Expo-Sure!

 HIE stands for Hypergrid International Expo and the main event, a conference in different languages, with talks about scripting, everyday opensim life stories, tales of the history of our platform, and art shows - 4 amazing performances! - is not until the first week of April. But the 'Expo' part of the event comes together long before that.

Mal Burns had the idea for the little booths back in 2017 for the first Hypergrid International Expo, as a fun and  crowd-friendly way for people to participate. Around the auditorium, the market-stall style creations brighten and enliven the place, but it's a trade-off between community and sim efficiency.... So... Many...Textures.
Yesterday we did a little load test to see if all this hard work has turned into a lagfest or not. It was a good day to choose, because the whole of opensim is in a state of trembles, with the ongoing OSGrid asset -cleaning event.

Mal Burns: this venue looks familiar!

 LadyKa 007: hello, everyone is good ?

snowbody Cortes: hello LadyKa, hey Minord:)

SoA BAD: hello all

Forest Azure: /me regrets it her horse did not travel with her

Taarna Welles: Put the horse in your Suitcase Forest. Just in case :D

Thirza.Ember: Welcome back to HG Safari Grid, this is our 3x3 sim called HIE. It is set up for the annual Hypergrid International Expo, which in 2025 will be held on the weekend from Friday 4 April (when there's an opening concert) and then the conference and art performances on Saturday and Sunday. The purpose of this conference is to give a chance to people whose first language isn't English to give a talk about their interests, their philosophy, or technical inventions or developments. As you all know the Opensim Community Conference gives English speakers this opportunity every year since 2011. So this is a sort of sister event.

Thirza Ember: The Expo is not limited to non English speakers though. The idea is to bring together 'all' opensim - well not all, that's impossible = on a single sim.  there are almost 130 booths this year, up from 103 last year. The Expo is divided into 4 colors, and if you cam up and look down you may notice the trees have 4 colors, red blue green and yellow.  This directory gives the names of the participants in alphabetical order. so, not in the order in which they are organized on the ground...You will have to hunt in the zone to find your booth.

The Yellow zone. it's the zone closest to the dance area - there is no real 'category' for the zones, but there are a lot of singers and DJs in this area of the expo

Tosha Tyran: I think these booths are just crazy!  so many different and creative things out of the little things people got on hand...

Thirza Ember: the idea is to walk around the region, maybe you'll see some singers you have never heard of, many of the booths have LMs or notecards, some have gifts, some have links to websites. some have little anims, like this one for Nazirah, here you can sing a bit!

Thirza Ember: everyone starts with the basic booth, but they make what they like of it.  it's a nice game of skill to try to use the least number of prims or textures to tell your story. The lowest prim count here for a booth is 1 prim and 3 textures and 1 script. But ... not everybody has done that. LOL some are really elaborate.

snowbody Cortes: cool to see what people created starting with the bare basic booth

Forest Azure: is it at the same time as the world fair?

Thirza Ember: it will be open while the World's Fair is open, yes, but I would say in a way it's the opposite of world's fair because the idea here is to not go crazy with extravagant builds. The booth collection was assembled in less than a month. Everyone's booth is just about the same size, so no size-envy. A non builder can make a booth in under 30 minutes, if they have limited time, a LM and a few posters are enough. Here we want you to make the least amount of lag to tell your story, with ingenuity, that's part of the fun of the builds.

Tosha Tyran: yes, it is, it is awesome

Mal Burns: it has been astonishing take-up on booths this year

Tosha Tyran: and every year they get more diverse

Thirza Ember: I love SoA Bad's CCI Grid booth - he completely re-thought the whole thing using the same basic elements. The HIE booth is more conventional and boring!  And over here in the Green section, there's everything from Kitely to Avacon. These pyramids mark where the final few booths will go. The deadline was really the beginning of the month, but with so much happening, some people got far behind, but now it's a hard stop, no more booths beyond this. Tina Bey, Cherry Manga, and Luna Lunaria have some nice booths... there is one for Karima, with many freebies.

Ayla Alvarez: a mashup

Thirza Ember: If you look from above, you will soon see why we invite people to put a logo or photo on the roof.

Thirza Ember: As for the differences with the World's Fair,  this build is entirely free. Nobody pays to be here, and nobody gets paid, including the musicians, the whole thing is run on donated time and resources and volunteering. There are no sponsors, or requests for financial support. The musicians who usually expect to be paid in other venues will all be singing for free.

Tosha Tyran: which does not mean that they can't be tipped

Taarna Welles: they give HIE a warm heart

Forest Azure: well, you know how i hate the idea of paying musicians in OS

Thirza Ember: personally Forest I dislike the idea that a 3D artist/builder works for months for free, but a musician gets paid for singing. That seems off to me. But opensim is big enough that there is room for every ideology. People do things in different ways on different events - that's the whole point of opensim surely, that we can agree to disagree.

snowbody Cortes: grins

Thirza Ember: as you can see booths come in many shapes! Can I show you one I made?  sorry to be so egocentric... but I love it

Forest Azure: lol

Thirza Ember: Dr Who -using the same prims from the booth but with a dalek head. For Toy McBride, who let us visit her Doctor Who sim on LFGrid, if you remember.

Star Ravenhurst: I like it!

Thirza Ember: Slideshow scripts, complete with timer, take sim resources, so this has just an animated texture, no script, and 9 photos are displayed.

snowbody Cortes: oh a pianist!

Tosha Tyran: yes, aint that cool,  the whole booth one piano

Cherry B: really cool

Thirza Ember: as you can see there's a lot of imagination. if you ask me what's the ideal booth...

Forest Azure: what is the ideal booth?

Tosha Tyran: one prim 3 colors, 5 landmarks

Thirza Ember: ... I would say one with maybe a single gift, not too many photos, but most of all A LANDMARK because really we want people to go to visit your place... some people go crazy with way too many freebies, which is nice and generous, but during the Conference, it can cause lag if people start 'shopping' during the talks, the asset server doesn't like it.

snowbody Cortes: I love freebies !!

Ayla Alvarez: OS is a freebie

snowbody Cortes: yes Ayla

Star Ravenhurst: I always want to fill the box

Thirza Ember: imagine what happens when, during the conference, and we have 40 avatars on the sim and someone buys a box that contains like 50 1024x1024 textures ... the server is suddenly put under immense strain and makes lag.

Garalt Rivia: good Lord  

Star Ravenhurst: I never thought about it like that

The Westeros booth

Thirza Ember: many new people have participated this time, this is by the Westeros people, the region we were just visiting 

Thirza Ember: This one with the green writing is for Jimmy Olsen... Jimmy lost internet recently so he couldn't participate, but he said go ahead and make a booth for Europa... I took some freebies from the build, and made this

LadyKa 007: great

Thirza Ember: very simple booths ... but there are some very fancy ones too!  I am glad that 3rd Rock found a new home and so they are able to participate again with this booth... it's for the Hal9000 build

Star Ravenhurst: Didn't we go see that?  That was an impressive build

Thirza Ember: some booths still aren't finished, or they need to be checked for linked items and those darn Giver Scripts LOL... which all get eliminated, in favor of 'Set to Buy', because even Giver scripts can go wrong when ported across grids, but luckily 'Set to Buy' is more reliable. Some people put Group Joiner scripts... they forget, nobody can join a group when the group is on a different grid, so that also has to be eliminated. I'll show you the cutest booth of all ... of course, by Lampithaler

Mal Burns: aww

Thirza Ember: so as you can see it's easy to get lost in here, that is the idea... like the Hypergrid, it's a very confusing place!

Cherry B: in any case beautiful job

Star Ravenhurst: It all looks fabulous and I have no lag at all

Tosha Tyran: and so many different things - something for every taste

Thirza Ember: For the artists and the Presenters, and the Moderators, this is the Backstage area

Forest Azure: today ordinary people can enter here, Thirza?

Thirza Ember: yes

Forest Azure: runs in... as the child she basically is

Mal Burns: we need animesh bouncer

Thirza Ember: here's where they wait before going onstage, then they walk here

Tosha Tyran: blablabla bla blablabla

Thirza Ember: oh Tosha the chairs! they are great

Minord Loup: mieux comme ça, plus moderne, Bravo

Mal Burns: don't walk too fast at corner - might fall off stager

snowbody Cortes: lol

Thirza Ember: as you see, the public sits at little tables and drink wine, it's a relaxed place LOL... so maybe you wonder, why did we do the Expo so much in advance of the Conference?  the reason is, the Expo is a lot of work.  We like to finish all that work, before the 'real' work begins, to rehearse the speakers, to test the art performances, to translate all the talks so we can have subtitles in 5 languages

Taarna Welles: What a lot of work has been done.

Thirza Ember: so the question is - how much lag did you have here?

Taarna Welles: No lag at all

George Equus: zero'

Tosha Tyran: not much

LadyKa 007: well, no lag !

Thirza Ember: there are many booths, and we love to have them close,  but we also don't want to make the sim so laggy it is hell for during the conference

Tosha Tyran: true

Thirza Ember: the Expo has no official open day, and will stay up after the conference for some weeks... If anyone here didn't participate this time, please think about doing so next time

Tosha Tyran: yes, and there are plenty of jobs for everyone: presenters, artist, translators, builder etc. 

Taarna Welles: Yup

Forest Azure: greeters

Thirza Ember: yes like Forest says (she has been our greeter in the past!)  for example, if you want to come along and be a greeter, just kindly say hello to people as they arrive, during the conference, that's a nice job

Forest Azure: i greeted my butt off

Tosha Tyran: but you got it back, as I can see

Forest Azure: yes?

Thirza Ember: yeah it may also have grown bigger

Forest Azure: /me checks

Thirza Ember: This is a team effort, a community effort. The Admin is 5 people Kelso, on the scripts always, and Tosha here, and Mal and James Atlloud and me. Then we have our 'performers' - 8 speakers, 4 artists and 5 presenters, who introduce the various parts of the conference. Plus the filming team, which is 4 or 5 people, and the subtitle translators, and the people who help put the subtitles into the Group Chat during the event... so there is a lot of work, and the more people we have helping out, the less stress on everyone.  So please, if you think you will be available the weekend of 5 and 6 april, get in touch with me, and we would love to have you help with the event, even if its only for an hour or so

Forest Azure: mmm.. only one extra mal

snowbody Cortes: when the job goes hard, kelso can double himself :)

Taarna Welles: I'm impressed

LadyKa 007: Thank you, Thirza, for this presentation ! Great job by Hie Team

Minord  Loup: Bravooo a l'équipe du HIE pour cette superbe modification de la région*

Thirza Ember: the more people we are, the more fun it is for all

Forest Azure: so are the people sitting here real or npc's?

Thirza Ember: the people will all be real,  it's like theater, everyone acting

Mal Burns: APCs - Actual Player Characters

Thirza Ember: that makes work, but it also makes a nice authentic community experience

George Equus: Today was a great Safari. Time sure flew...  Thanks!

Star Ravenhurst: Thirza thank you for showing us around. You all have done a fabulous job this year. Have a great evening everyone. See you next week!

HG Address:  grid.hgsafarigrid.org:58002:HIE