Sometimes, seeing is believing. AviWorlds owner Josh Boam discovered Second Life thanks to a friend who told him that 'there was a place you could live a virtual life and do anything create anything and meet people from around the world'.
Josh Boam: I did not believe him it was all so much to take in so that night I went home and joined.
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| Josh Boam |
But, as we all know, SL is pricey!
Josh Boam: At one point our Friday Harbor RP had over 15 regions and the cost to run was just way too high, so in 2014 I was turn onto the open simulator platform by some friends. It was at this point I could see the profit that could be made by running your own grid, and thus SkyLifeGrid was born. I ran Skylife for many years and learned over the years more and more about the backend of opensim. Having no previous knowledge of opensim or databases or anything I studied the code for opensim line by line during my working days and was able to develop a system that worked for me.
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| From left to right, Diamond, Mikey, Doc and Josh |
SkyLifeGrid offered Josh a huge learning curve not only in Opensimulator code, but also a chance to experience its complex and, at times, tumultuous ecosystem. About five years ago, he acquired AviWorlds, which up till then had been plagued with outages, unreliable service, and drama. Here he is with Core team members, Doc Wah, Diamond Dallas, and her husband Mikey Dallas.
Josh Boam: Ever since taking ownership, we have not had any downtime and have grown each year by about 1000 users. Although this number is small compared to Second Life, there have been a great number of good people join.
Thirza Ember: did you all meet here in opensim? or are you friends since sl times?
Mikey Dallas: me and Diamond go way back into SL days and we ventured out looking for something different and we found Avi world
Josh Boam: I met Diamond and Doc here in AviWorlds. Doc Wah has helped us for years in our backend!
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| Dancing at the grid's main club venue, close to the welcome area |
AviWorlds grid has over 5000 registered avatars. In terms of land mass, there are about 300 regions of various VAR sizes - the equivalent of 838 regions if they were all the standard 256x256 size.
Josh Boam: Our grid is home to a diverse group of people from around the world. Our largest community consists of English speakers, followed by Spanish and Portuguese speakers. We are an open-water community with boaters and pilots who enjoy our vast mainlands and oceans. While you won't find large crowds at any given time, people come and go throughout the day and night. We also welcome Hypergridders to our various and extensive shopping malls, where we consistently have a decent amount of traffic at any time of the day or night.
Thirza Ember: so between the 4 of you, you manage the whole grid?
Josh Boam: Yes, and we have some mentors also. The Servers themselves for the most part run themselves as for running.. But managing the regions inworld can be a time consuming thing for sure
Diamond Dallas: We all have our parts we do but we help each other
Mikey Dallas: Well it's my obligation because I'm married to Diamond hehe
Thirza Ember: is it a heavy workload, would you say?: I guess it is time intensive, to be on hand when people have issues - people are usually the most buggy component of any grid !
Diamond Dallas: At times it can be, but I find it fun
Josh Boam: LOL isn't that the truth !
Diamond Dallas: Yes and i would not go from here, I really have aviworlds my home when in the game
And when you're not managing the grid, what do you like doing best here?
Josh Boam: For me I enjoy building things
Doc Wah: building, landscaping and riding horses
Mikey Dallas: I play with Blender so I like to make stuff for Avi world but mostly for my Darling.... content creator with mesh
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| Landing point on Dallas regions |
Diamond Dallas: I love building... I own Dallas which is 9 sims. Every 3 months I redo it! That's my passion, making people happy and making their experience joyful in shopping or doing whatever they can.
Josh Boam: The hardest part of the job is maintaining the servers. However, most of this is automated and requires minimal work beyond setup and ensuring backups are functioning correctly. The grid essentially runs itself. The rewards are substantial: you can have as much virtual land as you desire. I enjoy creating real-life construction projects on my regions, and I can own massive plots of land without paying the high fees associated with them. This is by far the best reward of owning a grid.
Aviworlds has a big theme park with many rides, here we are going for a spin... like OpenSim, with its ups and downs, it's a lot of fun but you need to bring your courage, patience, and the strength to hold on tight hen things spin a bit out of control! Josh has a very practical view of what it means to be a grid owner.
Josh Boam: I find that there are very few genuine friendships within grids; it's a very cutthroat business. People often have solutions to problems but keep them to themselves to maintain an advantage over others. Many times, we've helped others with issues on their grids only to be badmouthed or not receive the same help in return. I have a few close grid owners that I collaborate with, but overall, there is little unity in the OpenSim community. It's a shame because if we all worked together, we could make OpenSim a more enjoyable place with more features for the end users.Thirza Ember: so now comes the terrible bit when you have to say.... what is Josh's biggest virtue, and his worst fault !!!
Josh Boam: Be honest :) Don't hold anything back... I got my finger on your region delete button :P Just kidding
Mikey Dallas: well, his biggest virtue is he likes to think he's really tall but he's really short.
Diamond Dallas: Finding him, smetimes! He loves the beach. RL
Thirza Ember: aaah yes, he is a busy guy, but i guess that shows how much he trusts his team, because he is not micro-managing
Mikey Dallas: Easy to talk to and wealth of knowledge............if you can find him. lol. Can't say nothing about the Boss man if you want to keep your job now lol
Diamond Dallas: Well I would not trade him in, he is a little guy with a big heart
Josh Boam: I trust these guys very much! They have been a great help and I don't feel the need to be around when they are here .. I know the grids in good hands.
The grid is open 24/7 of course, and with residents located all over the real world, there are always dance parties happening throughout the week. There are loads of interesting places to discover, that will find their way onto this blog in coming months. If you'd like a specific meet up though, Diamond has a suggestion.
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| At the giant Freebie store close to the Welcome Area |
So there you have it.... consider yourself Avi... Welcomed!
HG Addresses:
AviWorlds welcome region hop://login.aviworlds.com:8002/AviWorlds%20Welcome/128/128/26
Aviworlds main Dance club hop://login.aviworlds.com:8002/Aviworlds%20Club/96/199/26
Main Freebie store hop://login.aviworlds.com:8002/Freebie%20Store%202024/61/131/36
Dallas arrival area hop://login.aviworlds.com:8002/Dallas/437/280/17
Theme park rides hop://login.aviworlds.com:8002/Fun%20Park/392/307/36
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