I didn't know I was doing this this morning. Good morning, everyone. So you're in for an exciting treat. And I get to do something very special and to introduce this special guy right here. He is my honey. Yay. So he's a teacher. He just recently retired after 34 years with the Duvall County Public School System, which is amazing. He is not retired. I'm just going to tell you that. He still volunteers. He still volunteers in the schools. He still volunteers at the college. He is also a teacher that he volunteers for with schools in Africa. So when I met this guy, he was a blogger. He still blogs.  So if you ever see his blog, he is constantly blogging. I can tell you all night long. I'm like, it's time for bed. So this is going to be a wonderful presentation. I know you're going to get a lot from it. And I'm going to pass it over to my honey, William Jackson. Thank you, Aida. Thank you, dear. So this will be fun, as Aida said. So I'm not like one of those typical regular teachers that's going to stand up here. OK, I'm going to talk to you and lecture to you. So I am a past health and physical education teacher. That means I'm a past PE teacher. So I taught PE for 12 years before what I'd say. I got bit by the technology bug. So teaching my kids PE outside, running around, playing, doing jumping jacks, sports, the whole nine yards. Most of my career has been in elementary education because I do have a little ADHD. Aida says I have a lot of ADHD, but just enjoy talking to people and sharing information about my experiences, what I've learned, my mistakes, my accomplishments, more or less to inspire people. And to encourage them to stay and be involved in different areas of technology because so much changed. I've been involved in WordPress since 2010 when I went to my first Word Camp. That was Word Camp Orlando in Orlando, Florida. We live in Jacksonville, Florida. And we always like taking this six, seven hour drive up here to Birmingham, particularly when the weather's nice and you can see the mountains and the trees and stuff. But it's great to see people come to Word Camp and enjoy and learn and share and build a community. And that's what it's all about. And each year it changes. It develops. I love to use Aida's word pivot. You have to know how to pivot because if you can't pivot, then you'll be pulverized by things that are changing around you and everything. So let's give an idea.  And when I say teacher, let me rephrase it. I don't mean a certified teacher. Anybody that's in the school, whatever, classroom, for me, you consider a teacher because you do contribute. Private school, parochial school, charter school, whatever, because you're teaching kids. Who in here is an artist? Very good. Who in here is a business owner? Very cool. Everybody's hands should go in. Who in here has a brand? So everybody's hands should have a, everybody's hands should have, should, you should all have your hand up. And the reason I say that is because your name is your brand. What you do is your brand. What you're trying to accomplish is your brand because people recognize you and see you and they want to know what you're doing, where you're going, and how you're accomplishing that. So all of that is considered your brand. Our brand, we're known as the Extreme Team because we get so extreme about everything that we're doing. And Aida teaches on the university level. I teach elementary middle. I retired from teaching middle school because I told Aida the second year I taught middle school. I didn't want to be highlighted on the newspaper or in the news because some middle school kid jumped up in my face. I was like, I'm not doing this project. You can't make me do it. I'm like, OK, just, you know, just chill. Not that that happened. But I think it may be happening a couple of times. But I was like, just chill. It's OK. Because middle school kids are going through all this process, these hormones. And they're adorable, wonderful kids because you can learn so much from them. But the attitudes are like Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hot. Related to the metaverse, so much changes and so much information is out there. You have to really consider how you're going to take that information and apply it. So when I first started teaching technology, I was a STEM teacher, science, technology, engineering, and math. That was cool for a while. If you think was project-based learning, I rarely gave students any kind of assessment or test. Because I wanted to know what they could do, what was in their brain. Then when STEAM came along, Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics, the concept was you have this artistic creativity in you. You need to let it out. The arts help with innovation, creativity, understanding the different sides of your brain, how you can work with people, collaboration, cooperation, which in any of our professions is really important. Aida and I, we love to collaborate and cooperate with people. As you could tell yesterday, we were talking to different people about different things that were going on, sharing information, finding out what they're doing. Because our goal is to help people grow. With us, this is like a ministry as well. Being able to help people grow in a proper use of technology. We used to have a thing. And Aida did yesterday in her presentation, we had everybody hold up their phones. And we had them repeat, this can be your best friend or your worst enemy.  And like, where is this person going? What kind of information are they sharing? What is their intention? And the perspective on what you're doing increases yearly, because when you start using more technology, like the metaverse, you're really out there in immersive environments. So as we go along, if you have a couple of short questions, I'll be more than happy to answer the best that I can. But our journey into the metaverse is going to be fun. It's going to be exciting. If you've never been on a metaverse, the time will come, I guarantee, where there's some way, whether a laptop, your phone, a tablet, or whatever, you are going to be in an immersive environment. So my opinion is anytime you start off with something, you have to learn to pivot or adapt. So I've been using WordPress for so long. I used to make websites. I continuously blog on it, as I said, but my thing was, what else is the next technology that I'm going to have to adapt to? Not just for me and her, but then I'm going to have to teach or share with somebody, whether this is an adult or a child. How do you take WordPress, put it in a metaverse, or WordPress, use it in different types of media? So as business owners and users of WordPress, you should always have in the back of your mind, as things change, how are you going to adapt with the change? Because you don't want to turn out like the dinosaurs. All of a sudden you start off with just blogging, then you move to podcasting, and you stay at those two, which are good, but how are you going to adapt and move on to the next evolution? So as we talk about the metaverse is here. It is here. It's here to stay, and it's going to grow. And it is not just gaming, so I'm not even going to reference gaming anymore. So as I said, these are the little titles and little things about me, but mainly it's important that we want to help people.  And using the tools is important to understand anything that you use is a tool to accomplish a goal. Whether you're using an Oculus to play a game, whether you're using an Oculus to build an immersive environment, you figure how you adapt that tool to the best of your use, not everybody else's, because you're going to be the one using it. As we transition, we've been blessed to be able to travel to Costa Rica this year to talk, excuse me, 2022, right? 2022, we were able to go down to their word camp and present information as we're doing here about the metaverse and digital technology, and we are taking our Oculus with us, so we have Oculus will travel. And it's amazing when you go someplace different, people kind of sort of heard about the metaverse or immersive environments, so we allowed them to use the Oculus. In Jacksonville, we traveled around and go to middle schools and high schools and let the kids wear them. They have never used them before, but our specific goal is to talk to them about careers that are coming on the metaverse, and being certified VR educators, it opens up doors that we can use multiple environments to show that, okay, you can be trained in construction, you can be trained in art design, you can be trained in design and modeling in immersive environments using the Oculus, but also using the handheld devices that track your hands and what you're doing. Some of the technology now is you just put on the Oculus, but you don't have to have the handheld devices. They're synced with your body, and you can do some amazing stuff. But the idea is to learn as much as possible how you can apply it, how you can help yourself, your business, being an entrepreneur to grow. So don't think that there are people that call themselves experts because everything changes. We all know like in six months, something else is coming out, Apple's coming out with Oculus and some other companies as well. So you learn what you can learn. My thing is, working with kids, try to find a way to have fun with it, because if you have too much, if you're too serious about it, you're gonna lose out on the creativity and an innovation of what you have that's at your feet that you can use. Here's Aiyu, again, this is the one that, she's helping, here we go. She's helping a young man with, there we go, with the Oculus. He has it all set up. He's in the immersive environment looking around. Now when I say immersive environment, just imagine this.  But if the floor all of a sudden disappears and you're floating, you're in your seat or I'm standing here and you're still looking around, you still have the same experiences, but all of us are like avatars. But we're still in this environment. We can still talk to each other. We can even share information. We can even hold hands digitally. We can give each other high fives. So as you're moving around, you can embrace the environment. You can hear things. You can experience things. And the cool thing about that is you are not by yourself. So depending on what environment you're in, you are able to share that experience with others.  Now during the conference, there were a lot of people that actually did want to learn about the metaverse because they had never heard of it. But one of the challenges when you put the Oculus on, getting used to the environment that you're in.  So just don't jump into things. Take the time to understand what you're doing and where you're going and what you're involved in. Now as he's doing this, we explained to him what was going on because we had the Oculus also paired to the laptop and the screen so we could see what he was doing. Kids in middle school love it. First thing they're thinking about is gaming. First thing we're thinking about is preparing them for a career. This graphic in the upper right is our avatars as we attend church on Sunday morning. So we have fun with it. I eat this like every Sunday, we're going to change our outfits. We're going to match our colors. I'm like, what color are we wearing today? What are we going to, you know?   And that's the cool thing. That's why I say embrace the creativity because you're having creative inspiration. You're being innovative with the technology. You're learning something new that you can share with other people. Now as we teach the kids this as well, the interesting enough as we use more and more technology, your brain gets all that information and categorizes it. So interesting enough, and you may have experienced this walking down the hall, when somebody's having a conversation, somebody may say a particular word that clicks with your brain and you hear it and you can build this relationship if they're talking about PHP, HTML, blogging, podcasting. It's just something about words that you pick up. So the more that you're in immersive environments, when people are talking about these things, you pick up the nomenclature or the words and you build a relationship with those words. So that's emotional learning as well. So if you've had a bad experience on the metaverse, you're gonna have bad thoughts about it. And that's why caution, don't just jump into it. Gradually immerse yourself into the environments. So there are so many metaverses out there, you can find one that you can have casual and social relationships and conversations. If you have a bad experience in one environment, try another environment because there are keys and strategies to help you overcome some of the little awkwardness that's in there. If you create an avatar and you don't like it, you can always change it. You have that option depending on the environment that you're in. One of the things, we need to be prepared for digital pivots. When you're pivoting and using it, a lot of people start off in immersive environments with gaming. Now there's businesses that have their business meetings. Now there's companies that require their employees. We know you're not gonna be here in person. They're gonna build a space, you pick your avatar, you build it, you come in for the meeting, or you can take a picture of your head, put it on the avatar so people can still recognize you and you can be involved in those digital spaces. Actually I always say have fun with it, enjoy it, but you also look at the potential of what's going on. This young lady in middle school, she had never been in an immersive environment. So what we did was we allowed her to see the International Space Station.  But that's another thing. But you hear the wind blowing by you, you hear music playing, again, okay, I can hear music, but we're in space, but it's okay.   So as you're looking at it, it's a unique representation of the International Space Station. Then you go on instruction, where do you know how long it's been out in space? You know, a lot of kids today don't even know that there's a space station out there, it's been in space for like 20-something years. They're like, really? Like, what planet is it orbiting? Then you know, okay, this is a middle school kid, see, they don't know. But then you talk to them about, it's been in space for 20 years, they do experiments, there's another space station created by the Chinese, it's on the other side of Earth, so they don't bump into it. Then you build those relationships for learning and engaging. When you're using it for business, you travel around the world. So if you wanna meet people in a different nation, like I'll just use China, for example, gather information about that area where you may be communicating with people because you wanna make sure you understand the culture, you understand the environment, you can have small talk about something, you are able to build that relationship even in an immersive environment. Because you're still people.  In WordPress, let's see, Aida and I are from Jacksonville. Anybody here from California? How about Oregon? Canada? Maine? Oh, okay, Colorado? Okay, let me see, somebody named us, State? Washington. Washington, okay, anybody else? Texas. Okay, anybody else? Illinois. Illinois, okay, good examples. Because if you ever wanna do business in those states, my suggestion is always, this is an awesome, wonderful opportunity to network. This is a beautiful networking opportunity.  This is a collaboration opportunity. This is an opportunity to share resources to build not only on what you're doing but what other people are doing. Then the next thing you know, the next conversation is, are you on a metaverse? Are you in an immersive environment? And if you are, that's another way to meet and collaborate together. Why would you do that? Well, if you physically can't travel to them, you can also have a meeting someplace in that state or their city virtually. So I'm sure there's a coffee shop, there's a museum, there's a ballpark, there's something in that community or that city where both of you can meet in an immersive environment and have a conversation. And that conversation can lead to a collaboration. That conversation could lead to a business agreement. That conversation could lead to both of you building a business because that's the way the world is operating now using these immersive tools. So where did the metaverse come from? Virtual world or virtual universes? Okay, there was this gentleman that wrote this book called Snow Crash. His name is Neil Stephenson in 1992. And the name metaverse was used to represent the immersive environments in that book. So you know, you make this connection with literature. So using our Oculus, using tablets, using phones and computers, we are able to enjoy the options that we have in being on the metaverse. So these are just some different books that are, that printed the books, No Crash, Neil Stephenson. And I always like to show the different book covers. So in case you see it in a bookstore, it's like, oh, that's the book William was talking about. Okay, here's some other visuals of our avatars. Again, my beautiful wife loves to change our outfits and be colorful and everything, which is fun.  Cause then you think of, okay, if I can wear a different outfit in the metaverse, how cool would I look in real life if I did start wearing like reds and oranges and yellows and all that pretty cool stuff? All right, so you look at it as, everybody in here has some type of creativity in you. Use immersive environments and technology to bring it out. Because as a teacher of 34 years plus, I can honestly say, unfortunately, our educational system across the United States does not encourage creativity. It does not encourage innovation, which is unfortunate. But I always say, hey, when you have the chance to change your look, you know, to change your outfit, to change your hairstyle, whatever, in your in an immersive environment, take advantage of it because you might actually enjoy what you're looking at in the creating side of you.  Cause I always say, I don't have an artistic bone in my body. But I eat is like, yeah, but you're making spatial environments for word camp conferences and stuff like that. It's like, yeah, but you inspire me because I see what you're doing and I wanna do it too. All right, a lot of athletes now are creating environments to promote themselves. High school athletes that wanna go to major universities, they're creating metaverse sites. So that way they're embedding their pictures, they're embedding their videos, so that recruiters will come and see them and then they can reference. Well, I have a metaverse site or I have a site on the internet that you can see what I'm doing, how I'm performing and they're uploading videos, they're uploading pictures, they're uploading interviews that the newspaper may do or major media. So that way when they're in these environments, they can represent themselves better. So as you learn more and more creatively, you decide what you wanna do with it. And I always reference back, remember like the first few times you started using WordPress and I think that it wasn't an easy experience for me because I was like starting from ground zero, 2010, 2009, 2009. And I really didn't know who to reach out to to ask for help. So I had to just read through the documentation, this is how you start a website, this is how you get a theme, this is, and it was frustrating but I didn't give up. But today we have work camps, virtual in-person where you have all this access to these resources that will help you accomplish your goals. And in the metaverse, we can walk, we can talk, we can teleport, which is pretty cool. You can fly, you can travel, you can do all these great things in 3D environments. You can also see NFTs, non-fundable tokens, all right? So you can buy and sell and barter non-fundable tokens but that is another aspect of the metaverse where you talk to people that are knowledgeable in those areas.  She has an NFT gallery that she plays her NFTs and people can come in and buy them, which they look at and from all over the world.  And she's already an established artist but working in the middle school, we teach students about creating NFTs, not just art but it could be music. It can be anything related to design and modeling, all kind of elements because they have to understand that even in middle school, they can be business owners, they can be entrepreneurs. And we like to encourage people when we go to work camps that you are a light to a young person somewhere because you have a business, you are an entrepreneur and whether it's a school or a church or a civic organization, share your knowledge out in your community because you never know who you're gonna inspire. And if you think back at a people that inspired you to do what you do, it's really important that you give back to the community because it does give back to you. And I like to say, the kids that you mentor, one day they might work with you, purchase something from you or help promote you. So you take advantage of that. Everybody knows who this young man is, who is this guy right here? All right, so he's just showing some changes, things that you can do in the metaverse, change yourself, your outfit. I showed this to the students at school and they were like, they knew who he was but then they were like, they really didn't know exactly what he was doing. We were doing a unit on the metaverse and immersive technologies. And we were sharing, where have you seen the metaverse? If you watch movies, if you watch cartoons and television and advertisements, all of that's mixed in. The movies like The Matrix, Ready Player One. Those contain elements. And I think back when, I was going in the 60s, Star Trek, Captain Kirk, you walk up to the door and then the door opens but in reality, somebody's doing pulleys but now, hey Walmart, everybody's door opens automatically. And I referenced there was a scene in Star Trek that Captain Kirk was walking around in Enterprise and they gave the idea that was late in the evening, he couldn't sleep so he was walking around his ship. He walks into a classroom and who's in the classroom? Kids in front of a computer. Now at that time, those were just props but the idea that they planned it was one day, kids are gonna learn from computers. So he walks up to the teacher and the ladies walk around, he said, how are the students learning today? She said, captain, they're learning their lessons, they're doing a good job, they're doing what they're supposed to be doing and he says, hmm, and he's just looking around. But if you really think about it, the concept of kids using computers for educational purpose was planned and whoever was watching Star Trek at that particular time. So it stuck with me, because I'm a fourth generation teacher and my mom looked at me and said, see, that's the future that's coming. And I'm glad I listened to her because if I hadn't, my directions might have been a little bit different but it was a blessing that she recognized it then and we have to recognize sessions like this, talking about the metaverse. So like I said, when you're walking around, somebody says, out space VR, decentralized, spatial, other metaverse sites that those are sites that you may be exposed to or have to use. So at least you have heads up in the game. Meta or Facebook is not the only metaverse. Don't let Zuckerberg fool you in the thinking that Facebook is the metaverse. It's not, there are hundreds of metaverses out there. And the cool thing is that you go experiment and find the one that fits your needs and fits your style. Everybody has a particular style. Find something that fits your needs. What would a metaverse allow us to do? Social planning, strategic development, having meetings in the metaverse. When you look at different videos and you look at different concepts of what's coming, strategic planning is important. Collaborations, embracing diversity, teaching, engaging with other people. Now the reason I put these videos up here, just imagine kids wanna play against each other, basketball and metaverse, which they are doing. You know, they put on their oculus or they put on their glasses. They appear on the basketball court. They got a ball and virtually they're playing all kinds of sports, not just race cars, not just first person shooters, but actual different types of games that they're engaged in, physical, mental, emotional, psychological. So I always suggest parents and grandparents, uncles, aunt. If you have young people that either live in your house or in your community or that you talk to or that you know you relate it to, ask them what they think of the metaverse. Start having conversations about them because they are a source of information because where do they get their information from other kids at school? So you understand what's true, what's false, what's possible, what may be impossible, but could happen. So you develop those conversations and you take that content that you learn from them and you figure out a way how to apply it in your business because again, the young people that are coming up now, they're either gonna be your future employees, they're gonna be your future customers, they're a good way to feed into their growth and development because you never know what they may do. One day they may come in and ask you to be their consultant because they wanna start a business. Wouldn't that be cool? You helping a young person start a multi-million, excuse me, multi-million dollar business and you're here consulting, okay? Video games as always. I used to love watching anime, I still kinda do, but it's kinda hard watching anime and your wife says, you still watching anime? And it's like, yeah, but this is like really good. She's like, mm, mm, mm. Doesn't something need to be put out in the trash or something? It's like, yeah. Okay? So in the metaverse, you can't run away from that. You just have to like, okay. We all know content is important, so content is very valuable. As that guy, that rich guy with the glasses, content is king. We all know who that is. Who is that anyway? Who said content is king? Oh my gosh, y'all don't know who said that? Well, when it comes to me out. Who said content is king? Well, Google, yeah, Google, Google. Okay, I'll let that marinate so it'll pop in somebody's head. But engagement is queen. Engagement. You have to engage with people. You have to be involved with them. I am by nature an introvert, but the cool thing about WordPress and attending WordCamps, it's brought out the ability to speak and share and talk to my peers. All of you are my peers and friends because if I was my true self, I'd be sitting in the chair with it just watching, not talking to anybody. I would be quiet. But because of our community, it allows me to be expressive, share this content from what I've learned, not just from me, but what Aida shared, what we talk about with the kids in school, talk about my university kids when I'm teaching them. They're like, are you on Discord? Are you doing this? Are you doing?  Let's work on digital media first, what we're doing in class, and then we can embed all of that because you have to be flexible. If you are, or if you plan to teach any type of technology in the future, even though you have your syllabus, I always advise teachers that be flexible enough when you learn something from your students to find a way to embed that in your instructional process as well because that carries a lot of weight because it's not just knowledge that you have, which can be old and outdated at times, but you're embedding knowledge from young people around you. If you're a business owner, do the same thing as you do your strategic planning, your strategic development, your future processes for where you want to take your business. Think about where the young people are going, not just here in Birmingham or Jacksonville or anywhere, but globally, because we are in a global environment. We are in a global economy. Yes, sir. I think you're thinking about Bill Gates. Bill Gates, thank you. You can't forget about Bill. I didn't want to make that easy. Thank you. See, he go to the Googles, there you go. But use that technology, and there's little bits and pieces that you can put together to empower what you're doing. So people still want facts, they want data, they want statistics, they want connections, they want collaborations. So depending on what you're doing, and all this can be found in the metaverse. And as it has down here, knowledge is powerful if you applied correctly and with the correct tools. So you're using WordPress, you're developing stuff in WordPress, you're managing WordPress sites, but what are you gonna do if someone comes along and says, how do you take my WordPress site and link it to a metaverse site? And it's still involved coding, it's still involved web development, but you have to think about, well, this company, yes, they do want a webpage, but eventually they want a blending of technologies. WordPress and the metaverse. And you have to figure out the best way to collaborate those pieces together. Even if you're not sure, there's plenty of people in our WordPress community that are growing that are developers and coders that are blending these spaces as well. At the middle school that I teach at T-Lam, Twin Lakes Academy Middle School, we've been building and designing a WordPress newspaper that we blend with a podcast, that we blend with a metaverse site. So it's been a great opportunity to see the kids grow, to guide them. We're at the process now with the graphic on the left that they're interviewing local people in business and technology and education to put in the newspaper and the podcast. So the young lady that's on this side is Melissa Ross. She has a WJCT, our local station, related with NPR. They do interviews with them. We thank, and he's not in here, Tofer. Tofer, that's here. We interviewed, I shouldn't say we, the students interviewed him about WordPress, about different areas of technology. So they're expanding their ability to talk, have conversations, have a podcast posted in the newspaper and then also put it on the metaverse site. This graphic down here shows that this is my little avatar. These are the students and they interviewed the new vice principal of the school. So combining all of those elements in digital media is important because it gives them the flexibility of understanding this is what I wanna do in the future in some way, somehow. So maybe they don't wanna do a podcast. Maybe they wanna do a newspaper. Maybe they don't wanna do a newspaper. Maybe they wanna put everything on the metaverse. So it helps them and it guides them. Did anybody have any questions? Did you have a? Yes, sir. Do you necessarily need a VR to go to the metaverse? I'll say it again. I'm sorry. Do you need a VR to go to the metaverse? The question is, do you need a VR to go to the metaverse? You mean the Oculus itself? Oh, no, no. You can use your laptop to get on all space VR. You can use a laptop to get on spatial areas. So you don't always have to have an Oculus. Yeah, and that's the beauty of it. You can use a laptop. You can use your cell phone. You could use a tablet because it's all web-based. You may have to download a plugin or some program to get on it, but no. But the truly immersive. Right, exactly, yes. Okay, anybody else? Okay, oh, yeah. Young lady. I work at a K through 8 school. I'm curious about one of the things that I end up doing a lot is filtering out what kids can do because the metaverse, it seems to me, we've had, for instance, we love Scratch as a way of teaching coding, but the Scratch website got kids into a situation where there was somebody who was talking to somebody out there in the world and it got inappropriate. Right. So are there things out there that might be ways that acting within the metaverse can be sort of sandboxed for kids? Have you seen anything? There are specific sites for youth that are out there that are safe sites, but then you have to remember the metaverse is still growing and developing. So the best thing to do is monitor where they're going, monitor what they're doing, and we always say the metaverse is a representation of our world. There's good people, there's bad people, there's good sites, there's bad sites, there's terrifying sites. There are sites that promote language that you may not want your kids exposed to.  So like with anything you have to monitor what the kids are doing and what they're involved in. They will talk to their friends. So you don't wanna put yourself in a position where you're gonna tell them not to do something. The best way is to guide them and talk to them and get them to understand why you don't want them going to particular places online because what you wanna do with your relationship with whoever it is, you want to entrust them and empower them with knowledge. A lot of kids in this day and age, they don't wanna be told what not to do, what to do, how to do it, but they appreciate people that guide them along, people that not necessarily criticize them but understand how bright, intelligent, smart, creative they are, they like to hear that, and to help them to grow. So even if they do go to a site that their friends encourage them to go to, in the back of their head, they're already gonna know, well, I shouldn't do this, but if I go there, I gotta be careful because kids are gonna, they're inquisitive, they're curious. And in most cases, the peer pressure is so strong. Then you gotta, okay. So if y'all hold those questions for just a minute, okay, so that's going, these are emblems for our podcast. The podcast is on Anchor. So it is anchor.fm, it's free. Post your podcast, and it will share your podcast to Apple, Google, all over the place. So this is a good way to start for us. Also, these are our websites that we go to. If you're interested, I can email you the link or you can email me and request a link for this. But these are our metaverse sites, our podcast with Anchor, and our newspaper is on WordPress. Yay! And they're learning all of that. And I, you and I have put ourselves in a position that when we go to WordPress conferences, WorkCamps, we can no longer just go home and be like, oh, we met some of these amazing people. They are fantastic. Now it's like, Mr. and Mr. Jackson, what did you bring us back? Where's our stickers? Where's our t-shirts? Who did you meet? So, you know, when you get involved in this stuff and you're working with kids, you know, you have to bring stuff back home because that encourages them. And that reminds them that there are other people, particularly young ladies. One of the young ladies, the young lady up here on the right, when she first started, she was so scared, but she wanted to do it. And she was just so unconscious of how she spoke, but she knew this was an opportunity for her to grow. He's not a young man that regularly podcasts. He has autism, but he saw that as an opportunity to share that autistic kids can do things like this as well because he saw the possibility that, you know, people around the world could hear him and understand him. So these are just some special galleries that we created for Workham Ginger in Uganda, Costa Rica, Spain, and Africa as well. So these sites are spatial galleries that when you go in, you go in as an avatar, but they're centered around their work camp conferences. So building and developing these. And again, you'll be able to email us so we can send you the links if these are too long. We attend First Meta Church on Alt Space VR. Unfortunately, Alt Space VR is disappearing March 10th, so we're in the process to find another place to go fellowship and worship. And again, you go in as an avatar and the services are just like any service that you would find. The beauty about this, we are people from all over the world that come and worship with us. We're Christians. We love to share our faith. We talk about our faith, but it's not just the aspect of the faith part, but it's the aspect that Christians and those of other religions are expanding to the metaverse. And they're sharing their faith, they're sharing their ideas, they're sharing the background, they're also sharing the history of their faith and the history of their family. So this way you get to have a broader relationship with people around the world. And we share our faith, but we don't put it on the auspices of you have to be Christian or you have to whatever. No, it's understanding other people's backgrounds because in the end of the day, we're all humans. We all live on this planet. We wanna make sure we take care of this planet. So even though we're in Jacksonville, Florida, how can we help somebody in California or Oregon or Illinois or whatever to share information and use the technology? Make sure you're focused and you're clear on what you're doing with the metaverse, ask questions.  Understand why you're gonna have a presence even if you're just checking it out and just looking at it. Like I said, have fun. Education, entertainment, engagement, all these other great options. What are you gonna do on the metaverse? Look at it, understand it, figure out how to apply it, figure out how to pivot in your personal life, your business life as an entrepreneur. And as this grows, more and more wordpress is gonna adapt more elements to help bring wordpress more into the metaverse. I love the word because my wife says pivot. Pivot, my people, wherever you're pivot points with technology. All right, we even made it from, when is it, Windows 3.1 to Windows 98. From Windows 98, now we're at Windows, whatever, 10, 11 or whatever. So we all had to pivot. Metaverse so low-code, social engagement, socializing people, local activities, their stuff is on the metaverse, mobile adventures, use your phone, okay? Community connections and awareness. So much stuff is being posted on the metaverse as well. But we like to encourage people to pick a platform that you like, that you enjoy, run with it, share with it, and grow and expand from there. And communication. We have our web developers, we have our content creators, we have all of the stuff that's out there that people can use. And you have your options and your choices and understand the content that's there that you could use. And communication is always being used. So before you leave this WordCamp, make sure you share something with at least five people that you can connect with later on. So when something comes up about AltSpace VR or Decentraland or Spatial or something, you have somebody to talk to because, and I'm sure all of y'all understand, there's nothing more frustrating than us being in a WordPress community and we hear this great idea or we hear this great conversation and you leave it and you don't have anybody to share it with. And it's kind of like, well, if I talk to my kids about it, you know, they're gonna give me the stink eye. Like, what are you talking about? Do I really wanna hear this? So you know how kids are. Or, you know, your friends and stuff. I went to this great conference, WordCamp Birmingham. We talked about all this information and you just burst and you wanna share it with somebody. So you have a group here that you can share with so embrace it and take these concepts and ideas and apply it to what you're doing and help you be more successful. So, yes. Twin Lakes is in, he said, what city is Twin Lakes in? Oh, Jacksonville, Florida. Yeah. Yeah, you can probably even do a Google search on Twin Lakes Academy Middle School, Jacksonville, Florida.  Do you have any different teachers? There is an Education Dow. It's ED3, if you Google ED3, those were educators collaborate about Metaverse Training and Metaverse Technology. That's a great place, because, you know, we come together. There's some conferences coming up online in the Metaverse. Yes. Also, if you have a headset, Engage is the app, which really is focused on educators. Anybody? Yes, sir. Do you have a question? All right, okay. Is there any application or anything that you know about sort of how we get the Metaverse mainstream and this is a WordPress community? So I imagine at some point we'll get to the place where you can maybe just view your website immersively, your WordPress website. Is there anything that you know about that that probably is coming upstream that could potentially help those who work at WordPress say, okay, maybe we need to start thinking about that environment or that opportunity? Good question. The software that's used is Unity and Blender to create immersive environments. If you are interested in learning Unity and Blender, a lot of colleges and universities and even libraries are offering classes in Unity and Blender. So once you build the space or build the environment, then through the coding process, and I'm not really involved in that process, you can manage to put your website within the built environment of Unity or Blender. In many cases, people are like collaborating with those individuals that know how to use Unity and Blender because a lot of the coding dealt with, you're going from one server on the Metaverse to another server that's hosting a website. How do you blend those two? And that's still being worked on because not only are you taking the website and blending it with the Metaverse, but you're also taking your avatar and your avatar is in the Metaverse because your avatar represents you. So when you make that transition from Metaverse to website, website to Metaverse, there's a lot of coding involved in that. But I always tell people find out those individuals that are using Unity and using Blender and collaborating with them or you learn it yourself. I always say, I'm interesting enough, going into my 60s and my brain is like, you really wanna learn all of this? You just still learn how to use your remote. It's like, now you're trying to do something else. But yeah, right, yes. Unity and Blender you can download for free too. So if we don't mind, I just wanna add to that. A lot of developers are building their website and instead of using Metaverse, because like he said, they're still working on that, they're doing AR instead. So that when you put on the headset, when you're looking at the website, there's some interactive elements there. This gentleman. What's the software that you're using to make the online gallery for your art? All right, that's Spatial. Yep, spatial.io. And I think I got a minute or two left? Yeah. Okay, chat GPT. I wanna talk about that just for me, for me as an educator. If you're using that to help you with your blogging or you're creating or you're designing, I don't think there's an issue with using it. My main thing is that you cite your resources that you're using. So even if you're creating a business plan, even if you're writing a blog on a subject, even if you're doing some kind of strategic design, use it because it is an assistive tool, but make sure you cite that you are using or have used chat GPT because it's either getting rave reviews or it's getting, this is the worst thing in the world. Academically, for me, I look at it as, you have young people that go through the educational process and they struggle with reading, they struggle with comprehension, they struggle with putting those pieces together where their mind can read, write, and comprehend. But using chat GPT, they can request an article, it comes back to them and I encourage them read through it because the more you read, the more you know, the more you know, the more you grow. So you take those elements, as many of us were taught with the encyclopedias, you read it, put it in your research, cite it, and you keep it moving forward. So that's a good way to teach that comprehension, that reading and all those elements. And yes, sometimes it's challenging, but the more they do it, the better they understand the concepts of words and sentences and all that cool stuff. Okay, hang on, just, yeah, I just ended up. Question, in regards to that, you wanted us to do citations if you're doing it for a blog, right? Right. But when you start a conversation on there, you don't necessarily have to give any content for the information from the internet as being aggregated and processed and all things. So how do we even get the citation if it doesn't even tell us where it gets? Just state that you got some of your information from chat GPT. Can you say it's that site that it doesn't change? Right, so whatever you get, as you're reading, you're processing it, you may not use all of it, because I even use it to help me with some of my blogs, but also make sure I referenced some of this information I did get from chat GPT, because it helps me understand a different concept or idea from when I'm blogging about immersive environments or kids using tech or businesses using technology. Yeah, okay, oh, this gentleman, Mr. David. Hi. Hi. I'm pleased to hear that you're moving into your 70s, because I have a historic question for you. They're okay. I see all this and I think, there's something familiar about it and you made me think of Second Life. Does this seem like any kind of relation to that thing? Yeah, it does, because I look at it. Who inspired me was my mom. My mom was a business teacher, high school business teacher, and I went from the process of watching her teach shorthand, now this is years ago, teach shorthand in the 70s, then next thing you know, she had manual typewriters, then next thing you know, a year or two later, she had electric typewriters, then a year or two later, she had the IBM computers, so that process of learning, and she would always have me, my brother and sister over the summer go into her lab and set everything up, because you know the custodians, they didn't know, they just bartered in the boxes, dumped it in there and just left, but she was like, you need to learn how to set each piece up, you know, and when you have that idea, okay, something new and different's coming, I have to prepare myself psychologically and emotionally to be able to adapt to it and set it up and learn from it, and you know, that embeds in you a willingness to want to learn and continue to grow, because if you don't, then when something does come up, you know, as business owners and tech and all that stuff, you get stuck, you get stuck like Chuck, and then it's like, what are two things happening? You're either too embarrassed or scared to ask somebody for help, or almost an impending business disaster almost happens, then you're scourging and running around trying to find out somebody to help you, my thing is just be proactive, I already know, if you're not aware, find somebody that's near you, by you, that you talk to, to reference, or WordPress TV has a lot of great videos if you never used it. WordPress.tv has wonderful content, and I think a lot of these presentations are gonna be put on WordPress.tv in a month or two. So hopefully that answers your welcome. All right, great, if all hearts and minds are satisfied. Thank you very much for coming, I hope we share some information.


Inequality, in many ways, may be the biggest question of our times. I'm Branko Milanovic. I am Adrin Jayadev. We're shooting a video lecture series on the topic of inequality. In some sense, it may be the one issue around which the whole world is most interested in trying to find solutions. We have five lectures. Why do we care about inequality, the measurement of inequality, what has been happening to global inequality, and then finally some policy solutions that we think are valuable? Many of you who are interested in income inequality, when you sort of really strip it down to what it is, there are really things that we face every day. When we talk about gender inequality, we face differences in wages between men and women. When we talk about citizenship rent, we actually face inequality between people who are born in a rich country, people born in a poor country. When we talk about inequality in access to education in the US, we talk about inequality between people who are born to rich parents and people who are born to middle class or poor parents. This all comes under this big word of inequality. But in reality, each of these issues are really topics that we face every day. So you should not feel scared that you're going to really have some very abstract discussion about an abstract topic. That topic is as concrete as it can be.


West Sassett's County Council's second digital tea party was held at Crawley Library. It's an initiative that the County Council has come forward with to help residents to get to know more about what they can do online, how to stay safe online. Residents were able to drop in and have a chat with digital experts over a cup of tea. Whether it might be how to use Facebook, Skype, FaceTime etc. more about online security or how to use Android devices. Around 50 people attended the event and we're continuing to meet with some of them at our digital clubs.