Virtual HomeCamp Meeting

OK, we’re trying to setup a meeting on the HomeCamp sim.  Since we burst on the ReactionGrid scene with OpenSim, we have been throwing up real estate and trying scripts.  After playing and eating more memory and CPU than we probably should, we need a meeting to discuss quite a few issues.

1.  We currently have script limitations that everyone needs to respect
2.  We have ideas to overcome the script limitations. Fingers crossed on Plan A!
3.  A freemium idea – office and house rental is free, script usage is a small monthly subscription.
4.  Sponsorship opportunities
5.  Land building ideas and general build styles
6.  Regular events and training + publicity

We have had great community action going on at the HomeCamp sim and I am looking forward to the future with this one.  We have rented a full row of offices now.

Welcoming new tennants Craig Cmehil and Tish Shute.

I’m thinking we have a meeting on Thursday 26th March.  Seems a week away, but we all seem to be busy 🙂  Please let me know your thoughts and ideas regarding this on the google group discussion and whether you will be coming along.

The land grab begins

Grab Yourself an Office on Virtual HomeCamp

We now have four Home Camp sims on ReactionGrid on OpenSim:

HomeCamp
HomeCamp Labs
HomeCamp Sandbox
HomeCamp Sandbox2

From the meeting we had last Thursday night, we are aiming to have a virtual space to allow us to grow the Home Camp community, to integrate Virtual Worlds with Real World and a great place to run events and sessions.    I’m not entirely sure how we’ll set these up and I am sure we will rename some of the sims.

Stay tuned for the Virtual HomeCamp events calendar, as we are planning on having a regular weekly meeting, certainly initially, and some training sessions to help people get up and running quickly on OpenSim.

A photo taken at the first Virtual HomeCamp meeting on the HomeCamp sim.

We currently have 13 offices on the HomeCamp sim.  One of those is the HomeCamp main office and another has already been rented out to Mike TheBee.  So feel free to come and grab yourself an office.  There is no charge.  Any office with a “Vacant. Enquire within” sign, just stake your claim on the office space.  You might also want to ping either me or Tish Shute so we know it is your office.

Grab any office with a “Vacant. Enquire within” sign on the front.  You’re also welcome to have a house and Dave Pentecost has already got a house rigged up with a live feed from Pachube, which is available to copy and use.

I’m on a building extravaganza at the moment, putting together the buildings and the real estate on the sims.  As soon as the first batch of offices are taken up, I’ll create some more and we’ll keep filling up.

HomeCamp Labs is  potentially the sim that we should use to run any experimental scripts.  So we might want to think about limiting live data feeds and pachube feeds to the Labs sim.  We are planning to have an auditorium for presentations and conference events and there will also be an expo area where green tech companies can have a booth.  So get in touch if you want to have a booth in the Virtual HomeCamp expo.

The HomeCamp Sandbox sim is the place to go and do whatever you want.  Try stuff and build.  Just be kind to the environment and bear in mind that anything in the Sandbox area is likely to be deleted at any point.  So do not leave important stuff in there, or let us know about it.

Overall, really excited by the strong turnout of people at the first Virtual HomeCamp meeting.  Keep an eye on the wiki for the next one.  There are also instructions on the wiki to get you up and running on OpenSim and ReactionGrid.

Virtual HomeCamp on OpenSim

We now have a HomeCamp SIM setup on ReactionGrid, which is on OpenSim.  We are aiming to run a virtual world event alongside the main Home Camp.

ReactionGrid is already doing some great work with modelling using Pachube inputs from real life objects and we hope to have some demo environments setup for the event.  As always, watch this space for more details, or drop by HomeCamp on the SIM.

If you are interested in getting involved on the HomeCamp Sim, then let us know in the Google Group discussion.  You can also take a look at the Virtual HomeCamp wiki page for more details.

Announcing Home Camp 2

Home Camp 2 will be taking place on Saturday 25th April 2009 at Bash Creations:

65-71 Scrutton Street, London, EC2A 4PJ.

A map of the venue is here.

We are planning to have two tracks at this Home Camp.  One track will be hands on hacking and the other track will be more presentation based.  We feel both tracks have valid appeal, but would like to hear your comments on this.

We are also hoping to have Home Camp running on OpenSim so you can attend the event virtually if you are unable to make it.

Stay tuned as we release more details and if you haven’t signed up for Home Camp 2, head over to the wiki and signup.

Mission statement ideas

I got to thinking that it would be useful to have a pithy description of what Home Camp is all about.

Here’s a starting thought:

The home hacking, automation and green technology community

Let’s crowdsource this, though – I think that’s a nice short statement which describes what Home Camp covers without being either too exclusive, or specifically inclusive – but maybe other people have additions, changes, etc.?