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ep35. VR communities - West Park Park Bench Podcast | Otter.ai

ep35. VR communities - West Park Park Bench Podcast

Caron Lyon29min

Caron Lyon

00:03

Welcome to Episode 35 of the West Park park bench Podcast. Today I'm going to share with you the journey of my virtual reality communities. Now, this has come about because I'm currently doing a research project with Stripe Partners and they are asking people about how they use VR, their VR communities and specifically how you interact with and what you get from virtual reality communities.

Caron Lyon

00:42

So my journey starts back in the wilds, it's probably 1996 Maybe even 92 but round about that kind of time. And there is a blog post I will put in the show notes about this time and it was when I discovered Legend Quest, and legend Quest was a virtual reality gaming adventure. It was situated at the bottom of Goose Gate in Hockley. And it was where Dungeons and Dragons type people came together. There was a little cafe and you could go adventuring in these four character pods. And there was only four people at a time. And there was only one game that could be loaded at a time out of two games that were available. There was legend quest and there was Dactyl and Legend Quest was a Dungeons and Dragons adventure game. And it was probably over one summer that I explored that in Nottingham, and that was that was it. I went to university and really struggled to engage with consoles like the PS1 when that came along. I never quite got the hang of being so detached from the first person experience. I really really enjoyed that and I was looking for that mid 2000s 2006 I escaped to Second Life. I had left the entertainment industry to try and be a real girl a real person and get a proper job. And I did quite well for a while I retrained in web design and community management and discovered things like intranet and I got a job doing that. But it didn't go quite to plan. I ended up leaving and and had some time where I kind of again had to redefine myself and Second Life was there. I found it I escaped to it. And I met a group of people who were creating events and making art and performing music and poetry and theatre in a virtual space. It was experimental and they were entertaining audiences. And there was a mechanism within Second Life where you could put an object on the ground and it could take payments so people had hats and would have tips. Their avatars were animated to have a guitar if they will guitarist so whilst they were playing through a audio stream, their avatar would be on stage performing to the music with different animations. And in that time when those events weren't happening, there were communities that would pop up around virtual buildings and because people wanted to draw people to their spaces, there were objects that you could put your avatar on and if you stayed there for a certain time you would earn money. So I was part of a group called Roths Tower and in Roths Tower, there was a bit of a disco going on, and you would put your avatar on a dance pad and you would dance away whilst you would text messaging and talking to people in the room. And that would earn you a little bit of Linden Dollars. So for the first part of my second life adventure, I was really keen on not putting any money and I wanted to see if I could make my living in world. It didn't really need a lot. I think it was 25 lindens dollars to the pound at the time. And you'd earn sort of one Linden or half a linden so that notion have introduced me to micro payments. And then I got to a point where I thought, I wonder if I could bring a company in here. And I encountered a artistic director called Marcus Romer who was artistic director of Pilot Theatre and was also happen to be exploring emerging technologies. And we talked about Second Life and hey, wouldn't it be great to have a building in Second Life that could have posters on the wall and could have the next cast and maybe play audio podcasts? Of from the designer and the director and the costume designer, just to kind of give a sense of of what the show was about because it was a touring theatre company didn't have a home base. So for about a year, we built this space and got to the point where hey, let's do something and then we had the problem of being able to take the real world into a virtual space, and that that mechanic and that communication between the two worlds can be quite tricky. And at the time, we were 2007 2008. At that point ADSL was just so expensive, and it would have cost us more to get an internet line for the day that we needed to demo it and let people in than it actually cost for the entire event. So that kind of came to to a halt, and I wandered off into the wasteland, and I maintained the virtual space and having an avatar, I think is really important. So my avatars name was Katie Reeve and I've been really keen to keep that identity through the virtual worlds that I've since experimented in.

Caron Lyon

06:35

So there's this sense of continuity, and it's very easy to become disconnected from the real world when you don't know who you are. And I think it's even more so in virtual worlds if you don't know who you are you having to reinvent yourself every single platform and for me, I didn't want to do that I wanted to take a memory and I wanted to take something with me that all my learning and all my experience would go with me and Katie is that character.

Caron Lyon

07:06

More and more of recent years and months, I have started to create accounts for me as Caron Lyon, but I've still maintained an identity as Katie Reeve. And ironically, Katie has become a virtual intern. And there is a company that has Katie as their intern. Because it's a way of giving them support and moderation for Facebook in this instance, that I can't do by attaching it to my own identity.

Caron Lyon

07:42

Because, they're not paying for me basically. They don't they they're not paying for me. It's I mean go to the dock, the hairdressers and you either have the lead stylists or you have the intern or the junior stylists. So Katie gives me this capacity. And she has, you know, she now has had accounts since 2006. So, you know, in that sense, she's kind of my teenage daughter in an odd way. It's interesting to see that life.

Caron Lyon

08:13

so Second Life was a real foundation. And then there was a lot of years where I saw VR emerge but this tethered virtual reality this having to be in the computer and be by a computer and have the headset in was very, very expensive and I couldn't see a way that I would ever really be able to get over that hurdle because I had no justification for it. I mean, I ended up...

Caron Lyon

08:43

the journey of me getting an iPad when I first... when iPads first came out, fantastic, but all I could see it for me at that time, was a very expensive PDF reader. I didn't have a need for it. And finally I was able to get a secondhand one. I was able to use it for PDFs, but then discovered all of the other things that can be done with it. You don't know that. You only see the initial investment and if that investment is actually fundamental to your standard of living, it's problematic. So there was an opportunity where I was offered a Oculus Quest One headset, and it was around for me to be able to use. I was using it as someone else's account, but I was able to put it on, go inside. Feel my way around. And it took time. One thing that I discovered was AltSpace I wanted Second Life didn't go into VR, if it had a different story. Similarly, my whole journey into social media. If CD rewriters had emerged faster than they did, I probably wouldn't be telling this story either. So I guess the pivotal moments within tech

Caron Lyon

09:57

and having... having explored what it did. I discovered VR tolerance or intolerance and that actually initially 10 minutes is exhausting. And then you could work yourself 15 minutes and then you get exhausted and you realise you're about 30 minutes in and for me 30 minutes in is is a point where I can continue but it's only if there's something really interesting to stay for. After 30 minutes, I would often find either want to go somewhere else or I need to take a break. So I discovered AltSpace. Again, AltSpace, wandered around. I never really found the community in the way that I found the community in Second Life, but I knew it was there and I wanted to be able to find it. Now the thing with Second Life is that you can kind of free roam, you could walk across servers. I have heard the story from Philip Rosendale, the creator of Second Life that the servers are all connected. So in the beginning, they had to turn this off because of the amount of processing power it took. But if you dropped a pebble in one server, it could ripple across the entire network if it had the momentum and the physics which blows my mind that that was something that was possible then and they turned off a lot of that stuff because of the processing power.

Caron Lyon

11:30

So AltSpace, I found the community of AltSpace in Facebook groups. Now, Lots of those groups that were communicating in Facebook were very much set in a way that had migrated them out of AltSpace and as a result, they often centred around personal arguments personal trauma. People say one thing to someone else, someone not being happy, and it's very difficult to really find your way into that conversation apart from feeling like you were this voyeur. So I've always felt a little bit of a voyeur in AltSpace. And then I had the opportunity to from my live streaming experience. I'd been live streaming 2015 2016 for Cybersalon. Now Cybersalon is a group of academic and business and commerce thinkers who are immersed in technologies...

Caron Lyon

12:39

...pausing the thinking because yes, sitting in West Park, I am on a bench and I have people promenade past and we've just had, but to say if you listen to these podcasts, you'll know that this is an opportunity for me to pause. And if I can pick up where I left off, it means that I wasn't completely rambling and that I was structured in some way. So I can say that I can pick this up from AltSpace and finding that I was a bit of a voyeur.

Caron Lyon

13:15

But talking to Eva Pascoe at cybersalon, in 1994, so right at the start of my VR experience, there was an internet cafe called Cyberia. It was the first internet cafe. And it was it's 39 Whitfield Street in central London. And Eva wanted to reconstruct that building in a virtual space as a venue, as a place that people could use his pilgrimage that people could use to reconnect that people could use to hold sessions, to talk to just meet up to have a liminal space a space that is a Room of Requirement. A space that is there all the time, that doesn't rely on the person who created it, to open it up and allow people in and this is the thing with digital, things like Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, they all mechanisms in which people meet but the host is the controller. And those spaces tend not to exist, unless there is a meeting called and then the host joins the meeting opens and people can come in.

Caron Lyon

14:44

There are tools you can turn off so in zoom, you can allow people to enter before the host. So in theory, you could have a room of requirement that is a Zoom Room. You wouldn't be the host so it's just a space. Whereby I've used for exactly this purpose for Room of Requirement. There are several communities that have Whereby spaces that I have given them admin access to and it is a space that when they want to hold a video meeting, they can go into that room and it's there. And only people with that link can have that they can lock the door when they want to do a meeting. So if someone turns up that they didn't expect, they know who's there they can let them in. So that sense of having that but having something that was in a virtual space.

Caron Lyon

15:35

so moderation tools are important. And so this was the thing about AltSpace. It had a great range of moderation tools from the start. So we were able to build Cyberia, which I won't go over the building of this here. That's probably another podcast, but we had this building and we had three events that were held in there. One was a hybrid between a physical event streaming into zoom, and then the Zoom audience being able to see into the space, but also being able to screenshare into AltSpace and then being able to see what was going on in art space. We then did an event where we kind of expanded that a bit and actually had people on the screen so people in the space, the virtual space could see the people so it was more of a community that already existed looking for ways to connect. And those ways do rely on the foundation of the platform still being there. There's an entry point that you kind of have to learn and there's those hurdles.

Caron Lyon

16:42

And that was a little bit about the downfall of Second Life really is the the learning curve of actually getting in with an avatar and going through the traditional... You're here for the first time, you're going to build your avatar, you're going to do a tutorial, you're going to explore the world. Rather than being a front door into a venue that you're going to something that you know where you're going to go you just need the basics.

Caron Lyon

17:08

So sadly Second Life no sadly Altspace... Sunset.

Caron Lyon

17:15

Now this was a really curious way to bring a platform to the end it wasn't closed down. It wasn't ended. It was Sunset. Now sunsets have sunrises. So I think there may be something that emerged phoenix like at some point, but right now that left so from being able to do meetings that had events that had a foot in both camps, we ended up deciding... No, actually, let's just present in AltSpace. So our host Ben Greenaway. was at home in his headsets in Cyberia 39 Whitfield Street in AltSpace. Standing at the end of the room, we had a projection screen on the wall to which I was able to present content on to so as he announced the act that was going to play. We didn't do them live because that would have been very, very risky. And we wanted to get it right first so they provided pre recorded content. They came in on their headset. They had a little bit of a chat to Ben and then it was play VT and I played something on we moved on Ben also did a presentation that kind of summarised where we were at that point in terms of virtual social is really great presentation which he used the media player to be able to actually action his own slides that I had pre set for him.

Caron Lyon

18:57

You may be able to hear a plane going overhead.

Caron Lyon

19:01

But this brings me into the current space and coming out of AltSpace. I didn't want to just bring the community to an end. I wanted to finish in a new space. So that meant well, What new space? and quite a lot of research had been done through the AltSpace, Facebook groups. And a lot of people were going and checking out loads of different platforms and there was one person who put together a spreadsheet that had all of the worlds on and the tools that they had. It was a piece of research that I must myself really wanted to do. And there was a lot of that groundwork that has been done by that community. Fantastic set of work which allowed me to go into my headset now that I was familiar and comfortable with being in AltSpace and just go and visit some of these spaces and just see if I could get into them be what was the entry level of attention that I needed and commitment to actually get in and then once I was in there, could I find anybody?

Caron Lyon

20:07

Sadly, the answers tended to be no. There was one that I did find was a mental health and wellbeing community that I will link in the description. I will link in the chat. And also one that I've discovered is Alcove which is four people at a time in a space to be able to go on a little bit of a retreat. It's a apartment that's got a front room. It's got a porch, and it's got a viewing platform. And you've got games in there a little bit so I've put that in there as well.

Caron Lyon

20:50

But the one that I came down upon that held my attention not because it was perfect by any means, but because it had some traction from the community around me. So it's been recommended quite a lot. And also, it was easy to access. So you could go in you could put in your Google details. You could decide to build your avatar and you were away and you could start exploring. And again, not highly populated, but I think it depends what time you're actually in these spaces. So for me, of course, GMT or BST a lot of the activity that goes on tends to be Asia Pacific and the US states. So different time zones. And I think lots more activity goes on then. But it was somewhere that the next stage was. Can I get something in here? How easy is it to build for me? as a service provider to a community. And as it happens, blender and unity that we use for AltSpace, we were able to take that model, adapt it slightly for the conventions of Spatial and take that into Spatial so we have Cyberia in Spatial ready to visit, it's accessed by link only so I do have the capacity to minimal, minimal, minimal moderation. And that minimal moderation actually comes at a price at $25 a month. And I was very reluctant to pay one of those initially. I could stop and start it there's no obligation to keep it going. But once you've got them inevitably they roll over. So spatial is the one that I'm with at the moment. And with that I can mute everybody in the room. I can move everybody to seats, which is interesting. So if it's a cabaret style or with Cyberia, there are seats inside the cafe. So when an event starts, I could put everybody to their seats and bring everybody in. There is a gateway token system operates on an NFT platform not explored that but interesting that it's there. You can also sell artwork and NFTS again, no other platform.

Caron Lyon

23:27

But it did its job. And I think this is where I am now. So Cyberia have had their first meeting, Cybersalon moved from AltSpace at the end of the evening in to Spatial.

Caron Lyon

23:43

We have two spaces we have a public lounge, which is 22 Ideas About the Future. And then there are portals that bring you to Cyberia. So there is there is an airlock between the public space and the private space and that's something that I am keen to explore.

Caron Lyon

24:14

From there, we've not really been back in and done an event since we know the space is there. I have done in there a watch party live streaming from St. Louis, Brendan Bradley's non-playing character VR musical. So I know that the screensharing thing works. That's great. I've recently been talking to a friend from an Equity Branch, a spoken word artist, comedian, Elise Harris, and Elise is producing or leading on the digital free fringe at the Edinburgh Festival. Now, coming to a close and to wrap up where we are at moment. Some of you have been listened to the podcast may be aware that I was desperate to do a TEDx event and the application went in and I was holding fire so that I could tell you what the theme was going to be. And that thing was going to be Reality Check. And there was going to be podcast around it which is going to be separate from this podcast because you can't cross promote. You can't co produce with TEDx. However, they denied my application. So initially I was disappointed but the world opens up with other things and one of the things that has emerged because I really want to do something this year, that has ... can be a page on my website and can be a thing that I did a production, an event that has longevity, and for me that is going to be what becomes of this Spatial platform and the community that can build because audience is really important to me. And although I am not the best audience member, I'm not the best social practitioner as an audience, what I am, I think very good at is holding space and observing the world and creating space that I hope that people can come to the first time it will be overwhelming there's no denying that, but they can come back and feel that they're where they left off. And there's a sense of somebody being there that can help them learn where to go next. And digital free fringe will be going through August. I'm meeting with a Elise on Wednesday to find out exactly what it is that they want the digital free fringe is on demand. There may be some screened work on the ground. How this digital with a virtual extended venue happens. I don't know that is going to be up to talk into Elise. I'm really interested to see what her vision is for that.

Caron Lyon

27:03

But on top of that on June the eighth, I'm going to be zoom controlling for People Dancing and People Dancing have got four networks which are coming together. Fingers crossed on a regular basis to be able to meet up in a capacity that travelling to a physical event every month. It's kind of not feasible, especially if you're working professional. But this is about giving them a space so they're going to be meeting in breakout rooms initially. And there's going to be a keynote speaker and there's going to be a practitioner example so this time is Gerald Martin. He's going to do chair yoga. Then they're going to break out into their four spaces.

Caron Lyon

27:42

In the break the lunch break, we're going to be screening Cyberia into them for their Zoom so they can start glimpsing into what the possibilities of extended virtual presence might be. And then the conversation is going to be with them how many of them want to use it? Do they want to explore it? Is it something they have no interest in? Because taking your community from a crowd to an audience to a participatory group to a content creating group to a regular community takes time and you kind of need to give them the space in which to grow into.

Caron Lyon

28:24

so I'm hoping that that's what this is about.

Caron Lyon

28:26

So thank you for listening to the podcast, but also for the Stripe Partners programme. I hope this gives you a little bit of an insight into how holding communities is almost I think more important than actually getting stories from the people who are in communities. There has to be a foundation there has to be some sort of platform for community to emerge. There needs to be something some petri dish for a community to seed and to grow and to be nurtured. And I hope that I'm able to provide some of those spaces.

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