Tag: Calendar

More and More Conferences Are Going Virtual In Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic: Here’s a List of Events for the Rest of March (Thanks to Andy Fidel!)

Well, trickle that started with the highly successful Educators in VR 2020 International Summit has turned into a veritable flood, as dozens of conferences and events are moving away from real-world meetings to virtual ones, held on a variety of social VR platforms and virtual worlds.

Digital literacy educator Andy Fidel has compiled a document titled Running List of Conferences Going Virtual Due to Coronavirus Health Concerns — 2020, which he is updating as he hears of new events.

Here’s what’s coming up between now and the end of March (along with a couple of additions of my own). Thank you to Andy Fidel for all her work compiling this information!

March 16–19 | MVP Global Summit

“Microsoft has made the decision that this year’s MVP/Regional Director Summit will be an online-only/virtual event. Our entire team is working hard to plan and prepare an alternate experience that still provides the exclusive in-depth technical sessions in an online-only format and be inclusive to our globally distributed community.” [register here]

March 17–19 | Virtual Universe 2020

“Competing in today’s diverse market is no joke. Successful organizations must remain at the forefront of technology while controlling budgets, leveraging data, and ensuring security.” [register here]

March 18–19 | Women in Graphene 2020 Virtual Event

“The next Women in Graphene Career Development Day is going digital…join us on 18–19 March for an out of this world experience! This two-day event is an opportunity to discuss issues related to gender and diversity in science and technology fields and specifically in the graphene community.” [register here]

March 18 | Playable.GDC2020

“The Game Developer’s Conference has announced they will postpone their event. But all game developers know that with grit and innovation, THE SHOW MUST GO ON! PLAYABLE in the virtual reality streams from the event that you can attend from anywhere on the planet!” [register here]

March 18 | Domopalooza

“While we are disappointed not to be hosting Domopalooza in Utah, we are excited to bring the great content and conversations to you as an interactive online experience.” [register here]

March 19 | Spring Live

“Things are a little crazy right now. Were you excited about an upcoming conference that’s now cancelled? Same here. So we’re doing something about it. Complete the form and we’ll send you details on how to join this one-time event.” [register here]

March 19 | V²EC 2020 — Virtual VIVE Ecosytem Conference

“HTC usually hosts its Vive Ecosystem Conference (HTC 2020 VEC) in Shenzhen, China but due to the current climate will entirely host the event in virtual reality (VR).” [register here]

March 19–21 | Microsoft Build

“Join your peers and Microsoft engineers to learn, connect, and code together. Get inspired and leave a better developer than when you arrived.” [register here]

March 21–22 | Virtual Genius Conference

“Get ready for some very nuanced discussions/dialectics, lots of cutting-edge solutions to problems that the world hasn’t even acknowledged exists, to find like minds and new hobbies, and for a sneaky look at future trends (we tend to know them first!).” [register here]

March 24 | EMOTIONAI

“Join us for a virtual conference featuring leaders in tech and EQ to explore how AI and EQ can collaborate to build emotional connections for our future.” [register here]

March 22–26 | 2020 IEEE VR

“Out of an abundance of caution surrounding COVID-19, the decision has been made to convert the in-person component of VR 2020 into an all-digital conference experience — VR 2020 will now be an online event. The IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (IEEE VR) is the premier international event for the presentation of research results in the broad area of virtual reality (VR).” [register here]

March 25 | MoCDA Spring 2020 Virtual Conference

“How do you share information with your students, clients, and other stakeholders, such as department chairs and local employers? A picture is worth a thousand words. Discover how career practitioners can enhance their website content and workshop materials with original images, including infographics, without having graphic design experience.” [register here]

March 24–25 | TRANSFORM

“#TRANSFORM2020 Online will deliver the complete conference as programmed via live streaming on 24 & 25 March with all content uploaded for viewing post-event. We will film all the sessions as programmed and will video conference in remote speakers where feasible. Delegates will be able to join the conversation and participate in sessions by submitting their questions and comments live — stay tuned.” [register]

March 23 | The Ultimate Tech Skills Conference

“Pluralsight LIVE Europe is now a virtual event open to everyone. Tune in for exciting product announcements, a message from Pluralsight CEO Aaron Skonnard and sessions on tech trends, skill development, best practices and more. Register below to get information on how to access it and a reminder when it goes live on 23 March.” [register here]

March 25 | Microsoft Developer Virtual Conference

“Calling all developers! Get ready to dev-level-up. Spend one day exploring a digital virtual conference and learning from experts across the nation. This digital event enables all types of developers to connect and learn through 5 different tracks and 20 sessions, as well as an online Partner lounge to build connections and discover a range of developer tools and services. Join sessions created for developers and discover the capabilities of the Microsoft Cloud ecosystem.” [register here]

March 25–26 | OECD Global Anti-Corruption & Integrity Forum

“Forum will go ahead in a virtual format, allowing participants to join the sessions from anywhere in the world, contribute to the debates and engage with speakers in real time.” [register here]

March 25–26 |Virtual World Best Practices in Education

The long-running Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VWBPE) conference will take place in the virtual world of Second Life from March 26th to 28th, 2020. The keynote on Saturday March 28th will by Lorelle VanFossen and Daniel Dyboski-Bryant, who will share their experience creating and running the first-ever Educators in VR 2020 International Summit, which was a resounding success with 160 speakers over six days on five different social VR platforms, and a model for future virtual conferences. The title of Lorelle and Daniel’s keynote is Lessons Learned from the 2020 Educators in VR Conference. [register here]

March 29-April 1 | Association of Test Publishers

“Innovations in Testing 2020 has made the unprecedented decision to cancel their on-site meeting in San Diego and turn Innovations 2020 into a Virtual On-line Conference. These are extraordinary times and in some ways it is a remarkable opportunity to put into play the technology and e-learning that we have talked so much about.” [register here]

March 31-April 2 | Adobe Summit — The Digital Experience Conference

Watch the keynote live: Hear about trends and new products that are transforming industries from the comfort of your wherever. Explore 100+ breakouts on demand: Get free access to over a hundred on-demand breakout sessions from Adobe, customers, and partners. Sneak a peak at the future: Join special guest Chelsea Handler for a look at the latest experimental tech from our labs — at Adobe Sneaks. [register here]

There are many more conferences and events taking place past the end of March, 2020; for further details please refer to Andy Fidel’s blogpost on Medium. (Thanks, Andy!)

A New Social VR Events Calendar Website!

This was probably inevitable, but Robin K. Wilson is the first to do it: a calendar of events happening on the various social VR platforms, all in one handy website, vrevents.io:

At the moment, it only covers events on five platforms: AltspaceVR, Bigscreen, Echo VR, NeosVR, and Sansar. But I can see the utility of this idea as more platforms begin to post their events here, either automatically or manually. I think this is a great idea!

Comparing Events Listings in the Various Virtual Worlds

calendar-1990453_1920.jpg
Picture by webandi on Pixabay

How do you find out what’s going on in the various social VR spaces/virtual worlds? Often the best way is to consult their upcoming events listings. In this blogpost I am going to link to all the various event schedules that I have been able to locate for each of the major metaverse platfrorms.

 

First, let’s start off with Second Life. The Events listing in the Second Life client (under Search in the Firestorm client) can be a bit overwhelming due to the sheer magnitude of events listed (there’s also a lot of store advertising spam mixed in). You can use the handy drop-down menu in the upper right-hand corner of the Search window (under the General, Moderate, and Adult checkboxes) to limit your searching to, say, live music events. There’s also an events page on the Second Life website, which doesn’t appear to have as many events listed as you can find using the client. There’s also a Featured Events listing in the Destination Guide, which can direct you the major events happening around the grid.

 

Sansar has an upcoming events calendar within the client software, displayed prominently on the right-hand side of the screen when you first log in. There’s also a Rolodex icon labelled Events in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, which you can click at any time to see the events listings:

Sansar Create Event 3 21 Mar 2018

Sansar also has a dedicated Featured Events page on their website, as well as an Upcoming Events section on the Sansar Atlas page.

 

High Fidelity has an upcoming events page in pinboard, agenda, or calendar month views. Unfortunately, there’s no events listing within their client, on their tablet user interface, so you’ll have to rely on the website to get your information before you go in-world.

(Update: I just discovered that there is an in-world display board of upcoming events in High Fidelity’s Start domain, which you can search for on your tablet UI under the “Go To” icon:

High Fidelity Start 15 Apr 2018.jpg

 

Sinespace has an Events section on their official blog, but it’s not updated very often. You’re better off loading the Sinespace client software and getting information from the Upcoming Events section on the left-hand side of the log in screen:

Sinespace Login Screen 14 APr 2018

There’s also an upcoming events board located near the spawn point at the Sinespace Welcome Centre:

What's On In Sinespace 14 Apr 2018

 

VRChat actually has a VRChat Events website with links to their Discord server and to an online calendar of events. This is a separate Discord server from the very busy main VRChat Discord server, with different channels for each of the regularly scheduled events happening in VRChat, including the popular Endgame talk show. There’s simply no better way to stay abreast of everything that’s happening in VRChat! There’s also an official events calendar on the VRChat website. (Surprisingly, there is no upcoming events listing within the VRChat client, a glaring omission.)

 

AltspaceVR has a Featured Events listing on their website, as well as a listing of upcoming events in their client software.

 

I think that about covers it! Now you know where to get up-to-date information on what’s happening in the various virtual worlds. See you in-world!