 Check one and check two Hello everyone and welcome to the 1230 breakout session of the open simulator community conference 2013 as a reminder to our in-world and web audiences You can view the full conference schedule on our website at conference dot open simulator dot org and you can post your questions in local chat on The uStream chat or tweet your comments using the hashtag OSCC 13 This hour we are happy to introduce John Lester who will be representing who will be presenting Exploring the interconnected how past dreams evolve into future reality John Pathfinder Lester is a leader and expert in knowledge management 3d simulations multi-user virtual world and immersive learning his Brack background is in neuroscience research and medical education and he previously worked at Harvard Medical School Massachusetts General Hospital and Linden lab. John is currently the chief learning officer at Reaction Gribb Incorporated helping clients develop new systems for immersive learning using next generation virtual world platforms that integrate with the web and mobile devices Welcome John Great. Thank you very much. It's It's wonderful to be here. I'm just I'm just amazed at how this whole conference has Has taken off so I just want to thank you Joe and everybody else all the volunteers everyone who's worked so hard to make this happen because You know, it's I think it's just a stellar success. I've met so many wonderful people here and I've I've seen so many wonderful presentations. It's just fantastic. So Let's give a hand to the organizers Because they really they really deserve it and Thank you very much for for coming to my talk the The slides so you should be able to see the slides behind me There's a little bit of a delay with my voice and when I advanced the slide So when I advanced a slide I may pause for a few seconds just to make sure everything catches up But the title of my talk will be exploring the interconnected how past dreams evolve into future reality and you'll be able to get these slides with all of the Hyperlinks because I always like to have links to additional information in my slides But you'll be able to get these slides by going to that URL that bit.ly URL and just remember that bit.ly URLs are case sensitive So just type in that URL and you should be able to to get to my slides they'll be up on they're up on slide share and As Joe mentioned again, thank you Joe for that introduction My goal with this talk is really to just talk about the The history of how I've seen things evolving in terms of interconnected Grids how things were back at Linden lab how things evolved in open sim my own personal journey exploring how grids connect via the hyper grid and hopefully Just give a little bit of insight into how how dreams of the past evolve into Future realities and sometimes it's not completely a straight line right sometimes. It's a actually most of the time It's an organic process So I'm going to be talking about some of my initial experiences with open sim while I was still working at Linden lab and Also, how I set up my own region initially in Jokadia grid, which is an open sim grid and Then eventually setting up my own standalone grid and my explorations with the hyper grid with a group that I put together called the hyper grid adventures club, which is Which is really fun. Oh, someone asked me to type the URL in chat. So I'll do that here I There we go and I'll actually paste that into the Ustream chat as well because I know Some people are on Ustream. There we go. Let's see the next slide You've already heard about me my nickname when I was at Linden lab I chose the the nickname pathfinder because everybody has to choose an avatar name Sir name, you know something in the last name Linden and I didn't want to be John Linden because that's like being John Smith So I chose pathfinder just because I I always liked the nickname. It's a devocative and describes how I like to look at the world And I've kept it. I've kept the nickname pathfinder even though I no longer work at Linden lab I worked at Linden lab from 2005 to 2010 then my background is actually in in health care in neuroscience and in medical education, so I'm very interested in immersive learning environments and since 2010 I have been working at reaction grid where I'm the chief learning officer and I work to help develop Really new new immersive learning environments for clients who are primarily academics and educators and and businesses to people who are interested in in Learning within companies So past dreams Let's see here Great, okay Anybody recognize this this image. This is from second life. I'm trying to see if anybody in the picture Is actually sitting in the audience. I can't tell But this is my These are my office hours when I was working at Linden lab one of the things that we We started doing at Linden lab back when I was working there This was back in between 2005 and 2010 Was we created a space and this was actually my project that I took the lead on this we created a space in second life called Linden village and I Basically claimed a whole bunch of land and parceled it out and gave plots to different Linden lab employees for them to build For them to create whatever they wanted to and most importantly for them to have a space where they could meet with people and Talk and have conversations and these conversations were We're really really amazing and over the years many Linden lab employees took advantage of this and You can actually see my avatar. I Can use the little pointer you should see a little 3d 3d little red arrow pointing to my old avatar there with the wings That was a lot of fun So we would sit around and we would talk we'd have conversations and these conversations would also be about So, you know, not just about what was happening currently, but also about the future Right also about where things might be going with virtual worlds and those those were very productive talks And this is actually me in in real life on the left the bald guy And also what was really wonderful was my experience to To create the and to set up and to manage and really to build out the infrastructure for Linden labs initial East Coast presence in Boston the Boston lab So we grew that from You know it started out with the folks the employees that we acquired from Windward mark interactive the folks who did the windlight integration They became employees and they were the initial core for the Boston lab Including myself and a few other people and that grew up to be well when I left about I think about 50 about 50 people and all those people On the on the table Our employees or were employees. I think I think the only one who is still left is Nick's Linden, I think yeah But that was a great time too that was and I wouldn't trade that for the world had a wonderful time With that group and talking about the future of second life and not just the future of second life But at least back in those days we talked a lot about what we felt the future of the metaverse would be You know, it was it was very much a pervasive idea That we were thinking about where this could all go In the future and even where it could go beyond Linden lab involvement So there's I didn't mean this to be a morbid slide I just felt very touched when I left Linden lab when I was laid off along with a Whole bunch of other folks at Linden lab They put up these little memorials, you know, and some people thought oh, it's really morbid it's like you guys died and and I didn't see it that way I saw it as I Thought very I felt very touched because it meant people knew we were we were we were moving on to something else in our lives And we were no longer working with the company and these these memorials I felt were very um, they touched well They touched me very deeply so so anyone who was involved in those thank you for For that that was actually the avatar was wearing it didn't feel right for me to show up wearing my you know My pathfinder avatar because my account was converted to a Resident account so my pathfinder Linden account became Pathfinder Lester and I still have the old avatar, but it didn't feel right You know walking around with my old avatar so I was I Put on a Buddhist monk avatar felt that was appropriate and walked around and looked at my Memorial gravestone But I thought it was very touching so you know the thing about dreams is they start in the end Right and they evolve and they change And really you know that's you know, that's what happened for a lot of us at Linden lab So let's let's look a little bit at Some specifics If you go to YouTube You can find this this video and it was uploaded by Torley back in 2008 and it's a video Called across the metaverse from second life to open sim And it shows examples of folks at Linden lab teleporting from the second life beta grid to an open sim Grid being run by IBM behind their own fuck behind you know on their own hardware behind their own firewall And it was really interesting because it you know back back then we were thinking all you know You know I don't want to say all of us because not everyone at Linden lab always felt the same But a lot of us were really thinking about how second life could be part of a larger ecosystem of Grids and how it might interoperate With technology like open sim, which was just starting out And I have to tell you I remember being back at Linden lab And when I first started hearing about open sim and we started seeing examples of what was happening with open sim we were blown away and We were genuinely not We were the overall feeling was one of genuine amazement Because here were people who were so enthusiastic about this concept of a multi-user 3d immersive Everyone can edit everything in the same environment in Metaverse and they were so excited about that they were going on their own and expanding on the technology in a way That wasn't it wasn't infringing with ours You know they weren't stealing anything from from Linden lab They were just expanding on and creating an open source version that Could potentially create a much larger metaverse of interconnected Interconnected worlds and this is fascinating. I have to tell you everyone I remember everyone at the lab Just going holy cow. Who are these crazy smart people? Who are doing this and it was It was a really amazing point in time. It was really amazing now this slide is This is the only slide with a bunch of text on it Although there is a picture behind it that I need to talk about too, which is important but this is really the timeline of Past dreams with with lots of hyperlinks to specific moments in time and it covers a period of Of only six years and that's not very long if you really think about it, right? If you really think about you can zoom in on that and when you download the slides You can you can click on everything that looks like a hyperlink, but I'll go over these really quick back in 2007 This was when I had linen lab, you know, we were really excited about the idea of having having an open grid protocol of some way of connecting with With other grids like open sim grids and so linen lab started the architecture working group And you can still find these documents on the wiki That's what those links are to So I was back in 2007 think about that. No, that was six years ago And in 2008 That was when that video was created of the teleporting between the second life beta grid and IBM's open sim grid and that was also a very special year because 2008 was also when Krista Invented the you know invented open sims hyper grid system when she came up with her proof of concept That's when she she cut she she conceived of it and actually started to implement it and back and then in 2009 There was actually a larger working group chartered that was something that was not Explicitly run by linen lab. It was part of the IETF and it was the virtual world region agent protocol working group And basically this was going to be a group looking at standards to interconnect a Larger Constellation of virtual world. So not just talking about linen lab and second life This was about you know, the bigger picture stuff really really big picture stuff And you know again very exciting times You go to 2010 of course, that's when There were the the major layoffs at linen lab did across the board of which I was part of and That was the year that linen lab officially said we are no longer going to be involved in the In the virtual world region agent protocol group and we're not we're not going to be focusing on virtual world interoperability and Then in 2011 That was when the the VW or VWRAP working group officially shut down and Christa has a really good postmortem explaining from her perspective You know what were the causes and of course, you know, nothing is ever because of one particular reason It wasn't just because of linen labs ceasing involvement. There are other factors involved There, you know, they were the challenge with any big picture idea like the VWRAP working group is that it's big picture It's hard. Those are the hardest things hardest things to do right and so there are multiple reasons why it's It finally just just kind of lost steam And then 2013 I think is very exciting because this is the the year with the Release of open sim version 075. Oh, and I see Christa's in the audience. Yay Christa. Thank you for all your hard work That was released with hypercrit version 2.0 and If you read only one link on this page read the last link we're on for hypergrid version 2.0 because that is Christa explaining Where things are and where they're going with hypergrid because it has moved far beyond a proof of concept And and let's see what we can bolt on to this system That doesn't really want to do this in the first place to to really a thoughtful System that involves things like permissions how to handle the transfer of content and how to transfer handle the transfer of avatars between different Between different groups, which is all very important You know, we we all we all may have may have different ideas about what levels of digital rights management should exist But I think that's good. It's good to have people not all agreeing and to have debate because that's how you get the The right answers to the hardest questions you know So this is the timeline of how I you know, I basically sat down and wanted to put together all of the past dreams that I could find involving the interconnectedness of of of the world Of grids, right? And what was wonderful because I put this picture on the background I all my slides always have lots of images and when I put this picture on the background And I was putting together this timeline which actually took a while to tease out all the details and summarize it um, I realized If you look at the next slide here That the the in my mind at least the background image kind of summed it all up What happened, right? If you look at this background image You see that it's a you know, there's a beautiful There's a beautiful a stair staircase Stairway and their walls and you're obviously part of some building But you can also see where things are kind of crumbling and falling apart and you can also see where where trees have grown up through the ground pushing aside, you know the The organized planning of you know, whoever built this this building That's really what happens. That's that in a nutshell I think is is really the reality of how past dreams evolve into future reality You have things that are built that are created that you expect that will stand the test of time and they're they crumble and then other things grow up They sprout from between the cracks And become sometimes more formidable than the original construction You know that you can imagine how these trees probably are higher than the walls, right? you can imagine how the Exactly organic growth you can think about how what has grown naturally and in some ways, you know the You have to remember too that you know the the what you've created will foster certain types of unexpected organic growth right You may be laying The groundwork to enable a certain type of organic thing to take root and flourish and be much bigger than your original expectations of anything So camara, I don't remember where this um Where this is this picture Um, I honestly can't I need to find out where this was taken. I didn't even take this picture I can't I found it in one of my folders So I need to I need to find out but it is an open sim somewhere I know that it was something that either somebody gave me or a link or something But I think it's just a beautiful metaphor for how past dreams can evolve right and I think it's important to realize too that the um An evolution and growth the future Always arises from opposing elements. It's about things pushing against each other and leaning against other things and Uh, you know things pushing out of the ocean into the sky and the contrast between air and water and light and dark organic and and and and rigidly planned growth, um, that's how the future grows and the best thing you can do is is really Observe what's happening Very closely. Just look and see What's happening all around you and do whatever you can to help encourage the positive growth that you see around you Whether it's growth that somebody is cultivating specifically or organic growth, right? I think that's the uh That's the key. This is a picture of um I was very proud of this little kind of weird sculpture. I made in the ocean This is from my own open sim grid patlandia. So if you want to see this particular Um the image you can go to my grid. Thank you. I'm glad you like the colors. I like purple and I don't know purple more purple And the other thing to remember is organizations and companies really Are not living creatures. They are not singular entities organizations are conversations An organization and a company in particular Is the sum of all of the memos happening, you know flying back and forth It is a sum of all of the meetings that are happening both in conference rooms as well as the impromptu discussions around water coolers and in hallways and meetings after work over drinks and and email flying back and forth and conversations between the company and its customers Organizations and companies are conversations and conversations can change very quickly So when people say, you know people ask me well, what happened? What was the cause of Linden lab walking away from interoperability and like anything else there are multiple reasons, right? There are multiple variables. I think some of it at the core was it was such a big picture idea Because it involved not just thinking about And I remember some of these conversations with with many folks at the lab It involved not just thinking about inter-connectivity, but about changing the fundamental business model of Linden lab And that's a scary conversation to have For any company because basically what Linden lab was You know the ideas that were being tossed around one of them was basically, you know What would you know? Maybe we need to get out of the land business completely Maybe we need to just be like the federal reserve bank and control some kind of Interconnected economy that links all of these disparate grids whether they be open sim or second life Or maybe something like second life enterprise people running their own second life grids behind their own firewalls As a very hard conversations to have right For for any organization that has to face a bottom line because companies face the bottom line of revenue and if somebody tries to start a conversation about You know basically turning everything on its head and it would have to be something done very quickly. Those are very difficult Discussions to have so I think part of the reason in addition to just things like the layoffs Which were you know, it was just because a matter of a lot of that was just you know People who used to focus on interoperability were suddenly no longer around. They were just gone Um, I think it was also just a a um, it was such a big challenge There was such a big idea and and i'm not entirely sure any single company could really come up with the best solution to it Because companies have to face these bottom line issues companies have to you know Have a lot of harsh realities and they are not they are not as they are not completely 100 Navigatable you can't turn on a dime, you know, especially if they've been around for a while so I think what um It's fascinating to me was how when um You know as linden lab basically was putting aside its ideas of interoperability and you know for better or for worse It is what it is Conversations change within companies the the company that is linden lab today is a very different company completely different company Completely different conversations than when I was at linden lab, but what was fascinating to me was that um You had this community of of developers the open sim developers that people developing Hyper grid the people and the people using those platforms that really started to um Say, okay, well, we're just going to go ahead and try and do whatever we can we're going to we're going to do something all right you know, I think there's a lot of Potential for answering some of these bigger questions in particular the the v-wrap working group talking about interoperability for for a lot of um You know for for generalized virtual worlds, but at the same time what it gets me very excited is what are people actually doing now? Right, what are people building now? What are people experimenting with now? um I was I was very um inspired at one point I remember christa when you said something about how you know, you just wanted for hyper grid You just wanted to throw something out there to see if you can actually hack something together and make it work Right, you know, there's a time for sitting back and defining standards and theorizing and debating and putting together white papers But then there's a let's build something and actually get people banging on it Let's get something actually running And out there and see what happens when people use it and then from there Use you know then grow some of the answers to some of the harder questions And and in my opinion, I think that that's a really good way to do things it's it's it's it's important to sit back and and and work out visionary standards and plans, but at some point you have to move into um Actual tactics, right? You know, you have to strategize and then execute on tactics and what is that that's saying from uh Uh, you know strategy is uh, you need both right strategy Without tactics is the longest road to victory But tactics without any strategy is the noise before defeat right You need you really need both And I like this picture too because that's actually me I've cloned myself as in an mpc You know, it's it's an illusion that any kind of organization is made up of everyone who thinks exactly the same You know, I think that's the other The other illusion that we have to remember that organizations are not just conversations, but there are lots of different people right lots of different people Okay, so moving moving along here um I love this picture People recognize what movie movie this is from this is from uh I won't say it someone will say it in chat um You recognize the movie It's time bandits time bandits, um I always get a lot of inspiration from the you know the the statement that you know the and the idea that perfect is the enemy of good Perfect is the enemy of good if if you're constantly striving for perfection that is Deadly to the implementation of anything good Right, you don't have to be perfect If all you ever strive for is perfection, you will never actually create or do anything of of actual You won't execute on anything um It's always good to strive to perfection But but uh at the end of the day perfection really is the enemy of the good or good is is good and in many cases it's it's more than good enough and Frontiers of any kind, you know those rough rough edged Experiments for exploration you need people who are pioneers and who are willing to take risks and who are willing for things to break Right who are willing for crashes and things to blow up occasionally and and I love this um movie time bandits because One I can't remember what happened to me, but it hit me I I suddenly thought well hyper grid is exactly like the map and time bandits because the universe when it was created You know had some holes It was far from perfect So the ultimate creator of the universe made a map mapping out all of the flaws In in the creation of the universe and those flaws could let you jump between space and time points All right, you could jump You could basically hyper grid teleport to different locations and different time periods Right, so so that's where I I really um I got a lot of inspiration for um This hyper grid adventurers club, which I'll talk about in a moment um, so when I left Linden lab the first thing I did was I just started looking at lots of different virtual world platforms and I very very quickly got a A region on jocadia grid, which I don't know if jocay is around here but jocadia grid um is is around still around too. It's doing wonderfully and um That was where I cut my teeth on how to do things in open sim and I encourage anyone here who's interested in just starting out at open sim of course my heart is is um Is uh, you know, I'll always be with jocadia grid because they were the first place that I went to and they have wonderful customer support But there are wonderful grids around here where you could basically rent a region Right, go go through the expo see who's there You know talk to people But I would encourage you to try You know before you try setting up your own server try just renting something from from someone else Because it's a great way to learn and also to get connected to a larger community So I set up a little island There you can see that was my first boat This is my viking boat and that picture of the on the sail is uh a rabbit from the It's from the animation from the you know, uh, water ship down, right? That's where I get my blog's name be cunning and full of tricks um That's a quote from from water ship down But anyway, I set up a little plot of land and planted a weird tree on jocadia grid and it was fantastic And that was where I started the hyper grid adventurers club And this slide here is a picture of the map. I use that as the logo for the club Um, because the idea was we were going to be exploring the hyper grid. So this is back in 2000 maybe late 2010 And I ran the I was the hyper grid adventurers club is very active for two years basically late 2010 um through 2012 And um This is what we used to do In the hyper grid adventurers club. We would um meet in jocadia grid and sit around campfire and we would talk about Places that we had discovered on the hyper grid and then we would uh Walk up to these gates that I started creating I called them or somebody came up the idea of a blam gate because basically I scripted it So you walked into this gate and it would just instantly teleport you to Oh across the hyper grid to another grid and this is based on code that maria choralov posted on hyper grid business Which was wonderful that she shared that information and um And this was remember though, this was this was back 2010 2011, right? That's that's ages ago in terms of hyper grid that's like back hyper grid 1.0 and 1.5 and it was a big uh Adventure because there were a lot of bumps You know, it was hard to find different grids um, we would basically uh Line up here this slide. I love this slide We would line up in front of a gate and I would program a gate and I would be like today We're going to go to franco grid And everybody line up and a lot of these folks had never taken a hyper grid jump before and again This was you know, this was a couple years ago. So it was still it was it was very bumpy Not so not half as smooth as it is today and we would walk up to these gates And the gates were scripted. So like when you walked through them, they would explode with these sparks And people would be like, whoa john walked through the gate. I hope he's okay, you know see you on the other side It was it was it was awesome um and again a lot of these folks there were a core group of You know probably about 25 30 people who used to come at least all of the meetings and over the years, you know, they were probably Um, probably a couple hundred people who cycled through the club Uh, we would go through these jumps and sometimes things would work fine We experimented with different ways of making hyper gates Because you know, one of the problems with those round donut looking gates was like only one person could go through at a time So I came up with this taxi. I called it the hyper taxi group rates available where you could just click on the taxi and basically everyone could click at the same time and everyone would be jumped to um to another hyper grid and um Of course, this was not without um major bumps along the road. I remember this photo This was basically everybody in the hyper grid adventures club. We all were dressed into the same body I don't remember where this was Oh, it was just hilarious It was a teleporter accident, right? Um But the wonderful thing was um We would appear On some other grid as a crowd Yeah, we would lose hair. We would lose shoes I gave up trying to wear shoes after I lost like my 20th pair of shoes over the years and um Uh, and we would just appear In different locations. And if you're looking at the slides, these are just just examples of you know, we would appear suddenly It'd be like a flash mob And we would just appear here's Here's us all appearing. I think this is metropolis grid. Yeah metropolis grid there and there were people there from metropolis grid They they're and we're again remember this was like a couple years ago Right hyper gridding wasn't very very common and they were freaked out. They're like, where the heck are you all coming from? What how did you get here? Sometimes we would you know jump into a grid via the hyper grid and the owners of the grid Had never seen anyone come across the hyper grid before It was amazing Here's uh, and we would appear in sometimes, you know I'd bring people and and people in the group would recommend locations over time too Sometimes we would appear in some little shinatown. Yep. That's that's in franco grid And sometimes we would appear in strange locations like this one where it was um A simulation of a laboratory and we were all basically, you know, honey I shrunk the avatar world, you know, we were running around on the tables about the size of of mice and We would see things that were amazing abstract arts. I think this was on franco grid too Well, that was new world grid. That was the lab. That's right. The lab was on new world grid We would see abstract environments and then occasionally we would stumble across Grids that were just so detailed this you know, here's an example of a whole cityscape. I mean, look at this This is um amazing and If you see at the top of the slide, there's a link to the hyper grid adventurous club That'll take you to the blog and I always blog about each adventure So you'll see, you know, two years worth of blog entries of going to these different locations I can't remember exactly where this was. This was um I want to say rowena grid, but it may be offline now. I can't remember But I can find that out um And then I always loved this one of franco grid where they were building a real life size and Fully realistically detailed Eiffel tower and you can see all of us Um on the bottom you can see the scale Of all of us hyper gridding in And it was amazing and this is where I have to say um You know, I've been to so many wonderful grids and they're so awesome so many wonderful places, but I have to say in particular Definitely visit franco grid at christmas time because they have a winter carnival that is amazing And you can ski you can get really goofy looking sweaters You can get Gifts there's a scavenger hunt. Um the folks at franco grid do a fantastic job Of putting on this winter festival. It's amazing. So definitely visit franco grid at christmas So what other kinds of interesting things did I see and did we experience in terms of exploring the interconnected world? And again in some cases It was interesting because here were hyper grid connected environments that People weren't really exploring them across the hyper grid. I think our group was really the first group to do some serious hyper gridding In terms of, you know, large numbers of people jumping from one place to another And one thing that just started springing up Was sometimes we would visit a grid and would have hyper grid turned on and people would be able to build and Whoever set up the grid basically was just leaving it open for people to create things And so we started as a group basically being a flash mob of content sharing And I don't know if you can read the the letter that I wrote there That's a flyer that I would I would plant on the ground and it says Greetings from the hyper grid adventures club. We visited your region and found it empty with the ability to build turned on So we've left you some freebies. We hope you enjoy and find useful in your work. Please do with them what you will happy adventuring And so we would find sometimes These grids that were kind of empty maybe and some of them looked like people had set them up and had not ever actually Done any work on them And so we would you know, this was an example where we put out all these trees and content and a little sign And I always thought this was wonderful because this was It felt like leaving a message in a bottle, right? We didn't know is you know, maybe the grid was forgotten about Maybe it was running on a server that no one remembered Maybe the owner was just You know You know gone and and not interested in running it anymore The other the other thing that this reminded me of was That science fiction movie from the 1970s silent running if you remember where they Take a forest and put it inside of a space Dome and basically the the lead character in the movie Let's it loose into the universe hoping someone will find it And take the the forest and help it grow somewhere else And so I always thought that that was um That's what this kind of thing reminded me of you know, there's a sense of Hey, let's give these people some content on their grid and maybe they'll come back to it and it'll help them Um, you know, these freebies will help them Uh grow their own grid and then another phenomenon that um I thought was fascinating that continues to go now go along now is Occasionally you'll see on on the left on this slide. This is a hyper a hyper gate. It's a um um It's uh It's a system and actually you should really definitely check out the website I'll type it into chat here Uh The hyper gates.com It's a device that you can plant on your ground and it automatically will help you get connected to other grids that are On the hyper grid that also have a portal on their ground. It's a wonderful network device And I as and sometimes I use these portals to just to explore other hyper gridded worlds and discover them And I started noticing People were putting flags next to them people who were visiting these environments if they found the ability to build turned on They would plant a flag and say hi I'm from such and such a grid from such in such a country and I was here Please come visit my grid someday on the hyper grid now just think about that phenomenon for a moment. It's I mean, it's so beautiful. It's so It's such a wonderful example of of the Organic emergent behavior that can happen once you start connecting things to each other and allowing people to create these connections on their own right If you look at the these are flags on my land Um on my path landia grid Um And if you zoom in you can't really see on the slides, but you can see you know They show different countries and there's hover text typically that says, you know, come visit my grid. Here's my grid's url Planting flags. I mean, I just think this kind of of emergent behavior is so Is is so it's such a great example of the pioneering spirit That's happening right now and is continuing to happen as we look at the best ways to interconnect all of these different grids via the hyper grid All right, this this kind of emergent behavior is is beautiful Um, I set up my own grid path landia. This is a picture of it And um You can go and learn more about it, but I basically I started with uh Diva's uh standalone Uh software and also open sim on a stick so that I didn't have to set up a database I basically just run it off of my desktop And it's it's connected to the hyper grid. You can't get an account on my grid It's just for me to log in locally, but you can visit it over the hyper grid And that's the whole point of my grid is it's something that other people Anyone in the world can come and visit and all of the things that I find that are freebies on my journeys I put out on my land and pretty much 99.9 of everything there. You can take a copy of it because it's it's a freebie right and and I think this is The idea of something like this I think is really fascinating because It took a little work for me to set it up. It wasn't too bad But the the networking right the hyper you know how to connect it to the the network that took a little bit of doing But imagine If at some point in the future you could have a single piece of software like you know a viewer a combination Maybe viewer answer and hyper grid grid software Where you know, you're able to just basically run your own local grid constantly in the background on your pc And as long as it's turned on you can actually access the grid whenever you want and you can make it open to the world And you can have people from around the world visiting it I think the power of allowing anybody To easily set up their own grid is is very exciting and I know that there's A new world studio has I haven't tried their software out yet But anything that allows people to create their own grids and easily connect them with each other. I think is is A future reality that has a lot of potential. I'm just taking a sip of Coffee here. This is a um Picture of path landia. It's path land is running right now. That's how I'm logged in here It's running on my desktop machine, which never gets turned off And I logged into it and then hyper grid jumped from path landia to the conference where I am right now And this is you know path landia. I spend a lot of time sometimes. I'll just be logged in sitting around a fire And you can see in the background of that image. There's a a kiosk for the hyper grid adventurers club And So coming toward the end here Future reality again the the future is always going to be this evolution And striving of opposing forces pushing against each other, right? So we'll I've already seen a lot of conversations here at the conference You know people talking about digital rights management versus versus brand new business models, you know Conversations around you know protecting we must protect existing revenue streams versus we got to bet the farm You know, you don't you can't win big if you don't bet big And then there's a lot of you know, we need to stick with what we know versus we need to embrace the unknown And this applies to everything not just hyper grid, but I think you know server development the viewer development You know whether we should stick with as a community stick with You know following what linen lab is doing it should be strive out completely into the unknown and do something completely new I think the key to remember is this is always going to be a This is the way it is It's a it's a sometimes finding the middle ground. It's not just black or white as these Bullets are sometimes. It's great. Sometimes it's in the middle And it's an organic process. The future is very organic and Ultimately, you know, healthy futures require freedoms and I think this is one of the critical things About the evolution of past dreams into future realities that ownership is a critical freedom a limited use license is not ownership It really is not And any kind of technology that allows you to save your content locally and then migrate it Even to other platforms in particular actually to other platforms is a very good thing And this is why I've been so excited about the singularity viewer having the feature that allows you to export prim based objects in open sim Or second life as long as you're the creator To industry standard mesh models on your hard drive Which you can then pull into things like a unity 3b 3d based worlds like a jibe world Which is the the platform that we develop at reaction grid a unity 3d based web based environment So I think as we're growing We're seeing the space grow keep an eye out for anything that allows you to take your content and And do whatever you want with it and in particular migrate it to other platforms because The key to the metaverse I think is not just having a singular monoculture of of worlds but to have An interoperability in like in the grand future Higher levels of interoperability And that the means not just moving avatars between different worlds, but also moving content Right, so I think it's a good thing. I get very excited when I see things like this singularity viewer So in conclusion here, um I think a good strategy It really comes back to what I've always seen happening In in virtual worlds, you know sitting around campfires, you know as a community Um, I think it's very good to build campfires and gather around these company These comforting campfires and and conferences like this are like gathering around a campfire if you think about it You know, we're we're gathering around in a common place at a common time Talking about things that we've done sharing ideas. It's comforting And then at the same time we have to Walk out into the unknown night Together right to continue the exploration of the the edges and the the rough parts of these Frontier technologies, and I think that's a strategy if you're trying to take your current dreams and grow them into future reality I think it's a strategy that works very well And and that's it all right Thank you, john for a terrific presentation As a reminder to our audience, you can see what's coming up on the conference schedule at conference dot open simulator dot org In this room, the next session will be language quest and data analytics in secondary school Where it's girl girl my little egg heart Thank you again to our speaker in the audience. We'll be back shortly with the next session