Thank You for a Wonderful Conference!

OSCC Staff Team

The OSCC13 Staff, Streaming, & Planning Team – at least those who were still standing at the end!  🙂

The first OpenSimulator Community Conference 2013 may have ended, but we hope that the networks, relationships, friendships, and all of the amazing presentations and content from the conference will continue to have an impact for quite some time to come!

Be sure to check out all of the video archives for any sessions you might have missed, and when we get a chance to catch up on sleep and recuperate, we’ll be asking for your feedback and suggestions to improve the bumps in the road for the next time around.

A tremendous thank you to all of our attendees, sponsors, speakers, and tirelessly hardworking staff for a great first conference!  We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!

By |September 9th, 2013|news|5 Comments

Welcome to the First Annual OpenSimulator Community Conference 2013!

keynoteregions_snap

Welcome to the first day of the first annual OpenSimulator Community Conference 2013!

Use the hashtag #OSCC13!

Conference Schedule

We have an exciting program lined up, with great keynote presentations, breakout sessions, social events, and plenty of Expo regions to explore, and we look forward to seeing you in-world on the conference grid over the next two days!  Explore the full Conference Schedule online or check the Map & Schedule kiosks when you get in-world.

Connecting to the Conference Grid

Registered speakers, sponsors, staff, and attendees can download the OSCC Viewer and log into the conference grid with the username and password that was emailed to the address you used when you registered.  If you requested a local account and have forgotten your password, please use the Forgot Password link, otherwise review the Login Instructions to connect to the grid and start exploring the conference venue.

When you log into the conference grid for the first time, be sure to accept the Terms of Service pop up or you will be disconnected from the grid in 10 minutes!  If you miss the pop up, you may need to teleport to another region to trigger the notice again.

OSCC Zone Groups Access

When you log in, you will land on your designated Landing Zone region 1, 2, 3, or 4.  Check the rotating banner in your Landing Zone to see the corresponding Keynote region that you should use for keynote presentations.  You will only be able to access the Keynote region that matches your Landing Zone unless you are a presenter.  See the Online Map for an overhead view of the conference grid.

Landing Zone Regions

The Landing Zone regions are social areas with plenty of great places to explore.  Be sure to check out the Clothing Shop to customize your avatar, or take a quick trip to the HyperGrid Hub and use the portals to visit our Sponsors’ grids for even more shopping and exploring.  Just be sure to make it back to the conference grid in time for the program!  The Landing Zone regions also contain an Overflow Video area for viewing the conference streams if the Breakout Zones fill up and you can’t get in.

Breakout Zones and Keynote Regions

When you arrive at a Breakout Zone or Keynote region please sit in a chair ASAP during the sessions!  The conference grid will perform best if everyone takes a seat in the presentation areas.  All of the conference presentations will take place in the Breakout Zones and Keynote regions via parcel streaming media.  In-world voice will be disabled in those areas, so please use text chat for socializing, networking, and asking questions of the speakers.

Expo Zones

The conference would not have been possible without the financial support of our Sponsors, so please be sure to visit their exhibits and booths in the Expo Zones to thank them for sponsoring the conference!  Explore six regions of terrific booths and fun activities provided by our sponsors – and invite your friends who didn’t get a conference ticket!  The Expo Zones are open to public hypergrid visitors!

Technical Difficulties

Although we hope everything goes smoothly, it is always possible for there to be technical difficulties during the conference program.  If this happens, we appreciate your patience and understanding while we work to resolve the issue.  If you are disconnected from the grid, please wait a moment or two, check the conference Twitter stream @opensimcc for updated information, and then try to log back in.  We will do our best to resolve issues quickly and stick to the conference schedule.  No matter what happens, we’re sure the day will hold plenty of surprises!

A tremendous thank you to all of our speakers, sponsors, volunteer staff, streaming team, and attendees!  We hope you enjoy the conference program and we’ll look forward to seeing you in-world!

By |September 7th, 2013|news|0 Comments

Conference Kick-Off Final Load Test Today at 12PM PDT!

Welcome to the final kick-off load test of the OpenSimulator Community Conference 2013!

Today we will be hosting the last load test before the conference, inviting the OpenSimulator community and conference attendees to join us for one last opportunity to kick the tires of the conference grid before the start of the conference on Saturday!

Previous load testers should note that access controls have been turned on on the conference grid, so we’re asking everyone to teleport to the main conference grid URL of http://cc.opensimulator.org:8002 so we can test the routing and access control mechanisms.

When you arrive on the conference grid, you should land on the Expo Zone 1 region, and then as long as you are a member of the OSCC Load Testers group, you should be able to teleport over to the Keynote regions.  If you aren’t a member of the OSCC Load Testers group, just do a search for groups and join to participate in the load test.

Full login instructions for attendees can be found on the Login page, and for others who wish to participate, see the instructions below.  Our many, many thanks to all of you who have helped with load tests over the past few months, we’re looking forward to a terrific conference – thanks to you!

 

Participating in Weekly Load Tests if You Have an HG Acct

The OpenSimulator Community Conference grid is located in the 7000,7000 coordinate range, and the four keynote regions we’ll be testing are:

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 1
cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 2
cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 3
cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 4

We recommend using the OSCC Viewer or another viewer that can support voice and mesh, such as SingularityFirestorm, or Kokua.

If you already have an account on another OpenSimulator grid that is hypergrid enabled, here are the steps to participate in the load test:

1.  Log into your account on your hypergrid enabled grid.

2.  If necessary, navigate to a jump region that can reach a destination in the 7000,7000 coordinate range.  OSGrid provides public jump regions for this purpose, see the list at http://www.osgrid.org/index.php/hypergrid.

3.  Open your map and search for one of the following destination regions:

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 1
cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 2
cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 3
cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 4

4.  The map search should locate the destination region on the map, then click the Teleport button.  If you find that the first region you try is full please use the next address on the list and so on.

Participating in Weekly Load Tests if you Need an HG Acct

If you don’t already have an account on another OpenSimulator grid that is hypergrid enabled, here are the steps to participate in the load test:

1.  Create an account on a HyperGrid enabled grid.  The conference is not associated with any particular grid, but here are some suggestions for public grids that are usually stable and generally have 24/7 uptime:

OSGrid at http://www.osgrid.org/index.php/auth/register
FleepGrid at http://fleepgrid.com:8002/wifi/user/account/
FrancoGrid at http://www.francogrid.org/user/register  (French)

2.  Download and install the OSCC Viewer or a third party viewer that supports mesh, Media on a Prim (MOAP), and Vivox voice.  We recommend SingularityFirestorm, or Kokua.

3.  Log into your account on whatever grid you chose, and then open your map and search for one of the following destination regions:

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 1
cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 2
cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 3
cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 4

4.  The map search should locate the destination region on the map, then click the Teleport button.  If you find that the first region you try is full please use the next address on the list and so on.

 

By |September 5th, 2013|load test, news|1 Comment

OpenSimulator Community Conference Planning Update – Last Call for Sponsors, Volunteers Needed!

Community Sponsor Expo Zone

Community Sponsor Expo Zone

A quick update on the OpenSimulator Community Conference 2013 planning since we’re now less than a month away!

Many of you involved with the community have put in proposals to be speakers, and hopefully you’ve received a confirmation email with the scheduled date, time, and location for your presentation.  If you put in a proposal and didn’t yet receive a confirmation, don’t panic!  There are a handful of folks that we’re still trying to sort on the schedule due to various time constraints, so we still have a few confirmations pending.  You should get something soon, we promise.  😉

We’d also like to thank everyone who has signed up as a sponsor!  A friendly reminder that the deadline for all sponsor artwork and builds is 8/15, so if you haven’t gotten started yet, now’s the time to do it.  Submit your logo artwork and be sure to review the Expo Booth Building Guidelines.

This is also the last chance for anyone who wants to be a founding sponsor of the conference to sign up, so if you’re on the fence, please do take a look at our Call for Sponsors page.  The community sponsorships are as low as $50, and all proceeds go towards the cost of the conference grid and web services needed to run the event.  We’re still short on our estimated budget, so every bit helps and the sponsorships are tax deductible for US residents and companies, too!

We also desperately need more volunteers for the Greeter, Moderator, and Streaming teams.  Our goal is to stream and archive every session of the conference, but if we don’t have enough people to help do that, we’ll be forced to pick and choose which sessions to stream.  As a bonus, volunteers get an in-world ticket to the conference, so you can hang out and enjoy the rest of the event after your volunteer shift is over!  Please do sign up to help volunteer if you can, we really appreciate the help!

Last but not least, the Social Events schedule is starting to get sign-ups, but there’s plenty of slots still open.  This is a great way for you to showcase your grid or projects if you don’t feel like doing a formal presentation.  Just sign up to host a social event on your own grid and after the day’s breakout sessions are over, conference attendees can come visit and check out your space!

Our many, many thanks to all of you who are already helping with the conference, whether you’re load testing, bug fixing, building, speaking, sponsoring, or helping in some other way, this is shaping up to be an awesome event!

Thanks and more to come soon as we start finalizing the schedule..

By |August 10th, 2013|news|0 Comments

Special Conference Grid Load Test Scheduled for Saturday, August 3rd!

Load test on July 23, 2013, image courtesy of Austin Tate’s Informatics Blog.

Calling all OpenSimulator avatars!!  A special large-scale load test of the conference grid is scheduled for Saturday, August 3rd at 10AM PDT.  We need members of the community to help push the conference grid to its limits to test the capacity and performance of the simulator software and hardware prior to the first annual OpenSimulator Community Conference!

Anyone interested in the conference or the OpenSimulator software is welcome to participate in the load test by making a jump from any other hypergrid enabled OpenSimulator grid.  The OpenSimulator Community Conference grid is located in the 7000,7000 coordinate range, and the four keynote regions we’ll be testing are:

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 1

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 2

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 3

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 4

If you find that the first region you try is full please use the next address on the list and so on.

For the purposes of this load test, feel free to log in with multiple avatars, but please do not use bots, pcampbots, or other various libomv based viewers since we are trying to test the conference grid under conditions as close to the actual conference as possible.  We recommend a Third Party Viewer that can support voice and mesh, such as SingularityFirestorm, or Kokua.

Instructions if you already have a Hypergrid enabled account

If you already have an account on another OpenSimulator grid that is hypergrid enabled, here are the steps to participate in the load test:

1.  Log into your account on your hypergrid enabled grid.

2.  If necessary, navigate to a jump region that can reach a destination in the 7000,7000 coordinate range.  OSGrid provides public jump regions for this purpose, see the list at http://www.osgrid.org/index.php/hypergrid.

3.  Open your map and search for one of the following destination regions:

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 1

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 2

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 3

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 4

4.  The map search should locate the destination region on the map, then click the Teleport button.  If you find that the first region you try is full please use the next address on the list and so on.

Instructions if you need a Hypergrid enabled account

If you don’t already have an account on another OpenSimulator grid that is hypergrid enabled, here are the steps to participate in the load test:

1.  Create an account on OSGrid at http://www.osgrid.org/index.php/auth/register.

2.  Download a TPV viewer supported by OSGrid from http://www.osgrid.org/index.php/downloads and log into your account.

3.  Open your map and search for one of the following destination regions:

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 1

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 2

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 3

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 4

4.  The map search should locate the destination region on the map, then click the Teleport button.  If you find that the first region you try is full please use the next address on the list and so on.

 

Thanks in advance for your help and we look forward to seeing a big crowd on Saturday!

OpenSimulator Community Conference Announces Keynote Panel: The Future of OpenSimulator

The OpenSimulator Community Conference 2013 will open on Saturday morning, September 7, 2013, with a keynote panel of core developers, who will discuss the future of the OpenSimulator platform.  Topics will include a variety of issues including the future of the Hypergrid, content licensing and permissions, relationships with Linden Lab, third-party viewers, scalability, project maturity, and much more.  Expect a lively debate!

Keynote Panel: The Future of OpenSimulator will feature the following panelists:

Justin Clark-Casey | Avatar: Justin Clark-Casey

Justin Clark-Casey (@justincc) is President of the Overte Foundation, and one of the core developers of OpenSimulator, working on many different areas ranging from asset and inventory to performance and infrastructure issues. Justin created some of the better known data persistence formats for OpenSimulator, such as OpenSimulator Archives (OARs) and OpenSimulator Inventory Archives (IARs).  He also provides OpenSimulator-related consultancy services.

Crista Lopes | Avatar: Diva Canto

Crista Lopes is a Professor in the School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Prior to being in Academia, she worked at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (1995-2001). She is co-inventor of AOP (Aspect Oriented Programming), a programming technology featured in the MIT Technology Review (2001) as “one of the 10 emergent technologies that will change the world.” She also serves on the board of the Overte Foundation and is the creator of the Hypergrid protocol, which allows avatars to travel between Hypergrid-enabled OpenSimulator grids.

Mic Bowman | Avatar: Mic Bowman

Mic Bowman is a principal engineer in Intel Labs and leads the Virtual World Infrastructure research project. His team develops technologies that enable “order of magnitude” scalability improvements in virtual environments opening the door to new levels of immersiveness and interaction among players.

Melanie Thielker | Avatar: Melanie Milland

Melanie Thielker is the founder of Avination. As an OpenSimulator Core Developer, Melanie has been one of the most active contributors to virtual world software in general, and OpenSimulator in particular. A long term Second Life™ resident, she has gained much experience in using virtual worlds. Melanie has been involved in a number of virtual world projects and has created her own “spin” of the OpenSimulator software. Up to twelve developers have worked two years on creating the software which now powers Avination. Currently, Melanie holds the position of Director in Avination Virtual Limited, the UK based company which operates Avination. Melanie is known as “Melanie Milland” in both Avination and Second Life™.

 

Be sure to register for the conference, including streaming of all keynote speakers, today!

OpenSimulator Community Conference Announces Keynote Speaker Grady Booch

Grady Booch

Organizers are delighted to announce that world-renowned computer scientist Grady Booch will deliver a keynote address at the first annual OpenSimulator Community Conference.  Grady’s keynote address, entitled My Virtual Life, will reflect on a quote from Joseph Campbell, who observed that, “One has to know how and when to put on and to put off the masks of one’s various life roles.”

Grady is internationally recognized for his innovative work in software architecture, software engineering, and modeling, and is perhaps best known for developing the Unified Modeling Language (UML) with Ivar Jacobson and James Rumbaugh and helping originate the term and practice of object-oriented programming and design.  An IBM Fellow, ACM Fellow, IEEE Fellow, and recipient of the BCS Lovelace Medal and Turing Lecture, Grady is the author of numerous best-selling books and technical papers, including the UML Users Guide and the seminal Object-Oriented Analysis with Applications.

Be sure to register for the conference, including streaming of all keynote speakers, today!

OpenSimulator Community Conference Needs Participants for Grid Load Test 7/2/13

Hi folks, we are planning a large-scale load test of the OpenSimulator Community Conference  grid on Tuesday, July 2, 2013 at Noon PDT and we need members of the community to help push the conference grid to its limits to test the capacity and performance of the simulator software and hardware.

Anyone interested in the conference or the OpenSimulator software is welcome to participate in the load test by making a jump from any other hypergrid enabled OpenSimulator grid.  The focus of this load test will be fitting as many hypergrid participants on the keynote regions of the conference grid as possible.

The OpenSimulator Community Conference grid is located in the 7000,7000 coordinate range, and the four keynote regions we’ll be testing are:

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 1

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 2

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 3

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 4

If you find that the first region you try is full please use the next address on the list and so on.

For the purposes of this load test, feel free to log in with multiple avatars, but please do not use bots, pcampbots, or other various libomv based viewers since we are trying to test the conference grid under conditions as close to the actual conference as possible.  We recommend a Third Party Viewer that can support voice and mesh, such as Singularity, Firestorm, or Kokua.

Instructions if you already have a Hypergrid enabled account

If you already have an account on another OpenSimulator grid that is hypergrid enabled, here are the steps to participate in the load test on Tuesday:

1.  Log into your account on your hypergrid enabled grid.

2.  If necessary, navigate to a jump region that can reach a destination in the 7000,7000 coordinate range.  OSGrid provides public jump regions for this purpose, see the list at http://www.osgrid.org/index.php/hypergrid.

3.  Open your map and search for one of the following destination regions:

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 1

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 2

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 3

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 4

4.  The map search should locate the destination region on the map, then click the Teleport button.  If you find that the first region you try is full please use the next address on the list and so on.

Instructions if you need a Hypergrid enabled account

If you don’t already have an account on another OpenSimulator grid that is hypergrid enabled, here are the steps to participate in the load test on Tuesday:

1.  Create an account on OSGrid at http://www.osgrid.org/index.php/auth/register.

2.  Download a TPV viewer supported by OSGrid from http://www.osgrid.org/index.php/downloads and log into your account.

3.  Open your map and search for one of the following destination regions:

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 1

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 2

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 3

cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 4

4.  The map search should locate the destination region on the map, then click the Teleport button.  If you find that the first region you try is full please use the next address on the list and so on.

 

Thanks in advance for your help and we look forward to seeing a big crowd on Tuesday!

Registration is now open!

Update:  In-world venue tickets are currently sold out, but the conference sessions will be streamed via UStream. In the event that we can make more in-world spots available, we will offer those places to people who have registered for Streaming on a first-come, first-served basis, so be sure to register for a streaming ticket!

. . .

Registration for the in-world OpenSimulator Community Conference is now open!

Due to the “alpha” nature of the OpenSimulator software, this conference is an experiment in capacity testing for OpenSimulator in addition to being a community event.  Therefore, tickets to the conference will be free but limited in number.  We hope to be able to accommodate over 200 users in total, a figure which includes speakers, sponsors and staff .  Since seats are limited, registration will open on a first-come-first-served basis until the maximum number of virtual conference center tickets is reached.  At that point, community members will still be able to register for the live streamed version of the conference that will be available via UStream.  This will also be free.

The expo area will not be ticketed and so can be accessed by any avatar, subject to constraints on the number of avatars that the exhibition regions can hold at any particular time.

Sponsors, speakers, staff members, and volunteers should not register for a regular Attendee ticket.  Instead, please use the promo code provided to you.  See the Quick Links to the right to find out more information about becoming a sponsor, speaker, or joining the conference planning team!

By |June 17th, 2013|news|0 Comments

OpenSimulator Community Conference Invites Speakers, Presentations, and Research Papers

The OpenSimulator Community Conference is seeking speakers, presentations, and research papers for the inaugural annual conference event, scheduled for September 7 – 8, 2013. The conference will take place entirely within an OpenSimulator virtual world designed specifically for the event, and will feature six topic “tracks” to showcase community activities and projects.

  • The Arts & Creativity track will celebrate the diversity of artistic and creative endeavors on OpenSimulator grids. This can include large scale immersive art installations, ballet, theatre, performance art, machinima, literary arts, clothing designs, virtual fashions, architecture, music performances and other cultural expressions.
  • The Business & Enterprise track will feature sessions that cover a broad range of uses related to doing business in and with OpenSimulator, including grid hosts, third party developers, private entrepreneurs, in-world and enterprise businesses, as well as corporations and organizations using OpenSimulator for marketing, fundraising, product research, focus groups, and more.
  • The Developers & Open Source track covers topics of interest to OpenSimulator developers, including developers of third-party modules, viewer developers, applications that run in and along side OpenSimulator, Hypergrid systems developers, as well as the more technical details of content creation including 3D modeling, mesh, physics, NPCs, and emerging technology tools that help make OpenSimulator tick.
  • The Education track will feature sessions that cover a broad range of uses related to teaching and learning in and with OpenSimulator, as well as how schools, colleges, and universities are using OpenSimulator in their day-to-day work, from designing virtual campuses and classrooms, to integration with other campus systems, marketing and outreach, and much more.
  • The Research track will explore the ways in which OpenSimulator has become a laboratory for research in a wide range of areas, from computer science and engineering to ethnography and economics.  Please see the research track submission web page for details of the style of submissions and the papers requested.
  • The Social & Communities track will explore all the ways in which OpenSimulator offers communities for nearly every interest, from role playing groups to science fiction communities, to virtual towns and interest groups, historical explorations, religious and spiritual communities, book clubs, and so much more. This track will feature sessions that focus on sharing about and improving the social experience and overall community of OpenSimulator users.

To submit a proposal, visit the appropriate track page and be sure to review the specific guidelines for that track, as each track may have different requirements.  Note that proposal submissions are due on July 1, 2013. 

We look forward to seeing your submissions!