 Wow, it's amazing. Maybe try turning your volume down just a little gentle, like your speaker volume, so you won't be picking up quite as much. Or I don't know if you can put on headphones, but turning that volume down just a little might help with some of that echo. There, I think that's better. I'm hoping that's better. It is. Sounds better. Okay, we're ready to start. Good morning everybody. I want to welcome all the guests who are here today for virtual abilities, 8th annual mental health symposium. I'm gentle Heron. I'm the president of the nonprofit virtual ability Inc, which hosts this. It's an international free professional conference which is open to the public and it will be archived on our website. And this year we are exploring the theme mental health and the 21st digital destruction or support. And I'm sure everybody who's here today has thought about the pluses and minuses of the fact that we live with so much digital interaction in our daily environment. And our invited presenters will explore this topic from several different angles. I would like everyone to note that the material in the conference will be presented simultaneously in text and voice for maximum accessibility. Thank you very much to our transcribers. And you can read about the conference here at that website. If you haven't done so many. And I think that's enough of the introductory stuff. I think it's time for Linda to come up and give her introduction of the speaker. Good morning everyone. Welcome to virtual abilities. Mental health symposium. I want to thank everyone for being here. I see familiar faces and I see new faces and that's wonderful. My name is Linda. And in real life. I suffer from different comorbid conditions. Steming from carry malformation type one. All of these have drastically changed my once self-sufficient and full and active lifestyle. And I am bedridden currently that all of all that second life. I can't even begin to explain how much second life offers help to me in so many different ways. It mainly helps distract me from my pains. And I begin to feel like I'm participating in life again. And my memory is getting better. My abilities are starting to take ground and I am very grateful for second life. Next I'd like to introduce Dr. Evelyn McElani. She's a PhD senior lecturer at Glasgow Caledonia University in Scotland. Her research interest by the area of emerging and immersive technologies for health and well-being. Her PhD was conducted fully within second life. And she has taught many nurse practitioners within second life as well. And the topic of this presentation is the importance of the positive health assessments as assets from participation in 3D social virtual world communities. To living and coping with long-term conditions and engage with places and people. Two reminders that I'd like to mention is that first of all please do not type or talk when the speaker is presenting so that there's less feedback. We really appreciate that as well as the screen here behind us as she begins to present this. Please do not click on the screen behind me. And with that at this time I'll turn the mic over to Dr. Evelyn McElani. Thank you. I'll just get myself positioned here in case I upset Marcus. And hopefully that's okay. And then just turn myself around. So hi everybody. I'm going to be using speakeasy. Hi, thanks for coming today and for Linda for that great introduction. As Linda said I'm going to be speaking about finding from my PhD which you can find here in this link if you wish. The whole thesis is there so if you're very bored one night you're welcome to read all of it. However what I'm going to do today I'm going to talk about the second study of my PhD and as Linda said which is about health assets. So what I want to do is just to kind of put up this definition of health and social presence being there with others especially when we start to interact and communicate with others. The multiple visual auditory and interactive nature of these places and the communication tools help with immersion. So in this next slide you can see the findings where. So as Linda said all participants were recruited, interviewed in SL and using voice and text as I wish to be as inclusive as possible. And for the purpose of this study along with the differences can be then drawn from all four cases. Three methods of days to a collection were used, semi-structured interviews. So these were fairly unstructured. There was three text diaries and as I said at the start really that was about every time you go into the virtual world. Write down what helps you to live and cope with your long-term conditions. So and people were allowed to take pictures and images of the places it had been. I also did a social network questionnaire so the data was collected quite quantitatively so by kind of numbers. But the multiple methods allowed the integration of the data so what we call triangulation to gain different perspectives of the same phenomena over time. So the social network data was analyzed using qualitative methods, which is quite unusual sometimes, but this allows an integration with the other methods. And it allowed the visualization of the structures of networks as well as a deeper understanding of why specific people in the virtual world will be important or influential to participants ability to cope or live with a long-term condition. And this was opposed to just a statistically analyzing people's networks for binary measures, such as the presence or absence of a tie. So in other words, what I wanted to know is just not that we in general knew each other, but what did we do together that helped with our wellbeing. I also did two focus groups and these were undertaken with 10 people. So you can see the age range there. The case studies were between 45 and 6 participants and Paula was an American white female aged 51 to 60 who was a cancer survivor. And was a 45 to 50 year old single white American female who had quite complex regional pain disorder caused by a kind of post-surgical complication. And she'd had this for a very long time and this caused severe burning pain and swelling and really constrained what she could do. And she had to take a lot of medication for her pain and she really needed assistance with the activities of daily living and without this, she was bed bound and house bound. And she was also deaf. John was a 51 to 6 year old married white English male. He had suffered an ischemic leg and then he was able to work in the virtual world but unfortunately he then had a stroke which meant that he felt difficult. But that's important to remember the process of John that he really had built up a big professional network and then he had the stroke. So this is important later on when you see the kind of way that John talks about his network. So he's physical and he's cognitive disabilities left him with poor mobility, cognitive difficulties and unable to drive and essentially house bound as well. And Mary was a 51 to 6 year old married white American female who had multiple long term conditions which required several regular medications to control her symptoms. She was unable to work in the physical world because of this and this caused quite chronic pain, fatigue, infusion and she'd also been previously diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. All of the people in the focus groups had some sort of either intellectual learning or physical disability also. Some of these from birth, some were at a point in their life which required an adjustment to their life. So the findings really based into people highlights how participants came emotionally attached to particular virtual world places which evoked positive comforting memories. And for all four cases and in the people in the focus groups the positive benefits of this sense of belonging, the place to their wellbeing resulted really from the visual sensory and immersive aspects of the virtual world. If we look at these, how real health benefits from interacting with nature, but here in the virtual world people were seen very similar. So this bio-philia hypothesis was in the virtual world and when Sue Thomas argued that terms as techno bio-philia. So the following images in quotes, the scene if you like of nature is controlled by whoever has written the programme. Where Paula can return to this place as many times as she wants. And you can remember that Anne was very much bed bound and in this quote she talks about going places. I go here and this escape from that prison as she calls it or called it of her bedroom. Where often in a day she could see her mother once or twice a week and a nurse twice a day and that was it. However she was able to live, work and play within the virtual world and this was very very restorative. But as you see here this idea of going to again this area of Baja and some of you may have been here it looks like the kind of area in California. Again she will hear the sea, she will see the day change if the environment changes. She will meet other people here or she might find that she is alone which to her is absolutely fine as well. And maybe you can see again from this image this would be running water, trees and so on running walking in this forest. So again this restorative part of nature even when there was no people about was really interesting to me because this has not been seen that often in virtual environments so much. So one of the other things with the quotes from the focus groups as well. So you can see why the virtual world helped them to live and cope with our condition. And often people would talk about reconnecting with their pre illness bodies if it was a new condition that constrained their abilities over and this would help them to overcome their physical world bodies and constraints and improve their mental wellbeing. The people from the case studies reported also a symbolic which I'm sure these people actually did too. There's kind of symbolic feeling of belonging to a wider virtual world community. So this idea that even if you didn't know other people in the virtual world you understood the virtual world with them and you felt that you belong to this wider community. And this evoked feelings, comfort and protection and it was in particularly empowering for John and Mary who really felt they had no control over their physical world life. You can see here again John and Mary from the case studies talking about this how it helps them to relax and enjoy their life. Very similar to what Linda said at the start of this hero and Mary's talking about the friendship, the beautiful surroundings, things that mean a lot to her and her ability to control some of these things within the virtual world which she might not have so much control over in the physical world. However the social network interviews allowed participants to specifically state and rate the importance of particular people from their personal networks to their ability to cope. And combined with the other data societies evidenced a sense of belonging to people and to individuals and the collective benefit of communities as opposed to the sense of belonging to the virtual world as a place. And what I also mean by this and you can see in these social grounds, I asked people to rate, to name all the people of their friends list who were important to their ability to live and cope. Then I asked them to rate them and I showed them what we call a concentric circle so in the middle is you and then I asked them to rate them as one, two, three, four and these were rings in the circle where the furthest away person was the least important and the first one in the next ring beyond them was the most important. This allowed me to then create these social grams seen in the slide here to show how each personal network is represented with those deemed most important to the person's ability to cope closer to the center. So Paula named 20 avatars, 13 females and seven males and analysis of that data collection in the social network questionnaire combined with the discussions of networks and communities or individuals in the interviews and the diaries. These records revealed particular characteristics of the didactic so the between individuals and the relationships or communities which were important to Paula. If you look actually at Paula's, hers is a really dense network with lots of connections and interconnections and each of the people that you see in the network will have their own networks, so a network of networks. So therefore social resources, information, emotional support can be spread across the network creating almost a contagion of spread. So if everybody in the network is of the like mind and is very enthusiastic or very activist, which Paula spoke about, then often that spread across the community. For Paula, she split split these into two groups. So a supportive network and people who are important specifically as other survivors of chronic conditions, or who gave emotional and psychological support, and also hope for the future in respect to coping with her own health. She also kind of when you when I analyzed her network had almost an activist network and these were people who she saw as activists who were influential and motivating and who she respected and held in high regard. And these people inspired her to find the activist within herself and this empowered her to feel she had something meaningful to give back to the community. John also wanted to connect with his professional groups within the virtual world. However, he also wanted to fund and socialize in the virtual world. That's his network has two distinct groups, professional, which you can see as the dense network and then more distinct groups, which were just social. So these are more the triads that you see the almost triangles at the end and one just didactic where he's just liaising exactly with one individual. So Mary, for answering those positive health outcomes of supportive friendships and networks in the virtual world, enabled her to restore some of the what she described as the fundamental requirements of life. And for her, that was having friends working, being educated, having fun, which led to this overall improvement to the quality of her life. So in this slide here you can see how John and the member I said earlier that he very much had a professional network and often when we talk about networks we talk about weak ties and strong ties. Weak ties tend to be your associates and strong ties tend to be family or friends. However, John almost flipped that on his head because he talked about his professional network. You can see in this first slide as being like family, giving him what we would maybe sometimes see as being the idea of family. So they become your surrogate family. That's quite a strong statement to say about a professional type network. For Anne, sorry, you can see very much that she talks about a very strong group of friends and then others that are more associates. And that's probably typically what people would say when they talk about networks. Okay, let's get a little read at that. One of the other themes or sub themes of belonging to people was this idea of building resilience and regaining control. When discussing the consequences of long term conditions or disability, participants consistently mentioned the feeling of a loss of control. And this is often seen in other physical world research. So this loss of control in their physical world life and they discussed how the virtual world offered multiple ways to regain control. They considered how they chose to represent themselves via their avatar and one of the ways to regain control. John, Anne and Mary, who all had physical disabilities, talked about using their avatar to mask their disabilities. So often they wouldn't tell people that they had a disability until they knew them very well. And they of course couldn't do this in the physical world. They represented themselves as non-disabled or disabled bodies as sometimes used in some countries and younger and attractive. John described this as allowing him to partially return to his former physical self. And often they believed the ability to conceal their disability was almost like a self-protection. And they wished to protect them from the adverse consequences. Because as we know, non-disabled people often have difficulty approaching or discussing or talking to disabled people because they focus on the disability instead of their ability. So the consequences are people's negative assumptions were often obvious within the physical world. And Anne stated that, as in the physical world, she assumed that self-disclosure of her disability would make people feel sorry for her. And she really didn't want that. She didn't want any pity. She therefore told very few people in the virtual world about her disabilities, although she did not hide her deafness because she had to tell them if they were using voice etc. She also enjoyed seeing her avatar dance, fly and walk activities, which she was unable to do in the physical world. And I know gentle has discussed this before and many of other people that have met in the virtual world. And Mary's multiple health conditions had left her feeling that her physical world body was prematurely aged and damaged. She believed her physical appearance that she looked ill. And this has a profound negative effect on her body image and self-esteem. So she wanted to use her avatar to portray a virtual image of what she classed as a pre-illness body, which she believed was attractive and healthy. The ability to view her avatar as healthy then allowed her to feel more attractive and increased her self-esteem. And she believed it had contributed to her reduction in her body weight in the physical world. And you can see here, although I didn't collect physiological tests or whatever, you can see in this that Mary very much talks about her reduction in blood pressure because she is much haper, she is less stressed, she's distracted from her pain, she's using her medication less etc. So she looks forward every day to being in the virtual world. And this obviously is showing an increase in her mental health well-being. So although Paula had no physical disability and her avatar appeared similar to her physical world appearance, she described the emotional effects of her cancer, had on her feelings about her appearance and how she thought that the avatar may help people to take control and re-examine their identity. And this I think one of our speakers may be speaking about or I'm sure you've read some stuff from Tom, a disability to then feel embodied in their avatar and increased their self-awareness and allowed persistence to make sense of, construct meaning and to kind of cognitively appraise the interactions in the virtual world, to positively reconnect with their sense of self in both worlds. And we know that the sense of self or sense of identity is extremely important to our well-being. So this bi-directional appraisal and almost modelling of behaviour, emotional and social interactions, these were seen by participants as a way in which to transform and renegotiate if you like, their post-illness identities and then reconnect with their bodies. And this is something that they had struggled with for many years. Mary, John and Anne described the virtual world as a place that offered them a choice, control and escapism and freedom from their physical world responsibilities and constraints caused by their multiple long-term conditions. We know through research that this is something that people with a disability or a long-term condition, especially if it's been a sudden issue, that that is something that they very much struggle with. And it's an area that I would like to certainly study more. So maintaining a purposeful life, one of the most consistent mentioned concepts to emerge, and this related to a sense of loss, this sense of loss of how they could meaningfully contribute to society. This included their ability to work, their status, their sense of self-identity and control over their hopes and goals for their life. However, they believed that the virtual world allowed them to develop strategies to adapt to these losses and reclaim, if you like, some of their pre-illness goals and set new goals, resulting in a sense of purpose and meaning to their virtual world and physical world life. This leads me on to the core concept from my study. I'll just let that rest for a little second. So the virtual world features that participants considered important to living and coping with a long-term condition in the physical world, but very much multifactorial. And they were living in the virtual world, enabled access to a range of positive health assets. If you remember at the start, we defined that as really anything that helps you to buffer from life stresses. And these influenced the participants' health and wellbeing. And the following diagram illustrates a conceptual model of how access to positive health assets. If you see, if you're looking directly at this, at the left-hand side, it says pre-virtual world assets. So they didn't feel that some of the assets were available from their local environment. So being able to access these positive health assets really reflects Antonovsky's, who is a sociologist, a theory of solute genesis. So really in a lace terms, it's what keeps us healthy beyond the biomedical aspects of life or of health. There's two main concepts in solute genesis and these are a sense of coherence. In simple terms, this is about a picture of optimism and control. And these general resistance resources, and the main by that is the resources available to make movement from this weak sense of coherence or ability to cope possible. And this is reflected in my diagram for the positive health assets offered by people and places in the virtual world led to a positive health outcomes. And these outcomes contributed to building a strong sense of coherence, moving people from a feeling of illness to wellness, and from a weak sense of coherence to a strong sense of coherence, so therefore increasing their ability to cope, increasing then their, the way that they discussed their quality of life, saying that it very much improved. And that really ends the whirlwind discussion of the findings from that study. I think I might have time for questions. That's me. Thank you, gentle. Thank you. Thanks, Cal. Thank you, Nomara. I have a question. Yes, absolutely. Gentleman, you go. What should we tell non-believers? I think we just have to keep spreading the word. Caroline, are you okay to transcribe for me now? I think, I mean, last week I presented, or sorry, a few weeks ago, I presented this in New Zealand at a huge health conference for the International Union of Health Promotion and Education. I have done a webinar for Digital Health Scotland and I tried to promote, I actually played your video there, gentle, about what Second Life meant to you, because it's very much captured from this study. I should have just spoke to you, really. So I think it is really just about keep going with this and keep going with it. Actually, in the UK, the Stroke Association have built their own virtual world and used it with some people with stroke and have some fantastic results, which are exactly the same really as what we know happens in Second Life. And in a way, although they've created their own Second Life, sorry, their own virtual world, it doesn't matter because, again, it shows others the possibilities. So keep spreading the word. Does that answer your question? And let's do more research, gentle. And Nick Bowman is one of our other presenters. He's saying he loves the focus on sense of place. It's been a recent area of his own research. He's curious to know if you, Kelly, had a sense of, A, emotions that folks were feeling and, B, what objects or things in this space folks attached their emotions to. Hi, hi, Bowman. Nick, absolutely. I mean, I think the quotes that I've selected here are only a small amount of the quotes. As you know, in qualitative data, there is a huge amount of quotes and data that people say. But the participants were very, very expressive about how the meaning of the virtual world and about the places that it went. The very interesting part of doing research in virtual worlds, not on virtual worlds, but in virtual worlds, is the ability for people who are taking part to give you basically a slurl to that area. So they give you an image, they describe it, and then you give you a slurl to the area, allowing you to teleport their experience area for yourself and feel, if you like, some of the emotions that they attach to that place. And for me, that allowed me to have a much deeper understanding of an ability to analyse that from a qualitative perspective. And that is quite unique to virtual worlds. One of the things I would say, and I'm sorry if I found empty here, but if you are going to do research in virtual worlds or about virtual worlds, you need to have used them for at least a year. You need to know the language. You need to know the culture. You need to be able to navigate the world yourself and you need to understand the emoticons that people will use. Or you're just going to get caught out within five minutes that people know you don't actually know what you're doing or you don't really understand this place. So I'm a wee bit evangelical about that, but I think it's really important. I hope that's answered your question. Hi, Buffy. Gentle, do you want me to take Buffy's question first? Sure. Buffy says, will you be doing any follow-up with your participants in the future to see if I came off my screen? Hang on a second. I'll continue to have a positive effect on their lives. Thanks. Buffy, I would love to do more research and be able to contact people again. It's really just a timing issue for me at the moment. I'm so busy at work, but there's a lot of areas that I would love to know. What I would say is the participants have all been really in second life for about seven years, so I think they might have worked out by then whether it would still be positive or not. So whether it would be useful to go back to those specific people, I'm not sure. Okay, I'm just going to scroll up a little bit. Okay, Cal asked, do you plan to or have you expanded your research outside of second life? And he's asking like VR chat or other virtual settings. No, Cal, but I can see very much that others are starting to write about that area. What's slightly annoying me is that the writing about it and forgetting about the historical research in second life, which is really, you know, could help them. So I do think that we will find very similar positive assets because again, this is all about the people. And the environment and the ability to feel immersed in sense of presence. And I see that Tredi is here, sorry, I've just seen that. So she is another one that you could tell you all about, you know, this. And we have to remember when we're looking at these other areas of VR chat, et cetera, that we don't forget about the fantastic research that's being done in second life and how that can augment or show people that are doing it in that area. That makes sense. And I'm kind of losing the questions. Some of them need to help me get the questions again. Another question. This is from Dr. Kolder Keras, who's another one of our presenters. And she says hello and thank you for that great presentation. She's wondering about how we as scientists can make sure we look at and report possible negative aspects of virtual worlds. Hi, thank you. I think you have to just do the research, obviously the question may have influenced what the answers I got. However, initially I said just tell me, you know, what helps you or what doesn't, what influences or influences is the word I used, your ability to live or cope, so that could have been negative also. The people did tell me some negative stuff, but it was very, they seemed to minimise it and said that they could cope with it and it wasn't really any more than they experienced elsewhere. And one person did have a wee bit of an issue, so she created a new avatar, which did create a bit of a sense of loss. But I'm not in any way saying that this is a utopia, but for people especially who are socially isolated or who have disabilities, there needs to be choice and I think that this gives people another choice. And Kelly, as often happens in these sessions, we have some people volunteering, so Zuna is saying she can participate if you have further research. She has multiple sclerosis for 30 years, she has other friends with MS and she's been in second life for 11 years. Are you recruiting? I'm not recruiting at the moment, but people are absolutely, I'm happy for them to friend me and to send me a little message, kind of saying exactly as you said here, Zuna, and thank you for coming forward, so that if I get an opportunity to do more research then I certainly would be great to be able to contact people. One of the things that I would say is the generosity of time, especially when sometimes it was a very difficult to stay online, either talking or typing for over an hour sometimes in our discussions was just phenomenal. I find that quite phenomenal. And it was really quite humbling, actually. But I do think that people were really glad that somebody would hopefully listen to what was going on, because I think that you're not in this world that care as gentle sees at the start be difficult to turn folks heads. But I do think that the increase in the critical mass through Tom, Donna, myself and others research is starting to slightly change the tide. And even if VRChat or VR is the thing of the day, it is still talking about very similar psychological processes. So I think the more that we do this research and the more that people do it elsewhere, the more that this will come through. And we may, you know, change that kind of process. So I would love to do more research. And we have a question from Hope. She runs a group called Hope for Seytobs, S-A-T-O-B-S, sick and tired of being sick. And her question is, she's very interested in this report to have in her charity. Can you please put the URL that's on the screen there? Can you copy that please, Kelly? Yeah, sure. Just give me a little second. It was right at the start. Now, the thing is, this is linking to my whole thesis. So, and it goes into obviously much more depth and is written very long. So she can certainly take extracts from it or if she wants to friend me, I can send her the slides or I can come and present if that's easier. But I'll put that in, but I just need to go to my research gate. So if you just give me a second, I'll do so. Unless someone can scroll back quickly to the start to find the link in two seconds. You'll be able to get it. There we go. No, not below. I'm going to keep the next speaker. All right. I'm so glad I got over a bit of a cold and my voice doesn't sound quite like this, but yesterday it was much more husky, so I'm glad it's a bit better today. Or you might have been wondering, what in the devil is this person? Is this talking to us? Okay, I found it. This one will be fine. There's two actual links, but there you go. Excuse me. So if someone could save me this transcript, that would be amazing if you didn't mind. L.A., this is gentle. You're fine on time. We've got a few more questions here. Perfect. I want to point out to the folks in the audience that you are a nurse. You are also an educator, as well as an academic researcher. So this is a great comment and question from Dr. Karas. She says, she likes the idea of balancing positive and negatives to counter some of the more medical views. Do you want to talk about... I mean, you're a medical person. Do you want to talk about the medical views of disability? Yeah. I mean, I think we probably have quite a lot to learn, in all honesty. I think we still have... I think there's fantastic people, but we still very much focus on a biomedical idea. So Lutie Genesis' idea certainly is becoming a more popular idea again. And so this focus on what keeps us healthy, not what makes us ill, if you like. So I think from our point of view, we can keep a balance between the positives and the negatives. We can certainly point out when there is issues around addiction to social media or whatever else. But I think we do have to make sure that from a point of view of looking at people with disabilities, that we do have to focus on ability. What is the person's ability, not their disability? Just like in our communities, we need to look at what's the assets and what is the things that make this community strong and good and give us a sense of place and belonging and not what are the deficits in the community, which we often do as we often go in and say, let's look at all the things that are wrong here. And we, from our ivory towers, will tell you or in our position of power will tell you what you need to do. When actually it's a community that should be telling us what we need to do. That's why I very much was trying not to influence people when I was asking them about, because they would often say to me, what did I put in my diary? And I'd say, well, you just put whatever you want. So it was shopping. It was going out with friends. It was teaching people. It was, you know, just chilling at the beach, having a laugh, dancing, having fun. These were all the things that people felt were missing from their life. Not when do I take my tablets, et cetera. Not quite sure. I think I've slightly deviated from the question that you asked. However, I think it's still important to say. Do you have another question? There are other presenters are saying a few things. Nick Bowman is saying we are often so quick to pathologize otherwise normal behaviors. Absolutely. Michelle is saying this, what you've just said applies to views of disability, but also to views of virtual worlds. Absolutely. And Michelle will be available. Sorry. Transcript will be available. Oh, lovely. Thank you, gentle. Yeah. And I think that's important, Nick, because, you know, sometimes we also pull off pathologize. Sorry. Other behaviors that maybe, you know, but just people are slightly different from the rest of us. But if it's not doing us any harm, then who cares? You know, if you want to run around and dance in the middle of the street, then who cares? But yeah, I think it is about a drip, drip, drip, sometimes of turning people's minds to the virtual world. And of course, the media doesn't help because it's not sexy enough to tell about all the fantastic things. For many outlets, they prefer to focus on negatives. And as I say, it's not a utopia. It's a world where there's people and people are complex and people are different and some are not very nice. But at least you can teleport away from them here. I know Shaila, who is not exactly a people, but is a gecko, says... Yeah, I know Shaila. Hi, Shaila. She wishes that all of us could mail this study to every professional who is so worried about us becoming part of the quote-unquote screen generation. I wish you could do that also, Shaila. I'm trying my best to present it as many places as I can outwith the virtual world because I think many of you hopefully find that this is transferrable to your life and that many of the quotes I'm sure you've talked to each other about and that you can relate to. It's sometimes just making sure that people outwith the virtual world. They don't see all of this from their own frame of reference instead of thinking about, well, what if I was socially isolated or what if my body didn't do what I wanted it to do anymore, et cetera. So sometimes it's just about getting that out there and that happened very much in New Zealand. A number of people said, I didn't think of it like this and I just think this is fantastic and fascinating in an area that is rich for research and an area that gives another place for people to find that it helps their health and wellbeing. Because the reality is that healthcare practitioners only spend a short amount of time with people. People have got to live and cope the rest of their time on their own outwith any benefits from us and that is where these places to me as I say, give another choice. And I think we have time for at least one more question maybe before we let Toni set up. I want to introduce Treaty Felicima. She is a researcher who has been researching this community for the second life. And she always reminds folks that we're humans at the keyboard. We bring all our human traits here too, the good, the bad and the ugly. Would you like to comment on that? I would say that that's absolutely true, and you and everybody probably in this audience will know that better than more. However, as I say, there is some ability to cope with that. I think we have to accept that any place we'll have or any space which I tend to talk about is the rest of the social web. I don't really talk about that as a place. We'll have the good, the bad and the ugly. But if we can, as we do in the physical world, pull ourselves away from the negativity and find ourselves back in the positive networks, then that contagious positivity can go through the network and can pull us up. So just as negativity can go through the network, positivity can too. So it's sometimes pulling away from that. I think one of the really important things about virtual ability and all of the fantastic mentors like iSky, et cetera, is that ability to connect people with these groups and with these people who are so generous and so altruistic. That almost is a safety net, I think, for people when they come into the virtual world. It's great if you're able to introduce someone to that. I think maybe the first landing place in second life should maybe have a list of here are the good guys. Click here and you'll go to the good guys. Here are the folk that will keep you safe. Exactly, Liz Arna. So the look at it is our own frame of reference. Please note what Val, the librarian, is doing. She's making a library of virtual communities that are authentic. Val, another fantastic advocate. An activist here. I'm quite privileged here to be able to speak to you today. And it's so fantastic to see that there is many of you still here doing this brilliant work. And that to me keeps me hopeful. And I've heard the same old story that second life won't be here next week. The people were here. Dr. Keras is saying that there are some questions in the YouTube stream. I'm not watching the YouTube stream. If someone is watching the stream, could you put those questions in the chat here? Am I okay for time? Thanks, Nick. And Dr. Srimskleed. Thanks, Buffy. Anybody is welcome to follow me on Twitter or to contact me. I'm sure Gentle has my email or you can just friend me here and drop me a email. I'm happy. I'm not on as much as I would like but I get items to my email so I can always jump in. Exactly Val. And I want to thank Kelly. This was really a fantastic way to open up our conference. You always are so positive as a speaker. Thank you for sharing your work. Not only here in Second Life, but you share your work lots of places in the physical world as well because you're such a really good ambassador. Thank you, Gentle. Definitely means a lot coming from you, our friends, but such an inspiration. Sorry, that's my phone. Shut it up. So thank you. Thank you again, Gentle, for inviting me. I'm really delighted to be here.