 This session, we are happy to introduce a terrific keynote or our terrific keynote with the core developers of Open Simulator Our speakers today are Krista Lopes, Melanie Milan, Michael Sarkoni, Robert Adams and Yubit Yumaroff. And I'm going to go through a quick introduction for folks, and then we'll kind of get into things. Krista Lopes, Diva Canto, is professor within the Department of Informatics, Donald Brenn School of Information and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine. She developed HyperGrid, which is a federation architecture and protocol for Open Simulator virtual worlds that supports the seamless transfer of avatar user agents and assets between them. Melanie Milan, Melanie Thielker, is the founder of Avination. As an Open Simulator core developer, Melanie has been one of the most active contributors to virtual world software in general and Open Simulator in specific. Michael, Michael Sarkoni, sorry, is a 3D content developer for Uncitra and 4Dialog. Michael has been involved with the Open Simulator project since July of 2007 and is one of the original founders of OSGrid. His primary interest in Open Simulator has been to improve the software by providing technical support and to foster communication between the core development team to debug and provide the most stable platform possible. Robert Adams is in here. I mean, Robert Adams, sorry, is a retired software engineer from Intel Labs and was a member of the virtual world infrastructure team investigating systems architecture for scalable virtual environments and is a core developer also of Open Simulator. Yubit Yumaroff is an Avination Grid collaborator in the area of simulators. He has performed software development for several years and is also another Open Simulator core developer. And that's it for our panel today. So welcome everyone and let's begin the session. So we can start off with Krista. And I know you wanted to kind of start the session. If you have any thoughts on the, from the core development team, you could start off. Thank you, Joyce. Good morning, everybody. This is really great. I'm very happy to be here again. I think this is, Joyce, this is the third or the fourth? It's the fourth conference, right? It's the fourth, yes. Yeah, it's quite amazing. So I am, I am super excited. I've been, I, you know, I have not, in spite of virtual worlds, hyping up and down every year, I have not lost my enthusiasm with respect to applications of these platforms and in particular for virtual conferences. I, in other parts of my life, I have been on a political war, let's put it like that, to convince people to stop going to conferences and hurting the environment and to start using, you know, platforms such as this for meetings. It's, it's, I really, this has become my favorite conference of all the conferences that I attend in my field. So, so I'm very happy to be here again. So let me give you just a little upgrade of a little update about what is going on this year. Since last year. So one thing that happened last year, as some of you may know, in terms of software development is that we decided to accept a very large code contribution from Avi Nation, from Melanie and Ubit that had sort of been leading a sort of a parallel effort in bug fixing. And they donated everything to open simulator. So during several months, the code on the main development branch was a little wonky, as it was expected. And so there was a large effort, mostly that fell on shoulders of Ubit to kind of stabilize the boat again. And, and I think that that happened in fact that's happened sometime during the summer we were already starting to be confident that things were stabilized. So we started looking into doing a new release that we call 0.9. There has been a release candidate. Then, you know, life got in the way and I'm hoping that I have time again to actually do the release now doing the holidays. That's when we have vacation here in university. So I will, I will take care of hopefully take care of that within the, you know, the next month. So let me see what else is going on. So we had a lot of effort going on here on development of a simulator on the part of Ubit and I want to stress Ubit has been a terrific person who was added to the core development. Within the past year, I think, and, and he has really stepped up to, to lead this integration with the code that was a native Mavi nation and many, many other bug fixes. So I'm really grateful that he was able to do that and had time to do that. So that's about it. That's my state of the affairs here. And I'll be happy to answer questions that people have now or after everybody speaks. Great. Thanks, Krista. And we can turn it over to Melanie. I know Krista was bringing up the 0.9 release to come. So I don't know if you want to talk any more about what's to see about that or anything else that you want to bring up Melanie. Well, certainly, obviously now we are heading towards the final stretch, the home stretch of the 0.9 release. It's been long and coming. And I'm actually today started gearing up to do some of the fixing work that only I can do, namely in the area of permissions. So to make 0.9 be the most secure and generally most feature-rich release that we've ever had. Some people have been asking me, why don't you call 1.0? And honestly, some people have been saying you're going to go 0.99, 0.99, 0.99, 0.99, 0.99, 0.99, 0.99. And never have a 1.0. But till the truth, what comes after 0.9, it looks like an 0.1 to me, like 1.0 to me. So yes, this final stretch until Krista can cut the release is definitely going to be a leap forward in virtual worlds, architecture and virtual worlds reliability, as things have been improving massively on the side of the underlying operating system. This framework says well, unfortunately, most recent mono is a problem, but hey, there's all the versions around that work. Oh, I'm hearing here somebody says 0.10 comes after 0.9. No, not in the way I number things. No. Well, I like that suggestion of going 0.9, 0.99, 0.999. Just keep adding 9s. Get to 5.9s. Everybody wants 5.9s, right? So yeah, you could obviously, he's a genius at bug fixing. So he's done a lot of work like he's doing right now when he was working with me on Avination. It's just that he's got a knack for reading other people's code. And then he contacts me and he points at that piece of code and says that is nonsense. That's what he says. And most of the time it turns out it is nonsense. And oftentimes I don't even see where he's going with this fix. I'm definitely glad that we have him here. And he's been a pillow to build 0.9 on. And with us working together, we will have that 1.0 probably next year. Yes. That's exciting news to have that to get to that point. I don't know you, but if you have any insight about the whole tracking down bugs, I mean, obviously Melanie brought it up. And obviously the first set of eyes has probably been great to look at this, but I don't know if you have anything to add to that. If not, that's okay too. You unmute yourself. That's okay. We can kind of come back in a few minutes. Oh, hi. You're good. Very nice to be here again. Yes. Always everyone. So I think even Melanie already stated how we are in open-seam and what you are doing. So, okay. I don't have much to say about that. That's good. It's still good to hear your voice. Thank you for all your contributions. I'm sorry, my English is also not very good. And today I have some trouble rebooting my brain. So, okay. But we're an international community and not everybody can be expected to be perfect in English. We just want to be perfect in fixing the bugs. On another note, there's going to be a little secondary contribution from Avination coming up because I just recently was pointed out to me that we lack a functioning mute list at this point. Avination has always had one. So, this is going to come to open-seam within the next week or so. Cool. That's great. I was saying we should build bridges not walls. Bridges are known as the habitat of trolls and needlets for those. Yeah. Settings to monitor that. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for bringing up the international thing. And obviously, Krista brought up the travel thing. I think those are to the point of the virtual environments, especially Open Simulator, that they're fantastic for being able to have collaborators from around the world, regardless of where you are. And to Krista's point and not have to travel to them. Well, yes, maybe so. But there's one thing about traveling to conferences that is not that easily just set aside. And that's the perks. You see, when you travel to a conference, you get to see different cities. You get to eat in different restaurants. And you get to see the nightlife of another city. And I just see a lot of people who attend a lot of meetings, conferences, and so on and so forth in person who just don't want to let go of the perks. So, how are we going to do virtual perks? Yes, we need to figure that out. And that is up for the content creators and the people, the creative people in the community to figure that out. There's a big challenge here, which is true. And that's what I hear from everybody when I talk with people at the NSF and stuff, try to convince them to stop bringing people to DC and doing over the internet. And there's the human connection that needs somehow to find another way of expressing itself. I think there's plenty of opportunity, plenty of opportunity for good ideas or how to design for not exactly the same human interaction that you have in face-to-face meetings, but something that is different, but it is equally good. How do you replace that kind of face-to-face interaction with something else? How do you replace going to lunch and sitting near somebody that you just met? How do you replace having that chat with the program manager? How do you replace that shared experience of being in a place together? And I think that there's plenty of opportunity for creative people to experiment with that. Definitely. So I also, not to leave out the others, but Michael Serconi too, Michael and Nebedon for those of you who probably know him better in world. Obviously you've been part of the project for a long time too and you've been doing some amazing kind of, speaking of content development, kind of pushing those fields and collaborating with Krista on that as well. But if you want to add anything to this or your thoughts on OpenSimulator as it's moving forward. Yeah, good morning everybody. Like Joyce said, you guys know me as Nebedon from mostly from OS Grid, but other Grids as well. Yeah, I've been doing a lot of experimenting with things and kind of pushing content from OpenSim to Unity and WebGL and some other platforms experimenting just to kind of test the waters. Still primarily working in OpenSimulator about 90% of the time because it's been, we've done a lot of research to see if there are alternatives out there and so far there's really not much. So for me, OpenSimulator is still very much at the top of the pile. And it's been interesting to, you know, do all this work over the past many years. And I really, what I really want to do is I want to thank some of the people who are not up here on stage with us because there are other coders and contributors and testers who've been doing some good work. We've had some people like Alicia Raven and another person who, Mandrika Tasty is their name on IRC and I don't know who they are, but we've been getting some patches from them. And all the, you know, a lot of people, this has been a very slow year for me as a core developer. I've been kind of like Krista distracted with real life and my real life job with Incitra, which is very OpenSimulator based, but it's kind of distracted me a bit from doing what I do here for the past few years. And there's definitely been some people who've stepped up to fill my void, so to speak. I'd like to thank Dan Banner in the crowd. He's taken over basically as the head of OS Grid and really filled my shoes there big time because I've been just kind of absent there for a while unfortunately and he and the rest of the team for OS Grid have really stepped up a lot. Sarah Klein and Jim Jackson, they're really doing a lot of testing and stuff behind the scenes that you guys probably don't even know. They work a lot close with UBIT here, reporting bugs and getting things fixed. So really, I want to thank those guys especially because like I said, I've really just haven't had the time this year. Hopefully, I want to definitely, I'm not losing interest or anything like that. I've just been completely distracted. Deep in content development. Yes, I'm doing testing with Incitra and we have a lot of projects for city development planning things that we do and use OpenSimulator for. So it's really just been overwhelming for me and not a complete distraction from OpenSimulator but it's definitely taken me away from doing the hardcore 10 times a day testing of the code that I had been doing in the past but it's still happening so that's good. That's great. And you mentioned obviously OS Grid and for folks who may not know OS Grid is, well like Avocon it's a nonprofit so it's sort of founded like that but it also happens to be a big sort of testing ground for any of the new code releases, right? Yes, yeah, UBIT is very active there. I think he has been testing most of his code initially there on OS Grid just because it's very easy to access and lots of people there and we update the plazas, Dan updates the plazas at least a couple of times a week usually. Just stay very current with the latest code to make sure that you know hopefully nothing bad creeps in but even when it does the response from UBIT and others has been really good to get things back on track fast. Great. So last but not least on the couch obviously we have Robert Adams, Mr. Blue, right? Aren't you? Yes, I'm Mr. Blue often. Yeah, so I'd love to hear your thoughts too on OpenSimulator since your help developed too. Well, yes. Building on something that Nevidon said, I mean one of the things that OpenSim has that a lot of the other virtual worlds that are coming around is that it's not proprietary and anyone can take it and build on it. And that I think is one of its big features that we should promote more and more around. I mean there's a whole bunch of grids out there and they've made their own changes and that kind of becomes their thing. And I think one of the main powers of the OpenSimulator core is that it is this open and extendable platform for people to build on. And so my eye like Nevidon have been distracted with real life the last few months given my real life employment changes. But now I'm reaching out to all these different communities that are sprouting up around there and trying to see if some things can be pulled together to make the core an even better base for other people to build on. My particular work has been, I did a lot, I mean I did bullet SIM and now Ubit has made UBODE to compete and so I have someone to try to stay ahead of which is a good thing. And also I've been looking at adding more region modules to extend different functionalities in OpenSim. And we'll see how that turns out the next few months. But I really like being on the core group and I like supporting OpenSimulator because it is a base that's used by industry like Nevidon said and also the universities and many other places. And that's a good thing. You had brought up obviously the idea of the extensible framework of the core itself and then the concept of the modules. But I'm not sure, we have a pretty obviously diverse audience. There are some folks that are very technical but then there are also a lot of folks that are new at OpenSimulator. So it might be good to explain that a little bit, the whole idea of the module system and plugging into the framework of the core. Yeah well OpenSimulator has a region module, shared and unshared region module system so that if you want to add N-body simulation within a region you can write a module in C-sharp engine just load it with the region. I mean if you're running your own simulator you can load modules into the region and you can do N-body simulation. There are also systems for external running things inside the simulator. There was a project called Dispatcher that allowed you to call into a region from an external program and make things happen. And I've seen people make automobile simulations, have whole cities running with automobiles running around them in a simulated fashion. And so I mean OpenSimulator is kind of built on this idea that all the things that happen in the world generate events are callable from the code within the simulator. And that's one of the big extensibilities of OpenSim. I mean other systems like Second Life, if you wanted to add new functionality you have to just bug Lyndon Labs for them to eventually add it. For OpenSimulator you just run the simulator on your computer and add modules to it and you can make it do magical things. Well it would be amazing already at that point but there's one thing that wasn't mentioned here is that OpenSimulator itself is made up of modules. And that you can replace these modules with your own to not only add functionality but also change existing functionality. Now there's a project that was done by a French university that they contracted me to do. I mentioned that I was on something but I wasn't at liberty to say what at the time but now it's gone its course. Where I wrote a number of modules to replace existing core modules to give the functionality of having two different avatars that are kept to have the same name, the same clothing, the same accessories, attachments and so on and so forth because they were doing a study on the interaction of people visiting virtual worlds with the persons they meet and they wanted to see whether a visitor who didn't know that these avatars were actually driven by two different people but looked like they're the same avatar whether they would realize that they're meeting a different person when they're meeting the other avatar or whether they would just go by the avatar and think it's the same person it's got to be the same person and ignore the feeling. Quite interesting I think I think but for that I had to replace the chat module, the instant messaging module and I had to replace the display names module and a number of other modules needed small additions and changes but with the open simulator architecture that was possible without a single change to core code. Both of you bringing up those points that's a great thing for others to sort of understand because that does allow when folks want to customize it to their needs and I know obviously I know Krista you've done that too in Citra. I will be talking about a particular interesting module I think it's tomorrow right I have a session sometime about how to add content to open simulator externally. An interesting module actually done by Mick Bauman a former contributor here and then I took it and I extended it a little bit. I'll be talking about it tomorrow. That's great. So yeah that I think is tomorrow morning as well. So that's a really important point for folks to understand that the extensible nature and that you can kind of build into it. In the text chat some folks are wondering about this open simulator I mean we talked about the upcoming versions but beyond that the idea of a development roadmap for open simulator. I don't know if you guys have anything to add to that. Well being a project that is primarily volunteer driven we don't have any developers to actually being paid to do work on core unless they're being paid by certain private interests to do specific things makes it sort of difficult to put out a development roadmap because everybody is free to develop what they need at that time and not what others may need or put on a roadmap. So that may be possible if the project were to attract some funding at some point but seeing as it's currently a volunteer and hobbyist environment. I don't see a roadmap coming up. So yeah so there's something I mean we have some sort of a roadmap but it's quite different from what people expect I think. I think that in core we're all very much aware of what we would like to see happen in core which is to make the architecture even more flexible and modular. So we did a fair amount about a year ago to kind of go all the way to modularize certain things and modularizing is important because it means that then people can replace them very easily without having to change anything in the core code as Melanie said. So we did there was a few final things in core last year that were still not properly modularized and and we did all the way then to kind of cut the ties. There's there's a sense I think that everybody shares that we could have a much better way of coding how we code the scenes and the synogix and that's been talked about. But in core of what we would like to have and what's the right thing to do but that's a big big job. It's I mean it's replacing the almost replacing the engine. But entity component models would make a lot of change. Yes. So this is something that we would definitely like. It's something that's on the road on the roadmap for some time. I don't know when. But this is very different from what people want to hear in terms of features and things like that. But it's really important to us because once we make these things more modular and more flexible the goal here is that we get out of the way. People can then do whatever they want. They can just put their own modules and let me give you just a very concrete example. So you some of you may have heard about the Moses project. Military project that is using open Seymour based on open Seymour and that they were really interested at some point on on more powerful physics engines. And so physics engines is one of those things that people can actually replace them bulk. So you can just not use the physics engines that that come in the core distribution and plug in your own code for some other physics engine if you want. So that's what they did. And that's exactly what we want. That's what we want. We want to get out of people's way. We want to have a minimal core that's very flexible and very modular so that then people can just replace their heart out with other things that they need. And there's basically not a lot of contention about what goes in core and what doesn't go in core because we wanted to basically what goes in core is what should support people's creativity and and requirements. So so that's that's that's what I'm saying is that we sort of have a roadmap, but it's not this kind of thing that people are used to hear like with features and fix this bug effect that it's more foundational in a way. So yes, that's why I don't call it a roadmap. What I call our vision. A vision exactly. So so I mean it's definitely there and and it's it's basically it's to make us get out of people's way and let people then if I understand it's not made people know how to code or are able to code appropriately in a very complex code base like open simulator. But you know you can always hire people to to code features for you. And so that's that's sort of I think the vision here. And as you brought up the module nature then kind of broadens that scope of what folks can do to it and and also Robert you had kind of also brought up the the module mess of course because of the the bullets and other things that you've been working on. And you know so I guess for even if the code is obviously complex as you said Krista like what are the best ways for folks to sort of start start go down that path if they want to start customizing or creating modules. I mean advice for for that on that side of things as a good sort of starting off points. It's a lot of you have kind of done those. So there is a minimum set of documentation about how to code region modules and now I will try to find it and post it here. So for people for folks who are software engineers and can and can code I would recommend just to look it up and start experimenting for people who want to do something but they're not engineers themselves and you know just reach out. There's some people here in core who are actually willing to take on consulting jobs and contracting jobs for for open simulator and and you just just you know just reach out and and and you know it's not going to be free. The free is the infrastructure that we are developing such as the common core the common certain about the public infrastructure but the customizations and the particular features that people want likely is not going to be free unless there's somebody who really wants you know to do it and make it available. So so that that's sort of the model here and I would encourage people who want customizations to just reach out start reaching out to the people in core and if they're not available they probably will be able to redirect you to other people. Right. Any other thoughts on that or no I didn't know if Melanie or anybody else was going to. Well I could say I mean I know there's been a lot of interest from the crowd about raising funds to pay for coding and I think Krista said it well that you know you can certainly hire external people or even some of the internal people to do these region modules and if. There's no guarantees though that you know this code will ever end up in core but if you do it as a region module and things are good there's certainly no reason that we wouldn't promote such a project and potentially even consider. Eventual inclusion into core if it's something that's valuable to the whole community. But so it's just you know you need we need to really. Be cautious when it comes to trying to raise funds for some of these things because you know we've seen some projects in the past one for that was actually directly for second life with the fitted mesh. High so the group of people one of the people I know personally kind of spearheaded it and they raised I think five thousand dollars and they paid an excellent and lab employee to write this code. And then Linden lab rejected it and there's five thousand dollars out the window so we really need to be careful you know in terms of how these things work but when you start talking about using things like region modules. This is where it becomes really powerful because you don't have you don't you don't have to look to this panel of people sitting in front of you to get approval to do these things. So I know a lot of people probably in the crowd are interested in doing this doing kind of crowdfunding of things and I think this is one way that that could work without having to feel like you're being rejected by the core development team in any level. And I should I should also mention that this idea that all region modules the goal eventually is to come to court that I think that's not the right model. So I work for you know I work with the company the same company that Michael is also working for and we have a collection of region modules that they will never go in court. They're they're they're sort of being citrus proprietary thing. So going putting things in court is not it's definitely not the goal. In fact and I would hope that whether you keep them proprietary or not you know they're probably there should be also a lot of modules that are not proprietary that publicly available but they're just simply not in court because they just don't belong there. So and there's a mechanism. The core can't be everything for everyone strives to provide a sensible solution suitable for a social virtual world of every module that is needed to run this and it has two different modules for some things. They're like a legacy in the new ones for instance groups. There was XMLRPC groups needing a PHP script back end and then Crystal went and did a new groups that work within the robust framework. So now we've got two groups modules. We probably wouldn't be interested in adding a third a fourth or fifth that are only different in minor features. But obviously anybody who makes these is encouraged to share them anyway. Installing them is easy. Right. And so let me just be very clear that what we are talking about here is not the fork. What we are talking about here is to take the project as it is the core project and add these region modules. So region modules don't need to change the core code at all. It's just it's it's just additions. It's like it's called plugins. You just plug in additional features or change the features that are that are already there. And that can be done without needing to fork whatsoever. Now people can also fork because this is open source. You can fork if you want. But it's not necessary. And the plugin mechanism is such that it is possible for for people to maintain their own ecosystem of plugins publicly available if they want. And and without having to ask permission for absolutely anything. And it would will just work exactly with the core distribution that that. So if you are interested on and if you know how to code and interesting to kind of do your own version of things or new features, it's totally possible to do that. There's this will call them on mono addings. You put your plugins in this in your own repository and then you just tell people how to install them if people can install them from the command line. So so that that is it's totally possible to have sort of an ecosystem of plugins and I would very much encourage people to do that. And they don't need to go into core at all. So yeah, it's just like I have lots of plugins that are not in core. And so does Melanie. So there's many people. One that you guys probably all very familiar with is Divas Wi-Fi. That's right. Exactly. So a popular example that probably a lot of people here have used and. Right exactly. So Wi-Fi it's not in core and I would never suggest it or want it to be in core. It's it's something that I want to have it on the side. And you you install it from my own sort of the mono addings repository and that's it. And there's a whole other ecosystem on the side for for the Wi-Fi system. So yeah, people can do that. It's not just me. You anybody can do this. And and something maybe we should put on our non road map road map is kind of formalizing that. And we used to have the Forge add open simulator. But now there really isn't a good. This Dean or repository, you know, other looking to bring that back. I still have it. It's just that with all the stuff going on my former hosting provider and then a lot of other things that have been going on in the background that I'm not free to talk about at this moment has just taken up all my time. And to be honest with all the stuff going on in my life. I've plumper good about putting back forge backup. Sorry about that. So, I mean, you might want to explain what forge was. I think Robert, you were you were kind of going through that for others. Well, open simulator was a repo a repo of modules that people have written and have been maintaining for open simulator based on a get bucket, which is the open source GitHub clone. It would work just like GitHub for people putting their things in. And other people are being able to download them and compile them themselves. This is different from mono add ins mono add ins will actually provide you with binaries to run out of the box. But forge was for people compile their own stuff. Right. I don't know if there's any more thoughts in regards to the whole module. I mean, I definitely think to nebs kind of lead into a lot of this that that's a good place. If folks do have funds and do want to see things developed that would be a that's a great kind of way to like to tackle that sort of stuff. That, you know, kind of looping back around to the core, obviously the core, the core code and the core development team itself. So if somebody wants to get involved or or into the core team or hope to get code that could be put into the core code, what's the best approach for that? Or how do you how do you all handle that? Well, so the first thing is that people need to connect to us sort of almost on a sort of on a on a daily basis. So there's the IRC chat channel, which is sort of where we all hang out. It's open-seem-dev on three node. And so so it's not enough just to send patches, although if the patches are good, we'll take them. But sometimes it's very good to kind of before you do a patch, especially if it's a complicated patch, or if it touches on things like permissions or security or stuff like that. It's good to to talk with us before and during. So we're all hang out in the IRC chat channel. And if people want to get involved, that's the place to go. And and then from then on, you know, engage talking to us and sending patches, basically. That's how it goes, right? Anybody want to add more? Yeah, I think another key thing is that, you know, in addition to availability is that you don't. You don't work in private for six months and then come to us with a, you know, 100 megabyte patch file. Right, not unless you are a core developer. I'd say a hardcore developer. There's a good chance that if you did that, we it's not that we would reject your code because we don't like it. We probably reject it because most of us just don't have the time to do such a large code review to make sure that bad things aren't happening. Things aren't, you know, unintentionally breaking or perhaps even intentionally breaking. So it's good that you kind of let us see your work in little bits and pieces over time. And this way we can kind of review things as it goes along. And then there's a much higher probability of those kind of patches and fixes and advancements making it into the core code. Because we've had a few times in the past where we've done that and it's ended poorly. So we try to avoid that now. I should also say that what happened in this year with Avination code donation is that it was not just the code donation. The code donation came with Ubit. That's very important. So if it was not for Ubit, we would probably not have taken the code donation from Avination because none of us had the time to do the massive amount of integration and sort of stability job that came from that large donation. So if people want to contribute and they're working on something big but they don't have then the human resources to actually see it through the integration, then we likely will not take it. But small patches are definitely doable. We will have time for that. And then if you know if you can provide several small patches and things tend to go well and things don't break, then generally we will consider that person as an addition to the core development team. Someone who doesn't need their hand held and isn't doing malicious or unintentionally bad things. That's usually when we start to make an offer for someone to come and be part of the core team. Yeah, there's that general question of how you get on the core. And in one sense, we want everybody to be involved and supplying. But on the other hand, we don't want to just give everybody or any old person the rights to change the sources of core. So really the process is kind of building up the relationship, showing up on the chat channel, adding patches, asking good questions, making good suggestions. And after a while, the existing core members will say, well, that's a cool person. Let's invite them in. And that has happened several times in the last year for different people. And so the core group is not an exclusive club. We just need to know you before you're in. And I think to that point, too, there are the regular core developer office hours. That's a good place for people to start in a kind of interfacing with everybody. Neb, one of those. That's every Tuesday at, I want to say 2 p.m. Eastern, 11 Pacific. And that's every Tuesday at Bright Plaza and OS Grid. We don't always, not all the core development team makes it there, but usually one or two or three of us, sometimes four of us are there. And we're there to answer questions. Talk about problems, kind of just anything open simulator related is fair topic. A lot of good things happen there. We talk about testing and things like that. That's one important thing to say though about core. And that is that if one is not willing to communicate on a regular basis, then they cannot possibly qualify. So basically, people have been suggested for core and didn't make the cut because they were not available and reachable on IRC. We don't expect people to be there 24 seven. We expect people to have the log in going whenever they can read the scroll back and be active for a couple of hours a day at least. That is a requirement. So communication is important obviously, especially with such a collaborative project. Yes, communication is essential. You cannot run this. If you can't talk to someone except maybe via email and they respond 24 hours later, that's no way to work. And I know the idea of documentation came up, but that's a perfect way for folks want to get involved. There's certainly lots of documentation that would be helpful that you can dive in and start documenting things. I know that even if you don't even have a deep code background, that's helpful for you guys, I know. Yes, that would be something that we would really appreciate. Look at Nebedon. He's not a coder. He's core because he fills the vital role that we definitely needed, which is in principle one of testing coordinator. And that is a non-coding role in core that warrants membership. Nebedon could potentially commit to the repository. He just doesn't, but he contributes in so many other ways that he's becoming valuable. We wouldn't really have a proper test bed for OpenSim without him. Yes, I mean documentation would be something that we would really appreciate because most of us, we're all doing this for free on our free time. I think we're not being paid here for developing anything in core. And on our free time, we spend the time doing the things that we like the most, which is to actually code and to develop the features and fix the bugs and stuff like that. And the documentation is lacking. And that's, you know, we just don't like very much to spend our free time doing the documentation. And you kind of have to sort of respect that I think. But if people, you know, I know that there are people out there who could competently kind of read and poke at the code and infer what's going and ask those questions about what's going on and help with the documentation. And that's very, very helpful. We'll really appreciate people doing that. That's great. And we're going to have to wrap things up here. But I think that's a wonderful way to kind of like end it in that way that that, you know, even if you're not a coder, you can still kind of get involved on those levels. You know, one really, really quick thing, you know, just kind of as a nod to all this is that, you know, I had the opportunity to meet Krista this year because she had actually won a new body prize that honored software developers who were working to develop open source applications, especially in the social goods space. So, you know, it was great to sort of see open simulator, get the, you know, Krista, of course, get the recognition and also open simulator, get the recognition into a broader audience like that. So I think, you know, the more we can all, you know, hopefully get the word out about that to your point. You know, that's sort of the Joyce, let me just say that I had forgotten completely. So this year in March, I received this award, the Pizzigatti Award for software in the public interest. And it was given to me because it's a personal, it's sort of they need one contact person, it's not a team, but I received it on behalf of the core team. And in fact, there was some money associated with the award and they have the money reserved for paying bills of the project, basically. So I think it was a great recognition, not for me, but for the project and for the standing of the project. It was really, I was really, really happy because I received the awards before in my life, but this one kind of had a very special meaning. Yeah, it was fantastic. I mean, there were at least, I mean, almost probably a couple thousand people in that room too. That's right. So I mean, and that's testament, I think, as you said, to everybody here on the couches and to all a lot of the folks that Net mentioned and the other countless people who have kind of helped develop Open Simulator through the years. So, you know, much appreciation to all of you. And, you know, and I'd like to, you know, to thank obviously specifically those of you here on the panel, you know, Krista, Melanie, Michael, Robert, you bit for for kind of being part of today's presentation. So thank you. Thank you again for that. And, you know, as a reminder to the audience again, like you can always see what's coming up next on the conference schedule at conference.OpenSimulator.org. And then following this session, they'll be the games used in it'll be the a the presentation called games using engaging virtual environments for real time language education. So we encourage you to also visit the poster sessions for all the presenters that are out in Expo zone. The OSCC Expo zone three. And then we also have a great hypergrid resource section to nod to Krista on that in for for creating hypergrid but down in OSCC Expo zone two there's resources and the base special grid tour tomorrow as well. So thank you again to thank again to all our speakers and to the audience but you know thank you guys so we're going to wrap up and but you know thanks and see you in 10 minutes till then. If you want to keep in card, you know, we encourage folks in the chat to kind of keep the conversation going and hopefully some of the core will also be able to to kind of turn it over to chat so. Thank you, Joyce. You're welcome. Thanks all. Thank you. Thanks everyone.