Well, good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Whatever you're listening. This is Davisville on KDRT LP 95.7 FM in Davis, California. We live at KDRT.org online. I'm Bill Buchanan. Thank you for tuning in Well, it's often said that some places you should be sure to see are ones you never do because they're close and so because you could go anytime you never get around to it for those of us who live in the Davis area, the Beriesa region could qualify as such a place. Most of us know there's a reservoir up there, a lake, plus mountains that create the west side of the valley we live in. But if we're fortunate enough to have time and ability to see some of California's natural splendors, we might more readily head off to the Pacific Coast or to Yosemite or Lake Tahoe or the Redwoods. A few geologists and naturalists in Davis have written a book that should help move Beriesa more into the foreground and one of them is on our show today, Mark Oshofsky, a retired naturalist who lives in Davis. The other writers are Eldridge and Judith Morris, Peter Schiffman and Bob Schneider. And their book is Exploring the Beriesa Region, a Geology, Nature and History Tour. Mark, thanks for joining us today. You're welcome. Thank you. You know, as I read through the book, I thought this is a really good book for summer when late sunsets and clear skies create room to get outside. Why focus on Beriesa? Beriesa is an area that has incredibly complex geology and a lot of geological wonders in that area. And most people don't necessarily appreciate it. Geologists around the world have actually appreciated it and fly in from all over to look at it. The area is also part of a new national monument, the Beriesa Snow Mountain National Monument, that just celebrated its 50th anniversary last week or so. It also has a lot of, it's an ecological transition zone between the Sacramento Valley and the coast and you can see a lot of changes in vegetation as you go through. And there's some interesting history, both Indigenous people, some of the opening of California with the bear flag revolt and other history since then. So tell us, it's a very interesting area from three different perspectives. And could you define the region for us a little bit? As you pointed out, it includes the Snow Mountain and so it's much more than just the lake itself. The national monument extends all the way from Lake Beriesa all the way up to Snow Mountain and I think it's Colusia County. Our book is focusing on just the Beriesa region, which is the southern one-fifth of that monument. It's the area from winters out to Lake Beriesa itself on the west side. And then west into Pope Valley and Charles Valley and Capell Valley, that area, it gets a little bit into the Napa watershed, but not very much. People from Napa can easily access this area as well as people from the Sacramento Valley sign. One of the things that honestly I appreciated about the book, but I wanted to ask about is that you've, sort of the heart of the book is basically a car tour where people could follow, I think it's about a 21-mile route, although you say it would take all day if someone follows it with the hikes you suggest. Why focus on that route as opposed to say hiking or something? Why focus on the road? The road gives you access to a lot of different locations around the region. The actual route of the road guide is over 100 miles actually. It allows you to see a variety of geological features from the Great Valley group near the, on the eastern edge, some subduction zones over on the west side of Lake Beriesa, some really deeply buried Franciscan rocks that have been dragged up from 18 miles below the surface. So the road tour gives you ability to look at all of those different features as well as seeing different elements of history for the area. The, you know, you talked about geology and it struck me actually at the very start where you said this area is known to geologists around the world and of course if you're not a geologist you wouldn't necessarily know that and it makes me think you know traveling someplace far away and saying I'm from this area that a geologist would go you're near Beriesa whereas locally you might think yeah why does it matter? Yeah, maybe not all geologists will be fascinated. We will know the name Beriesa but they know the coast of California as this incredible continental collision zone and where you have one continental plate being dragged under the other and then that whole exposure being put up on land for people to walk around and drive around and look at. Most places in the world you would have to go in a submersible down into the deep ocean to see this. So this is an area where it's really exposed and a lot of structural geologists know about this so they can go and learn and see that directly just by driving to it. So now that's an interesting comment that the geology of that area in most places in the world would be underwater. Do I understand that correctly? Well at a subjection zone where you have an oceanic plate being pushed down underneath a continental plate like North America. So you'll see this off the coast of South America you see it in various places at these margins of the continental plates but to say off the coast of South America you would have to go down into the trench off the ocean to actually see the submarine fans that flow out into the abyssal plain to see all of the the it's a rock factory where you have serpentine being pushed up some of these areas have serpentine mud volcanoes that are like 15 kilometers across they're only down in the bottom of the Mariana's trench in the in the western Pacific. We have mud volcanoes exposed right here at Areasa up on land. You know in reading the book one of the things that kind of fired my imagination was reading about the lava in this area which I think it's described in the book as saying that it's similar to lava that's in eastern Oregon and Idaho and up by Yosemite and it just fires the imagination to think that lava from a place like that might have come here. Yeah this is the lovejoy basalt which is exposed on this tour only at the mouth of Puttacreek Canyon and it has flowed 150 miles as hot liquid lava from the northern Sierra up near Susanville and the this is related to a lot of the the flood basalts that are out in the Columbia Plateau of eastern Oregon and Washington. This came out around 14 million years ago and actually flooded at one point some 25 percent of the Sacramento Valley over repeated flows and one of them has extended all the way down to actually goes to Vacaville along the western edge of the Sacramento Valley. Climbers who go to Browns Valley open space will see basaltic boulders there they climb on those boulders that has actually come from the area up around Susanville. So this is like a secret history of the region. I mean maybe it's not really a secret I guess it's known if you look for it but I mean I don't think of this place as having anything to do with volcanoes. Right and this is really well this is one of the most this is one of the volcanic features of the area actually if you go on the western edge of our region you get up into the area east of Napa onto Angwin in Powell Mountain. Those areas are actually covered by the Sonoma Volcanics and Clear Lake Volcanics they're less eight million years old. As you get into the Napa Valley there's a lot more of volcanics and a lot of the vineyards are grown on volcanic soils very productive for them. You know we've been talking about the geology and such the book contains quite a bit beyond the geology you talked about you know the the history of the people of the area. I mean that could be a book in itself but I was interested to read that there have been at least seven different Native American groups over the past 12,000 years that have lived in this area that the book is talking about and then that leads us to the Pat Wynn the Winton and the Lake Miwok who currently inhabit the area. Could you tell us a little bit about these as I say that could be a book by itself but could you tell us a little about these original inhabitants and what you find of them in the Bariasa region? When we say that there's about seven different tribes or peoples those are in the national monument the full length of it. California has had one of the most culturally diverse areas in terms of indigenous people in North America so divided up there's so many different tribes and peoples and even the Pat Wynn people themselves. Pat Wynn is a name that the anthropologists used to group people that spoke languages similar but they would not call themselves Pat Wynn they just live in bands and they just speak a similar language so they're not like a unified group there. The Pat Wynn are the people that cover most of the area of our guide the Lake Miwok come in from or live up near Middletown and they had some villages in the upper Pope Valley area. Most of the Pat Wynn were actually south of Rumsie and Cape Valley they were pretty much exterminated by the 1870s and 1880s due to disease like malaria and smallpox they were killed off so there was hardly there was no no Pat Wynn alive south of there by then. Those survivors were up in the northern parts and they settled and they were given land around the Cape Valley for the Cache Creek Rancheria the Lake Miwok settled in their Middletown for the Middletown Rancheria so they're both thriving fairly well as as well as Native Americans are doing nowadays their diversified economy and bringing money from branching and other kinds of agricultural products. Well and and of course the casino is one descendant I guess of this because this was their land and by the way the laws have changed over the years it's such that they could have a casino there. Are there village sites and such in the mountains that are at all visible? The village sites are known really from historical records archaeologists know where they are there's there's not really much left in those areas. Various of valley for example was home for all had a lot of archaeological sites before it was flooded and those areas are now underwater so most of those villages as I said there was a lot of extermination of native Californians so by the time the early settlers showed up in the 1840s and 50s there were very few people left from that time. What are one or two things that you know if you were recommending to somebody first time visiting that region? What are one or two things that you think they should be sure to see? The um it really depends on the the interests of the person if you're interested for example in history just knowing uh as driving up Puttacreek Canyon and and looking at Monticello Dam and understanding the history of the Puttacreek Turnpike the first road through those mountains the first wagon road the quarry that used to be there the understanding the history of development of that dam also to look at Lake Berries and appreciate the history before 1957 when the dam was completed and how that landscape has changed and then there's also on the northern end there's a route that Fremont used to get out over into the Sacramento Valley related to the the California and Mexican war. Oh that was John Fremont the explorer. Right he actually sent some spies up Puttacreek Canyon to get from Sacramento over to Sonoma before the bear flag revolt and they used that route to avoid being detected by the Mexicans down at Vallejo. The bear flag revolt we should mention that was back to going to the start of California's estate correct where the land was under the control of Mexico and this was a revolt against that. Yeah California was part of Mexico up until that event. Vallejo was living general Vallejo was living in Vallejo and he was not getting much support from the Mexican government when Fremont came in and rallied up the increasing American settlers in the area and he thought it would be great to get California's part of the United States and Vallejo really was didn't put up much of a fight it was like sure whatever he was not getting any support from the Mexicans so that was the bear flag revolt in Sonoma and that led to California becoming part of the United States. To a quick station ID we are talking with Mark Hoshofsky he is one of the writers of a book called Exploring the Berryessa Region a Geology, Nature, and History Tour. I'm Bill Buchanan and this program is Davisville on KDRTLP 95.7 in Davis. What are some of the good hikes up there? There's some really nice views of the valley aren't there? There are a very popular hike on the east side of course is Cold Canyon which is a UC natural reserves very popular place it's near Monticello Dam. There are some other hikes up on the north end of Berryessa out of Pope Valley there's a Pope Valley Pope Creek to Putacreek Trail which goes up over the mountains and ends up on Putacreek as it comes into Lake Berryessa. A lot of the land is there's quite a bit of private land in the area there's a lot of conservation easements that have been placed on that land this conservation easements do not make the land publicly accessible but it does keep the land in a protected status so people do have to be concerned about and be sensitive to private lands out there. A good spot to find out more information about trails is the Tuleomi website that's T-U-L-E-Y-O-M-E and they have a great index of trails that are available on public land. The book says if I understand correctly that the area is more biologically diverse than most of the United States. Does that read that correctly and if so kind of how did that happen that this one region ended up with such diversity? There's a lot of biological diversity in the coast range so it's not just simply the Berryessa region this really includes the area all the way up into the full national monument. So it includes areas that have a lot of coastal influence than interior valley influence like the Sacramento. The east side of the mountains are a rain shadow so it's much drier and you have a lot more grass and blue equidland. As you go west you get into moisture fog areas that have this lace beautiful lace like hanging from the trees. Going north you get up into higher elevations of the Mendocino National Forest and you also have areas with redwoods out on the near Pope Valley you can find redwoods. So there is quite a bit of diversity. The biologic one of the richest biological parts are the serpentine soils and serpentine is a challenging soil for most plants to grow on it has chemical imbalance and it's a host for a lot of rare plants so you'll find outcrops of serpentine throughout this region that hosts those plants. So if I understand correctly it's and of course there's also altitude. When I first came to Yolo County I was surprised that there are mountains in Yolo County that go to 4,000 feet because living in Davis I think we're 15 feet or 50 feet it just doesn't seem to compute but there's difference in altitude there's difference in rain there's difference in topography and and so all that combined just engenders this diversity of biodiversity. Right yeah the the early settlers when they were in in the Sacramento Valley as they looked to the west they saw the Blue Ridge. The Blue Ridge is essentially a 2,500 foot high mountain wall that's about 40 miles long and trying to navigate that was a challenge for them. They found a route up Pooda Creek and they created Pooda Creek Turnpike. The other route over it was out of Cape Valley out of Brooks that went up about 1,700 feet over to Lake Berryessa and then eventually well to Berryessa Valley at the time and led up to Clear Lake. They were getting up they're going up there for the mercury mining area primarily in some of the borax deposits. In fact I want to ask about I was surprised how many mines there were up there too. I read in the book the references to dozens of mining sites but it wasn't for gold right? Right the um in the broader region beyond Berryessa there was quite a bit of mercury mining they were using the mercury to export over to the 49er area over in the Sierra where people were needed mercury for extracting gold so there's a lot of mercury mining out of the out of that region. They also extracted chromite and magnetite from the serpentine so there were some fairly large mines in the area in the late 1800s those are now mostly gone and abandoned. So you've spent quite a bit of time up there I'm sure over the years. First how did you discover it?  Well I've been living in in Davis for about 35 years and I am just obsessively curious about all kinds of places and I like to go exploring all the time. So I'm out traveling through the Berryessa region I actually do a lot of hiking in the Sierra as well a lot of different places and the Berryessa region is close and during the winter time is really the best time to be out hiking and exploring that area. There are times after the fires that are burned through that the wildflowers are just incredible it's just an amazing wildflower display and it just was a local area that I found fascinating and I knew about the geological background on it but I could never I'd been on a few trips with Eldridge Morse. He and Judy led public tours of geology for about 20-25 years in that area and I'd been on several of his trips and I didn't I wasn't satisfied with understanding the area so that's why I thought it was useful to work with Eldridge to create a more in-depth description that would be available for people and an easy to read way to explain more what he was trying to say on his field trips. Well and that that's a question I wanted to ask as well is what led you all to write this book and several of you archaeologists either by profession or training I mean is that how you met and is that how you decided you just said look Berryessa needs this kind of a guidebook? We've all known each other over the years. Peter Schiffman is an emeritus professor and has worked alongside Eldridge who was an emeritus professor at UC Davis they worked alongside together for decades and Bob Schneider has been involved in a lot of conservation issues and I've been involved in conservation issues so we kind of know each other the drive was partly when I wanted to learn more about the area and I felt that if I wrote myself a road guide and if I could understand it that would teach me more about the geology but I ran into some problems with understanding geology maps there were two maps next to each other that just did not match up so like I asked Eldridge if he knew somebody who could help me figure that out and he was willing to go out into the field with me and as we were out in the field looking at stuff I said we should just take your road guide the simple three page thing that you have and turn it into a book that other people could read and get access to and Bob Schneider joined in on that and Peter said oh I want to enjoy that and Judy is a big part of the program as well as Judy on her tour on the tours that Eldridge and Judy led Judy's element was sort of bringing in the humanistic side of things talking about the poetry and appreciating the beauty and all the sort of things that were different than what Eldridge focused on which was the science part I think the book reflects that I mean you can as a reader anyway I looked at it and it's a good armchair travel book as well I mean it makes me want to get out there and see some of these things but I could just sit there and look at the photos and the stories about the people and the different locations and be drawn into it and the maps I really appreciated I have this sense of the region but it's pretty rustic area even now you know if you look at a map it doesn't necessarily help you comprehend it at a detailed level well except in your book it does I mean I see all these different things so in all the times you've been out there name out if you would a favorite moment you've had out there maybe something you've seen or some realization I think the being in either Chiles Valley or the Bariessa Valley and having taken the geology maps these geology maps you'll see in the book lots of different colors left the lines but a geologist can interpret that and recreate a three-dimensional structure in his or her head about what that geology is I created a cross section from that and it really showed me how the the the whole area has been folded into these huge anaclines and synclines and then being out there in the field and just looking at when you say when you go to Monticello Dam you see all of that vertical bedding if you can visualize that bedding extending up into the air it's just been eroded it's been gone but visualize what it used to be was a big structural hill that went off over Bariessa Valley and visualizing the loss of the erosion of all of that material down the canyons into the ocean now you just see the pieces of it but you you know there's this incredible structure underneath I thought that was fascinating so an anticline and syncline I take it to geological terms for a certain kind of a formation but now listening to you right now I got a sense maybe this is part of the reason at least why some of us will go out and take hikes is because you see the thing there in front of you but it's like looking at the stars too you also see something larger something that maybe isn't right there right now but you can kind of see or feel the traces of it that's one of the reasons maybe to go out and get into nature yeah I have um I work professionally as an ecologist but I have a degree in geology and a long history I'm just you know passionate with that but I also enjoy photography and I find that a lot of people pass through the landscape either hiking or driving and for them it's mostly just a blur it's like either green stuff or whatever sometimes they see a nice view but if you slow down and you really look more carefully at things well when I go hiking people are a little frustrated because I'm always looking at things and I'm just checking out and wondering about why does this plant grow here why is that rock over there and I'm hoping that the book can help people slow down a little bit more and to look at the world and get a richer experience from traveling through that area you know it also struck me reading the book that the dam Lake Berry Esso was created by by the dam in the 1950s California hasn't built a new major reservoir in about 40 years so that was fairly late in California's cycle of building dams and such if the lake weren't there what would be there well what existed before the dam was a fairly rich agricultural area and they were doing a lot of farming in the area there was a town of Monticello there was a town of there was a cemetery that had to be moved up by Spanish flat with the construction of the dam so a fairly flat agricultural valley with a small town in the area and it becomes visible when the lake gets low enough right I mean not that there's much there now there's the foundations and I gather there's an old bridge and things like that right you can there is a bridge down near the just above the dam that was one of the largest stone span bridges at its time in western in the western U.S. that's all underwater now I'm not sure if that dam actually can be seen when the lake is low enough I did not get a chance to get out there during some of the extreme droughts to to see any exposure of that I've seen it over in Folsom Lake and other places but I I did not get a chance to see it at Berry Esso I've seen some photos and I mean it looks like the bottom of a reservoir in a drought I mean the the ground is very I don't know what that is you know dust looks like anyway well we're about to wrap up for today but when's when's your next trip out there how often do you go well the summer is not really a great time to be out there unless you're out there at some you know five or six in the morning when the temperatures are reasonable it gets quite hot people will go out there and you know it could be 90 100 degrees or so so I usually wait until about late October to get out there and start hiking and it's still rather dry but my favorite time for exploring the area is from about February through early May that's when most the flowers are out it's green I've led a number of hikes for groups like put a creek council and Audubon in the area I'd like to be able to do that again once we can get over this virus situation I'd love to be able to do some public tours following this guide out there but that's carpooling there's all these different constraints we're facing right now well it'll be there and your book I imagine will be there too so Mark thank you very much for talking with us today you're quite welcome Bill we've been talking with Mark Koshofsky who is one of the contributors writers of exploring the Berryessa region a geology nature and history tour I'm Bill Buchanan this is Davis Phil on KDRT thank you for listening


Good afternoon, everyone. If I could have your attention. Please continue to eat and enjoy your food and remember There's dessert on the back tables if you're if you're ready for that part of your meal I'm Michelle good the city of Fort Worth communications and public engagement director And I hope you all enjoyed this morning's workshops that we put on and we're able to get some valuable information to Take back to your neighborhoods we We'd like to begin this Event with an invocation by Brent Peterson He's from Fort Worth Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and as a member of the mayor's faith leaders cabinet Would you please join me up here for the invocation? our father in heaven we come before the at this Convention of neighborhoods and citizens of Fort Worth We're thankful to live in such a wonderful city and for the favorable circumstances in which we live we're thankful for the opportunity to interact as neighborhoods and to Figure out ways where we can communicate together where we can help each other and where we can grow stronger neighborhoods We're thankful for those that are here Those volunteers that are here and those that work in the individual neighborhoods around Fort Worth and we asked The city to bless them that they might be a a light and a strength to their neighborhoods to help strengthen our community Block by block in neighborhood by neighborhood We're thankful for our first first responders that are here Our firefighters are our police our EMS our military and we asked by blessings to be with them To watch over them and protect them as they serve to protect us We're thankful for our city leaders For the mayor for the council and for their service in our behalf We asked they to bless them with wisdom and leadership as they serve the city We pray thy blessings upon these proceedings. We're thankful for thankful for those that will receive awards We're thankful for those who have participated to make this event possible We pray thy spirit to be with us and to shower out thy spirit upon our community of Fort Worth To keep us safe to keep us strong and to keep us moving in the right direction We acknowledge thy hand in all that we have and in all our blessings And we pronounce these blessings and ask these favors from the in the name of thy son jesus christ amen Thank you very much We have many special guests with us today First i'd like to recognize our elected officials. Please stand and remain standing as i say your name mayor betsy prize Um judge wittley was here earlier doing some workshops and i'm not sure if he was able to stay for the lunch carlos floris bryan bird carry moon Gina bivvans jungus jordan denise shingleton kelly allen gray and anzeda the members of your city council And for those of you that work closely with the district offices You know that the district directors are very important to um Helping interact with the city council and our neighborhoods. So if any district directors are here, I would ask them to stand We also have a special guest the commander of the joint reserve base captain john townsend There are many city staff members here today Too many to name, but if you are a city staff, would you please stand and let us recognize you Thank you for all your service to the neighborhoods I would like to give a special recognition to the community engagement team for organizing today's workshops Exhibitors and awards luncheon In addition to this event they work closely with you all all year They work with neighborhoods elementary schools after school programs other community groups and city staff You'll find all of their contact information in your program Now I know what happens when a lot of you get home after you've been to an event like this This um goes into the circular file cabinet and you never open it up again We intentionally put a lot of very valuable information in the book this year So we hope that you will look through it and use these resources all year long We have contact information for all of the people who gave workshops And they are willing to come out and do those same workshops for your neighborhoods We also have contact information for all of the exhibitors. So please look through this and be sure you keep it and use it all year long I would now like to ask the community engagement team to stand so they can be recognized Ruth Barajas Tabitha Butler Barry Cram Tracy Edwards Dot Kent Madeline Gibbs Erin Oliveras and their manager Catherine Huckabee Their mission is to connect you with city services to help you with all of your problems And each and to work with each of you to build a stronger community If you don't know these folks yet, I encourage you to reach out Get in contact with them and let them help you and your neighborhoods The first award we will give today is being given by the league of neighborhoods And I would like to ask gene bibb to come up. Who's the president? Thank you, Michelle The full worth league of neighborhood associations is pleased to present The 2017 Ben and to make a reward Neighbor neighborhood of the year award to read in m. Vincent Rita lives in the Brentwood oak hills neighborhood where she's been an active volunteer for at least two decades She was involved in the formation of the neighborhood association And was the first president and held that position for 12 years She's remained active in the association leadership It's now the vice president of communications And she's the co editor of the newsletter and has been for more than two decades Due to her position as a neighborhood leader she met other neighborhood leaders And formed an alliance of nearby neighborhoods They called it the neighborhoods of east fort worth And it's now grown to about 19 neighborhoods along interstate 30 from riverside drive to east chase Rita was elected to the board of directors of the league of neighborhoods in 2015 And elected president in 2016 She's been appointed to serve the city On several occasions. She served in the on the community development council And on the mayor's planning and advisory committee on homelessness She's been recognized in many ways for her dedication and service to the community Including being named an outstanding woman of foot worth in 1998 by mayor kennis bar And a foot worth commission on the status of women I'm proud to name Rita vinson as the ben and tomaco neighbor of the year Thank you and congratulations Rita The city of fort worth created the neighborhood awards 15 years ago to recognize a variety of projects and activities That helped make fort worth a great place to live work and play Today we'll recognize outstanding neighborhood newsletters We'll also hand out two awards in each of these categories First we'll announce the winning mandatory homeowners association Then we'll name the winning voluntary neighborhood association This format allows all groups to compete with their peers We'll also give three individual awards and of course name fort worth neighborhood of the year A panel of judges from other municipalities in our region reviewed all of the nominations We thank them for their hard work in choosing today's winners Now I would like to welcome mayor betsy price to do a welcome Howdy You knew I was going to say that didn't you? It's great to see everybody here on this beautiful warmer saturday afternoon, and i'm thrilled particularly here at rhodiotime There's so much going on in fort worth. It's just amazing I want to take just a second and thank commander townsen for being with us today The joint reserve base is so critical to fort worth in your service and the young men and women who serve out there To keep us all free and safe is critical to our country and our city and nation And talking about service chief Fitzgerald our police chief is here Joel Oh, he flipped out. Okay. He was here and chief jackson our fire chief is here chief And this is chief jackson's last neighborhood awards as our chief He's retiring in march if we let him and i'm not sure we're gonna do that But it's great to have the opportunity to be with you today I always enjoy this event because there's so much going on in our neighborhoods And in all cities, but particularly in big cities if you're not actively engaged with your neighborhoods You're making decisions in a vacuum You have to have that input from people in the community hence this council And i'm so glad council could be here today And myself are out and about all the time and we're listening to you and finding out what fun things you're up to What innovative things you're up to and what your needs and desires are I can't guarantee we can fill everyone up every time. You don't want to pay those kind of tax dollars But we're listening to you and we're getting them on the radar and we're getting a lot done But continue to stay involved so that the city stays strong and vibrant more than ever in today's world civic engagement and participation Is so incredibly important You turn on the news and often the discourse that you hear At the national level or you open facebook or twitter It seems like our civil discourse has totally gone off the rails But i'm proud to say that here in fort worth. We're a little more civil and we're like each other And staying engaged and staying working when you work on your neighborhood and build a strong neighborhood You just boost the city up a little farther as we celebrate the week of compassion The last week of january and the first part of february I would encourage all of you as neighbors to find a service project to get engaged with its sport worse week at compassion Dot org or is it dot brand is it dot org? Yeah, I think it is the website Or just take a minute to pick up your neighbor's newspaper and put it on the porch To go to the grocery store for somebody who might need it or simply pat a young man or young woman on the back And say you're growing up in a great city. Thank you for being here If all of us took the time to celebrate each other and to celebrate our neighborhoods We already live in the best city ever. Think how much better it would be Thank you for what you do to make our city strong and for what you do to make our neighborhoods great I'm delighted to be with you today Thank you mayor price Our first awards will recognize excellence and neighborhood communication Which is so important to bringing neighbors together Newsletters are judged on content and appearance as well as how well they reach their intended audience As I announce your name with the editor or an officer Please come forward to pick up your certificate and mayor price. Could you come up and join us so that you can Have your picture taken with them We'll take a group photo after all of the awards are handed out We're my staff is very good at like details Because on mine when it said introduce the mayor and then it said Turn page and sit down So they're not leaving anything up to chance today Okay, if I could have these um these hoa representatives, please come up crofford farms hoa heritage hoa marine creek association And tahama ridge hoa These hoas produce anywhere between two and twelve newsletters each year Costs are covered by the hoa dues and often supplemented by the sale of ads Now our newsletter winners in the voluntary association category are Berkeley Place Eastern Hills Fairmount Mistletoe Heights Ridgely north And west meadowbrook Could you all come up for your awards? Most of these neighborhoods post electronic newsletters on their website or they email them directly to members Some still delivered printed copies either by mail or using block captains They sell ads to help offset the printing and the postage costs If you'd like to see samples of any of these award-winning newsletters Please contact to the association directly or you can call the community engagement office Thank you Our next award is the fort worth pride award It is given to an organization that improves the physical aspects of the neighborhood Winners in this category may have completed beautification projects community cleanups Park or garden projects are worked with the city's code compliance and other departments to make their neighborhood cleaner and more attractive Will the HOA finalists, please stand at your table as I read your names Chisholm ridge HOA for its tree planting program Neighbors applied for and received trees from the city forestry section Then dozens of volunteers helped plant 100 trees in the parkways and entryways to the neighborhood The trees not only beautify the area, but also add value and shade to the neighborhood Would harvest ridge HOA, please stand This was for their cow town cleanup This annual volunteer tradition to pick up litter turned into something much bigger in 2017 After march tornadoes ripped through north fort worth Downing trees fences and scattering roof shingles and the winner is harvest ridge HOA Would you please come up and would councilmember Dennis shingleton join them? While they're making their way to the stage. I'd like to tell you a little bit more about their efforts Harvest ridge had already set the date for its cow town cleanup But when damaging storms blew through just a few days before their project took on a whole new mission In addition to clearing their own neighborhood of downed limbs and debris Residents heard that nearby rolling meadows had been hit even harder Harvest ridge leaders knew they had to help On email and facebook harvest ridge renamed their project operation storm cleanup And volunteer response skyrocketed They surveyed both neighborhoods and made detailed notes about which streets needed which streets needed what? They recruited residents who had chainsaws and trucks and then matched them with teams of volunteers in specific areas of need They contacted the city to coordinate pickup of the debris and in just one day They not only cleaned up their neighborhood, but rolling meadows as well Congratulations to harvest ridge Now will the finalists of the voluntary association category Please stand when your name is called The judges were so impressed with these entries that they actually named four finalists for this award Please stand when your name is called and remain at your table and then we'll call the winner up Eastgate neighborhood association for its tireless efforts and getting a park and playground for their neighborhood Working together. They overcame obstacles of land acquisition and lack of funding Even when torrential rains delayed construction. They never gave up Historic rose dale park for its public art Volunteers worked with the city's graffiti abatement office to design and paint a mural featuring dunbar high school Along a major public walkway the neighborhood chose the name route to knowledge and made sure to involve student volunteers Next we have The linwood neighborhood association for its better block program A community walk helped residents identify safety needs such as crosswalks ramps and stop signs A grant from better blocks provided materials, but resident volunteers provided the manpower to paint curb markings and more And finally sunset heights neighborhood association This was also a public art project It started as an idea to prevent graffiti on a visile Highly visible neighborhood wall, but it grew into a beautification project that brought neighbors together And now serves as an entry sign to the neighborhood and the winner is sunset heights neighborhood association Would council member and say to please join them on the stage While they're having their picture taken, let me tell you a little bit more about what they did Instead of an artist driven design sunset heights chose a pixelated sunset with two silhouette figures in the foreground In addition to representing the neighborhood's name the six inch squares made it easy for neighborhood residents to participate in the painting It was literally a paint by number project Creating an original piece of art that now serves as a neighborhood entry sign Congratulations to sunset heights The spirit of fort worth award is given to associations that foster social revitalization Enhanced cultural aspects of the neighborhood or just simply make residents feel welcoming connected while working plane and celebrating together Will the HOA finalists, please stand as I read your names Harvest Ridge HOA for launching an activity program specifically for older residents in retirees The season's adult group plans its own events at least once a month Creative but inexpensive outings have included trivia night dinner in a high school play Speakers on identity theft prevention and a murder mystery dinner at a resident's house The remington point HOA For its food drive block parties they convinced They convinced HOA board members to take a pie in the face or a dip in the dunking booth If neighbors brought donations for those that needed most In addition to showing board members softer side the HOA collected more than 650 pounds of food for the tyrant area food bank And the winner is the remington point HOA Would you please come forward and would councilmember shingleton join them on the stage? While they're coming up and having their picture taken i'll tell you a little bit more about what they did Remington point hosted numerous events in 2017 A fish fry back to school party fall festival neighborhood cleanup and more But the project they submitted for this award is the one they're the most proud of They participated in the fort worth employee and neighborhood food drive for the first time They collected plenty of donations, but the block parties accomplished another goal HOA HOA board members often make tough decisions for the community But sometimes those decisions are not universally popular When HOA board members took a pie to the face or turn in the dunking booth Neighbors began to see them as one of us people doing their best to care for their neighborhood Congratulations to remington point Now for the voluntary association spirit of fort worth finalists, please stand as i read your names Crestwood neighborhood association for its neighborhood pet registry This online registry helps unite lost found or wandering pets with their owners using technology and volunteers The eastern hills neighborhood association For its easter egg hunt and july 4th parade and picnic as the neighborhood transitions from older residents To younger families both of these events helped connect newcomers with longtime residents and Ridgely north For its movies in the park This event brought back a neighborhood tradition from the 1940s and also highlighted recent improvements to bernie park A neighborhood survey to choose which movie to show generated excitement and pushed attendance to more than 130 neighbors And the winner is the crestwood neighborhood association Would councilmember shingleton come up and join them for their picture During its annual membership drive Crestwood encourages neighbors to register their pets in case they ever get lost The registry includes the pets photo description and owner contact information Via an online form they can report missing pets or animals running loose The association also had a has a universal microchip scanner That can scan pets on location The program is run entirely by volunteers with 100 success rate in reuniting pets and their owners It also reduces calls to animal control And increases awareness about the importance of having your dogs Or your pets tagged and microchipped Congratulations to crestwood I'd now like to invite mayor price to give the next awards Let me get your tablet for you This one is the mayor's health and fitness award that we added about three years ago And it's been incredible to see what so many of our neighborhoods Are are doing and what you're engaged in and you know If you haven't been asleep if you've been asleep, you wouldn't know but if you've been awake, you'd know I'm kind of a health nut And that I think Fort Worth should be the healthiest city and lead the nation and we're getting recognized for that And I love to see our citizens focused on taking their own health In hand because it's another tool in engaging in your neighborhood It's another tool in engaging in the city and healthy workers are more productive healthy kids or better students So the health and wellness award is just a great way to encourage that in our neighborhoods And to make a better life for everyone in a more attractive city So the first nominee is the Crawford Farms HOA And they've been active for a long time, but And let's ask them to stand But in 2017 they started a running club facebook page And more than 50 neighbors posted on the facebook page as they did their fun rides and joined And encouraged others to join them and cheer on The page was so active that they decided to tackle a run of their own and in february They started easy with a sweetheart stroll That encouraged residents to get their sweethearts hand and come out and walk and enjoy each other And that was just the warm-up in october They put together a 3k fun run that ended with october fest celebration They wore halloween costumes and the donations for entering the contest went to the american red cross Crawford Farms is our finalist and our winner for the HOA health and wellness Mr shingleton Come on up You're never quite finished with pictures in today's world cell phones make it you learn to just stand still So our neighborhood voluntary association our neighborhood association category Would you please stand as i address your names and announce them the eastern hills neighborhood association They submit it They're back here in the back They submitted their blue zones project after 40 years of high fat And high sugar potluck dinners cheesy casseroles and pies. I don't know about you, but it sounds good anyway Eastern hills decided to get a little healthier as a neighborhood They gave blue zones cooking demonstrations on how to eat healthier at home And at restaurant outings the neighborhood also partnered with eastern hills high school to build raised beds for gardening and planting vegetables in the school's garden Thank you for your work on that The garden of eden neighborhood association would you stand There they are This is their 13th annual 5k fun run and walk But this year they added a little bit of a twist and I can tell you that I know all about this because I've done this 5k five times And there's so many no other slow old ladies, so I usually win my division But they decided this year that they would make it focused on health and wellness in their community They've gotten pros at putting on a good race. So this year they decided to raise the issue of health care They had diabetes testing high blood pressure for their checks Chronic wellness counts and all kinds of education material But the fun thing about their run is it's made up of some of the youngest among us To some of the very oldest who don't run anymore, but just walk. It's always a good time. Congratulations for being nominated And historic rose dale park neighborhood association. There they are For the stop six shape up this initiative increased awareness about health issues in their community It focused on simple lifestyle and habit changes that can make people better and can make homes safer And better to be there it highlighted activities right there in their neighborhood Such as fitness and cooking demonstrations at the martin luther king community center And they encouraged all their neighborhoods And all their neighbors to get out and work a little harder. Thank you And the winner is The winner is this year's garden of eden fun ride Come on up Come on up Come on up to the stage and I don't believe councilmember moon is here This year's theme was the power in the blood They used the race to focus on the knowledge of knowing your own blood type Knowing your blood pressure know your glucose levels your cholesterol level And the importance of donating blood to help others The annual race is so Important because of its inclusiveness They give medals in all kinds of categories as I told you earlier. They even give them to old slow women I'm proud to say that I've competed and entered it in it for five times. It really is a fun thing Congratulations to garden of eden This is councilmember moons district and he could not be here today Congratulations to all of you This next award is about partnerships and collaboration. It honors significant creative initiatives initiatives that define a challenge and organize the community to make something happen to address that challenge Most of all it recognizes neighbors who work together with other neighborhood associations With city staff with their elected officials the schools in their neighborhood businesses and any other organization To find a solution to bring about positive change in their neighborhood or in the city as a whole The HOA finalists or if you'd please stand when I read your name Heritage homeowners association For they're all in for the blue hosted by the heritage poker club. This sounds like a fun group Members gathered rappel and silent auction items sold tickets to a poker tournament and arranged for in-kind food donations It took volunteers 900 hours of planning to set up and clean up, but it was well worth it. They raised $21,000 to support our local police officers Thank you The Tahama Ridge Association homeowners association For its bad building project residents and their children came together in a one day build sand and paint it Twin beds for needy folks in our community Even more residents donated mattresses pillows sheets while others volunteered to help deliver them to those in need Thank you And the winner is tahama ridge owners association Dennis, I think yours cleaning up As they make their way forward. I'll tell you a little bit more about their project They established a service outreach committee and brainstormed for a worthwhile project After learning about an elderly woman who had no bed to sleep on after her apartment was flooded They decided to provide beds for area agencies that help similar people in need HOA dues cannot be used outside of their area So residents raised every penny of this project from their own pockets Solicited funds from local business and all the neighbors On building day 35 adults did the heavy lifting and kids learned to sand and paint Nine hours later. They had 18 twin beds ready to go Other residents volunteered to deliver the bed And the mattresses to those in need throughout fort worth Congratulations, and thank you tahama ridge This next one is the mayor's civic engagement and Yeah community collaboration in the neighborhood association the voluntary association Once again, please stand when I call your name the greenway neighborhood association There they are They partnered with area churches and tcu fraternity members to make repairs on eight homes in their neighborhood For residents who were unable to do the repairs themselves because of health issues or income or both They held neighborhood-wide garage sales to raise funds for the greenway scholar program That provides lunches books and activity for children during the summer. Thank you The historic south side neighborhood association for its literacy carnival They sought to get books in the home of children who attend public schools in their neighborhood To boast their attitude about reading and their skills community partners Included the schools the faith-based organization the businesses and the government. There's a theme here on reading We're catching on on literacy. Thank you And the ridgely north neighborhood association for their community connection event When ridgely north surveyed its members they learned of their residents concerns about preventing crime And homelessness neighborhood leaders lined up speakers and information booths A key component gave residents the opportunity to don't donate toiletries canned goods and other items for nonprofits in their neighborhood who work with the homeless list. Thank you And the winner is historic south side neighborhood association Kelly She make your way up here councilwoman gray was with us, but I think she stepped away for a minute. So come on up I'll tell you a little bit more about theirs historic south side Has a standing education program that works with schools and after school programs In spot in response to the city's read for worth literacy program They came up with the idea of a literacy carnival It offered fun reading related games where children could win tickets for participating They could use those tickets to pick out books that they could take home to their very own home It was a true community collaboration with more groups Involved than we can mention here and when it was over historic south side and its partners had served 250 people mostly children Thrilled in pride to now have books of their own to enjoy at home. Congratulations And we follow the directions we are given Our next three awards will be going to um recognizing outstanding individuals I want to point out that none of these individuals were nominated by city staff or the elected officials All of the nominations came from you the neighborhood. So thank you for participating and recognizing Our staff and the and community members that make a difference The mayor's committee on persons with disabilities is a group of residents Volunteers who work with our city's human relations commission to make fort worth a more welcoming community for all They sponsored the dany scarth trailblazer award and we are honored to have mr. Scarth here with us tonight um I guess it just seems like an eye because It feels like i've been a for a long time The award is named for dany scarth who as most of you know as a former council member with the fort worth city council um This award recognizes someone who in their everyday life Raises awareness and makes a real change that improves the opportunities for people with disabilities And our finalists are Dorothy hill If you're here, please stand or raise your hand Dorothy has given hundreds of hours over the last five years to promoting high quality in-house care for people who depend on a ventilator She brought together physicians respiratory therapists and medical equipment providers Convincing them to serve as unpaid consultants to help improve care She has traveled to austin at her own expense to advocate before the texas health and human services commission on ventilator issues She's actually written a manual on community services and support for people using a ventilator And has succeeded in putting ventilator care improvements on the agenda at the state level Dorothy, thank you for your service Our other finalist is sarah martinez Sarah is an advocate for children for students with dyslexia a learning disability In addition to advocating for her two daughters She has helped hundreds of parents at fort worth isd Navigate the complexity of dyslexia in the public school system When dyslexic students began struggling with fort worth isd's achieve 3000 reading program Teachers and administrators weren't sure how to help Sarah contacted the program manufacturer Discovering that the program was capable of reading aloud to students now dyslexic students in many classrooms are Succeeding thanks to this program She has addressed the school board asked for funding and services She has also hosted an informational session for more than 100 parents Helping them understand their child's diagnosis and better accommodations She also helped found a facebook support group called decoding dyslexia Tarrant county, which has over 500 members And she has also partnered with the fort worth public library for dyslexia awareness day And the winner is sarah martinez Would you please come forward? And again, thank you to dorthy and sarah for all they do for our community The city's code compliance department is dedicated to maintaining fort worth as a clean and livable city Code officers routinely patrol assigned neighborhoods for code violations as well as investigate your complaints Our code officer of the year Recognizes an individual who in addition to investigating documenting and ensuring compliance with the city regulations Also responds to the public courteously and efficiently and maintains a great customer service relationships at all times Would officer tiffany taylor, please come forward Officer tiffany taylor was nominated by the historic south side neighborhood association. Would they please come up and join her for the picture? While they're coming up, i'll tell you a little bit more about tiffany To quote the historic south side's nomination officer taylor has kept the neighborhood association Informed of what buildings are slated to be reviewed and decided at a city level So that we can offer our support about specific buildings She works with building owners and residents alike to make positive change in our neighborhoods Officer taylor has been a code compliance officer for 22 years Congratulations to tiffany taylor our 2017 code officer of the year Our next individual gort award goes to the neighborhood patrol officer of the year This recognizes a special classification of police officer Npo's as we often call them do all the things a regular officer does But they provide those additional patrols and identify crime trends in specific neighborhoods or geographic areas that they're assigned to Npo's communicate with residents and business owners Attend community meetings and events and foster community leadership by recruiting volunteers for citizens on patrol Crime watch and other crime prevention programs They're often the most important link between our neighbors and the police department Well, the finalists, please stand and remain standing when i read your name adam cullman Sergio Guadirama bell hadad andrew johns alan pinnington And donald ship And our 2017 npo officer of the year is donald ship He was nominated by the east gate neighborhood neighbors association. So could you please come forward to join him in the picture? As they come forward, I'd like to read some of their comments about officer ship Since becoming our npo Officer ship has attended every one of our crime watch meetings He makes the time to attend whether it's convenient or not He speaks at every meeting takes questions and concerns and provides answers answers and knowledge another comment Our neighborhood is bounded on three sides by the west fork of the trinity river We have had issues We've had issues with crime and homelessness along the trails Officer ship frequently patrols the river trails in his fort worth truck and gives us updates Officer ship does preventive patrol in our neighborhood daily And during his patrol he stops to meet and visit with the neighbors. This simple fact is reassuring and a welcome site officer ship also helped with an attended east gates national night out meeting Assisted with the new dog walker watch program and is often seen picking up litter in the neighborhood Or wheeling a trash cart back to an elderly neighbor's door Congratulations to donald ship our npo of the year And thank you chief krouse for coming up even though I forgot to ask you to Chief it's jerald was here this morning for the workshops, but I know he had to leave before the lunch And so thank you chief krouse for stepping in Our final award today the neighborhood of the year recognizes excellence in all of the areas we've honored today I know for a lot of you, this is an unscripted. I'm going on script for a minute I know when you when you put the effort into You know writing an award and submitting it and and bragging about the good work being done in your neighborhoods That you want to win that award when when the time comes for your name to be called But please don't get discouraged Continue to apply for these awards our staff is available to help you Do your applications? To give you pointers on doing your applications. We won't do them for you But we can give you ideas on things to include and and how to how to package it and we can even show You examples of awards that have won in the past So I know it can be discouraging to not take home the the award But I want to encourage all of you to keep doing the good work And to keep nominating your neighborhood so that they can be recognized. So I'll go back to my script There the neighborhood of the year is being honored for collaborating with government businesses schools and other neighborhoods looking out for residents health and safety physical improvements beautification And the city of fort worth actually sends a representative from this neighborhood To the national neighborhoods usa convention so that they can compete for the national award And they're also able to attend lots of very very worthwhile workshops while they're there at the convention So I'd like to ask mayor price to present this final award and announce our winner Thank you, michelle Do we need a drum roll? There you go y'all are pretty good One of the things that impressed our judges this year about the 2017 neighborhood of the year Was that they really haven't been around very long While physical neighborhood was actually built in the 50s the neighborhood association fizzled years and years ago In 2015 a few residents decided to work with their community engagement office and re-established their neighborhood association They began to meet the needs of their community again In just two years. They reorganized Reconnected and launched a major project The neighborhood of the year is sunset heights Let me tell you just a little bit more about their neighborhood It's located in rolling hills, which require a huge concrete retaining wall at its south entrance Over the years the wall had become a target of graffiti and tagging The association leaders thought the mural might help and indeed it did become a work of public art The judges were impressed with your intentional and engaging way that this project came together Especially for a two-year-old neighborhood association They made deliberate choices in choosing the design and embracing the diversity in their community A colorful family friendly way for people to identify with their neighborhood Not designed by a single artist, but something that all neighbors and all ages had a hand in The steering committee reached out and engaged the neighborhood schools Made a traffic safety plan got refreshments refreshments donated and cleaned and prepped Getting ready for their big event over the course of eight hours more than 50 neighbors Help paint the squares that you saw earlier Quoting from their application it says the community fully embraced the mural on all levels That we did not even expect or anticipate Residents have boastfully posted pictures on their own facebook and twitter accounts Having the community be involved in the creation Instead of hiring an independent artist Instilled a sense of pride and a joy of collaboration Undertaken in no other community engagement project that they had done It attracted a lot of attention And depicted the neighborhood in a positive way So sunset hights congratulations Congratulations to all the winners and thank you mayor price Let's take a minute and recognize michelle good and katherine huckabee and their teams they worked They worked incredibly hard for months putting this together in addition to their regular jobs They piled this own and their team members willingly spent Several evenings and now they're saturdays putting this together So thank you both for what you do to engage our neighborhoods I would like to thank um our major sponsor for this event united health care Which allows us to offer all of these workshops in this wonderful In this wonderful facility and lunch At no expense to you the the neighborhoods and so I would like to ask scott Would uh scott flannery the ceo of the local united health care plan? Please come up so that you can say a few words Thank you michelle We are honored and humbled to be part of this so mayor price council members the staff We we thank you for allowing us to be part of it I didn't know what to expect this is the first time I've been to this event And it is astonishing what you all are able to do everyone that was nominated at one and award And what you've done in your communities, you know our our mission at united health care is to help people live healthier lives And part of that is being in vibrant communities and part of vibrant communities having great leadership Mayor price the self-proclaimed health nut That doesn't happen without leadership in any organization we see in our business When you have leaders who are committed To health and wellness and community you see that Prosper across the board and so Congrats to you and to your team and to your staff. What well done You know our goal really is an organization is to partner with with organizations like the city of fort worth And and those that are here today around building the vibrant communities I think when you look across the country when you have vibrant communities with supported businesses You see people prosper you see people grow but most importantly you see our youth See the world differently and and contribute to the world differently And so kudos to those that are here today that that have participated in that that's something that is Truly makes fort worth a great city and i'm hoping that you hit the goal of being the healthiest city in America because it seems like you're on the right right direction So without further ado, I think we had a a drawing for a amazon What's called a fire amazon fire and so we're gonna we're gonna draw a winner here with the assistance of vanna white I mean erin graves Everybody get your tickets out. So the question is do you have to be present to win? You have to be present to win all right So the winner of the amazon fire is 772844 There you go, come on I better hold on to that See we need you to rub it first and maybe that'll give us good luck to get amazon here, right So just some closing remarks if you were a finalist We do have certificates for you So if you would like to come up and get those afterwards and that does include our npo's as well as the neighborhoods who were finalists Um, thank you for coming today If you have any ideas on how we can make this a better event, we are always welcome to hear them I'd also like to give a plug for Many of you have probably know that the city has a race and culture task force And over the next month, we're hosting 14 community meetings for people to come out tell their stories And allow others to hear those stories and hopefully make a difference in our community Estra's Tucker has been working with us. He did two workshops today, but he's also chosen Facilitators for all of these meetings. We had our first one Thursday. It was a small group But I think there was a lot of really heartfelt communication that went on between people So we have a list of the meetings outside on the table If you're able to attend or if you want to spread the word in your neighborhoods The more people we get around the table talking about tough issues the bigger changes we can make so thank you Thank you for coming The mayor's community engagement workshops and awards are presented each year by the city of fort worth In conjunction with many community partners for more information visit fort worth texas.gov slash engagement


I'm ready to roll. So hello everyone and welcome to the first breakout session of the first OpenSim Community Conference 2013. That's just amazing to me and I'm just so excited to be here. As a reminder to our in-world and web audiences, you can view the full conference schedule on our website at conference.opensimulator.org and you can post your questions in local chat on the Ustream chat or tweet your comments using the hashtag OSCC13. Let's see that light up that OSCC13 today, shall we? So for this hour, we're happy to introduce Nick Swart who will be presenting the TILA Project Telecollaboration for Intercultural Language Acquisition. The TILA project is a project that is funded by the European Commission within the Lifelong Learning Program. This project aims to improve the quality of foreign language teaching and learning processes by means of meaningful telecollaboration among peers. Five universities, wow, that's impressive. Five universities and five secondary schools from different European countries team up to work with OpenSim. In real life, Nick holds the position of CEO of 3DLES, I don't know how you say that, but Nick will tell us. A company that has specialized in 3D learning experience services with a focus on education and OpenSim. He is a researcher for the University of El Qaeda-Henares and consortium partner in the TILA project.  Okay, so please join me in welcoming Nick. There you go, Nick, take it away. Okay, thank you very much. Good evening, good evening or good morning, but it's evening here in Holland in the Netherlands. I hope you are all as excited about these two days as I am. This is really a great event and already now I want to thank all people that made this possible. The staff, the greeters, the volunteers, the streamers, the builders, all of you. It's really great what you have accomplished. And I want to thank the moderator, Buffy, for the short introduction. I can add to that that I live and work in the Netherlands in Europe. And you all know Amsterdam, of course, I was born there, but now I'm living in the countryside close to Utrecht in the Netherlands. In the past, I studied information technology and education, but also electronics, music and theology. And I started working with computers about 30 years ago, which is a long time ago on a small computer called Commodore 64, connected to my television. Maybe some of you still know this computer. And things have really changed since then. I have been an IT teacher at the Fontes University in Amsterdam for several years. And now I am CEO, as Buffy already told, of a company called 3D LES, which is short for 3D learning experience services. And we focus on the use of open simulator for education, mainly here in Europe. And Buffy, yes, I love Amsterdam too. And the Commodore 64 was really a great computer. Today, I will tell you something about the use of open simulator within the T-LOU project, T-I-L-A. And our company is a consortium partner for this project. But before I start, I would like to mention that you can ask questions during this session by typing your question in the text chat. I'm not sure if all questions will be answered because I also have to tell my story within 40 minutes. And at the end, if I have some time left, there is room for some more questions. Later on, you can always talk to me on the 3D LES stand at the ExpoZone 7 region, or you can email me. All info will be at the last slide. So I forget to slide myself here. This is a picture of me. It's not so very important, of course. And I see Buffy already told the URL of the website. So that's okay. So I'll go on to the next slide, which shows you the T-LOU logo. So let me first explain what this TILA project is. First, as Buffy already told, TILA is short for Taylor Collaboration for Intercultural Language Acquisition. This project aims to improve the quality of foreign language teaching and learning processes by means of meaningful Taylor collaboration among peers. The project is funded by the European Commission within the lifelong learning program and runs from January 2013 until mid-2015. And two words of the title are important, Taylor Collaboration and Intercultural. Why? Because this project goes across borders in Europe and lets kids from different cultures within Europe cooperate through Taylor Collaboration tools. Six countries are represented in the TILA consortium. France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. And each country collaborates with a secondary school and almost all countries also have a university. Only the Czech Republic doesn't have a university connected to this project. So we have five universities and six secondary schools. And for those who have slightly forgotten where these countries are in Europe, I placed some red dots on the map of Europe. All of these countries have their own language. English in the UK, Dutch in the Netherlands, French in France, German in Germany, Czech in the Czech Republic and Spain even has more languages. We work with a school in Spain that uses Catalan besides the normal Spanish which also called Castilian. As you can see, the Netherlands, which is the second red dot at the top, is the smallest country, situated between the UK and Germany. So we have to learn other languages to survive in this world because our country is too small. And at the age of 12, I started learning English, French and German. And if you want, we can also learn Spanish at secondary schools. Language education is very important for all these countries in Europe. We aim to use open source software in the project. And the main three of this project are Moodle, big blue button and Open Simulator of course. Moodle is a course management system which is the heart of the project. It holds all the courses and we do asynchronous teaching through Moodle. It is also linked to the Open Simulator grid through the Sleutel tools so we can use some functionality of Moodle within the virtual world. And Moodle is also linked to the big blue button software which is software that enables teachers to give online classes with a webcam interface, a whiteboard, a pre-center, a chat and all sessions can be recorded. For this purpose, we rented two Linux, Linux server, North of France and installed Open Simulator, Moodle and big blue button on it and the website. And the schools and universities from the countries all communicate through these two servers. As you can see, I placed some arrows and the place where these servers are situated. In January of this year, so last January, we had a first initial meeting at the University of Valencia in Spain where we decided to use the open source software which I already mentioned. Also, all consortium partners had a training that we can work with Open Simulator on the 3D LES grid of my company because we didn't have a TILA grid at that moment. And because only a few of them had worked in virtual worlds in the past, so for most of them was a totally new experience. And we found that for most of the schools in Europe, it's Open Simulator and booking in 3D is very, very new. Okay, next slide. And after installing the Open Simulator grid, a month later we all joined for our first virtual meeting on the Arcadia region of the TILA grid. So that was really exciting to see everybody log in and everybody could talk through the voice system which we have from VVox, which is running quite good. And VVox has been very, they were very grateful to give us this voice for free. All educational institutes can have VVox voice for free. As long as, and we found even with, when we have meetings with 25 people, it works great. Okay, the TILA grid has no hypergrid capabilities. That is because we will work with kids in the age of 12 to 16. So you cannot visit it. And, but we, I found a solution for that. Most of the regions that are there can also be found at the demonstration grid of 3D LES and which is hypergrid enabled. So you can jump there whenever you like. We have eight regions on the TILA grid which includes Chatterdale and Parolei, the two language villages of Digi school. We have an asterisk village and a virtual Valencia and a welcoming area and also Arcadia, the orientation island where we also have the meetings every now and then. On this Arcadia region, I created a castle which is for a first orientation. The kids can choose their own language at the first sign which you see in the middle and go on an adventure into the castle and its surroundings. And during this adventure, they learn how to walk, how to fly, talk, dress, take objects, watch movies, all skills that we think are necessary for them to work in a virtual environment. And at the end, they are, of course, rewarded with extra closing and a game they can play. Is it all clear until so far? I see no questions, that's good. So now the grid is ready to have the kids over. We created a kid-save environment, no one can come in, that is not known by us. So all accounts that are created are passing by my eyes. We've reached the point within the project that we are doing teachers training at the moment. I did several trainings here at the University in Utrecht and also the other countries did similar trainings for the teachers of the secondary schools that will use the grid. Oh yeah, Inic already played the game, that's true. And Henk maybe played a game also, I don't know. Next slide, the problems at the schools. At the moment, we still have some small problems, but the problems that we encountered at these schools, I listed here, the school firewall is the first problem we met. All schools had their ports closed and not all schools have a technician running around in the school building. So some school had a technician technically operated from some central place and it really took months to get these ports open for some schools. We're now in say month eight or month nine and just last week, one of the schools finally got the ports open. That's good. Some schools just started with having all kids on laptops connected through Wi-Fi. And the problem there is that lots of laptops running on Wi-Fi on one Wi-Fi spot in the classroom gives too much trouble. Not all graphical data can be loaded and the users will get stuck or logged out. So they have to use the computer lab where all computers are connected to the school network. We also found that this network in the schools can be very slow because there are many more things that run on this network and open simulators, just one of all the other things that runs there. Some of the schools had to get new computers because the old ones couldn't run 3D applications and the schools that could run the software only could run the version one viewer like in Prudence. So we are not able to use meshes on the T-LA grid and no Moab media on a prim. That's because Prudence doesn't show them and so we had to work around that. And bad sound cards as a last on the list and bad headsets on the last problem. We have our voice jets. I already told you from V-Fox which is working fine for now but it takes a properly working sound card and a good headset to really use the voice jet which is quite crucial in this project. Okay, next slide. So now starting September, we will have teachers stills on the teacher trainings and we will have kids of five schools or six schools of these different countries running around and working together on assignments, testing and hopefully come up with new fresh ideas because we need ideas, we need and we will create with this project also manuals and instructions and new lessons material. In the picture, you already see some kids behind the computer running around in Chatterdale which I took at a pilot which we did with the digital school and we hope to have the kids of the Tila in the future. I want to point out two books because talking about ideas, it's great to have these two big books on my bookshelf, real books. One great author on education and 3D environments is Carl Kapp and these two books are really helpful in creating new ideas for this new dimension in education and you all have to buy these books, they are great. Oh, yeah, Hank Mussing already loves these books. He probably has them. For the future, we are looking to stretch the possibilities of Open Simulator and we will look at all the things that Open Simulator offers. Maybe we will do something with the NPC possibilities in Open Simulator to have a non-player character, a robot as a teacher would be great. There are always there when you need them but at the moment we are trying with the University of Olocala de Heranárez which Buffy already tried to pronounce. It's very good, Buffy. In near Madrid, in Spain, this university, they asked me to investigate the use of non-player characters or robots as language teacher for Spanish students. And we're still working on that until the end of this year but it's not a TILA project, it's a different project. But all outcome of this project will also be used in the TILA project, of course. The next slide shows you SLUDOL and we also have to see how we can make use of the available SLUDOL tools, how we can integrate them in some fun assignments which then can be registered or in the Moodle environment. Now, why did we choose Open Simulator? Because there are some great features and the best features of Open Simulator for educators. In my point, I just made a list of five but maybe there are a lot more, maybe you can come up with more. We can work from anywhere and the TILA collaboration will be across borders in this project. Most kids have the feeling that they're really there in this virtual world and meeting kids from other countries is really, really great. I already had a pilot on my 3D LES grid with a school from the US, from Cincinnati. And they did some German assignments with their class and then I jumped in and they were really, really surprised that somebody from a totally different country could get in this same environment and they could really talk to me and try their German language on it. It was really fun. So this TILA collaboration across borders is one of the best features that I can think of in Open Simulator. Also that it's open source is great. We all know how great that is. It's an all-in-one package. You can build and you can script your own objects. You can show videos. It's fun to teach and for the kids, it looks like you're running around in a game and that's why Open Simulator is so great. We are very happy that we can close the environment and only have people on it that we know. So that's good. It's also good if you can open the environment through Hypergrid and jump from one grid to the other but in this project, of course, we won't use that. And it's also great that there are so many free things. Several archives of Linda Kelly or from the Fleetgrid and many more offer interesting objects and even whole islands for education. All outcome of the TILA project, of course, will be available in the future for all of you, for all educators to use. Because the TILA grid is not Hypergrid enabled, you are not able to visit the grid but most of the regions can also be found at the 3D LES demonstration grid so you can have a look at it yourself. You can visit the 3D LES stand here on this conference grid at the Expo Zone 7. It's the red stand. And from there, you can make a Hypergrid jump to some of the TILA regions. They are all on this 3D LES grid. Now, for the Dutch among you, I have this slide because 3D LES is a member of the ADUSIM NL and some of these members are also here in the room in Kmaasink and Inneke Verheuil are also a member of this group. In the Netherlands, we have a special community for virtual education that focuses on the use of open simulator for education. At the left, you see the list of all participants at the moment and what we do is promote the use of open simulator for education. We give free seminars. We do trainings at school. We created a central grid where all institute grids are connected or can be connected if some of them still are working on having a grid running. So, but when it's done, they will also be connected to this central grid. We share content and scripts and develop new ideas and we have annual meetings and we also have real world meetings throughout the year. So we really meet every now and then in Utrecht and sometimes we even have dinner which is impossible of course in open simulator but maybe we have to find a feature to do that. Okay, all and we have a built a Dutch wiki about open simulator which explains it all from scratch. So people who want to build their own grid can go to this wiki and they find all the explanation about how to build it. Yes, also drinks and if you want to be a member of this, I see Lester, you can also be a member of it and talk with us about it, no problem. But we can also speak English of course but most information on the websites are in Dutch and all the Dutch information can be found through one portal which is opensimulator.nl. If you go there, you will find all connections and well, that's it about this group. It's not actually Tila, but I had to mention it because this, we want to make it, which now a Dutch group but we actually want to have it worldwide, worldwide, okay. My last slide, that's it for now. It's time for the questions, it's quite fast. Maybe I talk too fast, I should talk a little slower. Was I talking too fast or not? It's time for some questions, if you have questions and later on, and maybe tomorrow also, I will be at the stand at the expo zone seven.  Good, are there any questions? You can type them, I see Henk already typing. Yes, I think Lester has always been good to stop early. And, but I'm still very happy that I'm one of the first one because the last one, everybody will have very tired ears. Ling-ling, oh, it's nice to see you here also. Henk, can I tell something about how students act as avatars? No, not yet, because the avatars, we have no, we didn't have any students on it or kids on it. We did have some students on it already and we have a very good video of that on our website, which is of the students of the American class who already did the German things. And you can find the video on my 3D less website or you can find it also at the stand. There is a video block at the stand where you could click on and then see the interview I did with David Parrott and Barbara Simpson of the schools there. Buffy's, I have a question. What do I see as the biggest challenge for the future? The biggest challenge actually is to create material which can really get open simulator on the map for education. Because now lots of teachers say, okay, I want to do it. I want to work with it, but I have to think and create all my material, all my lessons myself. And what we hope to achieve is that we have very good lesson material that they can use directly without getting, without preparing actually. So that's a big challenge. And we also have some technically, technical challenges for the future because I hope that we can get all these old viewers, these imprudence viewers out of the way and in the future work with better viewers like Singularity. And I'm working now with Singularity and I think Singularity is working great and you can even set this Singularity viewer that it looks like the imprudence viewer, but the big advantage is that you can see messages and you can have media on a print. So that is my biggest challenge for the future. I see a question from Steven. Do you have a lot of reluctant participants but have to be on board anyway? We don't know yet. That's something that we have to find out. That's something that will happen from September now. We will have kids on the grid that probably maybe girls don't want to go on there because they say, I don't want to play games. I want to do something else. But also for girls who want to change their appearance and have lots of dresses, it's also fun to go on the island because we have, so I'm not sure how we're gonna deal with that. Ling Ling, does the TILA project only for languages in the EU area? Well, we only at the moment, we work with these five universities in Europe and six schools in Europe. And this is funded by the EU. So we also work with these schools in the EU but if you want to be a associate partner, that's no problem that can be from anywhere in the world. But the big advantage of working in Europe is that we have the same time space or how do you call that? So we can all work, let's say, yeah. It's the same timeframe. Henk says, open team should work on tablets. Well, that's not happening yet. It's, well, there is one for the tablet on my tablet. I have it working on my Samsung but it has no voice yet. So, Innecon, ADCIM hopes to promote some projects in OpenSim is used for different subjects. Yes, so ADCIM doesn't do only this, they do a lot of things. Lester, I used to use improvements for years, switched to singularity just a couple of months ago. I think it's great. I think it's great too, but I hope it can run on slower computers. Ellie, do you have any suggestions for overcoming the firewall problem? Thinking about places like Canada where it would be great to connect northern schools but they are all isolated and no technical people to help. Well, that's a big problem because I can have a question back, Ellie. Who closed the firewall for these people? And whoever closed these firewalls for these people maybe can open it also for the schools. But we had schools in one of the six countries that had very big problems because they had no technical staff at the school itself and they had to go abroad to some overall institute that controls all firewall settings. So, Ellie, that's a big problem. You have to find out first if that really works. Lester, singularity now also lets you export print-based things as mesh files. Yes, I've seen that, which means you can then reuse your content in other mesh-based platforms like Unity. Yes, that's very good. And the big advantage then also, of course, is that you can use OpenSimulator as a first start on how to build 3D content and use it also in other things. The only thing that's not exported yet is the textures that are on the objects. And also Lester comments here on Ellie. I'm based in Canada. So feel free to point any folks in Canada my way if I can help them. I'd be happy to do. Thank you very much, Lester. That's very generous of you. Steven, singularity is great, works pretty well in all the ones I haven't seen how far down the computer chain it will still work well. We will find out soon enough because I will ask the schools that now install the imprudence to test also the singularity if it's really going well then we will all change over to singularity. Well, that's all the questions, I think. And all within time, that's great. No more questions? No. Well, Buffy, I thank you for introducing me and helping me. Oh, there's one more question from Buffy itself. Do you think virtual words will continue to rise in popularity? Yes. It's a yes or no questions. I hope so. And I think OpenSim will be very, very big. Thank you, thank you. Buffy, but why? Buffy, I think it's, we all have to work on that. We have to work on use virtual words especially for secondary education because secondary education, these kids really like to play games. They want to go and to do all kinds of stuff. And the big advantage is that you can do things within OpenSimulator in education that you can't do in real life. You can have your kids step into a dangerous situation which you don't want to have them to do them in real life. You can have them walk around in buildings that don't exist anymore. You can have them walking around in Rome, in no engine room or in a Nazi concentration camp and you can go to the moon, whatever you like. Everything is possible. So I think it's a very good addition to education. It won't change education that much but it will add some extra very interesting stuff. And we have to work on that.  Well, it's very simple. If you integrate it into a lesson system they have to go online and then they find out that it's not really a game. It's something different than a game. It's an environment, it's an extra world. We expanded the world virtually and so we can have extra things which we can use and it's not a silly game. Who told you that? Lester tells me I should remind people to visit my public grid this weekend. He did, yes, Lester already did. I have a high brigade somewhere around here. Yes, it's on the stand, the 3D LES stand, expo zone seven, you will find it on the map. And if you are there, you can just click on the project sign that's there or one of the others and you can automatically jump there to my 3D LES grid. It's no problem. Here it will rather go to the one. Buffy is thinking of the people who approved the project's funding. Oh yes, they didn't know what they were up to. And so I will thank you all for attending this first presentation. I hope you will all have a very great two days here. I'll be around also. I have to go offline sometimes to go do some personal stuff, but most of the time I'll be online. And I hope we'll meet somewhere virtually or maybe in real life also. It would be great if we all should meet one day in real life, somewhere in the world. Just so I can see if Lester really has a beard and so on. I thank you all for your time. Well, that was great. Thank you very much. Really, it's so interesting, all this real-time, real-world use for virtual worlds. And I'm just really appreciative of all the information that you've presented with us today. I just wanted to remind our audience, once again, you can view the conference at, the conference schedule at conference.opensimulator.org. And also, I hope everyone who dropped into their landing zones, you were able to find our swag. It's all about swag at these conferences and we've put together a really nice package for you. You'll see the gift in your landing zones. Next up we have in about 20 minutes, starting at 9.30 is Buddy Sprocket and he'll be presenting virtual cultural heritage projects for teaching collaborative virtual environments. Boy, I need to have a drink of water after saying all that. All right, well, thank you very much, everyone. Enjoy the conference. Please do Twitter for us and the hashtag again for that is O-S-C-C-1-3. So enjoy your day and please ask anyone in the red shirts if you need any help and have fun. Okay, bye.