Events Directory

DJ Rosa Alekseev

DJ

Rosa Alekseev is DJ Resident in different games, Reggae Life Shops´owner, Kitely's Events Organizer, Builder, Member of IMA Chamber of Commerce (in Virtual Life)

Mike Lorrey / Mike Lorrey

Developer, Naboo in Kitely

Mike has been a virtual worlds developer in SL and OS for 14 years. While in SL, he capitalized Central Grid, the first major opensim grid, in 2008. Involved in SL as an estate owner, developer of the first virtual stock exchanges, owner of racing and combat sims, leader of the Save Our Sims movement. Today he is the developer of the Naboo region in Kitely with plans to open StarWars RP activities, and is chair of the exhibit building committee for the International Spaceflight Museum. He develops a wide range of content for sale on the Kitely market, and builds and scripts for a number of clients.

Lisa Laxton

R&D, CEO Infinite Metaverse Alliance

Lisa Laxton is the R&D Visionary and CEO of the OpenSimulator community focused Infinite Metaverse Alliance® (IMA). She is also President of Laxton Consulting LLC with experience providing various virtual world technology solutions for education, research, business, and defense clients. You may have seen her around the HyperGrid as Shelenn Ayres busy building content or engaged in testing but she is available via meetings to anyone in the Open Simulator community interested in collaborating to advance virtual worlds technology and/or to improve accessibility.

URL http://infinitemetaverse.com/

Crista Lopes

University of California Irvine, Professor & OpenSimulator Core Developer

Crista Lopes (Diva Canto) is a professor within the Department of Informatics, Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California Irvine (https://www.ics.uci.edu/~lopes/) and a core OpenSimulator developer. She developed Hypergrid, which is a federation architecture and protocol for OpenSimulator virtual worlds that supports the seamless transfer of avatar user agents and assets between them. She has also developed the OnLook viewer (https://github.com/diva/OnLook), a test case for developing a viewer native to OpenSimulator with programmable modular UI. In 2016, Crista was the first woman to be awarded the $10,000 Pizzigati Prize that honors software developers who are working to develop open source applications that aid activists and nonprofits involved in struggles for social change. https://youtu.be/AKMwzSusNoc You can view her code contributions to OpenSimulator here: http://opensimulator.org/viewgit/?a=search&p=opensim&h=HEAD&st=author&s=Diva%20Canto and code repositories on Github here: https://github.com/diva

URL http://www.metaverseink.com/

Joyce Bettencourt

AvaCon, Inc., Co-Founder

Joyce Bettencourt is co-founder and Vice President of AvaCon, Inc.(https://avacon.org), a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to promoting the growth, enhancement, and development of the metaverse, virtual worlds, augmented reality and 3D immersive spaces. AvaCon were organizers of 2010 in Boston & 2011 in Oakland Second Life Community Convention, the Federal Consortium of Virtual Worlds virtual workshops, and the ongoing OpenSimulator Community Conference. AvaCon also currently fiscally sponsors the nonprofit community of practice, Nonprofit Commons in Second Life, where Joyce has been a community leader and host of weekly Friday meetings. In addition, she is Creative Director of The Vesuvius Group (http://thevesuviusgroup.com), a collaborative studio specializing in developing online immersive and social environments for community-building. Joyce is a 2012 graduate of the Singularity University Graduate Studies program, focused on applying exponential technologies to addressing Global Grand Challenges. Previously she was digital media producer for the Online Leadership Program at the educational nonprofit Global Kids and helped produce digital media learning content including the Second Life Curriculum, many virtual and physical world events, and the social issue game CONSENT! As her avatar Rhiannon Chatnoir, she has organized numerous social good online events, including the Virtual Haiti Relief campaign within the virtual world of Second Life that helped raise awareness and $10,000 USD in virtual micro transactions. http://about.me/joycebettencourt

URL http://about.me/joycebettencourt

Kevin Cozens

OpenSimulator Core Developer

Kevin has been coding for open-source projects since 1992 including being a member of the OpenSimulator Core Developer team since March of 2014, and created, or maintains several add-on modules including the OpenSimSearch (https://github.com/kcozens/OpenSimSearch), OpenSimProfile (https://github.com/kcozens/OpenSimProfile), and OpenSimMutelist (https://github.com/kcozens/OpenSimMutelist) modules which are used with the Open Simulator project. You can also find him reporting bugs, bug triaging, updating the OpenImulator project wiki pages, and helping users via IRC or the mailing list. Kevin also runs the OpenSimulator developer meetings held weekly in OSgrid (http://www.osgrid.org/). You can view his code contributions: https://www.openhub.net/accounts/kcozens or support him by becoming a Patreon donor to the work he does on open-source code projects: https://www.patreon.com/KevinCozens

URL http://www.ve3syb.ca/

Melanie Milland

OpenSimulator Core Developer

As an OpenSimulator Core Developer, Melanie has been one of the most active contributors to virtual world software in general, and OpenSimulator in particular. As her avatar "Melanie Milland", she was a long-time Second Life™ resident and gained much experience in using virtual worlds. Melanie has been involved in a number of virtual world projects including creating, with a team of up to 12 developers, her own "spin" of the OpenSimulator software which powered the Avination Grid. Much of the grid's code, when shared back to the core code, was the base for many of the new OpenSimulator 0.9 update features. You can view her code contributions to OpenSimulator here: http://opensimulator.org/viewgit/?a=search&p=opensim&h=HEAD&st=author&s=Melanie%20Thielker

URL http://opensimulator.org/viewgit/?a=search&p=opensim&h=HEAD&st=author&s=Melanie%20Thielker

Robert Adams / Misterblue Waves

OpenSimulator Core Developer, BulletSim

Robert Adams has been an OpenSimulator core developer for many years. His OpenSimulator work includes the BulletSim physics engine, the DSG (distributed scene graph) simulator experiment, and many performance improvements. Outside OpenSimulator, he has been a computer developer and researcher for 40 years. He has a current interest in distributed simulation and robotics.

URL https://misterblue.com/

Ubit Umarov

OpenSimulator Core Developer

Ubit is currently a lead Core Developer for OpenSimulator who has been working on the project since 2012. He was instrumental in coding and implementing into the OpenSimulator codebase many of the updates that were part of the OpenSimulator 0.9 update and developing many of the OpenSimulator 0.9.1 and upcoming releases. View his code contributions online: http://opensimulator.org/viewgit/?a=search&p=opensim&h=HEAD&st=author&s=UbitUmarov and please support this key developer by donating to him directly: https://www.paypal.me/UbitUmarov

URL http://opensimulator.org/viewgit/?a=search&p=opensim&h=HEAD&st=author&s=UbitUmarov

Mike Higgins / Kayaker Magic

Ocean Engineer, Ocean Engineering

Kayaker Magic has been a tester for OpenSim for many years and submitted many bug reports. Some of the features he will be talking about are fixes to bugs he reported himself! He gave a presentation at OSCC several years ago about the “Sad Sorry State of Weapons Developent in OpenSim”. Things are much better now! Kayaker is a prolific writer of LSL scripts for OpenSim and you may have seen some his work all over the Metaverse.

URL http://magic.kayaker.net

Mike Lorrey / Mike Lorrey

Developer, Naboo in Kitely

Mike has been a virtual worlds developer in SL and OS for 14 years. While in SL, he capitalized Central Grid, the first major opensim grid, in 2008. Involved in SL as an estate owner, developer of the first virtual stock exchanges, owner of racing and combat sims, leader of the Save Our Sims movement. Today he is the developer of the Naboo region in Kitely with plans to open StarWars RP activities, and is chair of the exhibit building committee for the International Spaceflight Museum. He develops a wide range of content for sale on the Kitely market, and builds and scripts for a number of clients.

Kisma Reidling / Juliette Surreal-Dreaming

Co-Curator of 1Biennale

Juliette is the co-curator of 1Biennale and organizes the Hypergrid Hoppers. It is similar to HG Safari, but only once a month and not weekly. https://hypergridhop.com/

Reiner Schneeberger / Art Blue

AI Developer & Art Curator

Art Blue is known as the most gifted conference speaker because his brain is controlled by an AI, in fact an owl made by Tyrell-Weyland. Luckily he will get assistance by Juliette Surreal-D from Newport Beach, CA -- this way to ensure that his words are made for humans. Reiner stands in ROT13 for ERVA.RE -- at this webpage you get more about his creation Art Blue.

URL http://art.blue

Georg Schneeberger / Herzstein Dev

Computer Science / AI Development

I finished these days my Bachelor in Computer Science (AI Development) at the University of Malta. I took a class in Opensimulator my father lectured when I was at high school . Now I developed a tool for the benefit of this world which I want to present. I search for a high paid job in software development. *LOL*

URL https://herzstein.dev

Ori Shapira / turh zane

Founder, CEO, Head of Pedagogy & Tech / Eureka World

Eureka World - A world of learning High-tech entrepreneur over 28 years of experience in learning technologies, 10 years of research and development virtual worlds. The head of Eureka World project for the past 6 years. A learning OpenSimulator virtual world that works in 150 schools in Israel. 40 Projects:  Globe – Global NASA project for measuring weather patterns  Kadima – Connecting Jewish communities in Israel and across the world Simulations:  ERS – Emergency Event Management Simulator – MADA  Social gym for social skills for gifted students  Enosh – Simulating integrated with regular work Study Units (partial list)  Jerusalem Day Game  Virtual Haifa 3 Years  Mediation Room for Conflicts – Special Behavioral Education

URL http://Eurekaworld.co.il

Graham Mills

University Academic Retired

Graham Mills is a retired university academic with an amateur interest in the history of Liverpool and its railways. He uses OpenSim as an aid to better understanding issues of place and scale in historical contexts

URL http://build2understand.10centuries.org/

Andrew Stricker / Spinoza Quinnell

Instructional Architect

Dr. Andrew Stricker serves Air University as a distributed learning architect. In this role he helps to apply advances in learning and assessment sciences into U.S. Air Force educational and professional military education programs. Prior to his arrival to Air University Andrew served Vanderbilt University as Associate Provost for Innovation Through Technology. He was responsible for working with academic, technology and administrative leaders to prioritize, plan, and enable innovations for improving learning, teaching and research. Dr. Stricker also spent four years at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, creating and then serving as Director of the Cognition and Instructional Technologies Laboratory, and Director of the Knowledge Engineering Complex with the Texas Engineering Extension Service. He retired from the United States Air Force with 28 years of professional experience as an Air Force officer and scientist specializing in systems integration, human-factors engineering and cognitive sciences. His graduate work was conducted at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas and Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. He is a member of the American Psychological Association. His current research addresses developmental growth in reflective mindsets and contemplative practices. Dr. Stricker also engages in collaborative design of assistive immersive 3D virtual and augmented reality simulations for helping to improve complex problem-solving among teams.

Barbara Truman / Delightful Doowangle

UCF Graduate Faculty & Simulation Researcher

Dr. Barbara Truman serves as a Strategic Advisor for Immersive Learning & Collaboration in the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Simulation & Training in Orlando. At UCF, Barbara founded an award-winning department representing Online@UCF. Her background is in Instructional Systems Design, Human Performance Technology, and Computer Science, Emerging Media. Barbara has also served as the Community Manager for the US Army's Military Open Simulation Enterprise Strategy (MOSES) Project.

Cynthia Calongne / Lyr Lobo

OSCC Co-Chair, Professor

Dr. Cynthia Calongne, aka Lyr Lobo, is a Professor at Colorado Technical University and CCCOnline. She taught 52 university classes held in virtual worlds and conducts virtual world research at Virtual Harmony. As a software engineer, she worked with Air Force Space Command and with the U.S. Space Foundation during the Space Shuttle Challenger crash. A pioneer for 3D immersive education and games for change, she received the Thinkerer award at the 2017 Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education, and her team won the $25,000 Grand Prize in the Federal Virtual World Challenge for their space simulation the Mars Expedition Strategy Challenge. Slides: https://www.slideshare.net/lyrlobo/presentations

URL http://bit.ly/ccalongne

JJ Jacobson / JJ Drinkwater

Sci-Fi Librarian

JJ Drinkwater is a Virtual Librarian in a Real World, or a Real Librarian in a Virtual World, or both, or neither. Curatorial experience includes the real & imaginary 19th c, American Culinary History, and Speculative Fiction. Current research is Interactive/Immersive/Improvisatory Narrative in Virtual Environments.

Maria Korolov

Author, Editor / Hypergrid Business

Maria Korolov is a published author and covers artificial intelligence for CIO magazine and cybersecurity for CSO online. She is also the editor of Hypergrid Business since 2009. During her twenty years as a journalist, she's run a business news bureau in Shanghai, covered wars in the former Soviet Union, and wrote about local politics for the Chicago Tribune. But none of that prepared her for covering OpenSimulator, which has been both intensely frustrating and infinitely enjoyable.

URL https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Maria+Korolov

Adam Frisby

CEO / Sine Wave Entertainment

Blair MacIntyre

Principal Research Scientist, Mozilla

Ghoster Smith

VsChat, Altspace, HiFi, RecRoom, NeosVR

Ghoster has been a part of the VR community for the last 3 years in various social programs like VrChat, Altspace, HiFi, RecRoom, NeosVR, along with a few other game based communities. I've done VR camerawork for around 2 years now for multiple different shows. I've started and made a successful forum that promotes and give easy access for people to commission avatars for themselves (and for commissioners to make some money), as well as start/help run a few events in VR like an exercise event, improv night, and technical backend(my own show going over the dynamics of recording in VR.)

Mal Burns

Metaworld Inworld Review

Mal Burns is host of the "Inworld Review" - a weekly news and discussion program which has been running for over 10 years. He and Tara Yeats run Metaworld Broadcasting to provide input and output services for TV in virtual worlds and the expertise for the same. Mal has used virtual environments for nearly a decade, is concerned about user interfaces in general and has a wealth of media and design experience behind him. In the organic sphere he is now retired and uses his experience to deploy and promote in immersive spaces. He also has a twitter stream (@malburns) provide news links on a daily basis.

Rameshsharma Ramloll

CEO/CTU DeepSemaphore LLC

Rameshsharma Ramloll currently leads DeepSemaphore LLC, an E-Learning and Simulation Solutions company.

Bethany Winslow / Bethany Winslow

SJSU Instructional Designer

Bethany Winslow is a volunteer with the Community Virtual Library, and an instructional designer at San Jose State University. Her areas of interest include instructional design & training, digital citizenship & literacy, the open source movement & crowd-sourced knowledge (wiki), the Creative Commons, and any other forms of radical collaboration that are disrupting traditional education and access to information. Bethany regularly attends or presents at virtual world events, but she also attends physical world conferences to promote exciting things educators are doing in-world. She finds that despite widespread excitement about virtual reality, many educators have almost no knowledge of the long history of virtual worlds in education. She believes that those who are currently engaged in virtual world exploration will be the most prepared to design effective immersive learning experiences in any of the virtual reality platforms that emerge in the future. Her personal mission is to learn more about VR and VW by doing, and to motivate others to do the same. In 2019 she presented two posters (Immersive Learning Research Network Conference and the CSU Makerspace Convening) illustrating how virtual worlds are accessible, global, environmentally sustainable digital makerspaces where educators can find a vibrant community of practice.

URL http://www.sjsu.edu/ecampus/

Marie Vans / amvans Lapis

Research Scientist / HP Labs

Dr. Marie Vans holds a Ph.D. in computer science and works as a Research Scientist at Hewlett-Packard. She is an author of over 50 technical papers and holder of 20 U.S. patents. Marie is currently researching virtual reality for use in education.

Valerie Hill / Valibrarian Gregg

Director, Community Virtual Library

Dr. Valerie Hill received her MLS from Texas Woman’s University in 2007 and a PhD in Library and Information Science in 2012. Valerie is a library and information science educator with a research focus on the intersection of information literacy and global digital participatory culture and serves as Director of the Community Virtual Library.

URL http://valibrarian.net/

Bryce Johannes / BoShi Han

Media Manager / Nuna Art Gallery

Bryce Johannes (avatar: Han Boshi) is Media Manager at Nuna Art Gallery, a software developer at Axero Solutions and author of When People Unite.

URL www.nunagallery.com

Kisma Reidling / Juliette Surreal-Dreaming

Co-Curator of 1Biennale

Juliette is the co-curator of 1Biennale and organizes the Hypergrid Hoppers. It is similar to HG Safari, but only once a month and not weekly. https://hypergridhop.com/

Maria Korolov

Author, Editor / Hypergrid Business

Maria Korolov is a published author and covers artificial intelligence for CIO magazine and cybersecurity for CSO online. She is also the editor of Hypergrid Business since 2009. During her twenty years as a journalist, she's run a business news bureau in Shanghai, covered wars in the former Soviet Union, and wrote about local politics for the Chicago Tribune. But none of that prepared her for covering OpenSimulator, which has been both intensely frustrating and infinitely enjoyable.

URL https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Maria+Korolov

Reiner Schneeberger / Art Blue

AI Developer & Art Curator

Art Blue is known as the most gifted conference speaker because his brain is controlled by an AI, in fact an owl made by Tyrell-Weyland. Luckily he will get assistance by Juliette Surreal-D from Newport Beach, CA -- this way to ensure that his words are made for humans. Reiner stands in ROT13 for ERVA.RE -- at this webpage you get more about his creation Art Blue.

URL http://art.blue

Scott Dolphin

Graduate School Residency / Suny

Scott Dolphin has had a 35 year career in art & design and is now a graduate student in Learning with Emerging Technology at SUNY Empire State College. He has developed a fully immersive VR curriculum for interdicsiplinary art studies as part of his thesis and has become very active in his department in furthering the use of VR for higher education.

URL https://sites.google.com/view/shadowglen/home

Eileen O'Connor

Professor / MALET, SUNY

During the past 13 years, I have been involved in using VR environments for my students in graduate school at SUNY Empire State College; for the past five years I have taught others how to create education-level open-source environments. I come from a STEM background having been a chemist in government and industry, working for IBM in the 1980s, and completing a master’s in civil engineering. I returned to school for a doctorate in science and technology education and have involved in higher ed venues within the State University of New York over the past 20 years integrating science and technologies with sound pedagogical practices.

Bethany Winslow / Bethany Winslow

SJSU Instructional Designer

Bethany Winslow is a volunteer with the Community Virtual Library, and an instructional designer at San Jose State University. Her areas of interest include instructional design & training, digital citizenship & literacy, the open source movement & crowd-sourced knowledge (wiki), the Creative Commons, and any other forms of radical collaboration that are disrupting traditional education and access to information. Bethany regularly attends or presents at virtual world events, but she also attends physical world conferences to promote exciting things educators are doing in-world. She finds that despite widespread excitement about virtual reality, many educators have almost no knowledge of the long history of virtual worlds in education. She believes that those who are currently engaged in virtual world exploration will be the most prepared to design effective immersive learning experiences in any of the virtual reality platforms that emerge in the future. Her personal mission is to learn more about VR and VW by doing, and to motivate others to do the same. In 2019 she presented two posters (Immersive Learning Research Network Conference and the CSU Makerspace Convening) illustrating how virtual worlds are accessible, global, environmentally sustainable digital makerspaces where educators can find a vibrant community of practice.

URL http://www.sjsu.edu/ecampus/

DJ Shelenn Ayres

DJ

James Olmos

DJ

LibertyBelle Lyric

DJ

Kay McLennan

Professor of Practice, Tulane University

Kay McLennan is a Professor of Practice at the Tulane University School of Professional Advancement. Kay created the Tulane SoPA Metaverse and has been creating and using virtual world learning simulations in her online economics and business studies courses since 2008. Kay uses student feedback to continually refine and expand the educational simulations she creates to use in her e-courses. She has written about her creation and use of OpenSimulator-based learning simulations – read about "Interactivity, Engagement, and Increased Learning Outcomes in 3D Virtual World Educational Simulations" @ http://www.editlib.org/p/40849, “Prisoners’ Dilemma” simulation use case example @ https://sites.google.com/site/fvwc12mclennan, and “Data Detectives Game” simulation use case example @ https://sites.google.com/site/fvc13mclennan. Also, the video clips from the December 2018 “Mainstreaming Virtual World Learning Colloquium” event (organized by Kay) can be viewed @ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLctERt0Fl50gLOgYPdfHDE8NcPtuO4wb0.

URL https://sopametaverse.wp.tulane.edu/

Frank Rulof

Senior Systems Engineer / Thales Netherlands

Frank Rulof is a Senior Systems Engineer at Thales Netherlands with expertise areas in Training & Simulation. He is leading the research and innovation activities related to Open Simulator technology within the Thales Global Company using multiple Open Simulator grids focused on user needs.

Lisa Laxton

R&D, CEO Infinite Metaverse Alliance

Lisa Laxton is the R&D Visionary and CEO of the OpenSimulator community focused Infinite Metaverse Alliance® (IMA). She is also President of Laxton Consulting LLC with experience providing various virtual world technology solutions for education, research, business, and defense clients. You may have seen her around the HyperGrid as Shelenn Ayres busy building content or engaged in testing but she is available via meetings to anyone in the Open Simulator community interested in collaborating to advance virtual worlds technology and/or to improve accessibility.

URL http://infinitemetaverse.com/

Natacha Bru

Engineering Student / CPE Lyon, France

Natacha Bru is an engineering student at CPE Lyon (France), specialized in network architecture and cyber-security. She works as an intern at Thales NL and has been charged to review the SceneGate viewer security issues.

Troy Schultz / Seth Nygard

CTO & Developer

Troy Schultz (Seth Nygard) is a multi-discipline developer with 30+ years experience in real-time systems for industrial, automotive, and other critical environments. He has worked in the roles of Senior Hardware Designer, Senior Systems Administrator, Engineering Manager, and Chief Technology Officer at various companies and was the owner/operator of Refuge Grid. Combining a keen interest in virtual worlds with his professional experiences he has been an active builder, tester, and developer using Open Simulator.

Robert Adams / Misterblue Waves

OpenSimulator Core Developer, BulletSim

Robert Adams has been an OpenSimulator core developer for many years. His OpenSimulator work includes the BulletSim physics engine, the DSG (distributed scene graph) simulator experiment, and many performance improvements. Outside OpenSimulator, he has been a computer developer and researcher for 40 years. He has a current interest in distributed simulation and robotics.

URL https://misterblue.com/

Heike Philp

CEO Let\'s Talk Online SPRL

Heike Philp is CEO of let's talk online sprl, an immersive education specialist for language teaching and learning. She is co-initiator of EU funded LANCELOT (virtual classroom) and AVALON (virtual world) and the CAMELOT project (machinima for language teachers) and GUINEVERE (games in virtual worlds). She is founder of the Virtual Round Table Conference and co-owns EduNation in Second Life.

URL http://www.letstalkonline.com

Michael Thomas

Dr Michael Thomas is Professor of Higher Education and Online Learning at the University of Central Lancasihre in the UK.

URL https://www.uclan.ac.uk/staff_profiles/michael_thomas.php

Silvia Benini

Senior Research Assistance, GUINEVERE

Dr Silvia Benini works at the University of Central Lancashire (UK) as senior research assistant for the GUINEVERE project and she is also a tutor and lecturer in the School of Modern Languages and Applied Linguistics at the University of Limerick (Ireland).

Dieter Heyne

CEO Metaverse School

Since 2007 Dieter Heyne is a frequent Metaverse traveller through almost all available grids, evaluating their usability for education, collaboration and entertainment. To provide a safe, simple and reliable entry level access to the metaverse, he started to create his own web based virtual world platform cybaLOUNGE from scratch, which can be accessed from the browser without any installation and plug-ins.

URL http://metaverse.software

Steve LaVigne / Steve Franklin

Founder, A Dimension Beyond

Steve has been involved in Virtual Worlds since 2006. His involvement has also evolved from Second Life to OpenSim to Web Worlds like CybaLounge. He is a founder of A Dimension Beyond, Inc. a small company doing bleeding edge design and support services for VR, AR, and virtual Worlds. ADB is the North American distributer for CybaLounge. Check us out at adimensionbeyond.com

Frank Rulof

Senior Systems Engineer / Thales Netherlands

Frank Rulof is a Senior Systems Engineer at Thales Netherlands with expertise areas in Training & Simulation. He is leading the research and innovation activities related to Open Simulator technology within the Thales Global Company using multiple Open Simulator grids focused on user needs.

Lisa Laxton

R&D, CEO Infinite Metaverse Alliance

Lisa Laxton is the R&D Visionary and CEO of the OpenSimulator community focused Infinite Metaverse Alliance® (IMA). She is also President of Laxton Consulting LLC with experience providing various virtual world technology solutions for education, research, business, and defense clients. You may have seen her around the HyperGrid as Shelenn Ayres busy building content or engaged in testing but she is available via meetings to anyone in the Open Simulator community interested in collaborating to advance virtual worlds technology and/or to improve accessibility.

URL http://infinitemetaverse.com/

Natacha Bru

Engineering Student / CPE Lyon, France

Natacha Bru is an engineering student at CPE Lyon (France), specialized in network architecture and cyber-security. She works as an intern at Thales NL and has been charged to review the SceneGate viewer security issues.

Troy Schultz / Seth Nygard

CTO & Developer

Troy Schultz (Seth Nygard) is a multi-discipline developer with 30+ years experience in real-time systems for industrial, automotive, and other critical environments. He has worked in the roles of Senior Hardware Designer, Senior Systems Administrator, Engineering Manager, and Chief Technology Officer at various companies and was the owner/operator of Refuge Grid. Combining a keen interest in virtual worlds with his professional experiences he has been an active builder, tester, and developer using Open Simulator.

Meriem El Yamri

Co-Founder, Crowtec, Madrid

Meriem El Yamri, M.Eng, is currently doing her PhD at Complutense University in Madrid. Her main research area is the using of VR to train the ability of public speaking and exploring how to make computers understand human communication. She is also the cofounder of Crowtec, a software and hardware development studio based in Madrid.

Caitlyn Meeks

Founder & CEO, Tivoli Cloud VR

Founder & CEO of the social VR services platform, Tivoli Cloud VR.

Ilan Tochner

Co-Founder & CEO, Kitely

Ilan Tochner is the Co-Founder and CEO of Kitely, the biggest commercial provider of OpenSim regions and the creator of Kitely Market, the leading marketplace serving the Hypergrid metaverse. Ilan formerly held key positions in several startups, including CEO at IDChoice and Director of Infrastructure Development at OmniSky. Ilan has an MBA from Tel Aviv University and a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

URL https://kitely.com

Kalila Lakeworth

Co-founder of https://kasen.io/

Co-founder of Kasen IO & project manager of Kasen Community Edition, a VR metaverse engine.

URL https://github.com/kasenvr/project-athena

Mal Burns

Metaworld Inworld Review

Mal Burns is host of the "Inworld Review" - a weekly news and discussion program which has been running for over 10 years. He and Tara Yeats run Metaworld Broadcasting to provide input and output services for TV in virtual worlds and the expertise for the same. Mal has used virtual environments for nearly a decade, is concerned about user interfaces in general and has a wealth of media and design experience behind him. In the organic sphere he is now retired and uses his experience to deploy and promote in immersive spaces. He also has a twitter stream (@malburns) provide news links on a daily basis.

Rameshsharma Ramloll

CEO/CTU DeepSemaphore LLC

Rameshsharma Ramloll currently leads DeepSemaphore LLC, an E-Learning and Simulation Solutions company.

Anabel Origin

Language Teacher & Lecturer

Anabel Nowak M.A. Language teacher and lecturer, main field Blended Learning. Machinimist.

Chris Luchs / Abacus Capalini

PhD Scholar / CC Leadership

Chris Luchs is a Community College Leadership PhD student at Old Dominion University. He has over twelve years of experience teaching online and f2f at the community college level. His areas of instruction are Business, Accounting, and Multimedia and Graphic Design. In addition to formal college instruction, Chris has a passion for investigating new technologies and collaborating internationally with other educators on evaluating and exploring virtual worlds and games based educational applications.

Kae Novak

Instructional Designer, PhD student, Univ of Colorado-Denver

Kae Novak is an Instructional Designer for a Colorado community college and is a PhD student at the University of Colorado - Denver. She collaborates with ISTE Games and Simulations Network educators to offer a Just-In-Time series, called “Rapid Responses” whenever they find it necessary to discuss or fact check current events. In her spare time, she leads and facilitates the Metagame Book Club which combines the reading of fiction, game play, and education research.

URL https://sites.google.com/site/metagamebookclub/

Andrew Wheelock / Spiff Whitfield

WNYRIC Technology Coordinator

I am an educator, husband, and father of 3!.... after 13 years as an elementary teacher, I slowly found myself gravitating to teaching and learning with technology. I survived the early days of the internet, with turtle slow modems and static webpages to see the incredible age of the technology renaissance. The power and engagement possibilities of today's technology from mobile devices to virtual environments, to gaming is incredible. The true value is harnessing it to make powerful learning experiences, as well as, helping students navigate technology dangers. I have many ideas of my own on how that happens, but I feel I grow much deeper understanding when I talked to other innovative educators. These educators inspire me to go beyond and push the boundaries.

URL https://www.e1b.org

Alyse Dunavant-Jones

MLIS Student, SJSU

Alyse Dunavant-Jones earned her MLS at San Jose State University Ischool and has an interest in virtual world librarianship. She is the Assistant Director of the Community Virtual Library.

Marie Vans / amvans Lapis

Research Scientist / HP Labs

Dr. Marie Vans holds a Ph.D. in computer science and works as a Research Scientist at Hewlett-Packard. She is an author of over 50 technical papers and holder of 20 U.S. patents. Marie is currently researching virtual reality for use in education.

Valerie Hill / Valibrarian Gregg

Director, Community Virtual Library

Dr. Valerie Hill received her MLS from Texas Woman’s University in 2007 and a PhD in Library and Information Science in 2012. Valerie is a library and information science educator with a research focus on the intersection of information literacy and global digital participatory culture and serves as Director of the Community Virtual Library.

URL http://valibrarian.net/

Rachel Umoren

Associate Professor of Pediatrics & Global Health

Dr. Rachel Umoren is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Adjunct Associate Professor of Global Health at the University of Washington where she is the Director of the Neonatal Education & Simulation-based Training (NEST) program. She is the Vice-Chair of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare Section on Serious Games and Virtual Environments. Her research focuses on using virtual simulations for healthcare professional training in team communication and neonatal resuscitation internationally.

URL http://nestprogram.org

DJ Strannik Zipper

DJ

Etheriel 6 Dream Pop Rave host!

URL http://piratesatoll.com/

Joyce Bettencourt

AvaCon, Inc., Co-Founder

Joyce Bettencourt is co-founder and Vice President of AvaCon, Inc.(https://avacon.org), a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to promoting the growth, enhancement, and development of the metaverse, virtual worlds, augmented reality and 3D immersive spaces. AvaCon were organizers of 2010 in Boston & 2011 in Oakland Second Life Community Convention, the Federal Consortium of Virtual Worlds virtual workshops, and the ongoing OpenSimulator Community Conference. AvaCon also currently fiscally sponsors the nonprofit community of practice, Nonprofit Commons in Second Life, where Joyce has been a community leader and host of weekly Friday meetings. In addition, she is Creative Director of The Vesuvius Group (http://thevesuviusgroup.com), a collaborative studio specializing in developing online immersive and social environments for community-building. Joyce is a 2012 graduate of the Singularity University Graduate Studies program, focused on applying exponential technologies to addressing Global Grand Challenges. Previously she was digital media producer for the Online Leadership Program at the educational nonprofit Global Kids and helped produce digital media learning content including the Second Life Curriculum, many virtual and physical world events, and the social issue game CONSENT! As her avatar Rhiannon Chatnoir, she has organized numerous social good online events, including the Virtual Haiti Relief campaign within the virtual world of Second Life that helped raise awareness and $10,000 USD in virtual micro transactions. http://about.me/joycebettencourt

URL http://about.me/joycebettencourt

Bethany Winslow / Bethany Winslow

SJSU Instructional Designer

Bethany Winslow is a volunteer with the Community Virtual Library, and an instructional designer at San Jose State University. Her areas of interest include instructional design & training, digital citizenship & literacy, the open source movement & crowd-sourced knowledge (wiki), the Creative Commons, and any other forms of radical collaboration that are disrupting traditional education and access to information. Bethany regularly attends or presents at virtual world events, but she also attends physical world conferences to promote exciting things educators are doing in-world. She finds that despite widespread excitement about virtual reality, many educators have almost no knowledge of the long history of virtual worlds in education. She believes that those who are currently engaged in virtual world exploration will be the most prepared to design effective immersive learning experiences in any of the virtual reality platforms that emerge in the future. Her personal mission is to learn more about VR and VW by doing, and to motivate others to do the same. In 2019 she presented two posters (Immersive Learning Research Network Conference and the CSU Makerspace Convening) illustrating how virtual worlds are accessible, global, environmentally sustainable digital makerspaces where educators can find a vibrant community of practice.

URL http://www.sjsu.edu/ecampus/

Lynne Berrett / Lissena Wisdomseeker

Whole Brain Health

Lynne Berrett/Lissena Wisdomseeker is owner of the Virtual Learning Village grid. She has been building a comprehensive program for whole brain health through lifelong learning in Second Life since 2013. She has been active in opensim since 2013.

URL http://virtuallearningvillage.org