Tag: Housekeeping Note

Housekeeping Notice: The NeosVR Dispute

SEE ALSO: Housekeeping Notice: I’m Juggling

Because I have been occupied with my full-time paying job as a university librarian these past couple of months, I have fallen behind on my monitoring of what’s been going on in the many social VR, virtual world, and metaverse platforms I write about on the RyanSchultz.com blog.

So I have been out of the loop (and trying to get up-to-date) on the recent news about NeosVR, and the now-public dispute between the company’s CEO and the rest of the team, involving NeosVR’s cryptocurrency, called NCR. I have been madly bookmarking and reading everything that I could get my hands on over the past three days, and at this point, due to the large volume of information I have to sift through, I will probably be writing up a series of blogposts, instead of just a single blogpost, starting sometime next week. I do realize that because of my position and experience, I might be the best-placed person to write up something about this dispute!

But with that position and experience, I also have a responsibility.

I have learned (the hard way) some hard lessons covering corporate disputes and controversy in the past on my blog (notably the series of layoffs at Sansar), where I realized that I wasn’t just a blogger—I’m a reporter, and what I write has real-world impacts on the metaverse platforms involved, and the companies that build them. You could say that I have become somewhat battle-hardened. This means that I have a responsibility to my readers to be as accurate and as neutral as possible, while still having an editorial viewpoint (after all, the tagline of the RyanSchult.com blog is “News and Views on Social VR, Virtual Worlds, and the Metaverse”).

So, I plan to dot all my i’s and cross all my t’s before I publish anything about the NeosVR situation, and I will also try to incorporate a variety of perspectives and opinions, using direct quotes of source material as much as possible.

TL;DR: I am very well aware of what’s going on over at NeosVR, I am actively researching it, and I plan to write up a series of blogposts about the dispute, probably starting later next week.

P.S. Of course, I have many other story ideas in the hopper, as I usually do (for example, the response of the AltspaceVR community to the removal of the central gathering places like the campfire by the company). I never have a shortage of things to write about lately, there’s just so much happening! Stay tuned 😉

Housekeeping Notice: I’m Juggling

Between the ongoing pandemic, the recently-concluded five-week faculty strike at my university, and now the unexpected war in Ukraine, things have been a little crazy around here these past 3 months (did you know that 14.5% of Manitobans are of Ukrainian ancestry?). Like many of you, I have been glued to the news lately.

Throw in a broken Valve Index VR headset (my unit, of course, died a couple of months after its one-year warranty expired, and Steam has asked me to ship back my headset and cables to be replaced with a refurbished, non-warrantied, headset.) Also, Carlos and I have also—finally!—started working on Episode 1 of Season 2 of the Metaverse Newscast, about which I will be sharing more news soon.

I forgot to mention that after 23 months of working from home for my university, this week I finally returned to my office in the library full-time. (The University of Manitoba has a firm vaccine mandate and a KN95 facemask mandate. Faculty, staff, and students were required to upload proof of vaccination to a special, secure website, and students who did not do so were deregistered from their courses this term. U of M is following the science and absolutely not messing around, which makes me feel much more comfortable coming in to work every day!)

I’m juggling a lot of balls at the moment
(photo by alexey turenkov on Unsplash)

I’m juggling a lot at the moment. All of this is my very long-winded way of saying: don’t expect a whole lot of blogposts from me over the next few weeks. I’ll do my level best to stay on top of all the news and events happening in the metaverse, but no promises 😉

Thanks to my readers and followers for your continued support and engagement! And you are welcome to join the RyanSchulz.com Discord server, with 650 passionate members, representing every social VR platform and virtual world! We discuss, debate and argue about the ever-evolving metaverse and all the companies building it, and we’d love to have you participate (or, if you prefer, just lurk and learn!).

Housekeeping Notice: See You in November

Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash

Guys, I’m really sorry to do this to you again, but I am just absolutely swamped with work at my full-time paying job as an academic librarian at the University of Manitoba Libraries, with a lot of time-sensitive deadlines that I must meet, from now until the end of October. I’ll be pulling a lot of evenings and weekends, so something has to give.

What that means is that I am, once again, putting the RyanSchultz.com blog on hiatus until November 1st, 2020. Hopefully, once I have completed the mountain of work in front me, I can return to blogging “News and Views on Social VR, Virtual Worlds, and the Metaverse”, as the tagline of my blog states.

See you in November!

Housekeeping Note: Why You Can Expect Fewer Blogposts Than Usual Over the Next Two Months

My university, the University of Manitoba, started its Fall term this week, and with rare exceptions, all teaching will be done remotely and online. While I am truly grateful that I can continue to work safely from home during the coronavirus pandemic, this change comes with a completely different set of challenges from the in-classroom teaching that I usually do at this time of year.

Most of my time (including evenings and weekends) is now being taken up by preparing and delivering instruction for students on how to use my university library system, all of which is being delivered remotely and online, using Cisco Webex, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom. In some cases, I am using the technology for the first time.

Today, the librarians at the Sciences and Technology Library launched a brand new, for-credit course on information skills for undergraduate science students, which my colleagues and I will be team teaching over the Fall 2020 semester, using Cisco Webex within the University of Manitoba’s learning management system:

The first lecture of our new course

If you’re curious, here are our course objectives for the 13-week course:

In short, I will be quite busy with work at my full-time job as an academic librarian (the one that pays the bills and keeps the lights and the internet on!). So I will be working a lot of overtime, which means, unfortunately, that something has to give.

Therefore, while I may have officially returned from my self-imposed vacation from blogging, my blogposts here on the RyanSchultz.com blog will be much less frequent than usual over the next couple of months. I’m sorry, but I hope that by the end of October, things will settle down for me a little bit.

Thanks in advance for your understanding, support, and forbearance. I promise I will be back covering social VR, virtual worlds, and the metaverse at my former pace just as soon as I am able!