18th Year Review of Science Circle

Okay. So, if this were a physical space in first life, we might conduct an archaeological dig to see what we could discover of our origins. Uh, it doesn't work that way in Second Life, but through the magic of 3D visualization, the past can emerge before your eyes. Yeah. Special effects. Okay. So, um, I'm your host today, primarily because I was there at the beginning. That that always helps. Um, back then in 2007, no one thought, gee, I better take a screen capture of this for our 18th anniversary. Um but fortunately I did capture um our imputies as we went along and was able to piece together a presentation first for our 10th anniversary and then modified considerably for this event. So, first off, a little perspective is the average age of a Second Life resident in 2008 when the science circle got started was um mid30s. So if you were say 35 back in 2008, uh you would have been in your um early 20s back in 1995 when the people were just discovering email, uh the web, the internet in general, when the first virtual worlds came out and you'd be in your 50s today. Um that would mean that you you would have known Second Life and perhaps a science circle for half of your adult life. Um I people here again you can put stuff in chat as you as we go. Active Worlds. Exactly. Okay. Um, I discovered Active Worlds in 1998 when I first started teaching at a university and someone showed it to me and I immediately said, "Wow, this is [laughter] well I was in in 1998. I was already nearing 50." Okay. So, uh, but 16. Yeah. Okay. So, anyway, um, yeah. Oh, to be 60 again. [laughter] Exactly. Okay. So, next uh the science circle has evolved over a number of years. Uh but we have not wavered from Shantel's original vision of openly sharing science interests where diversity of thought and culture were respected. The basic premise is that we're a group that openly and freely shares our knowledge with the world with themes across a broad spectrum of academic disciplines focusing on the sciences. So to fully understand the reason why uh the science circle met in the virtual world of second life, it helps to understand the technological environment in 2007208 time period. Actually, this is a slide. The next this and a few slides are a little bit of tweaking of slides I actually presented to our Thanks. Um, back in I presented to our faculty back in 2007208 at the university where I was teaching at the time and to see to to give them an idea of what virtual worlds were about. Um, and I as I was discussing with Hope earlier is that a lot of people still don't get it as to what virtual worlds are, which is a shame because I thought that particularly with the pandemic, virtual worlds are a lot better to do just about everything in uh than say uh Teams or Zoom or stuff like that. Sorry, don't don't don't um Yeah, don't uh like um sue me Teams or Zoom. [laughter] Okay. So it just that's my opinion. Okay. So anyway back in that time period back in 2007208 time period governments and government entities and people from around the world tried virtual worlds. I mean it was very popular. And then at one time there were hundreds of virtual worlds. I mean literally three 400 of virtual worlds and in some cases hosting up to tens of millions of users. everything from uh aimed at everybody from about elementary school if any everybody remembers Habbo Hotel to Second Life. Second Life was the oldest group uh in in the virtual worlds that were like I said about average of mid30s. Um, Second Life today is not as large as it once was, but it has a loyal core of users. Uh, some of which have been in here for 20 years. Um, so commercial organizations also tried virtual worlds. Yeah. Uh, so let's see. So commercial organizations also tried virtual worlds but they kind of sometimes mistook avatars as say new customers uh rather than just embodiment of a or presentations. In fact the word avatar is a uh means a representation uh of uh an embodiment or representation. Okay. so often mistaking avatars as customers rather than the same people back in the physical world. So some organizations though discovered 3D virtual worlds to be great place to meet to model and test new concepts to obtain customer feedback. So today there is a thriving commercial world of making and selling things in world as well as an opportunity for residents to try out roles that might otherwise not be able to uh that they might not be able to in first life. You know architects and magazine publishers and nightclub owners and jewelry makers and all of that kind of stuff like that. And we uh builders and and such. Okay. So, as we all kind of know is that Second Life is more than just a marketplace. It's a place to express our collective Yeah, exactly. Um, it's a place that we can express our collective imaginations. A safe place to meet people from around the world. A place to create and be immersed in recreations of real places as well as creations of fantastic places we wish existed. It's a place we can look what the way we want, go where we want, live how we want with no physical repercussions. I'm not saying mental phys uh repercussions. Um, okay. But, uh, because that's up to individuals. Okay. So, remembering our origins, here's another little, uh, magic uh, thing we can do in Second Life. Here, I'm going to be pointing out the slides as uh, you see them up here, the ones I'm talking about. So back in March of 2007, we our founder Shantel started a forum in Second Life to discuss philosophical topics. It was stylized on the discussions about the world and life that the ancient Greeks conducted over 2,000 years ago. Back in 2007, we had rules for how the discussion would work, including passing a token around a circle so that everyone had an equal opportunity to talk if they wanted, not just the um, you know, most uh, extroverted people in class, so to speak, or else they passed the token on to the next person if they had nothing to say or if they were thinking. Sometimes it takes a little while to think before you talk. Okay. So, um the science circle was a spin-off of the philosophy circle or philosophy farum during which we talked about science instead of philosophical topics. The Shine Circle officially began in February 23rd, 2008. And I was uh invited by Shantel to do the first presentation for the Science Circle back in uh March of 2008. Joking token, huh? [laughter] Okay, so my presentation back in March of 2008 was on the anthroposine epic that is [laughter] well no few people knew about this uh back then. It just wasn't in the news. Uh it it was in the news for people that perhaps were really technologically oriented or that whatever. It's too bad that it wasn't better advertised even though there were a million uh users at the time. So, but but that wasn't anywhere near as big as say Facebook, although Facebook just got started uh as the top social media back in 2008 if you remember. Yeah. Okay. So, anyway, I was invited to give the first presentation on the anthroposine epic. Um that was the my choice in the anthroposine epic which is even more real today was how humans are able to change the world to the same extent or greater as natural forces and how this will be recorded as a layer in earth's uh natural history. Okay. So that's and and then um as you can see here the first home for the philosophy forum uh was a set of islands uh owned by Shantel and Q uh her husband called Queens Lake and Kings Lake and we met uh for a seminar on Thursdays and then discussed the topic on Saturdays and then Sean Talry approached me in the fall of 2007 seven about uh starting a science um farm to complement the uh philosophy farm. That's how that kind of got started. And then um the science circle was located on a number of islands over its first decade and we're briefly on Stony Islands and other Okay, let me um let's see. Okay, let me perform a little more magic here. Um, get out. Get away from all these trees so I can make sure I don't hit the wrong objects. [laughter] There we go. Okay. So, um let's see if the slide change as well. It should be Yeah. Okay. We're good. Well, anyway. Yeah, I know. I' I've rehearsed this a bit to make sure it works. Also, so I wouldn't fall off the platform. It's got rails and stuff. Okay. So, anyway, when the Science Circle was founded, the Silands was the place to be if you love science. And here you found at the silence this uh um continent here or many continents you found goin which created by Max Chat Noir. Is she in the audience? She's often here. Max if you remember things. Okay. I don't see the Max right at the moment. Not today. Okay. Must be often is here. And then uh the Exploratorium uh Micah which was hosted by Caltech, the international spite uh space flight museum which is still here uh the national physical laboratory in UK, Imperial College of London, uh yeah uh NASA, Noah, STEM island which was my contribution and a whole lot more. And the folks that got together were called Siland senators. We used to meet similar to what we do here um about once a month and then today in 2026 this continent is merely a archipelago with a few islands remaining and others moved away from this area and but it's still a lot of amazing places there uh to visit. And I highly recommend places like Genome Island and International Space Flight Museum and the National Space Society and places like that. So, a few years ago, my next poster over here, a few years ago, uh Lynden Lab, which was also under new management, um uh Lynen Lab being the makers of of Second Life, uh sought to bring together about 65 Yeah. The abyss for example was amazing uh by uh um Hajime Nishimura uh in real life uh that's his name um and a few years ago they sought to bring together about 65 or so educational sites in world and chose the area surrounding the old sailands and what was once about 50 islands that the University of Texas held. If you look on this uh big poster thing here, you can see where we are here over on this thing and some of our neighbors uh like Ciencia and then genomes over there and virtual worlds um educational consortium that sort of thing. So that's what we have today. It's made up of a number of different uh places. Let me here. Just make sure I've got lots of pieces parts to here. Okay. Um, well, the science circle was started in 2002, 2007, 2008, and it was never in the silence at that part because we were still looking at other types of um, let's See, let me get my slides back here. Hang on a second. We were on different islands, so we never ended up ex Well, now wait a second. Hang on a second. Let me rephrase that [laughter] because I'm about to talk about that. Okay. So for in in around that time period, we also met for a time in a place called Kira Cafe, which was one of a number of different regions that was hosted by a group called the uh Kira Institute. The Kira Institute was a virtual world organization uh sponsored by Dr. Pet Hut of the Institute of Advanced Study. Now, if you recognize that name, the Institute of Advanced Study in Real Life in Princeton, New Jersey was where J. Robert Aman uh J. Robert Oenheimer and other scientists shared ideas and Einstein spent the last 25 years of his life there. Um, so here's a picture of us meeting at the let's see here we are meeting at the Kira Cafe in this next uh view. here. And we got a presentation here by Deep uh Thinker O who's been around and she has a a column in the uh newspaper. Okay. And then Oh, you're on the right. Yeah, of course. Dolly's been here for a very long time. We we do have and and point that out. In other words, if you've been here for a while and you remember some of this stuff, then point it out that hey, I'm I'm there. I remember this. We did this all that stuff. Okay. So, uh then we moved to a set of islands owned by nature uh the nature uh publishing which publishes nature magazine. If you're a scientist, it's you recognize that as one of the most prestigious of scientific journals. Yeah, there you go. Remember C uh Cafe? Okay. So, um, the Illusian Islands, which were owned by Nature Publishing Group, unfortunately, sunk beneath the Lynen Sea like so many before it. And but uh before they went, I asked if I could while we have had Lind Philip Lindon come to uh our island here uh and talk and we and we met with him because he had the vision of in other words the educational discount went away and then he had he went around literally to talk to all the different people in Second Life and realized that education was is a big deal and reinstalled the set the educational discount. Unfortunately, most of the universities already moved away and it'd be kind of nice to get them back because there used to be some really uh nice universities here uh from from all over the world. So anyway, uh before Islands moved beneath the Lynden Sea, which is the kind of romantic way to put it, I rescued a virtual replica of the Beagle. And that's the ship that you see here uh on this island. Uh it's the one that Darwin sailed around the world on, discovered evidence leading to the uh theory of evolution and it's docked here in the island and it may be unfortunately the all that remains of that time and uh place in second life. Okay. So um in the last slide here you see that when the silance kind of disappeared and people were not able to pay for the without the educational uh discount uh a lot we became kind of the refuge for a lot of people from the silence. So among them were Rob Kop who built the planetarium that's on with inside of the amphitheater here. uh George Jorgovski and if George is in the audience I apologize for butchering your name. Um he's the one that owns uh Scientia um hosted by Caltech over next uh one of our neighbors of U Micah uh and then Maryanne Clark who's Max Shat Noir yeah curious George exactly that's his uh second name of genome Hajime Nishan Roa of Abyss Observatory all that good stuff okay so let me go down here to where I started. There we go. Okay, let's take a look at a little some of our other slides here. So, in the summer of 2010, Shantel formed a board of directors. Um, Science Circle was going great. We'd already been at a number of different places. uh had some professional leanings. So she formed a board of directors to help guide policies and activities to strengthen the science circle and outreach and yeah [laughter] it was and not as many ads and to conduct efforts to reach out to other people. And so in September of 2010, a Science Circle student first created our first uh Facebook page. And this one, you'll never be able to read this unless you get up really close. Uh but by 2011, I just thought I'd show you how many different presentations we've done. Now, by today, we've done hundreds of them, and they would never fit on. I I have six slides alone that just show the present presenters from the last five years. Uh so there's lots but in any case the topics range from anthropology, statistics, religion, uh stem cells, nature, reality, particle physics, critical thinking, genomes, telecommunications, political science, autism, stone edge, archaeology, quantum physics, natural farming, calendars, time, human factors in aviation, safety, women in technology, evolution, psychology. Uh well, the Monty Hall problem. Yes. And actually that used to be on this island. And the person who did that was deep thinker O who's up um has her own little realm above us but she was there toward the very beginning. In fact there were a couple of times where there were when Shantel needed to take a break that uh uh deep thinker and I for example took over for about 6 months or so uh so she could take a break. Okay. So big thank you to Augustine Augustine Martin, KT Bernardet, and Robert Lawson Brown Brown who's here today are capturing these presentations of video over the years. Okay, let me do some magic here. Okay. Uh yeah, exactly. The door ch behind door number three. You remember that stuff? Okay, good. Okay, so uh let's see. Hopefully, I will pick the right Whoops. I don't want to pick a tree. That's the problem with having I I rehearsed this at another level where there weren't trees. So, I have to be careful not to do it to damage our trees, so to speak. There we go. Okay, let me um Yeah, pull that together. There we go. Okay, got it. Okay, let's try this again. Okay. So, we're talking about the time period of about 200 uh 10 or so uh when we became a professional a more professional organization. Yeah. The well the foliage is it is what it is. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. So um let me get the slide going here. There we go. Okay. So anyway, along with a board of directors, the science circle decided to participate in the first for the first time in the virtual world's best practices of education uh group which has been around for a while. I think this is their 11th year or something or 18th I don't know 21st some of the but VWBP and we've been participating in them for many years we did this year as well. Oh 20th yeah I was going to say it's a really really long time that they've been uh around. Okay. So, and thanks. In other words, put in chat there for for you guys that have also been here for a while. Uh, put in chat some of the types of things that you remember. Okay. So, we also decided at this time to vet members, not everybody, but members who presented, who are up here doing what I'm doing, and to encourage them to use their first life uh life names. Until then, few people knew the real identity. Yeah, exactly. Well, Baragon, I've got your name in here, so hang on a second. [laughter] You're you're in here. Um, but until then, very few or few people knew the real identity of our members and we had not heard each other's voices. It was very fascinating to hear each other's voices. But as you know the voice reveals so much about your identity that some members even today choose to remain anonymous others not to use their voice. So we still didn't have a home. I mean back here uh even while we were becoming a more professional organization uh we were still um without a home. We were however continuing to do more outreach. So, for example, um we expanded to open sim. Well, it's not a matter if you if you have something to I I've I'm only doing this because I've had a gamillion years of practice both uh I'm retired Navy officer. I so I had a full you know 20 years at that. I was a research biochemist before that. Public published research biochemist. I was taught for 25 years. So yeah, I think you could do it after a while. I've given hundreds of present well I don't know about hundreds but whatever lots of presentations. So around this time we expanded open sim which is a free virtual world and we eventually had about uh 15 regions there partly because uh what happens if second life goes away? what would we do? Um so our newest activity then uh okay let me yeah okay so let's see we were at uh tomorrow u med biomedical research lab during this time period and then we were at a place called um whatever this place is called here and then in 2013 we moved to uh STEM island. Okay, so we moved to STEM Island in 2013 and we're also starting to greatly expand the range of our subjects and the nationalities of our presenters. And our newest group activity at that time was to go on field trips to other scienceoriented sites. And this expanded to tradition that every Saturday in December and in May, we would be uh devoted. Yeah, there we go. See, the closer I get to today, the more people will remember. And the uh tradition that every Saturday in December and in May would be devoted to field trips. Okay. We also started, let me see if it's there or here. Okay. here is that uh NASA at that time um had several regions in Second Life right they have one left there's one called NASA education and so we started recording presentations on YouTube and you can find some of these uh videos at a couple different places the one I just put in there is this presentation by NASA it's in an old version of the science circle video collection. Our current collection is under the science circle foundation at and and then it is that's about 283 videos dating from uh 2015 to 2026. So that's 283 presentations uh that people gave lots and lots of stuff that's just from 2015. Let me see. Let me take a look at our um video. I mean our slides down here. So in 2014 we Okay. Uh we were at a place called Shamish uh which is another island to that we call temporary home and we've participated in another virtual world's best practice education then where we discussed shared our story and our vision to connect with academic uh disciplines inspire creativity and inventiveness and all that good stuff. And so let me go back. I got I've got this little chore choreography um thing going here. So, got to keep uh on schedule. And I think I just um hang on a second. There's a there's a transparent um walkway that I'm trying to do like as if you're walking in the dark. I kind of know where it is and it prevents me from falling out, but you have to be careful. And I'm still doing it. Hang on a second. Okay, let's try again. Okay, walking along here. Do walk this way. Uh, walk up. There we go. Now we're good. Yeah. Well, I had to practice it a bit because I kept falling off. [laughter] So, uh, finally finally in 2015, we took over Shamish. In other words, the per person actually he was from Egypt and he wasn't using Shamus. And so, essentially, he said, "Uh, do you want the island?" And so, we did and then we started paying for it then. And so Shamish was renamed the science circle. That's where you are now. And so the newest addition in our activities at that time was Darwin Day where we had a presentation on a scientist or a researcher who contributed to our understanding of evolution. And this here uh was what we looked like at our 10th anniversary when we gave a presentation like this uh in 2017. Uh and science circle's gone through a lot of uh major changes uh by uh also and another Yeah. Well, it looks look like DNA. Well, that's interesting because see that's actually um um Hashim Najimra. That's his real name. What's Jans? That's Yan's creation there. And he needed some space. So, it's on another island now. Uh he needed a little more space to put it because it was taking up a lot of prim. But it does um look like DNA. And so, this is our look in 2017. We went through another major change in 2017 when we became an official notfor-profit non-governmental entity headquarters in the Netherlands. The reason the Netherlands is that's um Shantel's house. Yeah. At uh Okay. VW. Oh, good. Okay. At VWC. Uh he's always been very uh productive and creative and stuff, but um Oh, you're in the Netherlands. Okay, cool. Well, we have other people also from Netherlands and other Well, exactly. Uh, Max has a it's not quite a helix, but Max has a tower that she has all of this information for her graduate genetics class. Okay. So in uh 2015 um we went through still another that was last year or in fact around this time we went through another big change in our history and because uh Shantel's founder and longtime director Shan uh I mean science circles founder, longtime director Shantel Joerger, uh announced that she needed to pay more attention and to work and family and made a difficult decision to leave SEC science circle and sec life. So this marked another right of passage for our organization and we are eternally thankful uh to Shantel for her vision uh over 17 years of uh leadership. That's a long time to do anything, you know. That's like raising a kid and she spent an enormous amount of time and effort in in uh putting this together. But you know I I'm retired Navy officer and I before I went into uh um academia and one of the first things we were taught was from day one is you need to be training your replacement because no one's totally expendable but you have the expertise that then you need to be passing that on. So even though we've called many places home during our first uh decade and then saw many changes in how we operated and outreach and such, one thing that's remained the same over our existence from the beginning was who we are and our mission. And you'll note uh in here, let me just point out a few things. So you'll note that we are a multinational alliance. We are welcoming to everybody uh in particular vetted scientists, educators, but also students and science enthusiasts. We welcome anyone interested in science. Uh we collaborate to share knowledge. We promote open-source education around the world. We value dialogue within a community that promotes inclusion, diversity, mutual respect. Yeah. Okay. Let's see. Next slide. So, um, by the way, there, if you actually zoom in, you may be able to see what we look like in real life. [laughter] I hope nobody minds that, um, [laughter] pictures there. Yeah. Okay. So, there are a lot of things that happening behind the scenes of any successful organization. And in addition to uh the obvious which is like paying for the island which is covered by National Science Foundation grant awarded to Mike Shaw developing a year-long speaker schedule which Shantel used to do with some I did it for about a year and she used to get some helpers to do that but it's no small feat and today it's performed by Steven Gazer uh helping helping guide the direction of the organization and Natalie and I help do that and then organizing and watching over the island and its builds. And so Hope is our new estate manager and she's up in the pavilion watching the uh for griefers and other people and she um helping out in helping me get prepared uh for this thing and the whole bit like that and making sure that nobody's you know the whole bit that you do as a and and and looking around the whole area to make sure nobody's put stuff there. So, the Science Circle's always had a website from the beginning. You can see what it looked like back in 2008. And um it is accessible now. It was uh not accessible for a bit a little bit, but there's still some tweaks we need to do about it's under review, revision uh with the recent change of management. There's two columns. One of them I don't think's there anymore, but it was Stargazing. It was from 2014 2015. Uh Star Cass as a Second Life name. She is actually has a telescope, an observatory in Switzerland. And I'll talk more about that uh a couple Sunday uh Saturdays from now. And then there's a column called hypothesis which deep thinker has been monthly putting on there since 2019. Uh she's a long-standing professional member and then Shantel also maintained links to science sites and a section on science news. Part of the mission is outreach. And so the science circle has social media pages in on several platforms that we probably need to update. [laughter] Some of them is old. Um our Facebook page is still there and there's a Spanish version in case you you may not know. The Science Circle also has a Facebook page in Japanese. So there's three different languages. If anyone's likes social media and yeah, if anybody likes social media and is interested in helping to update some of our uh social media, let me know. The science circle page in Japanese is maintained by Arian. Um I took a look the other day and it's still just fine and I think I just misspelled Arian. Sorry. Um, and I see it's still active. And then there's a LinkedIn page created by Augustine Martin way back when. And then the Flickr site is there, but it doesn't seem to be updated since about 2013. [laughter] The first five years from the beginning of the science circle in 2017 and the end of the pandemic were a period of great expansion in terms of new activities. You can see them on here. And then addition of active members. So, uh, Baragon, you mentioned I I think I mentioned you again coming up, but, uh, you see you've got your bistro there and a panel and discussion starting in 2018 and there are podcasts and a logo contest, which is where we got our logo today and crisper year and review and uh, science cafe and follow the food summer program by Stephen and Fireside Chats and uh, all kinds of uh, uh, cool stuff and the concert starting in uh 2019 in addition. So, let's see. Let me uh put that um during the summers when we weren't scheduled presentations, we also had science fairs. I think we've had science fairs other than this, but this was three years in a row. And we one of them uh here's a list of participants over a three-year period. And then I thought I'd show you just for kicks. In other words, none of this is trivial. This is a this was the winning entry in 2021 that was created by uh his um Yeah, it was. It's and and it's still around. It's way up uh on another platform, but it's still around. He he goes by Jude in Second Life, but his uh he's u um I don't think he'd mind. I I keep track of him. He's doing a PhD right now. Um in AI use, let's say, use of AI to identify uh uh tumors and stuff in uh uh uh radiography. Really cool stuff. Uh in any case, he was a a master builder, scriptor, and uh made a dynamic model of a hydro a turboan um jet engine. This is what powers the commercial aircraft. And I just thought I'd show you that uh one. Yeah, this is um well, this is in Second Life [laughter] up up at about uh high above us. We're we're kind of looking at the island again. how to um fix this up, but it's all dynamic moving and stuff. The whole thing it's it's pretty well u uh done. And then uh some of our earlier activities are still online. for example, Steven Ben Hook, who's president of educare research and a former television producer and international journalist recorded a series of podcasts about the experiences of some of our members in virtual worlds. uh since I was had been in since the beginning, he asked me to uh do the first one and then Baragon Betts hosted a panel of experts on different subjects as well as a longunning uh discussion group called Yeah, [laughter] I told you you're on here. Is that a discussion group met weekly over by the lighthouse? fact that's why the or kind of the lighthouse uh is over there. [laughter] Okay. And then the interesting thing that you may not know was even before we had the science circle channel on YouTube and like I said there's 283 um videos there. The group website was a collection point for hundreds of videos of early presentations. And so you can go there to the page and click on the names and stuff and see their works. And I have, like I said, I have six slides. Uh, no, not everybody needs a PhD. Uh, but they they were people that actually were real experts in their area. Like right in the middle there you you see Rob Canop. Uh Robert Hendris is a retired MD uh specializ in earnotes throat. You've got William Walls who's a uh archaeologist. He's got tagline. Yeah. Tagline. You've got William Wall there who has some museums there. You've got Paul Doherty who was the chief scientist at the Exploratorium. Uh Curious George. Marian Clark. um Lynn Barrett who happens to be here. Uh all in other words, every one of these are people who are experts in in different areas. Uh well, uh he's a not an archaeologist, a arch anthropologist. What do you call a paleo? um anthrop paleo archaeologists uh that area. Well, whatever. Okay, got in other words, they know what they're talking about. Okay, so 18 years a radio astronomer. Okay, then I got Who's uh who does the um Oh, William Walt. Okay, paleo. Dolly is sorry, Dolly. Okay, Dolly is the one of the museums. [laughter] Um, I mixed up names. Sorry about that. Got some really You go over to Scientia, there's some really cold dinosaur museums um over there. Okay, so 18 years is a long time uh for a busy organization. Die Miami. Um, long time for a busy organization. Uh, so now I'm just short of the 15-year point in our history and about 10 minutes short of the hour. So I'll likely give another presentation at our 20th anniversary that focuses on most of the of the recent five years whether it's from 2023 to 2028. But for today's presentation, let me present the last five years like this. Now, while I am uh while I am setting this up, what I'd like you to do is remember to ask yourself and perhaps to share about what brought you to the science circle, why do you retain uh or why do you return? [laughter] And then what do you think this future of the science circle is like? Or what would you like to it to be like? Okay, if you'll give me a second, I'm going to pop up to where I've got some of this material and pull it down here. I'm just setting up a few things here so it'll make sense. Okay. So, let me start um with this. Let me pull this up a little bit here. Okay. So, this is this summer the virtual world's education consortium uh invited us to create a display. There's about 45 different um there's about 45 different groups there and they invited us to be one of the groups to display something about our uh group. And so um I constructed this display, this is just part of it uh to summarize who we are and what we've done over the last um few years. So let me share some of the highlights. First of all, what do we do? Well, we have three islands here. The science circle is a global community of vetted science and education professionals, but also uh students and science enthusiasts who share scientific interests and knowledge. We have several things going on. It's uh down at the bottom there it says uh we do science presentations on Saturday, which we do. We've also got on Sunday a classical concert. uh above here you will see and unfortunately it's not rotating right now for some reason. Um but anyway there is a math club back in back in for the 20 I'm watching my time but back in for the 15th anniversary celebration we thought instead of just doing a celebration we would Oh, it's rotating. Good. Okay, good. That should the middle one should be rotating and the math one should be rotating. Cool. Maybe for some reason it's just not mine. Okay, good. Okay, so um we decided for the 15th anniversary that we would Yeah. Really? Uh for the 15th anniversary that we would instead of just celebrating, we would demonstrate what we do best is to collaborate. I mean, think about it. where people all over the world, totally different backgrounds, a lot of different ages and uh beliefs and whatever. And uh the idea is we would get together and we would come up with different ways to celebrate what we do in the science circle. So tagline created the math club and it's if if you are free, unfortunately I'm not. It's sad, but if you are free at 4 PM on Second Life on Thursdays, I highly recommend that you go. It's highly entertaining. Uh he's a genius with regards to visualizing uh math and putting it all together and explaining it. And it's uh I'd highly recommend go to there if you have time. at 1000 a.m. on Mondays. We've been meeting uh for 3 and a half years now, something like that. every Monday uh for the moonbased group. And what we're doing is we're trying to go through all of the science and interdisciplinary science. Everything from color psychology to uh growing insects to physics and uh inter interbody problem and uh atmospherics and who knows with the uh moon base uh group um on 10:00 a.m. and I uh facilitate that one. But we got some really cool uh people that go to that one. And then also, let me I'm watching my time here. Got a few minutes. Is let me zap this one and then show you one other thing. The way I do this is I'm zapping them up to a higher platform so I can >> uh zap stuff under Okay, there we go. And we got a couple minutes left, which is fine because that's what I've got left in my presentation is this is a large display. Let me just um um walk through it a bit. What I'll probably do is have this in the center of this island or someplace where you can find it because it essentially tells what we've been doing for the past five years. Is that there's a lot of material here and I'll just start over here real quick. We've got about a minute to go. But um we're a community it does [laughter] looks like an altar. Um so anyway, we're a community organization and I've got that in a couple different places. So for example, we participated in the whole brain health healthy aging conference in 2022 uh world space week um in a number of different time uh periods. Uh this this one shows examples of what we did in 2025. the V here again this summer here with the community fair for VWC uh VW expert series in uh January couple people spoke at that our virtual best practice education conference in uh this year Second Life birthdays many years up here you've got a picture of all the different places that you can find on the different levels here in um Science Circle Island. Uh Hope is we're going to be meeting about how to do that and Hope has some new teleport devices that will help to get everybody to these places. Up at the top here, you see all of the the presentations from January to May and then pictures from each of those presentations. Um, and that's just this year and then some of the other years. So, there's a huge amount of stuff that we still do. And it's amazing because people, like I said, people are from all different places. We all get along [laughter] almost all the time. And I find it absolutely amazing and it really makes a lot of difference in my life. Okay, we're at the hour. Does anyone want to add stuff now? Oh, by the way, I always like to just like any meeting close with like what are we doing next time sort of thing. I'm going to be doing the next two Saturdays. They're all kind of related because I wanted to show the 18 years. Next Saturday is on science in general and it's a presentation you've never of the likes you've never seen before. It's totally different type of presentation on science and then a presentation on space exploration particularly moon and stuff the following Saturday. Then we have other presenters. Some amazing stuff this um fall that we're all putting together. I just thought I'd uh throw my name out there at the very beginning because so that um we can uh make sure we give plenty of time to other people. Okay. So, thank you today. Does anyone have any comments or other things about their experiences? Otherwise, there'll be time next Saturday to talk about some of your uh experience in Second Life, particularly in sciences. Thank you. Okay, I'm going to wrap up for today.