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!

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!

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..

The Overte Foundation and AvaCon are pleased to announce the first annual OpenSimulator Community Conference 2013, to take place on the OpenSimulator Conference Center grid on September 7 – 8, 2013.  The OpenSimulator Community Conference will be a celebration of the platform and of the large and varied community using and creating it.  It will feature two days of keynote speakers, presentations and panels on different topics, and an expo area to showcase community activities and projects.

What is OpenSimulator?

OpenSimulator is an open-source platform that supports the creation of collaborative, immersive, distributed and social 3D virtual environments over the Internet. Started in 2007 and developed by individuals and organizations large and small, it has become a versatile system with which anyone can experiment.  OpenSimulator software is now the basis for many hundreds of “grids” and worlds of varying sizes and purposes.

Who should attend the conference?

Anyone who is interested in the OpenSimulator software and the future of the metaverse is welcome to attend.  We especially hope to see OpenSimulator developers, grid administrators, and members of the community who participate on OpenSimulator grids.

How much will it cost to attend the conference?

The conference is free to attendees!  While we encourage community members to become a sponsor to help cover the costs of the conference, registration for the event will be free to attendees on a first-come-first-served basis.

Where will the conference be held?

The conference will be held entirely within the OpenSimulator environment.  The official program will be held in a grid specifically set up for the conference.  We expect 150-200 attendees of the conference to be able to attend virtually on the conference grid, as well as an even broader audience through live streaming of the conference sessions on UStream.  In addition, the conference will offer social hours following each day’s program to accommodate satellite events that will take place in the many grids operated by members of the community.  There will also be an exposition area on the conference grid for sponsors.

Will the conference be HyperGrid enabled?

Yes!  Conference participants will have the option at registration to request a local account on the conference grid, or to attend via a HyperGrid account.  In addition, during the social hours, attendees will be able to move between the different grids using either the Hypergrid or by creating accounts in each of the participating grids.

When will registration 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 on June 17, 2013 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.

I’m interested in being a speaker, where do I sign up?

The conference will have five “tracks” to cluster break-out sessions into common areas of interest, including:

• Arts & Creativity
• Business & Enterprise
• Developers & Open Source
• Education
• Research
• Social & Communities

Each track may have different requirements in their Call for Speakers, so please be sure to view the specific pages for each track you may be interested in.  All speaker proposals are due on July 1, 2013.

I’m interested in being a sponsor, where do I sign up?

Although the OpenSimulator Community Conference is being held in virtual space, and made possible by hardware donations and by dozens of volunteers, the conference incurs some expenses, in particular the professionally-managed operation of the conference center grid (the setup, performance tuning, and constant monitoring are of utmost importance for the success of the conference) and the streaming services and other web services. Compared to real-world conferences, the budget of a virtual event like the OpenSimulator Community Conference is very modest, but, nevertheless, it’s not zero. As such, we ask businesses, entrepreneurs,  and community members alike to help financially support the conference if they are able.

We offer a wide range of  sponsorship opportunities for community members and grids of all levels, and sponsorships are tax deductible for US residents minus the value of any tangible benefits!

Please see the Call for Sponsors page for more information, and we are grateful for your support!

I’m interested in being a volunteer or helping out, where do I sign up?

The conference needs volunteers to help greet attendees, moderate breakout sessions, assist with building and scripting tasks, technical support and assistance with streaming, and other duties to help make the conference a success.  If you are experienced with the OpenSimulator platform and have an interest in helping, we’d love to have you join the team!

Please complete the Volunteer Application form and a conference planning staff member will get back to you soon!

Who is producing the conference?

The OpenSimulator Community Conference 2013 is being organized in a joint effort between the Overte Foundation and AvaCon.

The Overte Foundation is a non-profit organization that manages contribution agreements for the OpenSimulator project.  In the future, it will also act to promote and support both OpenSimulator and the wider open-source 3D virtual environment ecosystem.

AvaCon, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the growth, enhancement, and development of the metaverse, virtual worlds, augmented reality, and 3D immersive and virtual spaces. We hold conventions and meetings to promote educational and scientific inquiry into these spaces, and to support organized fan activities, including performances, lectures, art, music, machinima, and much more. Our primary goal is to connect and support the diverse communities and practitioners involved in co-creating and using virtual worlds, and to educate the public and our constituents about the emerging ecosystem of technologies broadly known as the metaverse.

I still have questions, who do I contact?

Please use the Contact form for additional inquiries, and thanks for your interest in the first annual OpenSimulator Community Conference 2013!

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In the months ahead, we’ll have more information and details about the organization of the conference, and we look forward to seeing the wide range of projects, presentations, and other activities of the OpenSimulator community.  Thanks for your interest and support, with more to come soon!

OpenSimulator Community Conference 2013 Planning Team

Conference Co-Chairs
Justin Clark-Casey | Justin Clark-Casey
Chris M. Collins | Fleep Tuque

Conference Planning Committee
Crista Lopes | Diva Canto
Joyce Bettencourt | Rhiannon Chatnoir
Mic Bowman | Mic Bowman
Michael Cerquoni | Nebadon Izumi
Melanie Thielker | Melanie Milland

Conference Track Leaders
Joyce Bettencourt | Rhiannon Chatnoir, Arts & Creativity
Maria Korolov | Maria Korolov, Business & Enterprise
Justin Clark-Casey | Justin Clark-Casey, Developers & Open Source
Mic Bowman | Mic Bowman, Research & Education
Crista Lopes | Diva Canto, Research & Education
Austin Tate | Ai Austin, Research & Education
Jolanda Mastenbroek-Dobber | Joja Dhara, Social & Communities