Hypergrid Resources Library/Virtual World Pioneers

There are many, many amazing people who are part of the emerging, connected metaverse community. And most of them are found on more than one grid, with more than one avatar name, and they may have more than one area of interest.

The following is not meant to be comprehensive by any means. What is intended here is to start creating one crowd-sourced collaborative and evolving instructional resource that can serve as a hub that connects what are otherwise many individual blogs on this topic. The mission and vision for this wiki, (which is very much in alignment with the Community Virtual Library’s mission) is bringing together the many talented individuals who contribute to the metaverse into one a single community resource that can be helpful to those who are new to virtual worlds. The “pioneers” are just some of the many prominent people in our constantly evolving community, but directing newbies to their blogs is a start on connecting people to communities of practice. In that spirit, pioneers are organized into a few meaningful categories, which should also evolve over time as needed.

Pioneering Artists (Multimedia and Machinima Creators)  

• Draxtor Despres - creator of Our Digital Selves: My Avatar is Me (documentary)
• Thirza Ember - she ran an early group of hypergridding adventurers with a weekly Hypergrid Safaris in OpenSim.

Pioneering Developers

• Crista Lopes (AKA Diva Canto) - Developer of the hypergrid protocol.
• Fred Beckhusen (Ferd Frederix) and Fred's Website Outwordz - Fred helped create an easy to use standalone installation of OpenSim.

Pioneering Educators

• Selby Evans (Thinkerer in SL) - Selby is a retired professor of psychology, a wealth of knowledge, very active in the metaverse community, and has a lot of great information on his blog.
• Tom Boellstorff, Professor of Anthropology UCI -

Pioneering Entrepreneurs (Business & Non-Profit Organizations)

• Avacon - Their mission is "Building community in the metaverse. Building the metaverse community. Building the metaverse."
• Ilan Tochner  - Co-Founder and CEO of the Kitely grid
• Maria Kolorov - Hypergrid Business

Pioneering Librarians

Dr. Valerie Hill - Director of the Community Virtual Library