OSCC 2021 Welcome / OpenSimulator Features and Updates

Speakers

• Crista Lopes University of California Irvine, Professor & OpenSimulator Core Developer
  

  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.

• Cynthia Calongne / Lyr Lobo OSCC Co-Chair, Professor
  

  Cynthia Calongne / Lyr Lobo

  OSCC Co-Chair, Professor

  Lyr is a Professor at Parker University in Dallas, Texas and a VR researcher. Since 2005, she taught 54 university classes in virtual worlds and mentored 800+ 13-year-old students. Her team won the $25,000 Grand Prize for their space simulation and she received the Thinkerer Award for her passion for virtual world education. She loves OpenSimulator and is proud to be a member of the OSCC Organizing Committee.

• Joyce Bettencourt / Rhiannon Chatnoir AvaCon, Inc., Co-Founder
  

  Joyce Bettencourt / Rhiannon Chatnoir

  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

• Kevin Cozens / Andrew Hellershanks OpenSimulator Core Developer
  

  Kevin Cozens / Andrew Hellershanks

  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

• Melanie Milland OpenSimulator Core Developer
  

  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.

• Ubit Umarov OpenSimulator Core Developer
  

  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