We held our first public Advisory Board meeting today! This also served as a test for Test Grid #1 before the move to the new R&D Server box as the Halcyon Test Grid. Average CPU time was about 5% with the grid hosted in a single VM (like Sim-on-a-stick) on a home connection. We did see an error on the messaging server which will be reported to the Halcyon development team. But overall, the meeting went well with no performance issues impacting the user experience.
Our goal was to provide an overview to potential Advisory Board members on IMA's mission, its structure, and the role of Advisors in the Working Group branch process. Subsequent questions, answers, and ideas for working group efforts turned a one hour meeting into two hours and we could have gone longer if folks had time!
Steve LaVigne gave a presentation using the in-world presenter and the text of the presentation was included real-time to make it more accessible. We also talked about working groups at length as well as the status and plans with resources for the working groups. Included in the presentation was a new simplified step-by-step working group process from start to finish.
It may be possible future meetings can be livestreamed with video, audio, and chat if we get a volunteer for that function. The next meeting will be on the third Wednesday in May at IMA Outpost Alpha which is hypergrid-enabled. As we finalize the make-up of the Advisory Board, (Hopefully this week we will have the majority in place.), we will publish the list of members and start filling the interim Director's Council seats as more interest evolves. For all those who were unable to join us today, here is the chat log: (Slides for the presentation are at the bottom of the chat log.)
IMA Advisory Board Meeting 04/19/2017 chat log (typos edited in presentation only)
Will Burns: Changing of the words? From this point forward, THIS shall be known as THAT
Will Burns: =^-^=
Lisa Laxton: lol transcribe we must
---------------------------------------------------------start presentation
Steve LaVigne: Hello everyone and welcome to the very first Infinite Metaverse Alliance Advisory Board meeting!
Barbara Truman: :) heree!!
Isis Ophelia: she is
Bob Curtice: yes
Bob Curtice: Yvonne just logged in.
Steve LaVigne: It is very good to see all of you here. Please get comfortable and we will get started!
Steve LaVigne: Infinite Metaverse Alliance (IMA) is a Research and Development Philanthropic Foundation formed in response to open source community needs for maximizing societal benefits.
Steve LaVigne: I am our CFO and chair of the Advisory Board, joined by Myron Curtis, our CIO, and Lisa Laxton, our CEO.
Steve LaVigne: Our core mission is a focus on accessible and inclusive software design to advance virtual worlds, virtual reality, and synthetic environment technology in everything we do.
Myron Curtis: hi
Steve LaVigne: There is a range of membership levels defined in membership terms from free social level participation to various levels of subscriber participation.
Steve LaVigne: Subscriptions will be used to fund the resources provided to core and subscriber working groups at different levels of activity.
Steve LaVigne: IMA has three branches: Research, Development, and Working Group branches - each supports the others.
Steve LaVigne: Working together through intersections in science, technology, and innovation, IMA focuses on community.
Steve LaVigne: To see the relationship in a broad sense, take a look at this diagram:
Evie Marie: Hi all, sorry I'm late!
Steve LaVigne: As you see in the diagram the community is the center of everything at IMA.
Steve LaVigne: We are here to provide the community the resources that it needs to advance our technology to the next level and beyond.
Steve LaVigne: We can get into details later if you desire.
Steve LaVigne: To accomplish our mission, the team identified a need to streamline source code development,
Steve LaVigne: implement coding standards with a refined architecture framework,
Steve LaVigne: help move volunteer open source code projects forward,
Steve LaVigne: and facilitate "design thinking" so that we all benefit in the use of these technologies.
Steve LaVigne: Together, we identified the need for one unifying organization to function as a research organization, (typically a non-profit),
Steve LaVigne: a development organization, (typically a for-profit),
Steve LaVigne: and a standards organization, (typically a business and academic consortium).
Steve LaVigne: IMA's approach is a community-driven foundation that functions in all three capacities as a financially transparent Limited Liability Company.
Steve LaVigne: The core team at IMA is driven by both community and customer needs – including those established and refined over the past five years.
Steve LaVigne: The collective goal of the membership at large is to advance the development of virtual worlds technology and adapt to both virtual and augmented reality (mixed reality) future markets.
Steve LaVigne: While there are far greater details that will be addressed by membership Working Groups (the bulk of IMA), five foundational pillars were refined to provide IMA's business focus.
Steve LaVigne: Provide sustaining engineering services related to open source code.
Steve LaVigne: Support R&D Working Groups including standards development.
Steve LaVigne: Develop safe, secure, production grade source code capable of supporting a commercially viable in-world economy.
Steve LaVigne: Conduct software research and development using virtual worlds and virtual reality.
Steve LaVigne: Contribute via philanthropy to the user community and facilitate Working Group participation.
Steve LaVigne: These pillars provide stability for the foundation's hybrid structure where the working group branch is sustained by the research and development branches:
Steve LaVigne: In the left of the chart is the Advisory Board and Director’s Council.
Steve LaVigne: There are 14 base categories, each with an Advisory Council member heading that category.
Steve LaVigne: Each Advisor is a person with intimate knowledge of the category he or she represents.
Steve LaVigne: The 14 working group category Advisors are initially appointed by the IMA Executive Board.
Steve LaVigne: The core categories are led by IMA while the others will be elected by the community annually.
Steve LaVigne: There are also some advisors beyond these who serve in support roles that are appointed by IMA.
Steve LaVigne: These roles - 17 of them at present - apply more broadly and will likely support many working group categories.
Steve LaVigne: The first set of advisors are appointed by IMA to get us started.
Steve LaVigne: At IMA we tend to be pretty infinite!
Steve LaVigne: This next slide is a diagram of how this all fits together and how the process works with our Working Groups.
Steve LaVigne: Around the outside edge you see the various core categories.
Steve LaVigne: Each category has working groups working under it, an Advisor and a Director’s council committee contact.
Steve LaVigne: The Working groups deal directly with the Director’s Council member who is their main contact.
Steve LaVigne: The Director’s Council contact will contact the appropriate Advisory Board member for help and arrange a meeting between them.
Steve LaVigne: This puts a layer between the Working Group that will make sure that the Advisors are not too much in the middle of everything.
Steve LaVigne: You will only be called on to assist working groups when you are actually needed.
Steve LaVigne: This does not preclude you from jumping into the fray and starting a Working Group of your own!
Steve LaVigne: Feel free to join in and become a part of everything that excites you!
Steve LaVigne: In the middle is the infinity loop.
Steve LaVigne: That loop represents the Lean Six Sigma process that IMA uses to keep things on track and working smoothly.
Steve LaVigne: Lean six Sigma is really a simple way to do things and works well in organizing any type of project.
Steve LaVigne: When you look at the loop you start at the lower right curve and go counter-clockwise through
Steve LaVigne: Define, Measure, Analyze, Control (or Implement), and Improve.
Steve LaVigne: Then you start all over so it becomes an infinite loop until the project is finished!
Steve LaVigne: Next up is the IMA Research & Development Working Group Process Map.
Steve LaVigne: This diagram shows the basic process of creating a Working Group.
Steve LaVigne: It is fairly straightforward. Here is how it goes.
Steve LaVigne: An IMA Member has a great idea, or a need to fix something in something.
Steve LaVigne: They then send an email to the Director’s Council (which at this point is me!) with their idea and what category that they think it fits into.
Steve LaVigne: The Director looks at the proposal and decides if it is unique.
Steve LaVigne: If it is not, the Director sends a note back to the Member saying “Have I got a group for you!” and they are given information on a group to join.
Steve LaVigne: If their request is unique the Director will setup the resources for the group including Open Project and maybe a Git or whatever else is needed.
Steve LaVigne: Training is also available on how to work within a Working Group, and also on Lean Six Sigma to help them get started and be organized.
Steve LaVigne: Working Groups are autonomous so they can run their group in any way they want to.
Steve LaVigne: IMA offers help if they desire it at any time through the Director contact.
Steve LaVigne: That is level one and two on the chart.
Steve LaVigne: The Advisory Board is at the 3rd level on the chart.
Steve LaVigne: The Advisory board has a direct connection to the IMA Executive Board as Executive Board members have seats on the Advisory Board.
Steve LaVigne: For those of you becoming Advisory Board Members feel free to get together with Executive Board members anytime you need us.
Steve LaVigne: We are here to help you!
Steve LaVigne: If a working group needs sage advice from an Advisor they come through their Director contact.
Steve LaVigne: Advice could theoretically be needed in any stage of the process from a simple
Steve LaVigne: “Do you think this will work” when they have come up with the idea in the beginning,
Steve LaVigne: to “Help! I am stuck in this and can’t figure this out!” scenario.
Steve LaVigne: The Director contact is in between you and the Working Group because for most simple requests the Director can handle the issue.
Steve LaVigne: We also set it up this way to respect your time and the fact that you have a life and other obligations to attend to.
Steve LaVigne: When advice is given just keep the Advisory Board Chair informed and make a note in Open Project for the group to see.
Steve LaVigne: Sometimes if the issue is clear cut you won’t even need a meeting- just put the answer into Open Project.
Steve LaVigne: On the bottom of the chart is the Executive Board.
Steve LaVigne: The Executive Board is compromised of 6 people.
Steve LaVigne: Three from A Dimension Beyond, Inc. and three from Laxton Consulting LLC.
Steve LaVigne: The Executive Board is responsible for providing and sustaining research and development products and services.
Steve LaVigne: Basically the Executive Board keeps the business end of things running smoothly so that IMA can provide its members with the services they need.
Steve LaVigne: This next slide simplifies how to start your very own Working Group.
Steve LaVigne: It follows the Lean Six Sigma process and gets the whole experience down to 7 easy steps.
Steve LaVigne: Basically it gets down to this:
Steve LaVigne: Step 1. Choose a category from the list. Find one that fits the best!
Steve LaVigne: Step 2. Email Steve with a short writeup of your idea and how you want to do your new project.
Steve LaVigne: Steve will send you an email back that has whether your group idea is unique or not and direct you appropriately.
Steve LaVigne: Step 3. So your idea is unique!
Steve LaVigne: We then set up on Open Project and get you started there.
Steve LaVigne: You begin recruiting your Working Group members and get together and decide when and where your first meeting will be.
Steve LaVigne: IMA has places to meet all setup for the IMA Grid for Working Group Meetings.
Steve LaVigne: They are being built here on Prv02 to the east of us.
Steve LaVigne: There will be a copy of that region on the IMA Community Grid when the server work is finished.
Steve LaVigne: There are also other places to meet around in outside settings all over or even here in the Welcome Center.
Steve LaVigne: Step 4. So your first meeting happens!
Steve LaVigne: You have your group all together and are ready to get to work!
Steve LaVigne: In the first meeting you are already on step 4 of the plan here.
Steve LaVigne: You decide on some details as a working group:
Steve LaVigne: What is the research question, mission or problem statement?
Steve LaVigne: Who will do what to get that done?
Steve LaVigne: When and where will you meet?
Steve LaVigne: This can all go into Open Project.
Steve LaVigne: Step 5. If your group is really together you can go on to step 5 in your first meeting.
Steve LaVigne: Fill in Open Project with your project timeline or in other words create a project roadmap.
Steve LaVigne: How you will organize or gather the information you will need to start and complete the project?
Steve LaVigne: How will you measure your progress along the timeline?
Steve LaVigne: How will you analyze your research data or complete the tasks?
Steve LaVigne: Step 6. Then the working group does the work while the leader of the group manages the roadmap timeline in Open Project.
Steve LaVigne: The Director Contact will review the group’s Open Project entries and will meet with the group on a regular basis to offer support and help their project be successful.
Steve LaVigne: 7. When the project is completed, the group publishes or presents their results.
Steve LaVigne: IMA will help with getting the word out about their success!
Steve LaVigne: The Working Group can also offer code back to the core of the version they are working on if they desire.
Steve LaVigne: Then it’s Party Time!
Steve LaVigne: As you can see, the process is pretty simple and well organized.
Steve LaVigne: IMA is dedicated to providing our Working Groups with all the help they need to succeed.
Steve LaVigne: We will not drag Working Groups along.
Steve LaVigne: We will gently guide and advise them along their journey.
Steve LaVigne: IMA is setting up a very powerful, very well connected server for use by our Members.
Steve LaVigne: The server will have a variety of OpenSim servers on it that will be dedicated to being there for Members to use for development and testing of their code and scripts on the various platforms.
Steve LaVigne: This gives a good platform to compare metrics in a similar controlled environment.
Steve LaVigne: One of the things that you will need to know is that IMA is not just here about OpenSim versions.
Steve LaVigne: We intend to do parallel development on what we call the next next generation of Virtual World technology.
Steve LaVigne: We are intending to get together and design the future using the lessons we have learned in the past.
Steve LaVigne: This will be for sure a grand adventure!
Steve LaVigne: IMA considers OpenSim a step along that path and some of the technology will come from what we have learned there.
Steve LaVigne: We can see that OpenSim in one version or another will continue to be a viable solution for some projects in years to come.
Steve LaVigne: IMA is dedicated to the Open Simulator community to help them create and maintain the new technology that they need to have in the future.
Steve LaVigne: IMA is community centered as all we do comes from our community’s great ideas and hard work.
Steve LaVigne: IMA is also reaching out to Education, Commercial Enterprises, and Government to
Steve LaVigne: help them understand what a well designed and managed Virtual World system can do for them and
Steve LaVigne: the excellent return on investment using Virtual Technology can provide.
Steve LaVigne: Do you have any questions you would like to ask?
Steve LaVigne: Just put them in the chat and we will answer then as best we can!
Isis Ophelia: <--- raises hand for 3 questions, when it is my time
Steve LaVigne: Thank you very much for coming today!
---------------------------------------------------------end presentation
Isis Ophelia: thanks Steve
Barbara Truman: Nice overview!
Will Burns balances a muffin on Selby's head
Isis Ophelia: I prefer to type for now
Myron Curtis: Good work Steve and Lisa
Barbara Truman: Will be AFK in just a few - conf call came up. ugh
Isis Ophelia: do you give me the floor Steve?
Isis Ophelia: thanks :)
Gentle- Heron: Voice is breaking up badly for me (lousy internet here in the rural area where I live) so text is helpful for me. Thanks.
Isis Ophelia: 1) how have you planned to accomodate the different time zones
Dieter Heyne: could have been my question, too :))
Isis Ophelia: 2) One person has a unique project, how is the communication planned so that person
Isis Ophelia: exactly
Isis Ophelia: exactly ok will leave it for now to the 1st question
Tim Elliott: How is it coming with developing a web-based virtual world ?
Isis Ophelia: Tim give a minute, I am quick done with my questions :)
Isis Ophelia: right
Isis Ophelia: ok seems I need to speak in voice haha
Isis Ophelia: ok let me go in voice
Lisa Laxton: working groups set their meeting schedules themselves but can use our calendar
Lisa Laxton: when you contact steve he will facilitate
Isis Ophelia: ok
Isis Ophelia: need to toggle voice
Lisa Laxton: and the calendar is public
Isis Ophelia: 2) Person has a unique project. How does he find out who else is in IMA, how will he find his gorup members?
Evie Marie is Online
Isis Ophelia: how is the communication between people planned to be?
Lisa Laxton: sometimes groups need to have multiple meetings to accommodate members in different time zones... but the coordination of their work inside open project makes the information available to all
Lisa Laxton: through steve
Evie Marie: wb Selby
Selby- Evans: I lost voice -relogging
Lisa Laxton: ok hb
Will Burns raises hand
Robert Adams: also an email list where one can broadcast messsages like "hey, who is interested in X?"
Lisa Laxton: published list of advisory board members and the director's council will happen soon... and a social network will be setup as well so that members will be able to communicate with each publicly :)
Lisa Laxton: thanks will
Isis Ophelia is Online
Steve LaVigne: That would work as well- we have a G+ type of thing that is just for community.
Isis Ophelia: sorry my viewer just closed
Steve LaVigne: people can post in there too
Lisa Laxton: correct that is planned
Isis Ophelia: right
Lisa Laxton: bill commented we need a master list of projects
Lisa Laxton: and that is planned
Lisa Laxton: this is a function of open project
Myron Curtis is Offline
Isis Ophelia: thank you Bill :)
Lisa Laxton: and our social network
Lisa Laxton: and in open project
Lisa Laxton: as well as G+
Lisa Laxton: it exists
Lisa Laxton: already
Lisa Laxton: some sites are closed
Lisa Laxton: in the support menus
Isis Ophelia: fine, me is satisfied :))
Lisa Laxton: we have a plan for a community built knowledge base
Lisa Laxton: where faq's will exist
Will Burns: WIKI?
Isis Ophelia: sounds good
Gentle- Heron is Online
Steve LaVigne: Hi Tim! Welcome!
Robert Adams: Robert's question: how are conflicts resolved? voting? benevolent dictatorship? forking?
Bill The-Grump-Blight: Nuclear Weapons
Dahlia Trimble: lol forking
Evie Marie: haha
Will Burns: Rock Paper Scissors
Isis Ophelia: lol Bill
Isis Ophelia: we need a pychological mediator lol joking
Bill The-Grump-Blight: Should not also the person who formed the working group be the first line of conflict resolution ..
Lisa Laxton: lol
Isis Ophelia: agree with Bill
Bob Curtice: 16 people online: Server is running at average of 6% and spikes at 20% CPU use.
Isis Ophelia: (Bom yes, but that Singularity simply closes is though an issue you might want to look at) :)
Lisa Laxton: conflict resolution is built into the structure
Isis Ophelia: uh meant Rob
Bill The-Grump-Blight: Personal opinion, it should be defined IF the person that created the group actually is in charge of that group, should conflicts arise
Bill The-Grump-Blight: but if cannot be resolved, be escalated
Robert Adams: will IMA be doing 'standards' or will IMA just be supporting groups that are developing standards with existing organizations?
Lisa Laxton: working groups are autonomous so they decide what their governance is
Selby- Evans: Coflicts will usually be resolved in the WG.
Will Burns raises hand
Isis Ophelia: Robert has a question
Dahlia Trimble: existing organizations (IETF, IEEE, etc) might have more merit
Myron Curtis: the existing organizations will be resources
Robert Adams: the other groups have voting and all that resolution process for standards
Bill The-Grump-Blight: Personally I think standards are very esoteric, because getting anyone to actually accept them in a already established market/community is going to be almost impossible. But I good idea ..
Bill The-Grump-Blight: "But A good Idea"
Lisa Laxton: agreed myron
Myron Curtis: So far there has been little traction for getting those other groups to see virtual worlds as being worth their effort, but with IMA they will realize that virtual worlds are a valid industry.
Will Burns: Thing about standards is - the way to get them adopted universally is to actually put out the products that use them and show they have an advantage. When it is adopted in a consumer fashion meeting their needs, the rest will follow.
Myron Curtis: correct Will
Selby- Evans: We are working with Dieter.
Will Burns: Standards follow the Field of Dreams model. If you build it, they will come.
Myron Curtis: I would be interested in finding out what members of this group think should be standardized.
Will Burns: So if you wanted a standard for interop... you build the APIs and stuff to do that and allow others to use them.
Myron Curtis: right
Will Burns: It's really a saturation point to address
Lisa Laxton: we have about 10 minutes left in our time... a few of us have another meeting at 3 pm so we want to be sure everyone gets an opportunity to ask questions or make comments
Mal Burns: could start with cross platform chat/comms
Myron Curtis: Good
Will Burns raises hand for a comment in voice
Myron Curtis: There are some efforts on that.
Lisa Laxton: wb dahlia
Dahlia Trimble: ty I crashed
Lisa Laxton: yes
Robert Adams: my question is whether the existing defined structure is sufficient for what we want to do with standards.... it sounds like the answer is 'yes' since we don't need an additional process for voting/reviewing/refining standards (since we'd be using the existing structures of external groups)
Dahlia Trimble: there's probably hundreds of those kids working on new VR things right now
Robert Adams: IMA just needs the process for creating and managing working groups that are working on any such standard
Myron Curtis: :-)
Lisa Laxton: a valid concern robert and one for the advisory board to discuss... the good thing is, with the flexible legal structure, IMA can adapt as needed based on the advisory board inputs
Myron Curtis: Thats the beauty of this.
Myron Curtis: Hi Tim
Isis Ophelia: wb Tim
Lisa Laxton: nothing "hard coded"
Lisa Laxton: tim, try clicking the cushion not the counch
Lisa Laxton: couch
Isis Ophelia: no just a comment
Lisa Laxton: go for it
Myron Curtis: We are trying to design a system that is agile enough to keep up with the fast evolution of our technologies.
Will Burns: Modular approach I think is the way to go... being able to change out modules for functionality as needed without a total re-write of code
Lisa Laxton: agreed myron
Isis Ophelia: listening to all questions, remarks, etc. I dont see for myself how I could be of any use in this :)
Lisa Laxton: agreed will
Mal Burns: sorry got here late, prob missed a lot
Isis Ophelia: because
Isis Ophelia: I am no techie person
Robert Adams whispers: I have a hard stop at 11:30
Lisa Laxton: i see you can be of great use Isis :)
Steve LaVigne: yes we have always seen the need for a modular approach with a solid core
Lisa Laxton: we will talk more you and I :)
Isis Ophelia: because I am more the kind of social experienced person working in social work
Dieter Heyne: I agree with Will ... the key are small (well testable) components ... like micro services
Lisa Laxton: agreed dieter
Evie Marie: Agreed
Isis Ophelia: ah ja?
Evie Marie: <<part of the geek squad
Isis Ophelia: had not think about that
Isis Ophelia: thought everything is about 3d techniques
Dahlia Trimble: <-- burned out geek
Lisa Laxton: everyone who has been invited and some more folks we have not gotten to yet brings something different to the table :)
Isis Ophelia: lol
Myron Curtis: Those micro services need to be maintained and supported, but if people like you Isis are not around to tell us what you need we won't know to fix or provide them.
Lisa Laxton: good point myron!
Isis Ophelia: good point
Isis Ophelia: I might ask you difficult questions though hehe
Isis Ophelia: lol
Isis Ophelia: ok end
Selby- Evans: we can't make virtual worlds for only geeks
Myron Curtis: Please do ask the difficult questions.
Evie Marie: exactly!
Isis Ophelia: ok will come back when I am that grandma :P
Tim Elliott: How is coming with developing a web-based virtual world?
Isis Ophelia: lol
Myron Curtis: :-)
Dahlia Trimble: lets hope people's 92 year old grandmas have good graphics cards in their computers
Isis Ophelia: good question
Will Burns: There's always a point to be made for including those "untested rogues" in our groups. Sure they might not speak the language and be a little green, but they have a way of seeing things the seasoned vets might miss, or approaching things from a whole other angle we never thought of to produce those "miracles"
Myron Curtis: Very slowly. That is sthe same issue everyone working on web based worlds encounters.
Lisa Laxton: great comment there will
Myron Curtis: yes
Selby- Evans: See here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/113820090045883309705
Robert Adams: yes... working group!
Selby- Evans: 3D web-worlds of the browser
Myron Curtis: We may need to rewrite significant amounts of the source code and either update or replace the current http services built into opensim before we have lift off.
Will Burns: I agree, Myron.
Lisa Laxton: probably a good idea to send steve email with agenda items for upcoming meetings
Selby- Evans: I am the NPC web-world almost every day at 10 slt
Dieter Heyne: you are right Myron ... communications between browser and backend is the first hurdle
Myron Curtis: Good to know.
Selby- Evans: come in and we can talk about it
Robert Adams: is this an advisory group meeting or a 'browser VR' working group organizational meeting?
Isis Ophelia: oh yes, let us meet Selby to test how it works with more people :)
Dahlia Trimble: sorry I have to go, ty for inviting me. I should be able to come next time. bye all :)
Lisa Laxton: see you soon dahlia!
Myron Curtis: thanks for being here
Robert Adams: take care, Dahlia
Selby- Evans: the web link I gave it a Gooogle Commuinity
Lisa Laxton: robert nothing is off the table :)
Robert Adams: when can we organize a browser vr organizational meeting?
Steve LaVigne: Thank You Dahlia?
Steve LaVigne: !
Isis Ophelia: for me is monthly better
Mal Burns: prob monthly, but am easy
Robert Adams: I will work with steve to organize such a meeting
Isis Ophelia: and here is the link to meet Selby in the web 3d world https://nonprofitvirtualworld.org/location.html?locationid=800000002&dl=true
Isis Ophelia: each day at 10 am California time
Lisa Laxton: our goal today was to organize and provide information on how IMA is structured and the role of the advisory board
Gentle- Heron: I'm used to translating from Pacific time
Robert Adams: I'm going offline.... my avatar will stay here to get any more chat.... I'll contact steve who will give me pointers to interested people to create a 'browser vr 'working group'
Evie Marie: grid time
Mal Burns: UK or pacific - all else confuse me lol
Isis Ophelia: yes, I am used to pacific time
Steve LaVigne: I want to be in that group for sure!
Dieter Heyne: I would love ot join that group, too :D
Robert Adams: for sure, Dieter
Isis Ophelia: SSteve?
Will Burns: Put a timezone translator on the site :) So people can get a "their time" on stuff
Bill The-Grump-Blight: personally I think it should be whatever grid time is
Lisa Laxton: not all grids use pacific time
Will Burns: one thing about being in a global society like a virtual world system, is that we learn to translate timezones globally.
Lisa Laxton: right willl and that is why we choose the google calendar for IMA Events... it translates the time for all users
Selby- Evans: Google search does time conversions easily . I only need the time zone
Lisa Laxton: no need to search or use another tool
Will Burns: I use Google Calendar... it translates for me
Lisa Laxton: exactly
Lisa Laxton: we are trying to accommodate for different time zones
Lisa Laxton: by choosing this time
Steve LaVigne: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Lisa Laxton: any other questions?
Steve LaVigne: ste-be in Skype
Will Burns: La-Veeg-nae
Will Burns chuckles
Lisa Laxton: ist gut!
Dieter Heyne: and I thought that isis when water freezes :p
Lisa Laxton: lol dieter
Mal Burns: as in vigmette
Gentle- Heron shakes her head at Dieter
Will Burns: It's alright... I usually have to put a disclaimer in my profile saying I'm not related to Mal lol
Lisa Laxton: lol will
Bob Curtice: :)
Gentle- Heron: Will!
Will Burns: I've given up and started saying the adoption paperwork is still ongoing
Mal Burns: he calls me "bro" in IM though!!
Steve LaVigne: lol
Barbara Truman is Online
Selby- Evans: time for me too go -- HG Safari
Myron Curtis: AFK
Evie Marie: Thx everyone! Great meeting. I'll see you next week
Cherry Park sofa: Permission denied, please resit on me.
Evie Marie is Offline
Bob Curtice: Ok!
Cherry Park sofa: Permission denied, please resit on me.
Mal Burns: heading to safaro too - so see all next time!
Myron Curtis: Bye all
Myron Curtis is Offline
Primitive: Permission denied, please resit on me.
Isis Ophelia is Offline
Bill The-Grump-Blight: back to work at my place ... cya later
Lisa Laxton: k bill!
Will Burns shuffles through the thousands of ideas in his head
Gentle- Heron: Back to other worlds for now. Bye all.
Lisa Laxton: bbye gentle!
Dieter Heyne: bye gentle!
Will Burns: I'd volunteer some ideas but most of them are for "down the road"
Gentle- Heron is Offline
Barbara Truman: Great meeting
Will Burns: I would suggest the following though
Bob Curtice: A life again!! Lol
Will Burns: If we're looking at working groups to address stuff
Steve LaVigne: Will your down the road ideas need to be written down though so we can put them on the roadmap
Will Burns: One of the things I would suggest on the low level end (back-end)
Bob Curtice: Will be working on the IMA server issues today.
Will Burns: would be the ability to co-process regions
Steve LaVigne: ah tell us more Will
Steve LaVigne: like DSG?
Will Burns: To an extent yes
Will Burns: Maybe the same
Will Burns: But essentially
Steve LaVigne: we are looking into DSG actually now Will to see how it worked
Will Burns: idle regions are wasted processing. When we have popular regions crippled from traffic and such, why not have a way to co-process the regions with those idle regions
Bob Curtice: What is "co-process regions"?
Bob Curtice: Ok
Steve LaVigne: Robert you have any input we will be grateful!
Will Burns: when you have a super computer among servers, no point in ignoring it
Steve LaVigne: He is AFK now but he will chime in later!
Bob Curtice: That is done in Halcyon by how the region servers can be set up.
Will Burns: would prolly help a lot with concurrency
Lisa Laxton: making call but will be watching
Will Burns: same deal with ability to peer share cache to lessen the load on main servers and speed up delivery of assets in groups
Barbara Truman: Terrific turnout today, Thanks!
Will Burns: that last one prolly only works best in larger groups and not small groups
Will Burns: which is exactly where it would be needed anyway
Steve LaVigne: yes I am thinking that we also need to be working toward a distributed computing model using the graphic cards of clients as co-servers to distribute the scene
Barbara Truman: FYI: The IMA twitter account is @IMATalks
Bill The-Grump-Blight: On linux I renice my lower traffic regions so they cannot take resources away from other regions that need them. Kind of simple actually
Steve LaVigne: ah so you do bandwidth shaping of a kind?
Will Burns: Yes, something to that effect. Where the entire server farm is a collective wimpy computer cluster
Steve LaVigne: Bill's server is really fast
Steve LaVigne: yes
Bill The-Grump-Blight: renice forces the process to a much lower priority so it cannot exceed or overrun other processes
Will Burns: ganging up on popular regions instead of making a single server handle it and crumble
Steve LaVigne: Actually my friend Scott says that the wimpy computers run virtual worlds better than the beasty ones due to caching
Will Burns: I think that being a baseline sort of configuration would be most beneficial and helpful for a beginning
Bill The-Grump-Blight: I normally start my bigger regions with a much higher priority, so they have the resources allocated ..
Bill The-Grump-Blight: even to the point of assigning specific cpu cores to specific instances
Steve LaVigne: yes I want to see a WG that researches the effects of different types of servers work in VW
Steve LaVigne: so like maybe a pile of Raspberry Pi's in a cluster anyone?
Dieter Heyne: a smartphone has more power than the servers I am using for testing ;-)
Bill The-Grump-Blight: ie, Region 1 has core 0, region 2 has cores 1-2 region 3 has cores 3,4,5,6
Dieter Heyne: Selbys nonprofit virtual world runs on a single cpu with 512MB of RAM
Will Burns: Therein is also the addition of Solipsis methodologies whereby area of importance determines updates and an ad-hoc peer sharing instead of a central server trying to keep up on everyone's updates
Bob Curtice: Server Implementation strategies and grid setup affects overall performance and a number of them can have the same outcome. It all will affect the scalability of the grid depending on what is done.
Will Burns nods
Will Burns: to answer that all important question:
Bill The-Grump-Blight: Same software, same specs, with different admins = different results
Will Burns: What happens if you *do* become the popular defacto and everyone shows up?
Bob Curtice: ;)
Will Burns: I think it's a blessing that opensim and SL etc haven't had that issue yet with popularity and mainstream adoption
Will Burns: cause if a billion people jumped in here it would go up in flames
Steve LaVigne: that is very true
Will Burns: so we design a back-end that anticipates billions of users simultaneous
Dieter Heyne: indeed ... just look at the initial problems with pokemon go
Steve LaVigne: that is why we need to work towards that billion people VW
Bob Curtice: yeah. The load on SL was big enough and had a lot of growing pains as LL had to figure out how to deal with it.
Will Burns: so if you have ... say...
Will Burns: 100,000 people on a region
Will Burns: the system won't blink
Steve LaVigne: yes Dieter and Pokemon Go was initially something else before and tested but too many people at once happens!
Dieter Heyne: exactly!
Will Burns: I'd also suggest a working group to implement Zones in OpenSim
Will Burns: that will do a hell of a lot (when used proper) to mitigate the load and speed things up
Steve LaVigne: If the system was distributed the 100,000 would be all doing their share of the load
Will Burns: right
Bob Curtice: Cant have that many unless there are multiple levels on the region. Max possible: 65536 avtars one per sq M. lol!
Bill The-Grump-Blight: Therefore no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force.
Bill The-Grump-Blight: LOL
Steve LaVigne: Will tell me more about zones..
Will Burns: and you only need to kick that on when it reaches a saturation point - otherwise let the central server handle it
Steve LaVigne: yes kinda like a turbo mode!
Will Burns: Better if I explained in voice and demo
Steve LaVigne: yes maybe
Lisa Laxton: we are on the call
Lisa Laxton: myron
Steve LaVigne: OK
Steve LaVigne: I will be there tight away
Bill The-Grump-Blight: Bob, unless it is a var region , 16x16 =16777216 square meters ... LOL
Steve LaVigne: CU later guys! I will be watching chat here
Myron Curtis is Online
Bob Curtice: Yes, Halcyon does not support var regions for performance reasons at this time.
Bill The-Grump-Blight is Offline
Bob Curtice: That is a definition for 3D parceling.
Bob Curtice: That has long been wanted in SL...
Bob Curtice: And rivers, lakes etc.
Bob Curtice: Software core programming for how deal with 3D Parceling processing. If that is created as a new "prim" type or extending the parcel creation space.
Myron Curtis is Offline
Bob Curtice: Yes, equivalent given a starting definition for it. Parceling controls are defined while they dont exist for prims. At least in OS or Halcyon atm..
Tim Elliott: Dieter, Steve has told me that you have design a web-based viewer from scratch .
Lisa Laxton: dahlia wrote a web viewer for opensim a year ago so we need to get everyone together
Dieter Heyne: @Tim ... yes, that's right
Dieter Heyne: but it's not only a viewer ... it's a whole web-based grid
Bob Curtice: A lot of latency lag that way. That is the primary problem with using cloud servers in a datacenter. Kills performance.
Tim Elliott: how does it work ?
Bob Curtice: Ok. I should ask a different question: ARe you talking about multiple users hosing a region on their home computer or a datacenter hosted grid on a server?
Bob Curtice: hosting... not hosing... lol
Tim Elliott: Does it work well ?
Dieter Heyne: the backend is a "normal" LAMP stack (Linux-Apache-PHP-mySQL) ... the viewer is HTML/CSS/JavaScript/Three.JS with webGL and webRTC
Bob Curtice: yes, shortest latency times with shared load option. Some Operating systems have been made to do that also. I have never seen any real performance stats on them.
Primitive: Permission denied, please resit on me.
Bailyville sectional sofa: Permission denied, please resit on me.
Dieter Heyne: it is working great with little resources .. we already had a 2-digit number of concurrent visitors
Dieter Heyne: and up until 8 or 10 people even voice is working well
Bob Curtice: MOSES resolved that in how they set up a region server. Used one region server and put in 50 regions all running independent instances. Could have 100 people running around in any of the regions or one and no change in load.
Bob Curtice: That is in the MOSES Halcyon grid.
Bob Curtice: The server performance and grid setup strategies have been close secrets with the commercial grids that are operating at large user capacity. No reason to give that to competitors.
Bob Curtice: With the IMA grids I am setting up and those who are willing to share that information, we will be getting implementation performance stats posted.
Will Burns nods
Will Burns: That being said... I do have to jet
Bob Curtice: Ok see you later!
Will Burns: Take care everyone :)
Barbara Truman: Bye Will!
Dieter Heyne: bye Will
Steve LaVigne: Bye Will- Thanks for coming!
Will Burns is Offline
Bob Curtice: Server barely reached 20% CPU use and then only in short spikes. Not sure what that was about as it did not correspond with anything visible happening here. Average CPU use was about 5%.
Barbara Truman: Good to know, thanks Bob!
Bob Curtice: Not too bad. Would need to see 50 avatars here to see what happens. most of the lag causing content is not in here.
----- end capture… total time: 112 minutes
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