlds. It was created to provide NFT-related capacity building; to promote NFT awareness; and to showcase digital media projects including artificial intelligence generated art (AI/GAN art), Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), and related videos.

Project visitors including real life and virtual-based artists will use the 3D immersive virtual world to view and share digital media collections while building a community for information sharing, informal discussions, training, and educational sessions pertaining to Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs); Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchains; and artificial intelligence generated art (AI/GAN art).

By Sally S. Cherry BS MT(ASCP)

Venture capital investment in the metaverse has nearly doubled this year, Facebook has changed its name to Meta, and metaverse hype is everywhere. With improvements in bandwidth and better headset design, we’re on the cusp of a new era. Many of the projects being announced are closed or proprietary platforms. OpenSim’s decentralized, open-source, hyperconnected universe can point the way to how to do it right.

By Maria Korolov

“Hybrid Tech” means combining multiple tools to blend their strengths and mediate their weaknesses, relative to the use case at hand. “Cross Dimensional Thinking” means shifting perspectives, again and again, to master hybrid tech tool combinations. We will review FIVE USE CASES demonstrating how tools and perspectives can be blended interchangeably, relative to the use at hand.

By James Neville / Sitearm Madonna

Panel discussion moderated by Mal Burns.

Panelists:
Dr. Fran
Doug Thompson

WE ARE GOING TO AMERICA. That was the message the Pilgrims followed in 1620. AMERIKA is a village in Germany carrying the German / Dutch / Africaans / Turkey name for America so the slogan goes also this way: WE ARE GOING TO AMERIKA. Common between all languages is that we are leaving the borders of the old worlds behind. In May 2022 will be the award ceremony in the real Amerika Museum in Germany.

One year ago the call was made at OSCC20 for an immersive art competition, called AMERIKA ART. At OSCC21 the Grand Opening will happen. The Italian machinimist WizardOz Chrome created a machinima AMERIKA ART 2022 that will be presented, then everyone is invited to explore the art show and to give a vote that will result in the public award for one of the Long-Legged Maskitts, designed as a bronze statue by the Canadian artist Bryn Oh.

By Reiner Schneeberger/ Art Blue

Groups of language learners, young and old, meet in immersive environments like OpenSim, Second Life or Minecraft and are asked to build a spaceship together. Or a village, or a power plant. They come from Italy, Finnland and Germany and need to communicate in English to achieve the lofty goals. Can building in OpenSim provide a venue to communicate in English in real-time? This potential will be explored in EXCALIBUR, a new EU funded project to come in 2022.

By Heike Philp

The focus of this presentation is on immersing learners in OpenSimulator for TESOL. It highlights the need to incorporate Virtual Worlds in order to keep up with educational needs in conjunction with contemporary technological habits.

(TESOL stands for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages)

By Helena Galani

A panel will share a variety of digital citizenship elements relating to changing digital culture, the need for metaliteracy, and ways digital citizenship can be advocated in virtual environments. The target audience is educators, learners, and anyone interested in utilizing virtual worlds for specific purposes. Examples of the need for digital citizenship will be featured as a personal responsibility for each of us.

Sheila Webber / Sheila Yoshikawa & Valerie Hill / Valibrarian Gregg

This presentation from Infinite Metaverse Alliance® (IMA) and Thales Group discusses detailed research and development progress made by student interns, past and present, on the future viewer SceneGate 2.0 project. Areas of investigation include: documenting the viewer source code; exploring use of a more modern rendering engine; streamlining the source code where needed; and updating the development environment.

Frank Rulof & Lisa Laxton

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

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!

James Olmos (SL: Acoustic Energy) is a songwriter & photographer who finds creative outlets through life’s moments. His inspiration and muse, along with medium often changes as he discovers and crosses new paths. James takes chances with his art and is constantly evolving. He is curious and can’t sit still. James gets anxious and craves exploration on many levels. His social network posts range from songs he has written, photographs he’s captured and blog ramblings about his philosophical thoughts and life’s moments. James also enjoys a healthful lifestyle and is passionate about obstacle course racing, mud runs, trail runs and the all-out, kick ass times he has while breathing, living, and journeying through life’s moments. As for his music, James is one of those artists who doesn’t need 1,000 listeners; he only needs one to listen. He doesn’t need a 1,000 viewers; just one to see.