OpenSim – Ciaran Laval

April 12, 2017

Yuri’s Night Coming To Second Life And Kitely

On April 12th 1961 Yuri Gagarin, a Russian Cosmonaut, took the spacecraft Vostok into Outer Space. Twenty years later, April 12th 1981, NASA’s first Space Shuttle was launched. Celebrations of these events take many shapes and forms.

Yuri’s Night is very much part of those celebrations and even goes boldly into virtual worlds, Second Life and Kitely are two virtual worlds you should be familiar with.

The Celebrations in Second Life are co-sponsored by the International Spaceflight Museum and the National Space Society.

They are planning a whopping five hours of celebrations starting at 3pm SLT today.

The event launches (sorry couldn’t resist) at the International Spaceflight Museum in Second Life :

3:00-4:00 pm – Dance to our “Space Filk & More” audio stream.
4:00-5:00 pm – DJ Aristippus spins space-themed tunes and songs of the Space Age.

SLURL : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Aspen/200/120/3730

Then the party moves on to The Sagan Planetarium in Second Life.

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March 29, 2017

Virtual Worlds Best Practices In Education 2017 Now Open

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education 2017 opened today, with Arisia Vita playing the tunes as we awaited the ribbon to be cut to officially open this year’s educational conference.

The conference is a peer reviewed community event, with clearly a focus on education and more to the point, education by use of Virtual Worlds. Education is a life long learning pursuit so conferences such as this one are very much welcome.

The conference does not just revolve around educators sitting down and talking about education, as important as that is, there’s also fun to be had, here are today’s listed events :

VWBPE 2017 Grand Opening Ribbon Cutting Ceremony – 11:00 AM – 11:30 AM SLT
Above the Book: Ebbe Altberg: “A Conversation about Education and Second Life” – 01:00 PM – 01:50 PM SLT (This session will be held privately by invitation and streamed to the Main Auditorium.)
Quadrivium Networking Topic: VR Technology on the Horizon – 02:00 PM – 02:50 PM SLT
Social: The Freewheelin’ Electric Tambourine Man Parade – 03:00 PM – 03:30 PM SLT
Social: Lightning Production’s Bob Dylan and The Band Tribute Concert – 03:30 PM – 04:30 PM SLT
The Keys to Legacy: A VWBPE Quest – 04:30 PM – 04:50 PM SLT
Keynote: Celia Pearce, “The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: Twenty Years in Virtual Worlds” – 05:00 PM – 05:50 PM SLT
Lizards of “ARS”© Installation Participatory Play – 06:00 PM – 06:50 PM SLT
Through the Visual Literacy Lens to Learn Ecosystem – 06:00 PM – 06:50 PM SLT
Quadrivium Networking Topic: Teaching in Second Life, Art and Visual Literacy – 06:50 PM – 07:50 PM SLT

Plenty of varied events, full details and SLURLS can be found here : https://vwbpe.org/vwbpe-news/vwbpe-2017-event-schedule-day-1-wednesday-march-29

I would also advise you to keep your eyes on the main event calendar.

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March 22, 2017

Virtual Worlds Best Practices In Education Conference Gets Ready

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference will start on March 29th and run until April 1st. The event, as the name implies, concentrates on educational use of Virtual Worlds and part of the blurb for the conference tells us :

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education is a peer-reviewed community event focusing on education in immersive virtual environments. This open conference is organized by educators, for educators, to provide an opportunity to showcase the learning that takes place in this community of practice.

Although the grand opening isn’t until March 29th, there are opportunities to have a peek at some educational usage before that, you just need to keep an eye on the VWBPE calendar to find the details.

The conference will have a large focus on Second Life but will also have representations from educational use in Inworldz , OpenSim and more.

The theme of this year’s conference is “Legacy” and this title relates to the fact that this is 10th VWBPE, which is a very impressive feat.

Whereas the focus of the conference is quite rightly education, there will be a couple of one on one interviews with people whom you may be more familiar with from elsewhere as part of the Above The Book interviews.

Ebbe Altberg and Bernhard Drax (AKA Draxtor Despres) will be featured. A blog post gives details on this event and how you can attend :

This year, VWBPE introduces a new segment this year called Above the Book, conversational interviews with Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab, on March 29 at 1pm PST and Bernhard Drax, creator of the award-winning mixed-reality documentary series “The Drax Files,” on April 1 at 3pm PST.

These sessions will be in a private region. To get your invitation to attend you need to submit a question for our guests. Start thinking about what to ask! Questions must be submitted no later than Sunday March 26 at 11:59pm PST (extended from original March 20th deadline).

Still a couple of days left to consider a good question.

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April 1, 2016

Last Few Hours To Comment On DMCA Via US Government Website

The US government have been inviting comments regarding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and how it works. The comment period has been extended until 11:59pm Eastern Time today, you can see more here.

The main document describing the reasons for comments is Requests for Public Comments: Digital Millennium Copyright Act Safe Harbor Provisions. Comments are closed there, but as I said the commenting period has been extended, so follow the first link if you want to comment. The main document however is summarised as :

The United States Copyright Office is undertaking a public study to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of the DMCA safe harbor provisions contained in 17 U.S.C. 512. Among other issues, the Office will consider the costs and burdens of the notice-and-takedown process on large- and small-scale copyright owners, online service providers, and the general public. The Office will also review how successfully section 512 addresses online infringement and protects against improper takedown notices. To aid in this effort, and to provide thorough assistance to Congress, the Office is seeking public input on a number of key questions.

This should be of interest to Second Life and other virtual world content creators, although I suspect it’s intended for an American audience, being an American law being discussed on an Amercian Government website. The results of this discussion however, are going to be of interest to content creators worldwide.

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November 7, 2015

Immersive Edge A Hypergrid Story Launches In OpenSim This Weekend

This weekend sees the launch of Immersive Edge, A Hypergrid Story. I initially took a look at this project a week or so ago; OpenSim Storytellers Are Developing Some Impressive Storytelling Techniques. The launch covers more than just introducing people to Immersive Edge, there will also be presentations from writers and designers regarding techniques and tools that can be used in bringing immersive fiction to virtual worlds utilising OpenSim.

Some of the techniques will also be good for other virtual worlds, but OpenSim has made some great leaps and bounds in making it easier for people to create immersive fiction than other platforms. Let’s take a look at the presenters for the launch, or more accurately, let’s take a look at Nara Malone’s blog post introducing us to the presenters; Meet the Presenters for Immersive Edge Launch.

Sande Chen

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer. Her writing work includes 1999 Independent Games Festival winner Terminus and the 2007 PC RPG of the Year, The Witcher. Sande was also nominated for a Writers Guild Award in Videogame Writing for The Witcher.

Sande is the co-author of Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform and a contributor to Writing for Video Game Genres, Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing, and Secrets of the Game Business.

Sande was profiled as one of the top 100 most influential women in the game industry back in 2006 for her work as Director of Girls in Games, Inc. On top of that, Sande was nominated for a Grammy Nomination in 1996 for music video direction.

So that’s quite an impressive bio I’d say! Sande will be speaking on Sunday November 8th at 9:00am SLT. The title of Sande’s presentation is : “How Technology is Changing Storytelling”.
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