Permaculture Places in the Metaverse
Team
Rakesh Rootsman Rak, Ewan Findley, Jemma Findley
Reporting Officer: Ewan Findley
Area
Prototyping, Emergent festival, Next Steps project
Objectives
- Phase one: research & planning (May-Jun 2023)
- Identify affordances, limitations and potential for the Mozilla Hubs platform
- Explore and identify suitable permaculture themes and concepts based on the above
- Develop these ideas into more detailed virtual world plans
- Phase two: Development (Jul-Aug)
- Build the worlds defined in 1.3 (above) using open source tools such as Blender and Spoke
- Phase three: Publishing and Launch (Sep)
- Publish the developed worlds with a Creative Commons CC-BY 3.0 license using Spoke
- Share this via CoLab Slack, newsletter and website article
- Present and demonstrate the world(s) to permaculture educators at the in-person Educators Gathering in September 2023 organised by the Permaculture Association. This will be demonstrated on phone, desktop and VR headset, along with an introduction to the Hubs platform and the metaverse as a concept.
- Ongoing: learning & reporting
- Document learnings along the way
- Share progress and learnings on CoLab Slack
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—- Updated aims due to lack of funding through the Emergent festival –
- The project can continue as planned within this budget. Proposed work within this budget is as follows:
Jemma, Rakesh and Ewan have two 1.5 hour meetings (total 9 hours work at suggested hourly rates).
Rakesh 3 x 25h = £75
Jemma 3 x 25h = £75
Ewan 3 x 22h = £66Total £216 - These meetings will cover the first two items from phase one:
Phase one: research & planning– Identify affordances, limitations and potential for the Mozilla Hubs platform
– Explore and identify suitable permaculture themes and concepts based on the above. - By the end of this the outputs will be;
- – notes documenting the process
– recordings of the sessions that can be shared with CoLab and our educator and permaculture networks - The remaining budget will be used to edit the notes and recordings to make sure they are useful for distribution for others to learn from.Ewan 0.5h x £22 = £11I will seek further funding for continuation of the work, with the aim to complete a usable prototype for testing and sharing.
OUTCOMEs
Project Update September 2023
Further funds of £380 have been allocated to the project from the Emergent Festival
– Based on 17.3 hours at £22 per hour
– With additional aims now within the scope of this project:
development of a first iteration prototype virtual world that can be contributed to the commons, uploaded and used by anyone. The theme and concept for this world will come from the second team meeting.
November 2023 Update
We have successfully completed some limited R&D around how the spatial/3D social platform Mozilla Hubs might be used for permaculture people, for example in events or education. From this research a prototype 3D world was developed using the FOSS tools Blender and Spoke. The permaculture themed world includes several areas that users can navigate around including; a presentation stage, a breakout room, a campfire and a lobby. The space has been deliberately designed to be largely event-agnostic, so that it can be more easily used for a greater variety of scenarios.
resources created
A video tour of the virtual world can be watched here.
The virtual world can be found here, where anyone can use it for their own virtual gathering, or remix it using Mozilla Spoke.
Full meeting notes including a link to the first meeting in video form, can be found in this document