Keywords

1 Introduction

Leadership and technological advancements have enabled online, immersive conferences to become more common occurrences where hundreds and even thousands of participants log into their computers from around the world to interact and learn. Increased access, reduced costs, and benefit to the environment have made online conferences effective and economical [1]. Many professional associations offer online seminars to enable members to access professional development. Such events have become more valued as travel budgets shrank or went away completely during the 2008 economic downturn. During this period, the United States federal government experienced furloughs that required employees to maintain responsibilities in some cases restricted from logging into their computers during unpaid time off. Employees had to compensate to achieve more with less time often for more customers due to interrupted services.

Training was often conducted at a distance requiring time away and travel funding. In person conferences were over relied upon leading to legislation that reduced travel across government agencies by 50 % [2]. Industries, non-profit agencies, and academia were significantly affected by travel restrictions. In 2013, the U.S. government shut down completely requiring administrators to rethink operational budgets due to new fiscal realities. State funded universities are experiencing program scrutiny to find efficiencies through reorganization and mission realignment.

During this time since 2008, social media use and online professional development offerings have proliferated fueling human networks. The need to keep up with advancements in technologies and knowledge creation propelled and required social learning. University researchers also found virtual worlds to be a low-cost, immersive platform suitable for teleconferencing and research collaboration [3]. Entrepreneurs also engaged in networked communities. Yetis-Larsson et al. reported, “The online economy has made it possible to organize economic activity in different ways by enabling individuals and companies to establish and maintain their businesses through new business models and value propositions” [4].

1.1 Opportunistic Disruption Within Virtual Worlds

Constructive virtual worlds, notable for their community development, were disrupted by the economy too, including the leading platform, Second Life. Since its inception as a means to create new digital realities, users of Second Life began to self-organize and offer online events. The virtual world platform became an engine of collaboration to jointly create experiences. Some universities and organizations, such as the United States Army, made commitments to Linden Lab, maker of Second Life, to participate in a program designed to serve enterprise needs for virtual world use. When Linden Lab cancelled their enterprise program, the open source viewer code was available for use. OpenSimulator was released in 2007 and one of its core developers, Clark-Casey described its broad appeal, “OpenSimulator has two basic architectures, “standalone” where the entire simulator and its services are executed within a single process, and “grid”, where 1 or more simulator processes and one or more service processes can be run independently, potentially on different hardware” [5]. The open source license enables individuals and institutions to host OpenSimulator themselves, without cost to rent land, enabling integration into existing networks [6]. Medical simulation also found applications in OpenSimulator where the fit for long-term, cost-effective healthcare training increased use for simulating training exercises to improve incident response [7].

1.2 Community and Conferences

As the Second Life virtual platform grew and the economy declined, community conferences were coordinated and became large events with a global constituency. The community was made up of artists, musicians, content creators, educators, and many people who did not want to be known. Mixing at events was not always a positive experience where diversity of interests played out. Entertainment and educational agendas conflicted at times. A subset of the educational community organized its own conference called the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VWBPE). In 2014, the VWBPE had approximately 4,000 avatars participate from several continents [8].

These conferences were offered at no cost to participants. Sponsors covered costs that were low compared to the overhead of events held in the physical world. Such online events fueled rapid growth of global networks of educators who used virtual environments for many disciplines including global health topics. Umoren et al. asserted, “…when feasible, (virtual environments) should be utilized as a tool for the development of international partnerships [6]. Partnerships do not catalyze without leadership. One virtual world user who took to Second Life and became a leading virtual community organizer experienced the sometimes painful switchover to OpenSimulator as the disruption to Second Life evolved. Chris Collins, also known as Fleep Tuque, helped lead the development of the first OpenSim Community Conference in 2013 [9]. Collins said, “Organizing people & organizing code aren’t the same thing, but they both have to work really well for a completely virtual conference to be successful” [10].

1.3 Origins of the Federal Consortium of Virtual Worlds

Like other virtual world communities, members of the U.S. federal government also became networked users seeking collaboration. In July 2007, National Defense University’s (NDU) iCollege established the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds (FCVW) under the leadership of Dr. Paulette Robinson. Face-to-face conference events were held near NDU that featured several companies that made or hosted online virtual worlds. The FCVW conference offered paid attendees and unpaid online participants the chance to explore virtual world platforms. The 2015 FCVW website was created with permission from NDU after a reorganization prevented the ability to hold the face-to-face conference. The website states:

The FCVW was created to explore multi-agency and intra- agency collaboration using the robust capabilities of virtual worlds, examining best practices across multiple sectors. The objective of the consortium is to help government agencies to share resources, training, and experience; leverage outreach capabilities and practices; connect to new partners and business opportunities; and demonstrate the benefits for virtual worlds’ collaborative capabilities [11].

2 The Military Open Simulation Enterprise Strategy (MOSES) Community

The Military Open Simulation Enterprise Strategy (MOSES) was created by the United States Army’s Simulation & Training Technology Center (STTC) as a program to replace the investments made into Second Life Enterprise. In 2011, users from government, other military services, and educational institutions were permitted to request participation. Land was provided for building and in-world meetings were held regularly. Douglas Maxwell, STTC Manager, stated his ambition for the collaborative, MOSES initiative in a conference paper documenting research results, “There is a need for a broader application of simulation-based training systems to train multiple small teams in concert or larger unit operations” [12]. Civilian participants contribute to realism of the virtual scenarios developed for testing. The MOSES community routinely shared experiences creating a cross pollination of knowledge sharing between military, education, and industry members. Administration of virtual land empowered community members whose land called “sims” was configurable for unique needs. Processing capability and dedicated memory are variables left to the administrator for each sim. The variables are highly dependent on user behavior and available hardware resources [13].

Not everyone chooses to participate regularly in the MOSES community where formal protocol is often valued over self-expression common in constructive virtual worlds. Military culture requires hierarchical, professional courtesy that has nuanced translation in virtual worlds, where gender, race, age, and status is permeable. Maxwell reported, “MOSES is not a product, but intended to be a best practice strategy for other organizations wishing to deploy an Open Simulator based virtual world [13].

The MOSES Community was invited to participate in distributed scene graph experiments in 2013 where members role played as civilians or service members in a simulated village. The research was conducted in association with Intel Labs to explore how the OpenSim environment could be scaled for thousands of simultaneous users (see Fig. 1 , MOSES Distributed Scene Graph Load Test.) Photo credit Barbara Truman.

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MOSES distributed scene graph load test

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The Netherlands has an initiative similar to MOSES, and research invited by the European Defense Agency on distributed experimentation with OpenSimulator was found cost effective. A recommendation was made to test larger-scale experiments with more users [14].

A modified version of the MOSES OpenSim configuration was used as part of a field experiment in January 2014 involving guided training. Army reserve soldiers in central Florida participated by accessing the technology in a face-to face lab setting as shown in Fig. 2, MOSES Field Training Experiment. Photo credit Douglas Maxwell, Apache Company Armory, Leesburg, Florida. The experiment used an orientation, practice activities, and scenarios similar to those used in physical training. The OpenSim experiment served as an example of new dynamics that may improve training outcomes while saving time and money. The training may be applied for a variety of virtual and physical training needs. A finding from another study on room clearing provided the recommendation, “Rather than substitute VW (virtual world) training for typical live training, augment it, and assess training efficacy” [15].

Fig. 2.
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MOSES field training experiment

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As mentioned in Sect. 1.2, the inaugural OpenSim Community Conference was produced in Fall 2013 through support from the nonprofit organizations, AvaCon, Incorporated and the Overte Foundation. Some members of the MOSES Community participated as well, as speakers and volunteers. Cross-community engagement was found as a characteristic of OpenSim entrepreneurs by Yetis-Larsson et al. where, “Working on multiple teams is also a way for entrepreneurs to explore new combinations, exploit synergies, and transfer best practice between environments” [4]. Core OpenSim developers made thousands of code improvements based on data from weekly load tests. Twenty three regions were created for the OSCC13 and the environment was planned for 220 avatars, but over 400 attendees were able to participate. Synthetic avatars were used to increase the demands on the server as there were insufficient volunteers available any one time to stress the server. Access to the keynote regions were restricted to distribute the highest load. Clark-Casey summarized the sentiment of the conference coordinators, “ It also goes to show that in open-source, there’s nothing quite like making yourself “eat your own dogfood” – we had committed to put on a conference in OpenSimulator and so were highly motivated to spend the enormous time and effort necessary to get performance to where it needed to be” [16].

A key difference in other forms of open source software is that attendees of the OSCC13 obtained reusable software code. Grid configurations do differ as seen with the MOSES distributed scene graph load tests. In that research, there were also insufficient volunteers to stress the server in specific ways. A key finding of Maxwell et al. reported, “The system and network demands of human agents operating within a simulation-based training system are vastly different as compared to artificial (bot or NPC) agents” [12].

The inaugural OpenSimulator Community Conference was a surprising success. The planning committee made up of members of Avacon Incorporated, the Overte Foundation, and volunteers met weekly on the grid using the OpenSim software as a planning platform. Volunteers were recruited and trained to assist new users. Speakers, moderators, and track chairs had authorization through HUDs built for the viewing during the sessions. Presenters prepared their content for importing into the grid. Videographers choreographed how sessions would be streamed and archived. Eventbright tickets were used to carefully manage registrations and users were placed into groups that dictated how entrance to regions occurred. Very few surprises occurred. Figure 3, Second Annual OpenSimulator Community Conference 2014, was taken in November 2014. The event was also a success for the software and community. No incidents were reported. Photo credit Barbara Truman.

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Second annual opensimulator community conference 2014

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The majority of users participated via use of the hypergrid where they teleported into the conference grid via other grids enabling them access to some of their inventory. One of the core developers, Crista Lopes, and her coauthors cited the design of the software that makes it suitable for conducting conferences, “The architecture of OpenSimulator is designed to scale to many simulators and their user-driven agents. OpenSimulator provides for managing user data and logins, assets, grid connections, accounts, and inventory” [3]. Hypergridding opens access between OpenSim virtual worlds including the transference of digital content.

3 The Federal Consortium of Virtual World Returns

The success of the OpenSimulator Community Conferences in 2013 and 2014 laid the groundwork for the U.S. Army STTC to contract with Avacon Incorporated to sponsor a similar online event with support of the MOSES Community. Permission was acquired to obtain the name, Federal Consortium of Virtual Worlds for use in the event. References to “conference” had to be changed as many government and military organizations could not get approval to support attendance at a conference, even if it had no cost. The term workshop was adopted. Planning began in earnest in September 2014, prior to the outcome of the OSCC14 event. Figure 4, Plenary Seating for the FCVW15 Workshop, shows the venue constructed for the keynote speakers. Dates for the FCVW were selected for March 6–7, 2015 over a Friday and Saturday.

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Plenary seating for the FCVW15 workshop

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Scheduling issues surrounding the FCVW Workshop mean that some attendees will not be able to get outside computer access to participate. Saturday scheduling meant that some attendees can get access and attend, but may not want to use their personal time. A key difference in between the OSCC events and the FCVW Workshop involves live streaming. The decision was made to reduce complexity and not overwhelm speakers and volunteers with session logistics. Another key difference in the event was the desire to avoid lecture style presentations favoring interactive sessions with tours and 3D content. MOSES Community members toured regions in advance of the program providing feedback and offering content to fellow members. The MOSES Project provided a packaged platform based on testing and configuration of the grid, complete with voice-over-IP set up and a GUI-based grid manager. The project also provided several regions that were provided as Creative Commons licensed environments [17]. Registration numbers were not finalized at the time of this writing.

Figure 5, FCVW Workshop Planning Team, shows the group meeting on the FCVW grid to discuss logistics of building, sessions, and coordination. The FCVW grid configuration had several differences in configuration compared to the OSCC13 and 14 grids. The database and voice server were notably different creating challenges for staff to manage.

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FCVW workshop planning team

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A significant feature of OpenSimulator conferences is the ability to import content for 3D posters or entire regions imported as archive files. In 2014, the Army STTC funded a Lidar scanning project to make a replication of the University of Central Florida’s Partnership II and III Buildings located in the Research Park in Orlando, Florida. The building represent a collaboration among the University and military services. The same scanning technology had been used by Dr. Lori Walters for a virtual heritage project. Walters is a researcher with the UCF Institute for Simulation & Training’s SREAL Synthetic Reality Lab. Figure 6, LIDAR Images of UCF’s Partnership Buildings, illustrates a region used for a panel presentation with the Security, Privacy, and Identity Track of the FCVW Workshop. The region will be continued for use in the MOSES Community grid after the workshop for further research and development. The scanning project resulted in identifying scale issues with standard avatars when the avatars entered the lobby of the buildings. A machinima was made to illustrate the process of scanning and conversion into mesh models. Members of the MOSES Community participated in the project to illustrate the ability to go inside the buildings [18].

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LIDAR images of UCF’s partnership buildings

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3.1 Areas of Future Research

Virtual Conferences enable computer-mediated collaboration and provide the potential to develop virtual community learning organizations that span domains of education, industry, government and military. Future research should explore how virtual conferences using open source software can incorporate crowdsourcing, collective intelligence, and citizen science. Truman’s research from 2013 explored collaborative uses of virtual worlds among groups and found, “The use of social media before, during, and after events provides an orbit of activities that also occur within the environment through the use of avatars to build strong relationships” [19]. Figure 7, FCVW15 Workshop Session, represents the session that David Metcalf and Barbara Truman presented on the FCVW grid on March 6, 2015. This paper was submitted on the same day so full attendee information was not available, but approximately 120 avatars were present for sessions. The grid performed well. Photo credit: FCVW Twitter account.

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FCVW15 workshop session

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The session title was Innovations in 3D Simulation and Challenges of Trust. Examples of mobile use were highlighted for multi-agency collaboration. Integration of mobile devices involving the Internet of Things provides a rich area of future research for the impact on users, business processes, policy, and culture. These dynamics impact research and development of the technological innovations as well.

3.2 Conclusion

The Federal Consortium of Virtual Worlds Workshop was another successful example of an immersive virtual conference using OpenSim software. The event’s purpose and transference of brand from NDU to the Army STTC in the interest of collaboration is a success of collaboration. There was no formal ceremony to transfer the changing of the guard. The OpenSimulator platform has proven its potential to host virtual conferences based on two community conferences made possible by a community of open entrepreneurs. The economic and environmental benefits of virtual conferences have been realized. Factors that contribute to the leadership of developing communities within local and virtual environments must be realized to address chronic and acute needs among government, military and academia. “As the line between the physical and virtual worlds continues to blur through virtual world platforms, we observe a tendency among entrepreneurs to embed themselves in both physical and virtual environments leveraging affordances from both spaces” [4].