DJ, turn it up, better DJ bring it back. Solid DJ, turn it up, better DJ bring it back. Solid DJ, turn it up, better DJ bring it back.  Like DJ, turn it up, better DJ bring it back. Solid DJ, turn it up, better DJ bring it back. Solid DJ, turn it up, better DJ bring it back. Come on. Physician Assistant Field is consistently recognized as one of the fastest growing professions. Visiting a doctor's office, you have doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants. But do you know the difference? These are the professionals that you'll be seeing more of instead of doctors. Welcome, I'm Adana, the PA. And this the True Life, True Life, True Life, True Life. And this is the True Life of a minority PA student. My name is Adana, and for those of you who don't know me, I am a first-year PA student. Some of you may know me as Adana the PA on YouTube and Instagram and on YouTube I actually make weekly videos about my experience going through PA school. I also make videos just informational videos about what I wish I knew before entering into PA school so that pre-PA students and just anyone that wants to see may have an insight on what to expect in PA school. I'm a minority PA student and really and truly we are the minority in PA school and it's kind of across the board that is what you'll see. And I thought to myself well that's not necessarily cool like I want to see people like myself because I want to be able to relate to somebody else. Not everybody is going to be able to understand what I'm going through as a minority if you don't experience the same things that I experienced. So I thought let me make this documentary about this whole experience about being a minority in PA school. Of course I could not do it by myself so I enlisted the help of some amazing future PA's and my future colleagues to give you their experiences thus far in their PA school journey. Hopefully you will enjoy this documentary and just get a little bit more understanding on the minority PA student experience. Hey guys my name is James Kim. I'm Korean American. I'm a first-year PA student in the state of Nevada. You guys may know me by my Instagram handle Fresh Prince of Healthcare or my YouTube channel James Kim PA Student. Hello everyone my name is Amber Henry and I'm a first-year PA student at South University in Savannah Georgia. I'm a hundred percent African American. My mom and my dad are both black so it makes me black. Hi everybody my name is Stefania. I'm a second-year PA student and I live in Miami Florida. I am originally from Peru. I came here six years ago so yes I'm part of the Latin community. Hi my name is Tuno Chacoya. I'm a second year PA student here at the University of Florida and I'm from Nigeria. My name is Jasmine. I'm a first-year PA student at Western U in Pomona California and my nationality is Chinese, 100% and I speak Cantonese. Nice with you guys. I was pre-med in undergrad. I did not know what a PA was until my senior year of undergrad and I didn't know about this until I started working in the hospital. I saw all these white coats walking around and I saw like PAC under behind somebody's name. I just assumed it was some type of specialized doctor so I was like oh what type of doctor are you? What's that? They're like oh my physician assistant. I'm like what's that? And they you know told me what it was and their scope of practice and their role and I did more research and I was so like taking it back so like a surprise about what a PA was and it wasn't until I started applying in med schools that's when I realized that I did not want to become a doctor and it wasn't in God's will for me to become a doctor anyways. I wanted to become a PA because I shadowed an amazing PA in orthopedics. I was initially pre-med and I decided to change my mind soon after that after shadowing him. Honestly I feel that the PA profession chose me. The ability to interact with patients on a daily basis was what instantly gravitated me towards the profession. As I researched more I was able to see that not only did they have the lateral flexibility meaning they can switch specialties at any point in time but they also have the autonomy the ability to make their own clinical decisions and make their own prescriptions that was very important to me. In Peru we don't have PAs and a lot of people actually still don't understand what the what the role of a PA is so when I came here I was trying to figure out what to do since I already had five years of education in medical school back in Peru. I was very undecisive. I didn't know if it if I should keep going with the MDDO route or if I should try something else. I remember one day being at my primary care physician and having an appointment for an annual physical and he basically was never there. I will always see the PA until one day I had the courage to go and start asking her about the PA profession. I can be very curious sometimes and I started making quite asking questions and then when I saw her I saw myself being part of this profession too. For me I wanted to enter the healthcare field and go into a role in profession that I knew that I was going to make a big difference and have a good amount of authority. I personally didn't want to be stuck into one specialty so I looked into the PA role and I loved it you know there's a lot of autonomy and a lot of collaboration with physicians but you also have the flexibility of being able to move laterally into different specialties and not necessarily be burnt out and stuck in one specialty for the rest of your life. It is super important to have a racially diverse group of PAs because your patient population is going to be diverse with different cultures different beliefs. To have the understanding and to know where your patients are coming from that's that's a key thing to have as a PA. I feel like it's very important um with my mom's side of the family they're from South Louisiana so medicine down there isn't diverse at all and my family members don't go to the doctors at all and it's because they're like oh I don't trust the doctors whatever you know and I don't I think it stems more so that the doctors down there and the PAs down they don't look like them at all and even with me being a PA student and like the short like the small amount of patients I have seen the minority patients respond to me way differently and better than to do the preceptor they've opened up to me a lot more and I get a lot more information out of them than a pre preceptor does and I think it's because it's not because they trust me more because I'm a student so I don't really know much but they know that I'm not judging them and they see somebody that looks just like them and they can trust them more and I feel like if there was more diversity throughout the PA profession we could have this you know bond between patient and PAs. I think it's really important to have a diverse group of PA students in your class it definitely gives you more unique perspectives and different backgrounds that students do bring to the table and it helps students see things in a different manner and especially if you grew up in a predominantly Caucasian population it's nice to have different ethnicities and different types of people come together to provide healthcare especially down here in Miami with our Spanish speaking population and also the French and Creole and Chinese Mandarin it is very important to have a diverse culture diverse people are it's a reality in our all of our 50 states so yeah I think it's very important diversity is always welcome at least in my mind I don't see how any profession can thrive without it we all think differently as human beings we all think differently as minorities in order to succeed we have to be able to tap into those different mindsets those different experiences that each individual brings to the table and come up with one production I think any profession especially the PA profession and the nature of our job that lacks diversity is failing I think getting into PA school in general is difficult but being a minority I would say does play a little role in that majority of PA students are Caucasian and I think being a minority does somewhat play a role they do want diversity so being a minority can help you maybe get into PA school a little easier not that getting into PA school is easy at all I think it's just as difficult on Casper it doesn't require you to provide your race you only have to put your GPA GRE the classes you took in undergrad or post-bac and your letter recommendations in your healthcare hours and personal sake so they don't see your race they don't know if you're black white red green they just know your name is this and you have these dots and then you know they decided they want to give you an interview even at the interview I feel like it's just a sphere because when I interviewed I was the only minority there and I got it so I just go to show you that it's fair and I think there's not a lot of minorities in the PA profession because simply there's this lack of education in my class there are 60 students I'm one of one black male there is no one individual that looks like me thinks like me maybe grew up the same way I did and I honestly don't know why that is I often thinking that's myself if I'm one of one black male in my class does that mean I was the smartest black male applicant in that cycle or that there were no other black male applicants in that cycle I refuse to believe either of the two I believe there are inherent obstacles that minorities must face especially when applying to professional programs or graduate programs when you think of the financial burden that it requires to apply to some of these programs the level of education that some of these programs require the time commitment I do feel that on some degree it is harder to get into PA school or any professional degree program as a minority I honestly think that it's a little bit easier a little bit easier getting into PA school as a minority because as statistics show a lot of Caucasian people get into PA school maybe after all your CASFA and your personal essay and your interview is scored many programs want a more diverse class so maybe they'll take your ethnicity into account and get you in um some hard things that I found throughout the my path was that some people can make fun of the way you talk because um sometimes when I I remember they're like we would spend maybe like 10 hours at school trying to like listen to classes and like pay attention and at some point I wouldn't even function anymore and I wouldn't even like be able to communicate which sounds silly but like I remember people making fun of me because of the way I was talking or because of my accent that was a tough one for me then some professors want like because they don't understand you they might not even like take credit onto the stuff that you do I don't know I mean I it was a little bit hard for me to communicate with them in that sense but overall it was easy for me because it's being different it's always it should be always an advantage I think um the fact that I have that I know an extra language and I'm very fluent in it um makes me have an advantage over other people we are at all if you go into these inner cities and stuff their focus isn't on going to college their focus is on graduating high school so and a lot of times in these inner cities a lot of times the kids are dropping out in an early age and they're not even graduating high school even the high school I went to I went to a really good high school went to the top schools in Georgia and there was lack of I don't think there was lack of education about anything other than becoming a nurse physical therapist doctor pharmacist and business stuff you know any other options in the medical field we weren't giving with that we weren't giving that so when I was got to undergrad I still didn't know what a PA was I still didn't know what other options were I didn't even know what a respiratory therapist was until undergrad and the only reason I knew that because we had respiratory therapy school for minority high schools um I don't think there's enough exposure to the PA profession um it was either nursing or just being a doctor so I feel like there should be more traction there but in undergrad I felt like there was enough information about PAs and what they do I don't feel that minority students are properly educated on a lot of the professions prior to graduation personally I didn't find out about the PA profession until about a year or two after I had already graduated from college it wasn't until I was exposed to the profession through working at the hospital that I was able to finally see what the PA profession was about who we are as minorities in this country honestly is a multi factorial issue when you think about the lack of exposure to well-paying professions our housing the lack of resources that we have as a community it's no wonder why we tend to be second to last or last in finding out about certain things especially the PA profession when you think about the minority students who actually have to work and bring home you know a certain amount of money for the lights to stay on those kids aren't necessarily concerned with graduating or postgraduate professions they're they're mostly concerned about survival their main issue is okay how can I make it till tomorrow not next year I think the more the more exposed you are onto technology the more aware you are of what's out there you know like now kids are like they always have social media and and by being in college they always get smashed by pre-PA clubs and career fairs and if they're into medicine they start like googling what they could be doing so yeah I think they're getting more more and more informed about it however the parents which are usually a little bit of a struggle for them I think it's a little bit of a struggle for them to understand fully what the PA profession entitles to you know and sometimes you won't like I personally didn't have that much support from my parents because they didn't understand what the PA profession was and the fact that I was telling them that I wasn't gonna follow the MD DO route kind of freak them out a little bit that was kind of hard for me to make them understand that I was gonna give the same quality of care to my patients just by a different route you know I personally don't think anyone is getting educated enough about the PA profession it's still a growing field and there's still so many undergrads high school students not just minorities but just in general that don't know about the PA profession and it's really up to the pre-PA students PA students and working physician assistants to educate those that don't know what a physician assistant is and can do I think the simplest thing anyone can do is to just be more socially aware be cognizant of those around you and their experience as minorities living in America this country has a deep rid of history of marginalizing the experience of minorities the best thing any non-minority can do is to simply acknowledge minorities for who they are that's what makes us great that's what makes us different I mean I personally haven't had a problem with non-minorities um I just remember them some people making fun of me because of the way I talk that's it um but I guess for some other people who might be having struggle I wish non-minorities knew that we're here from for the same reason they are here you know we're here to help especially in our communities you know we're not here to take anybody's spot we're not here to take anybody's sparkle um and we are not trying to make them look bad because we know an extra language you know or because we we are more sensitive to other cultures because we're part of it you know we have I don't know you make your own experience and everyone has a different story so there's not one thing that I wish they knew about my experience everything is different everyone has their own story so that's my take on it I want them to know that we worked hard just as hard as you guys to get here and I think a lot of times and this sucks I'm saying it's I hate that I'm saying this I think a lot of times non-minorities they look at us and they somewhat pity us because oh they let her in because they need to seem like they're diverse to other to other to the nation so that way that they know oh we let minorities in as well so of course let's let let's let this girl in because she's such in such rays and whatever no that's not it I mean as I said Caswell doesn't look at rays when you're applying and when we get in like we work just as hard as you guys it's not harder and my mom at a very young age told me like Amber like you have to work harder because you are black you have to work you have to prove yourself to them and let them know that you deserve to be here so since when I was a young little girl I think and I think she started telling me this in like elementary school I've worked my butt off to get where I'm at and I've spent my whole life proving myself that I deserve to be here just like everybody else that I think minority pre-PAs might have is that they might not get it and I don't blame them because if you look at the statistics more Caucasians get into PA school than any other race or ethnicity um so don't feel like there's no chance for you because each class coming through is more and more diverse my class of 98 we are so diverse we have so many cultures so many backgrounds ages gender it's it's so different so don't lose hope one misconception is that we isolate like this isolation like this divide that's in my in my PA class that's not the case um we are one big happy family I've met some of the most amazing people I have ever met my classmates are great the faculty is so great so yeah like you know there's not a lot minorities but at the same time like we don't separate ourselves from everybody else like we're a one big happy family like I have my classmates are awesome so I just want them to know that there is the support is there you're not by yourself like you can reach up to your classmates and they're not going to judge you that we're all going through a struggle we're all going through this PA struggle like it's a struggle so and they can relate to that you know as well so don't be afraid to reach out to somebody you know that doesn't look like you that comes from different backgrounds like you know like try to be their friends because you you might look miss out on an amazing person I think as minorities a lot of times we sell ourselves short we don't give ourselves enough credit we always feel that because of where we came from that we're not good enough the truth is you are good enough it's not better your experience is what allows you to excel in PA school the minority experience is often depicted as one of great struggle and shame but honestly it's what makes us resilient I think a lot of people think that because we're minorities we're in disadvantage and that's absolutely false the fact that you're culturally aware of exposed to other to other people makes you be in an advantage and I mean it might not seem like not in advantage but like it might be easier for you to understand what your patients are coming where your patients are coming from it's gonna be it's gonna make way more sense when you're your rotations you know like when doctors don't speak a language and they ask you to translate and you can get more into a more personal communication with your patients that helps you a lot and no I'm explaining the yes so when big controversy when big things come up that affects us as a whole we bond together like there's no idealist business and I feel like it's beautiful like it's so awesome to see everything that's you know all the like troubles and stuff we've gone through and how we like you know unite together and help each other out and like my friends I can always rely on them and they have my back and I can always like if I need anything like I would go to them and they won't say like they won't even hesitate to say no the no part is so if there's not nothing controversial going on expecting a little as a whole a lot of times we're hearing each other down and I hate it so much because I'm such a positive person and I hate when people like are going out of with each other and bring each other down so it breaks my heart to see you know when we have minorities bring each other down and not banding together because I look at a lot of other races and not minorities and stuff and consistently they're helping each other out just because you helped somebody else does not dim your light you know what God wants you to do will happen if it's in God's purpose it will happen so based on my personal experience I haven't had a situation where I didn't feel like we weren't helping each other even with non minority people like in this profession we're here to help we're here to help anybody it doesn't matter who they are yes some people get very focused on their on their own success but I think that overall the majority of people in general either non minority or minority do help a lot I feel in general minorities do help each other out but my personal take on it is that help anyone out that's struggling don't just help out your minority brothers and sisters I mean that's great everyone's going to succeed everyone's going to do well but there shouldn't be that divide and just help whoever is struggling honestly it's a very difficult question you know as minorities we've been oppressed and we've been put into a situation where we're still having to battle some of those past ideologies a lot of what minorities have to overcome today is due to what they had to overcome in the past with this country's history a lot of minority groups have been systematically oppressed to the point where they're just starting to realize they're in a potential and just starting to realize okay we have so much further to go there is a detrimental mentality that some minorities have where they feel they have to outshine the next minority or they have to feel like they're better than the next minority but honestly you know one success means nothing if they're unable to help the next person coming after them it is so different like it's not even funny we I had an idea I don't know what I was thinking to be honest I was like I told you guys I was in medical school before I was on on the set on the seven-year program I finished five years and I remember the pace that we will go through medical school and the classes it was like nicely paced you know like we had enough time to grasp all the concepts in here it's just like that meme that they always show you that the fire hose starts like throwing all this water onto your onto your mouth and you're like getting like overwhelmed by all this information that's completely completely completely true everyone says PA school is like drinking from a fire hydrant with the amount of information you have to learn in a short period of time and that is honestly the most accurate way to describe it and for me I was expecting that but even then the amount of information we had to learn in a short period of time still overwhelm me to some degree but it's definitely doable it's hard it's difficult you're gonna have long nights of studying but it's definitely something that you can complete so I feel like they did PA school at this justice this junk is hard it's a lot of work like I'm in class eight to five Monday through Friday and I'll come home get home around like 5 30 and study until like 11 11 30 and most weekends I have a lot more free time on the weekend but it's a lot of work um I will say that it does fly by I can't believe that I'm 10 months in and I start rotations in five months so I will say that it's still so surreal that I'm almost done like in 17 months I'll be graduating thank god but yes it's everything that they say not if anything they you know they kind of like flip it down prior to being accepted here I was in my early 20s still very young in the mind and I didn't realize how much of my time my effort and just my personal sacrifice would actually be expected of me there were a semester where I was studying eight to ten to even 12 hours a day weeks where I wouldn't even go to the gym because I didn't have enough time each day passes each week passes each month passes and every time it's a different sacrifice that is kind of expected than you to make the truth of the matter is your time is limited what we're studying here today is not just so we can pass an exam on Friday is to save somebody's life one day now that I am in PA school um it's a little different than what I expected it to be because getting into a class of 98 students it's a little overwhelming um it's one of the biggest classes here in southern California and I thought I was gonna be overwhelmed but it's such a huge family people coming from different cultures and beliefs like I said earlier in this video um that really helps with dealing with school issues and life outside of school um so I love the familial support and my whole class it's it's amazing I did not feel like I was gonna be as successful that I as I was you know I was just kind of just like now let me try this out you know I need to share my journey with others because when I was applying to PA school I didn't have a mentor and I feel like if I would have a mentor I wouldn't have not made as many mistakes as I did and I just love hearing people's stories and so unique you know hearing how everybody got here and I just love like having people come to me asking questions about PA school like I enjoyed that more a lot more than studying like I would rather if I could sit around and answer you guys questions all day I would I absolutely embrace being someone that you guys can look up to and can reach out to I'm pretty much an open resource for you guys you guys can reach me through Instagram YouTube anything like that even Facebook I don't feel it as a burden at all I love doing what I do and I love helping you guys and my goal is to help you guys get into whatever program you guys do choose to apply to I personally feel honored that people are looking up to me um I never thought I was gonna be able to to lead by example um although I've also like to talk about my experience and help other people out I never thought it was gonna get this um this good and this big I don't care if a lot of people are are looking up to me I just want if one person can actually change their lives because of the way I live mine and help them out to succeed I'll be happy I love the fact that I started the IG account and my blog initially I thought it might be a little too much because I should be studying I should be focusing on passing exams um all that but honestly it's a stress reliever and kind of like a great mental break for me every time I do something like this um so I embrace it and I love that people are reaching out to me and seeing um seeing what they're doing with their lives and how I'm able to inspire them that that makes me so happy and yeah I embrace it so much honestly in the beginning it was pretty hard to conceptualize that I have people who are looking to me for guidance or looking to me as an example I'm the youngest of four boys and I've never had to be an example to anyone else I've always had the examples to look up to and now that I'm in this position you know I'm starting to embrace it more and more and I'm starting to realize the impact that I truly have being in PA school and being in my position I believe that who we idolize or who we respect is who we attempt to emulate it's who we become for me I would say maybe just having more diversity especially because majority of the PA population is Caucasian but even just diversity within the minority PA students just seeing different backgrounds and different cultures come together is something that I wish will continue continue to happen and continue to grow in this profession I say I would say in here it's not so hard because although we might seem like we are the minority I don't think anybody in here is not Spanish speaking person you know like I mean I'm I'm being a little bit dramatic but I think like a lot of people do know how to I mean there's a huge Latin community here there's a huge Creole speaking community here and but I guess for other states where minorities are really minorities I will I will wish for understanding from non-minority people you know understand what we're coming from understand that we're not from here it's hard to adjust to a new culture and a new system it has never been it has never been easier for us to adapt to other cultures but we were able to thrive and do it as best as we can and I will I will wish for people to understand that mine would be to go into the inner cities and what you know areas that's heavily populated with minorities and to just spread awareness about the profession in general I feel like if we did this you know them the world end up closing the gap between whites and non my and my whites and minorities in my in me using me as a personal example I didn't I went I lived in like the suburbs of Atlanta you know the area it's a pretty like the area I lived in what's a pretty affluent area and I didn't know what a PA was and that's been coming from a pretty like from really good background and here you have these inner cities kids they don't have the same opportunities that I grew up having and a lot of other you know the non-mortem minorities did and a lot of times for like minorities they sometimes think being a coming a doctor and going to be um is not attainable and it's I mean it's kind of intimidating seeing you know four years of medical school four years of um or four plus years of residency and a lot of them think they can't do it and that's all they know they don't know there's other options you know a lot of inner city kids like their goal isn't even to go to college in high school or go to college while they're in high school is to graduate because the graduation rate is so low and I feel like if we start young you know educating them encouraging them to you know do better things like hey you can do this simply more diversity the patient population that we treat on a daily basis is as diverse as it comes and I think we fail them and fall short when we don't match that with our class population if a black male comes into my clinic and I diagnose him with hypertension he's more likely to follow my recommendation as far as what anti-hypertensive medications he needs to take this is why diversity is important this is why having minority pa students is important those minority pa students are going to be able to connect on a level with their minority patients that most other races can if I was granted one wish about the minority pa experience I would just abolish the divide of minority versus non-minority because it shouldn't be like that like everyone love each other everyone push each other encourage each other and succeed together my final message goes out to anybody on their path to success who's currently struggling focus on your journey the obstacles you overcome today are only going to contribute to your strength tomorrow never compare your journey to others you are in your own time zone just because it's 12 o'clock in the state of florida and nine o'clock in the state of california doesn't mean that any one time zone is wrong the journey that you're currently on today is going to be the blueprint for somebody tomorrow it's really hard to get into peace well despite your ethnicity your nationality your culture all that it's it's what you make of your experience and it took me three times to get in but I think it all happened for a reason so keep pushing surround yourself with positive people and just help each other out it's going to be okay and we're all going to be successful so just keep that positive in your life as minorities we need to stop tearing each other down I hate to see us you know say negative things about each other and whatnot and because you know when my own minority see us tearing each other down you know publicly it lets them know that hey it's okay to do it because they're doing it themselves and it's not okay well nobody should be tearing anybody down whether we're white black red green we need to sit there and you know spread love because in the day and age you're living in so much hate going on there's so much hate going on and sad to see sad to see that as minorities we're not banding together like we should like we support each other on big controversial things but when it comes to when that's over we're back to bashing each other and saying negative things and saying hurtful things to each other and you know that's not how god wants us to act that's not how it's not godly so we just need to stop it and I encourage everybody to you know compliment somebody just compliment one person a day and not only are you making some ideals full of better but you're making yourself feel better my goal is to help you guys get into whatever program you guys do choose to apply to and whether you guys choose pa or medical school or ot or pt school I want to be there to help you guys reaffirm your decision in what you guys want so whether I help you guys get into pa school or a different type of grad school or just help you figure out what you want in life that's definitely my ultimate purpose and I absolutely love doing it things are gonna happen you're gonna fall you're gonna fail um they're gonna be so there's gonna be so many rocks thrown into you but just let that be the motivation for you to keep pushing for and fighting for your dreams don't ever give up on your dreams um it's never hard also I would like to leave you guys with a quote that I love I I've been very into it lately and it's it says everything you need your courage your strength your compassion and your love everything you need it's already within you so this marks 50 years of the pa profession being in existence and I wanted to make this documentary to have it serve as an introduction to not only the profession but to minorities in the profession ultimately it's something that I did not see when I was applying to med schools because initially I wanted to be a physician so I didn't know about the pa profession when I was looking at different healthcare routes it was either go to med school or become a nurse really and truly but there is more out there and I want minority students to understand and know that hey there's a huge landscape in healthcare and the pa profession is one of them that needs more of them in it so do your research and hopefully it's a profession that you will love and you can add to and you can thrive in because you can do it I want experiences all of these individuals experiences to serve as motivation to you all that there's other people that look like me that are going through the same thing maybe in a different situation but they have some similar experiences to me so if they can do it I can absolutely do it because you absolutely can that's really and truly what this documentary is all about understanding the minority experience in pa school but just also the minority experience in healthcare because with all of the different health disparities it's essential that we're able to relate to our patients so lastly but definitely not least I want to give a special thank you to all of my participants that gave their experiences in this documentary if you guys want to just follow them or support them on their journey you can do so at their different social media handles that were provided in this documentary thank you guys so much for watching and I will see you guys later bye so I want to thank adana the pa for giving me the opportunity to talk a little bit about my experience and also what it's to be a minority on pa school and I am so honored to be featured today on adana's youtube channel I just want to give a huge shout out and thank you to adana for featuring me on this video I'm really excited for how it's going to turn out don't forget to subscribe to our channel and follow her on instagram as well at adana the pa yeah


On Saturday March 30th, the Pike County Cooperative Extension Office is hosting their Home Chef Showcase with a breakfast theme. Home cooks in Pikeville and surrounding counties are welcome to bring their best breakfast dish so it can be judged and shared with others. Dishes will be judged for best presentation, best on theme, and best overall. Home Chef Showcase, we have it here at the Extension Office. It's going to be March 30th, and you just, if you think you make the best bacon or you think you make the best breakfast dish, you know, bring it, bring enough for 30 people to try, and we all come in, we sit around, and we make ourselves a plate, and we just hang out and talk, and then at the end we kind of vote in three categories. So there's best theme, there's best overall, and usually we have best dessert, but if you're not like me and eat dessert with breakfast, we have the best presentation this time of said dessert, because dessert doesn't really go after a breakfast item, so. Appalachian Community Care offers outpatient medication-assisted treatment for addiction, counseling, and behavioral play therapy for children, accepting Medicare and all major insurance. Recovery is hard, regret is harder. Appalachian Community Care, Pikeville, Weitzberg,<PHONE_NUMBER>, find them on Facebook. More than just a contest, Home Chef Showcase is about community and learning as a group. Participants can sign up by contacting Pikeville Creative Community at gmail.com. Anybody can come in, show off what they've got, their cooking skills, and yeah, we can kind of sit around for a couple hours, talk, we'll talk about like the next one, what people's ideas are for the next one, maybe we'll come out with a new theme for next time. And we usually hold these quarterly, so maybe like every three months, and the next one will be sometime in the summer. But there is a competition aspect, so if you think you've got the best dish, bring it, we have little stars that we pass out and everybody can go around. We get three stars because it's three categories, and you just go around and you put, if you think it's the best best overall, then you put that on the thing, and so the winners walk out with a big gift basket from us. Reporting from out on top news, I'm Nick Colum.


to introduce a presentation called, Why is Open Simulator So Boring? Our speakers are Reiner Schneeberger, aka Art Blue, and Kisma Riedling, aka Juliette Cereal Dreaming. Please check out the website found at conference.opensimulator.org for speaker bios, details of sessions, and the full schedule of events. The session is being live streamed and recorded. So if you have questions or comments during the session, you may send tweets to atopensimcc with the hashtag O-S-C-C-20. So welcome everybody again, and let's start. Over to you Art. Greetings to you all. I have prepared a speech that includes sound and voice from other sources, so I had to pre-record it. The length of the recording is 15 minutes. Before Marcus will start the recording, I want to apologize for the quite catastrophic presentation of yesterday called, We Are Going to America. The text and the slides did not fit together. That's all my fault.  But what comes now might be even worse. The title is a provocation. Why is open simulator so boring to avoid to use the shortcut open sim when talking to people outside this group we are in because this term is used for body movement simulator. I copy the link in chat. But nevertheless, it can be nice to play with a confusion. No, I'm not in body simulation. I'm in actual virtual reality. That's top notch. The idea why is open simulator so boring has a source out of some talks I had with artists when I think my art events are running in open simulator and they wrinkle their nose asking if this is old second life. They say, I shall move on to tools that are cool to be state of the art. We know to be cool is something that is relative. There is no button to press and to say from now on be cool. To let you will note questions that may come up during the speech and maybe there is time at the end to answer them in voice or chat. And if not, then I will do it in IM. Today I stole some ideas which some of you might think interesting. Please Marcus, you may start now the recording. Welcome to the noise of actual virtual reality. Three years ago word press went disruptive giving the rebirthing a name, the name Gutenberg. Matt Mullenveig was surprised that he forgot about VR in Gutenberg. A developer Morton Rand Hendrickson gave a speech which was commented by Matt. He's really excited about VR. I was like, wow, this is a lot of VR. We haven't even, Gutenberg and VR has not even imagined to me until that presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, let me welcome Art Blue. Later when we have heard what he says to us some unknown user might say, he is really excited about noise. Wow, this is a lot of noise. Open simulator and noise has not even imagined to me until that presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, dear audience, the speaker tells me I shall make noise, a lot of noise, but my first words go to the organizers of the Open Simulator Community Conference 2020 to thank them for inviting me to speak on such a stunning matter. Juliette, would you please announce the title? Juliette, where are you? Are you still in America? I am so sorry. I was on actual reality, a term invented by Google. Nothing virtual today, you said. We shall speak on facts. The presentation on virtual art was yesterday. Yes, facts. Let us show the audience facts that count. I need that you blend in the title. Right away. Here comes the chart. Why is Open Simulator so boring? What? Art, is this the right title? So organizers of the conference published this title, surely for a reason, maybe because my talks are always so boring. Maybe because you do always the same, you use Open Simulator to make immersive art known. Look, the title has changed. Boring reality is back and it looks good this time.   That often, it needs just a fix and boring things turn to a hype. The things that make virtual reality compelling have been with us for tens of hundreds of thousands of years. At its core, it's about storytelling. Everything along the way is a step towards trying to get more immersed in the experience and more immersed in the story. But, you know, we're still putting something between you and the world. What we really wanted to do was to make something feel real. And so this is the first headset for actual reality. You saved my day. Every developer knows how it is with a hot fix.  Then you rename the package and post it as ready to go. That's the time when we need you as a super spreader. Yeah, on command, I will create a myth about the patcher. I buy, secretly sponsored by America Art, the one with the spelling mistake, thousands of likes on Facebook. That cost me just a fiver. An intentional misspelling can be a good way. It gains attention by the ones who want to correct you. In addition, we need also good fake. America is not good enough. You know how social media performs. Fake news runs six times faster compared to truthful information. So what about your launcher rumor that Elon Musk wants Open Simulator to simulate his first settlement on Mars? Open Simulator makes Mars great again? Art, this work? I'm not sure we shall discuss at the end. In the open discussion, there are various ways to get attention for us, to get the breaking news out that Open Simulator runs now on actual virtual reality. Thank you, Giuliette. Now I need to go in media's race just for five minutes. Oh no, I hate this word. In media res means there is no room for me and I have to keep my mouth shut and my ears plugged. Audience, now Giuliette can't hear us. You see how difficult it is to get cool users and trending influencers on our side. They don't see the inner values of a continuous software development. They want the hype. They don't mind if it is a hot fix that gives them the tunes. They want the easy fun, the simple buttons. People like Giuliette want to be born as an avatar that is stunning, not starting like a developer is used to look. They want a great wide search for groups and names, a global friends list spanning over all grids. I admit, the wish list differs greatly on the social dynamics that different types of users have in mind. Is it Open Simulator for closed, for individual, for isolated tasks, for testing, for teaching, for simulation? Does it stand for robust work hours? Does it stand for the state of the art in immersive, interactive environments? My talk today is meant to be provocative. Open Simulator shall be our answer to Zoom. We are the immersive Zoom. What has to be done for this? A big leap? I faked a talk I took from the WordPress conference and replaced the word WordPress by Open Simulator. Let us listen to it. All right, I think a question from Morton is on the bingo table, so. Hello, I'm Morton from Virtual Reality. Can I talk about something other than Goodberg for a second? Yeah, just get a little closer to the mic. Closer to the mic, sorry. Last year I asked a question by Proxy about Open Simulator. It's using its power to influence how the web evolves by having representation in the bodies that make up decisions about the web. And I think your answer was something along the line, so I'll just do it. I'd like to continue that conversation. Because we have great people in our community that are working on accessibility that should represent Open Simulator in the fora that make decisions about accessibility. We have great people who work on GDP in Europe that should represent Open Simulator in the fora that make these decisions. We have people in the US that work on political decisions around that. But we don't have a methodology for making decisions about what Open Simulator stands for, so no one can actually represent Open Simulator in any of these groups. So we have all the power and none of the ability to do something about it. So how do we as a community make decisions about what Open Simulator stands for, and then find representatives to front those decisions into the bodies that make decisions that impact us and our users so that we can truly help democratize publishing and do other great things like just bring democracy to the world? Now Matt Mull and Vee Gansers to Morton. Let us take his answer for Open Simulator. Yeah, so first thank you for the question. I think you're highlighting that there's kind of two issues embedded in there. One, are we, how do we know that we're aligned so that the person doing the representation is actually aligned with something that we can call WordPress? Whether that's the, could be the community at large, although, but we're more of a representative democracy, I think so, with perhaps aligned with other leaders. And then two, we don't really have a way to recognize or give autonomy or authority outside of developer roles and like leading releases. And we just kind of just introduced that for designers. We don't have that yet for accessibility and in fact, or many of the other areas that we work on. And in fact, sometimes like, we might roll something back because the committee, like typically how these groups operate is like committee and the committee might agree on something and then someone else like a lead developer might say, oh, that's not actually what we wanna do or what we wanna happen. What I would love, love, love, love, love is for more of this to not be as committee driven as it is today because what I've seen happen personally, I'm not gonna call it any of the groups, but sometimes like the lowest common denominator of what can be done. And that's not necessarily gonna move us forward. So to this sense, but a lot of people I think have been hesitant to step up and like say like, okay, I'm the head of XYZ for WordPress. If there were, I could meet with them regularly. We could have like a every month or two meeting and like these sort of things could come up or we could make sure we could put something to some sort of a quorum to say like, okay, so-and-so is gonna go to this meeting at in Brussels, I guess, where all these things happen or whatever it is for whatever kind of area that you're talking about. I would love that. So this sense, it's been like pulling teeth sometimes to even get some of the committees to elect a lead. So since then we can have more of that, I think that would enable exactly what you're talking about. So I think there is a bit of a vacuum there and it can be filled by people who step up and I would love for it to be. So what are you gonna lead? Besides virtual reality. We need to strengthen the back of a person who decides for open simulator on a wider scale. I will end this feature by giving two isolated ideas. One is to increase the length of sound on a prim from 10 seconds mono to 182 seconds stereo. The other one has to do with environment settings. You know the land management makes it easy to subdivide parcels. On each could be a different local windlight. So when the avatar walks from one to the next parcel, there are change and the firestorm fewer happens. I used it once in a theatrical performance where people had to sit in a row on a bench and I moved the bench forward and backward. If there would be a function to communicate to the fewer software, it would create visuals no other virtual world can provide. I'm not a developer, but if half of the about 80 developers listed on GitHub log in right in the next session break and give an update, then our community would get a boost. I said we need to strengthen the back of a person who decides for open simulator, who is willing to give a budget. What if such a person looks at GitHub or ask someone, how active is the developer's community? Right now, when you look at opensimulator.org, there is no SSL certificate for the website running. The last update in the footer states being of February 4th. Small things can make the difference. Let us think big and care for the small things. Thank you. Due to copyright reasons, the soundtrack from Mars 182 seconds was taken out for this upload. Remember 182 seconds in stereo instead of 10 in mono. 182 is the time light needs to travel from Earth to Mars. If Elon Musk wants to be state of the art, he has to use open simulator. Juliette, where are you? Mars is calling. America is calling for Mars. The timer should by now have reopened her ears. Here I am. Let us make America art again. The AAA Biennale. I see there is still a little time. Art has some ideas about the viewer that we need alongside the classic firestorm. Something similar to Frame Ever, which is a product made by the Vera Bella team. You don't need to download a viewer there. You need only a web address and you find yourself in an interactive room with others. We discuss our art projects there, the America art, how to contribute, what awards are given, what happens virtual and what in actual reality. That is possible with having an account in open simulator. So check it out. http colon forward slash forward slash frame ever.io forward slash America. And that is spelled a m e r i k a. Let us make noise again. Thank you. The discussion is now open.