AvaCon Inc.^✦✔ @avaconinc

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.

Wytchwhisper Sadofsky is a Multifaceted Artist, Singer/Songwriter, Advisor, Spiritually Enlightened Wiccan and Comedic Deviant. She has been singing in SL since 2009 Some of her songs can be sung in English, Domestic Cat, Domestic Potatoe and Domestic Chicken.Called a torch singer by some and a freaky fairy by others she has a unique sultry, sensuous, original, jazzy, alternative, oldies, demented, pop, rock sound at her shows. She supplies unique relaxing vocals, stress reducing melodies and life changing knowledge. Listen with caution while driving or operating dangerous equipment.

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

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

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

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

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!

From her incredible energy, to her relentlessly single-worthy vibes sparkling with insightful lyrics, endearing & dynamic vocals, and passionate instrumentation – AMFORTE makes music that resonates deep inside the soul & creates songs that are guaranteed to become part of the soundtrack of your life. AMFORTE is making the most of every moment in 2021, and ready to find out how far her music can go. Join her for the official release of End Of Story – Side A, available on every major online music platform, and get set for the next chapter to follow with End Of Story – Side B dropping onto the internet this fall!

Having worked for many years as a DJ in RL, Kat brought her love of music and Irish charm to virtual worlds. She is also quite the 3D modelor, game designer, coder, and builder with that unique sense of humor and personality like no other. You can catch Kat’s shows at the 381 Club in sinespace where this witch from Northern Ireland spins tunes three times a week from 6-8 pm Eastern Time on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays evenings.

An indie folk rock singer/songwriter and recording artist based in Pittsburgh, PA, her acoustic guitar driven songs of love, introspection and connection are an eclectic blend of the styles of her influences such as Karen Carpenter, Joni Mitchell, Patsy Cline, Sheryl Crow and Alanis Morissette. With 3 original albums and various singles, Cherylann has been writing, recording and performing since childhood, creating new music at her own SunHawk Studio, hosting open mics, singing at charitable events and retirement homes, and sharing weekly live streams on YouTube and Facebook, often with her kids and other special guests. Having played the song, “Love Train” with Eddie Levert of The O’Jays for his first time ever singing it on a train, she also performs virtually in Second Life, with support of her HeArts Coming Together partner John Stone aka Eyeclectic, from Canton, Ohio, with the mission of bringing non-profit organizations and visionaries together to keep the “Love Train” vision on track. All aboard! Time to make the music!

A networking meet-up for educators currently using learning simulations in virtual worlds/platforms AND for educators and others interested in learning more about using learning simulations in virtual worlds/platforms. Drop by to visit with colleagues, ask a question, share/locate content, and more!

To attend this event, you can either Hypergrid into the OSCC grid or register to attend #OSCC21 and get a local account avatar at http://conference.opensimulator.org. The meet-up will be in the 'OSCC Expo Zone 3' region, at the Speaker booths.

In addition to the Educators' Meet-Up on 12/10/21, do not forget about joining the "Educators in OpenSim" group (in the OSCC grid). More specifically, after you are logged into the OSCC grid:

Right click on your avatar;
Click on Groups;
Search for "Educators in OpenSim" (without the quotation marks);
Click on the "Join" button; and
Click on the "Yes" button.

Finally, feel free to use the Educators in OpenSim group chat function to network with other educators during the 2021 Open Simulator Community Conference!

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

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

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

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

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