Conference Call Ten

 This year is the tenth annual OSCC, and you're invited. Great! But what is that?  Who's behind it? What's happening? How much do I have to pay to go to this thing? Where is it held, and when?

Conference Hall, OSCC

Let's start with when and where. The OpenSim Community Conference is held on a dedicated grid with the snappy address cc.opensimulator.org:8002. The grid is online all year round but it is most frequented in November and December, as things gear up for the two day Conference event, this year held on the weekend of December 10 and 11, 2022. There is no charge for admission, you can jump over there with your regular avatar, or if you want, register as an attendee.

Map of the conference grid

The whole thing is organized by Avacon.org, a non profit that has more than a decade of experience in planning and facilitating real life meet-ups between virtual world fans all across America. They have been organizing this inworld event, the Opensimulator Community Conference or OSCC, since 2013. People who volunteer their time and talent to making virtual worlds more interesting are sometimes referred to as 'hobbyists' but this group is far from amateurish, and spends a lot of time on refining the program, the technical aspects, and the support and outreach to both presenters and the audience. 

Expo Zone 2

What kind of presenters are we talking about? The main focus of the OSCC is science and education - it always has been. There are talks by folk who use virtual worlds in the academic field, geeks who spend their time making the viewer work better (or not), and thinkers who philosophize on where virtual worlds are going. 

Expo Zone 4

But there's more than that, there are presentations by artists and performers, bits by people interested in making clothes for inworld use, or bringing a better sound experience to opensim, or how to make virtual worlds even more immersive. Something for everyone. 

Plus parties! Check the OSCC Schedule here

Shopping sim

For example Maria Korolov does an annual presentation about how opensim has been doing over the past year, according to her many statistics.  Ferd will be talking about Dreamgrid and its latest innovations, Nara Malone and friends will be explaining their storytelling project, and Graham Mills will bring a Very Large Boat. On top of that, the grid has a bunch of Expo islands, where you can see displays from many different grids and projects happening all around Opensim.

Expo Zone 6 with dragons and rabbits

All this, and a special two hour Safari trip on the Sunday.

Hypergridding trip departs from Expo Zone 2

The OSCC has obviously its own website is all over social media, on Twitter  on Discord and on Facebook so you can catch all the latest news in those places.

Visit the OSCC grid  here    cc.opensimulator.org:8002