Alright, it looks like our audio is good, so as soon as we get connected with it, we'll start. It looks like we're connected. So hello everyone, and welcome to the 9.30 breakout session of the Open Simulator Community Conference 2013. 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 U-Stream chat, or tweet your comments using hashtag OSCC13. This hour, we're happy to introduce Rameesh Ramalal, who will be presenting virtual exercise design in the immersive virtual learning environments, recent emerging approaches. Rameesh Ramalal has been developing immersive virtual learning environments for diverse user groups during the past seven years on platforms that include Second Life and Open Sim. He is currently the CEO and CTO of Deep Simifor, LLC, an e-learning and simulation solutions company. Welcome, Rameesh. Hi, I'm very happy to be here. So just let me know if you can actually hear me. Just send some feedback. Okay, so here I am. I'm right now on the east coast in New Russia and New York. So I'm going to present today my experience designing virtual learning environments, especially for training. An experience that spans quite a few years. I've started around 2005, 2006 in Second Life, and now I've actually moved to Open Sim. I've moved to Open Sim the last year, and so the transition has been interesting. So I'm happy to share my journey with you and I'm aware that a lot of you are already probably on the same path, and you're self-involved in developing virtual environments for both platforms. So one of the things that I wanted to say about the title is that when I'm speaking about virtual exercise design, at the start I thought it should be actually four immersive virtual learning environments, and then I realized that most of the time I spend designing virtual environments for learning, it's actually in C2. I spend most of the time interacting with my audience, with my clients within the virtual world itself, which is kind of interesting, it's not typical. We have minimal face-to-face interactions. We do have face-to-face interaction, but that's almost like 10-20% of the time. So let me try to move here to the next slide. So what I was trying to do is to talk about the various challenges that I faced, the operational, technical usability, and learning and evaluation levels, so that perhaps it won't be as well structured as 1, 2, 3, 4, the list here, but most of the information is in there, and I'm going to try to focus on each and every one of them, and try to provide actionable pieces of advice that I thought I might be able to give, given the amount of time I've spent with a target user, users, and given the range of simulations that have been involved in developing. Regarding questions and comments, I'm aware you can actually, I don't mind if you type in your questions as they pop up in your mind. I'll try to focus on the chat here, and I'll try to catch them. Please don't mind if I miss them. Just keep typing and repeating the comments if I miss any. So what is virtual exercise design? I thought I would define this because sometimes it's not very obvious, given the feedback I've got from a few reviewers from some of my federal grants submissions. So what I mean by exercise is precisely a place. There are a number of common aspects of an exercise that I personally view as important. So let's review those. The first aspect I focused on is broadly speaking, since we are still at the philosophy level here. We are talking about the demonstration aspect. So when an exercise is being carried out, it allows people who are observing the exercise to get a sense of the various steps or actions that are needed in order to produce a particular outcome. And you can also, through observation, of somebody demonstrating a certain scale, you can also evaluate that scale. The second aspect of an exercise is practice. So when you have an exercise, one of the core elements of an exercise is the ability to repeat it, either to become better at it or whether you want to refresh your memory before you actually do the actual thing. And typically the practice is then in a safe environment. And the other component you look at when you talk about exercise is the collaborative aspect of exercises. So, for example, I think before giving out an example, let me say this. The collaborative aspect, it allows the students or the people involved in exercise to understand the nature of dividing and conquering complex operations through team interactions. So there are some exercises that don't require collaboration, but there are also a very large set of exercises that require people interacting with each other, dividing the task and actually solving it. And lastly, the last component is the evaluation. It kind of is tied up a bit obliquely to the first one, which is like when you actually do the demonstration part. It enables you to measure the learning and skill acquisition, and that's what you want to do. You want to measure ideally skill transferability from virtual to real. So those definitions, once we are clear about them, we can start thinking about what is virtual exercise design. So what we want to do is we want to take the exercise as it is done in the real world and try to shift it in the virtual world and try to see whether the virtual exercise provides affordances for the aspects that we identified to be the main ones of an exercise. All that is philosophy, but at least we are clear about what we are talking about. So some of the previous projects I've been involved with that involves virtual exercise design, the first one is pandemic flu influenza, emergency preparedness training, effort that involved a number of universities. So here, as you can imagine, there was a lot of the collaborative aspects of an exercise that came into play. So if you are teaching a start protocol or a triage protocol, whether it's start or elevated severity index, ESI, it's actually a deeply collaborative activity, or when you want to explain what is span of control and how to assign different roles to different individuals, and then unleash all these students in an environment and then have them solve a particular emergency response task. There's a lot of collaboration that comes into play in here. So that's just describing the goal of the first project. The second one is a bit more the demonstrative aspect, and there are a number of projects out there where we have avatars performing exercises. There are researchers out there who actually have produced results in an oblique way showing that if you have your avatars doing exercises in the virtual world, it's translated into the real, et cetera. On my end, I was looking from a different angle. I was trying to look at how to use the virtual environment to help somebody perform yoga poses in a very detailed way. I'll talk a little bit in further detail. The third one, I was involved in a virtual reality therapy solution that promotes behavior modifications in individuals with daily living challenges. Many of these individuals have social behavioral issues, and we had to design a virtual environment to teach them some basic aspects of daily living. So that's another project that I'll touch on. The last one that I'm currently engaged in is in hazardous materials training. As you can imagine, that's kind of related to the emergency response training. We'll get a chance to touch on that. As I said, I won't go into details about what the projects are, but I'll pinpoint on some design guidelines that I learned so that you can actually take those and inform your own efforts. It's just an opinion. You might think that that's not the right way to go about doing things. The first kind of exercises I'm talking about is the very simple kind where you have somebody actually doing a physical exercise. Yoga is done in the real world. You have a series of poses, and there's a lot of attention that is placed on breathing, and you need to be able to understand the two in order to get the benefits of the exercise. In this case, what I tried to do is that I spent a lot of time trying to animate an avatar, but at the same time, what I did was I tried to represent or allow users to see things that they cannot visualize in the real world. For example, when you have an instructor teaching you about a vinyasa, which is like a flow between various poses, there are changes in the breath pattern. It's not easy for somebody doing an exercise and at the same time say, okay, now I'm breathing in through this particular pose and I'm breathing out and exhaling through the other one. It's kind of difficult to do the exercise and through speech and breathe the right way and teach your student. Every time when I deal about trying to implement something in the visual, there's something clicking in my mind. What can I do in the virtual that cannot be done in the real? To me, that's the key. I don't want to fuss around a lot of unsealing reasons why we should do it in virtual. Let's look for a very hard-hitting goal. In this case, you have the person doing some stretches in the sitting position and then you're doing a downward dog.  Just an example, highlighting the demonstrative aspect of a physical exercise. Let me move on to the next example here. Oh, wow, that slide came in fast. The reason why I talked about the previous example is to try to touch like a bee over just trying to fly over a few flowers and show you various aspects of exercises. One of them was the yoga one because I felt it was the best example to illustrate demonstration of something in the real that you can enhance in the virtual. You actually choose something like trying to assemble an engine or dismantle a computer in short of just parts, etc. That's the example I chose because I was involved in that project. Very quickly here for this slide where I was planning to talk about issues I faced when migrating from single life to open same, but I see that most of you are already familiar with these issues. Just like Kay mentioned before me, the transition is only difficult in the beginning at least for me when I realized that I had to live around more than $150,000 of content which was trapped in the second life platform. Even though you can sell things on the marketplace when it comes to projects that are funded federally or by clients there are a number of things that really cannot be achieved if you're using a second life platform. I was a bit afraid about the technical capabilities of open same but I'm much less so right now. I also see there are some technical advantages to actually develop in open same. Even from the basic user level there are a lot more technical advances in open same than in second life. That's a pretty controversial thing I'm seeing here but when I realize, for example, that now I cannot do away without non-player characters and I see that was not available in second life for example that's a big no. The only thing I might be a little worried about is about the physics engine. We have been promised the bullet engine for quite a while I'm still waiting and hoping that we are going to get a good physics engine but the core reason why I'm in open same is because I am in full control of my content. That's the real reason and the other reason is that for the client they don't need to keep paying second life just to have their content hosted and when we talk about content it's not content in inventories it's content which is on, you know, deployed on a same. Two different things because it takes a lot of efforts to actually take things out of your inventory and assemble on a region or on a same. Okay so I'll move very quickly to the next slide because I don't spend too much time on the transition. Okay so now we are coming to things that you can use and it's kind of controversial but it's okay I don't assume that that's the best thing there are probably many better ways for implementing things. So one of the things I've noticed is that even though I use it myself it tries to avoid numerical scores to represent progress through an exercise instead strive to represent progress through changes or modifications made to the environment as a result of actions performed during the said exercise. So for example I can choose to have a student solve a certain task and then give, you know, like a number to how fast they completed it or I can design the environment in such a way so that they are actually assembling the thing you can just by looking at the evolving result in order to get a sense of how much progress has been made and just by looking at it, you know, because form usually the form of something gives you an idea of the history of the steps that led to that current stage so there's much more information in that than just giving a score.  There are also, you know, of course there are many optimizing technical issues that come in that sometimes pulls you away from this guideline. Okay. Right now this is what I think should be the ideal and we can try to optimize things if we find that technically it's not possible to do so. The second thing I realized is that the dividing line that there is a dividing line between the casual users and virtual environment designers. Okay. If you look at the user interface of the viewer it reflects powerfully the assumption that the need to manipulate a virtual environment is primarily of concern only to the 3D modeler. So what I mean by that is that, you know, if you look at all the tools that are provided in a viewer most of them are not, you know, that's something obvious that I'm saying so I apologize. Most of users don't actually use them because, you know, most of them walk around, touch and they want to interact with environment in a way that they do in the real world. Okay. So there is the issue of trying to satisfy both users here, well, not users, the designers, the three designers and the casual user. This has been debated in lists, you know, for ages but I'll give you specific examples that will make this much clearer. Okay. Yeah, that's kind of repeating the last one. The 3D modeler-centric view UI is a barrier to target user interaction. Okay. There are two things that I found to be at least with my target audience which are typically non-players, non-computer game players. They have a lot of difficulty with the camera and the inventory is something that is... Even though it's an obvious thing to have for us as designers, it's one of the aspects of interacting in virtual worlds as it is now that is kind of troublesome. And I assure how having actions that require the inventory interaction, it really hurts flow. So one of the guidelines regarding camera control, at least what I do, is whenever possible, I try to create situations where manual camera control is kept to a minimum. That's kind of difficult to imagine in a world like Second Life or Open Sim. We can have some automatic camera control. We sit on a chair and have the camera just swing to the right position and orientation. If you're looking at the booster, you have auto zoom, you have all kinds of tricks like that. But the broad guideline is I'm trying to, whenever I design, I try to minimize manual camera control. Perhaps this will change when we go and change the user, the actual hardware for accessing virtual world, or worrying the HMDs. It's not going to be a problem, I think.  All right, the other thing about inventory manipulation that I just mentioned is it should be kept to a minimum because of their propensity to dampen emotion and flow. And I'll show you an example where, I'm just hoping I get a picture. All right, so here's a picture. Initially, when I was working in Second Life, I would spend a lot of time teaching people how to interact with the inventory. You can imagine somebody goes into a virtual environment and then they spend a lot of time learning about the inventory and camera controls and chatting, working without having done a single thing for the very first training session. And this is deeply discouraging. And most of the time, with people with narrow attention span within space and time, it becomes... It's not easy to actually keep people interested. Whereas in OpenSeam, one of the things you can do, for example, is that you can have this, you know, first attachment of objects. So in this case, for example, you can see the lower picture. If somebody wants to wear all the personal protection gear for a firefighter, they can actually just walk up to an unplayed character displaying all the things that you need and click and get all your gear up. Okay, the same things for all the other uniforms. So by processing the inventory, the only problem with this is that, of course, the attachment objects get stacked up in your inventory. So inventory management becomes an issue. So if you start with a goal that you need to have an easier way for people to wear things, that leads immediately to new ways of dealing with attachments and whether they need to be stacking up and thousands of copies made and fill your inventory. To me, it's obvious that that's not the way for doing things because at least I am clear about that. Okay, the next slide is... I'm just showing here, for example, a user, instead of at a click getting all the gear, you want them to know where they can actually access these various pieces of equipment in the real world. So you have a fire truck here and it has all these different compartments and the user has to walk towards the fire truck, open up the various compartments as needed, and pick the items and as soon as just a single click, they would just wear the right thing here, the other person is wearing a hat. They could wear this CBA or they could even pull out a fire line, a hose line and things like that. But really you want all actions to bypass the inventory. The inventory really destroys flow. It cannot stress that more. And I think that has a lot of implications regarding how we should move forward when we think of improving the viewer or even the underlying infrastructure of OpenSend. Okay, so as I said, direct manipulation, that is our urge to change the environment, that's different from a user and it's not the same as somebody pulling, pushing, and importing mesh objects and adjusting and all that. Two different classes of things. We cannot assume that those two things are going to can be satisfied by a single set of tools. We should actually script direct manipulation either at the scripting level or if we find that some of those direct manipulations that are useful for end users, we can try to take those and inject it back so that people who do the 3D modeling can also benefit from those kind of advances made for direct manipulation for the users. I'll give you an example, don't worry. Okay, so let's move to the next slide. Okay, that's a good example. So while it is trivial for a 3D modeler, for example, to pick an apple and put it on a table right through 82 tools, okay, this task is a frustrating one for a casual user. So let's say you work in a virtual world, I see an apple in a basket, I want to put it on a table, I'm not a 3D modeler, I would wonder how the hell do I do that? Is it stuck on the table? I mean in the basket, you know, it's kind of... So we are really moving from the traditional view of games, could somebody let me know how much time is left? It's 1-4, started at 12.30, wow. Okay, so that's a difficult task for the users. So how do I make it simple for a user? Next slide. Okay, I've talked about how I'm providing solutions through scripting. So given two objects, what is the most simple way we can select to facilitate this task? Okay, well, it's just because I feel that what I'm speaking is much more fluid and I might have repeated myself through the slides by becoming more, you know, by explicitly writing what I was trying to say. So I'm sorry for flipping the slides too quickly. All right, so I think what I was trying to say here is that when I was trying to solve the simple problem of selecting an apple and moving it and placing it on a table, I came up with a number of solutions and each of them had a problem until I landed on a solution that doesn't seem to be quite intuitive. So this is what I did next. So if you can zoom on the picture on this table, I was trying to have a setup where a user who is trying to learn about meal planning, they had to pick objects from the basket, you know, in utensils and lay a table, and they had to do it very in a direct way without having to go through the inventory. So the first problem is how do you select an object? So you can select an object. In this case, I had to have big handles on each and every object but when you click on the handle, it tells you which object is selected. But you can see that visually this is not appealing. There's, you know, the handles. It's difficult to design. It forces people to have to learn camera orientations so that they can actually see the handles so that they get to click on. Okay, so very quickly I moved away from this approach and I landed upon some other solution which I call temporal grasping which is slightly different in the sense that an object is selected only when you keep left clicking that is touching it for a minimum amount of time. Okay, so if I have an object like an apple and a plate and I have to put the apple on the plate, okay, I press left click on the apple for a minimal duration. Okay, not for a minimal, sorry. For more than one second and then it gets selected and then I click on the plate and the apple gets placed on the plate. It's kind of something, it's like I said, it's a very simple problem but the solution is not to include it. But when I experimented with this approach I found out that it's actually quite workable. So in this case you don't need to fiddle with your camera position in order to find a handle on the object and click on that handle until the system that the object is being selected where appropriate object and then click on the other object and say that, okay, now I'm going to... so that the system knows that the other point is actually the target position and then that's how the system knows that the apple needs to go on the plate and you don't need any extra handle and when we look at the environment it looks pretty much the same as any 3D environment. So for example in this case I could make it easier for somebody to create, to make a sandwich. Okay, it's not one of the best things you want to do in a virtual world but if you're explaining things about new planning for example you have the user code there you have a number of food items on the table and just by, you know, clicking on the objects various objects and they can put it on the plate. Okay, alright. So all the objects in this environment are targets. They are not specific targets. The environment is fully graspable in the sense that if I see a button I just flip the button, I can put it on the table and then put it on the refrigerator. It's like every object has got scripts that enables them to become a possible target. Okay, so as a design guideline you don't want to add too many notifications in your environment. It makes things really ugly and noisy and you want to avoid that. You want things to look as far as possible the way they would look any additional information overlaid on them. So that's my design goal. It's a hard one but once you find the solution you'll find that that really improves your interactivity a lot. Okay, next slide. So again the same principle here I'm using it to demonstrate how you can use the same approach to allow users to create content. In this case it's not exactly legal it's a bit more than legal in the sense that you're picking any one of these objects and you're assembling them together. So for example if you want to put a flower on a stem you'll select the flower and then one second left clicking on it gets selected and then just touch release on where you want it to go and it's going to go there automatically and it's going to be oriented automatically. Basically what I'm doing is that the normal of that object just gets aligned with the normal at the point of the target. Simple things like that has tremendous impact on direct manipulation by the users they don't even need to know how things are working what they see is that hey I have two objects here I want to put one on top of the other and selecting one and putting it on the other just in an intuitive way and I didn't need to do any extra manipulations. With the same basic infrastructure you can just build a board game very easily without any extra work and you can actually just users move pieces around just like they would do in the real world select a piece and click somewhere else that piece is going to go there. So when you're faced with this kind of direct manipulation then you start thinking is this not something that needs to be a feature of the viewer from ground up rather than have all these different things implemented in script. When you implement things in script you're actually wasting a lot of resources and there are also many other constraints the number of real listeners for example is limited and you really need to optimize your code a lot in order to make those interactions possible in order to have a large number of objects that would have the same kind of property in an environment. Okay, so as I said there are technical constraints that hurt usability but at least we should have our design guidelines clear and then we try to optimize and try to work around if possible. Okay, and as you can see right now how different our class of virtual environments is from the typical games that are out there. In a typical blockbuster game you have a very narrow set of interactions whereas in OpenSeam or SecondLife you have a lot of opportunities to have much finer interactions but we do need to spend some time in order to facilitate those interactions. Alright, so I think I'm coming close to my last few slides here on the evaluation aspects. Okay, so my kind of evaluation is directly rooted in the following principle. I actually create an evaluation exercise to help me find out what I was already trying to achieve. My evaluation exercises, at least the way I designed them is not to throw my original goal out just because the results tell me so. For example, I won't find an evaluation exercise that's going to evaluate face-to-face versus virtual and look at the results and say, well, you know, face-to-face is better and therefore I'm going to throw virtual solutions out of the window. No, I believe in the virtual solution and I'm going to try to construct evaluations that allows me to improve it. So a lot of my evaluations are directly focused on the nitty-gritty of the human-computer interface interactions in the virtual world. And this has allowed me, for example, to know that having interactions through the inventory, for example, is maybe 100, 200 times worse than just having interactions straightaway inside the virtual environment in situ. Okay, so those are my idea about evaluations. Of course, then you have other levels of evaluation where you want to evaluate learning and you can bring in the educational technology folks and they'll be looking at the boom taxonomy framework and all these things that look complicated for me. And then you can try to evaluate at a different level whether students have learned anything or whether the things that they have learned in the virtual environment can be translated into the real world. It's 117. I've started at 1230. So I think I should be stopping here and going to try to answer your questions if there's any. Okay, I'm going to scroll through the chat here and see some of your questions. This is, we're getting ready to close here, so if anybody has any last questions, please ask them now. Thanks, Professor Chatterbox. Well, none of this work was grand-funded, unfortunately. I have moved from an university position and I'm now 100% growing my personal company and a lot of this work is coming from, you know, defending from private clients. Ramesh, do you have any last comments? Well, what I think... Well, my last comment was that last year I was a bit worried about, you know, shifting to second life, but now I've shifted to Opensim, but now I feel fairly comfortable with the Opensim environment and I think I'm here to stay. And I probably will have a major product release soon. So, you know, I hope to be back with some more new stuff in the near future. Thank you. Thank you, Ramesh, for a terrific presentation. As a reminder to our audience, you can see what's coming up on the conference schedule at conference.opensimulator.org. In this room, the next session will be the fantastic voyage of converting to Opensim for biology and archaeology education at 1230. Thank you again to our speaker and the audience. Thanks, everyone. I really appreciate your patience. Bye.


This is a programme where we showcase up-and-coming developments, talk investments and show you how you can find yourself within this latest development called Delant Estate. My name is Chad and I'll be your host and today we are joined by none other than Helandi Mulman who is the marketing manager for England Falkers in Fochastroen. Helandi, thank you so much for taking some time to join us today. Hi Chad and thanks for the opportunity. We are very excited to join you on your show. It is more than a pleasure. Fochastroen, I'm sure a lot of people tuning in are going to be reminiscing to their days where they were more carefree running down the Fochastroen strip enjoying themselves. Yes definitely and the great news is it's actually still that great living here. So they should definitely come and visit or invest in property this side. I think so. I think all these development shows that I'm doing are making me very jealous with where I'm situated. I always thought Santon, I've made it, I'm done, I love where I'm living and I'm talking about people who are located on the coast. I'm talking to people who are living in Fochastroen which is a such a nice place to be every time I've visited. I've always loved it and it's super interesting to talk to you about developments there because I was always under the impression it was a lot of beautifully established homes that was done and that was kind of in Fochastroen and evidently I was very wrong and the real estate industry in Fochastroen is booming. So can we start with give us a brief introduction about yourself, about your team, England Focus household name. So I'm sure a lot of people are very familiar with you but let's run through that quickly and just give us a brief on how people can expect dealing with you and what kind of services you guys offer. Yes, definitely. So hi, I'm Yolande Moeman. I'm the marketing manager at England Focus in Fochastroen. I've been here now with the company for seven years and England Focus, Fochastroen, we celebrated our 15th birthday this year in Foch. So we've been in the market for a long time now and we continuously do market research. We know the market and we are lucky in Fochastroen to have a very sound property market. So I think Fochastroen is a very diverse economy, you know the university, we've got good hospitals with schools and then of course the lifestyle. I think a lot of people only move to Foch for the lifestyle that you can have. It's close to the city, it's easy for commuters. There's a lot of people commuting from Haughton to Fochastroen. And then you have this, you know where you can just go mountain biking and trail running or whatever over weekends. You don't have to drive 40 minutes or wherever to get to a place where you can start your weekend adventures. So I think they are very lucky with the environment that they have. And then in Fochastroen we have a project division specializing in projects. So over the past 15 years we've done more than 50 projects successfully or developments successfully ranging obviously from student to residential to commercial to estates. And with over I think over 1,300 project units sold throughout division. So we really, when you're dealing with us regarding developments we really want to offer developers a one stop. So from A to Z. So you can literally walk into our office and announce that you want to start developing.  So we can start to assist you from the land, the development land and then also the entire process. The market research regarding what should be built on the land that you acquired. Should it be commercial? Should it be residential? Should it be to range? Should you sell it? And then also the products development on the site. So we sit with the developer. We sit with the developers architect and our team. We have a team of over 50 and our agents. I mean they they deal with clients day to day. So they know we need more coverage here. This little corner will be a problem, that door, whatever. And then we fine tune the plans up to the point where we really want to minimize the risk for the developer as much as possible. And then when we are happy and the developers happy that we have a product that we know will sell in the market, like I said, minimizing the risk. Especially in a competitive market. Then we launch and we go to market and the out market and I'll sell the development for the developers. So it really is a one-stop and we take all the admin and stuff out of the developers hands regarding that. I think it's always great hearing about the experience different different people in the industry have with developments. Because everybody's heard the horror stories about developers. So knowing they're entering into this development with Engel and Falkers. You guys have got the experience. You've done it all. You've seen it all and you've learned from those different projects you've done. So you know you're moving into something that's built specifically for its purpose. And that is to be a comfortable home that's going to last you forever. So it's really nice knowing that. And I think every single person tuning in always listens out for the previous history of the previous experience on developers. So I'm super glad you touched on that. Yeah. Now I think we also we we work with a lot of developers. So we also build relationships within and we know we can trust them and that they offer great great work and great projects. So I think the trust is from both from all three sides applying from us and from the developer side. Well this development the land estate could you give us an introduction to that? Yes and the land is a very interesting one. We started with the land estate about 11 years ago. Coral Fenton our MD started the research on the land estate. So it's a 30 hectare estate. And at that time it wasn't even in the hands of the current developers. The developer is the Alstrup. So they acquired in the meantime and then Coral worked with them. So you soon realise that 30 hectares is a large estate for Coral Fenton and you can't just put the same product down in the entire 30 hectare estate. You have to broaden the market. So what an immediate need was at that time and still is retirement accommodation firstly. You saw that while in Coral Fenton all the retirement facilities are full the waiting lists are long and even in all the surrounding towns the retirement accommodation was full with long waiting lists. And also the accommodation available offered a room or a house but not really a lifestyle.  So we wanted to offer to address the need for accommodation but also to offer a lifestyle for that phase of your life. So that's where it started and then now we sit with the 30 hectare estate. Five hectares of the per hectares are for 55 plus. So it's a 55 plus village, a retirement village. And then the other 25 hectares are for all ages.  I'm still wanting to retire there but there's the option of the 55 plus village. So now we have a multi-generational estate for all ages. I think that makes it really exciting and there's a lot of amenities to offer on the estate as well, the care services, the security. So that was the big need, an estate and then secondly, security. So as you know, security is getting a big issue all the time. And since, as I mentioned, we have a lot of clients moving to Porch of Strum from Carleton. So security is an even bigger issue for them and then maybe for born and bred Porch of Strum is. So we really needed to get excellent security if you put down an estate. And we went with the developer and we visited security sites in Halting, Pretoria and Dervik and we talked to their head of security and your own sites and we asked them what did they learn over the past few years at their estate? What worked? What did they implement? What did they see? Where were they? Maybe a few gaps that they needed to address and we learned from them and then we came back and implemented everything here at the last site in order to provide really the best security that Porch of Strum has seen up to date. So I think that's the second thing and then the lifestyle that you can enjoy inside that security, obviously. So maybe just a brief overview then. So the land estate is the protector of multi-generational estate. Five vectors is then a 55 plus belief with five different complexes. There's a restaurant, the care center, and then in the rest of the estate that's for all ages. Of course there is then the race one stands where you can build your own full title home and there are also development stands as well, race two and race three stands. So ideally then that's for developers and we have a few complexes that are currently busy with integrated landstates as well. So essentially it seems like you catered for every single thing somebody could possibly want within the land estate. You've got all the different I'd say complexes or smaller developments within the land estate as well as then the retirement development. So I mean if you're looking to have your parents retire anywhere and you're living in Porch or you want to move to Porch, you can have them retire close to you and also within the same security in that, which I'm sure must be incredible. It's such a nice offering to know that your family is going to be super close by considering how tight the South African families are. And they are still benefiting off the security and all the other things that you've put within that estate. Yes definitely and I think we're really aimed as you said to include a wide range of people in the estate.   If you want a retirement option then there's something for you. So there really is something for one. And that also once again minimizes the risk for the developer that they, so we target more markets than just one single market. So if we start looking at prices, if we start with the retirement home, what are the prices, if we just talk about starting from price? So for the retirement section for the 25 plus village as I said there are five complexes. Now the first one, the upsell, they are currently sold out but they are being rented. So mostly we're sold thanks to investors and they are being rented. And the rent there is from six to six a month. It is for one bedrooms for the kitchen need various sizes. And then also an additional 2800 grand for a care package including meals, including food treatment, blood pressure measurements, cleaning services, laundry services, etc. So it's a relative basic care package. And that's the only development inside that I understand where any sort of care package is actually included. So those units we call assisted living units.  Then we have the hook. Now the hook is also 25 plus village and their homes, they only have I think about six or seven left and they are from 1.2 to 5 million at the moment. Then we have eight span. I think there's only five left as well of the 27 eight span homes. And they are from 2.175 million and all of the of the retirement homes and all the development state actually is pet friendly. We know are important pet friendly environment is so they all have small private gardens. And then Val Ferdint is the other complex in the 55 plus. We are launching that now actually we launched that a week ago. And that's larger homes, two and three bedroom homes in Val Ferdint. We also have fair homes with wine cellars. So I think Val Ferdint homes, they are from 2.385 million. And then Val Ferdint the last one in the 55 plus complex of the 45 minutes there. We actually only have five left and two bedrooms left. And they are from 1.3 million. I think you put a lot of people in a bit of a pickle. Yeah, if their parents are watching this with them, they're going to say, you know, you know, son, I wouldn't mind a wine cellar in my home right now. Yes, that's not real. I mean, a wine cellar in a retirement home that speaks to a lot of people. And I wanted to say another thing and that's it looks like your retirement section is selling out really, really fast. So people who do want to purchase within they need to purchase now. Yes, definitely. And I think we've seen as well that it's not just the small ones. You need a variety in the 55 plus village. So there's a lot of people.  So we really have large options available as well. We have smaller options, kind of a log up and go. And that's the nice thing. I think of the smaller options as well, the estate itself offers such a nice environment, such a nice outside environment, a community, friends, the restaurant. So even if you do pick the one bedroom options, you have very much a larger space actually to enjoy your lifestyle in than just that on the divorce. Well, I think this is the perfect segue into looking at what the Orlando State has to offer. So we'll take a short break. And when we come back, I'm very excited to talk to you what you have on offer outside of the 55 plus range. Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. And welcome back to the developer show. My name is Chad and I'll be your host. And if you're just tuning in with us, you've missed out on a lot. So you're going to have to rewind. But I'm joined today by Helandi Mulman, who is a marketing manager for England Focus Potters Room. And she is presenting to us their latest offering. And it is a beautiful offering located in Potters Room called Delant Estate. Now, Helandi, we were chatting about the 55 plus retirement village. Can we talk a bit about what's on offer outside of that? Could you give us a run through with what you have? Yes, definitely. So I'll give us a recap. So it's the 38 estate with only five vectors for 55 plus. And then the 25 vectors for all ages. And we really have quite a lot of nice offerings in there. So in phase one, that's all the residential one, there's one school title stands are all sold out. And then obviously there's a lot of people already living on Delant Estate. So you can either buy a computer house there or you can buy a stand. There are only 12 stands left in phase two after Delant Estate, after 40 stands in phase two. So if you are looking for a stand, there really aren't a lot of them left. So you have to jump quickly. And then they have the development stands as well. So we are currently busy with two developments for all ages in Delant Estate, the Buert and then Moelant, which will be launching soon. Now the Buert is a very nice, very upmarket project, 22 houses and studios. And the three bedroom homes are all sold out.  They go from 1.55 million. And we are really excited about them as that is the first type of studio that Forge actually has ever seen. So it reminds me more about something that you'll find in Joberg in Tansan. And even like in New York, a very nice, light-filled spacious studio. So we are excited about that. I think that's something that the Pochmark are really enjoying. And then we have six development stands left in phase two. Now the internal services phase two are being completed at the moment.  So really the timeline is ideal there. And the stands we have for developers are from about 6,600 squares. That will rest two stands up to over 20,000 squares. So you can do a small development or a larger development in phase two after lunch. And as I said, there are only the two developments that we are busy with for all ages. So there really is space for getting those sites and putting up a nice development there in the greater United States as well. And the amenities, we've touched on it quite well very briefly in that you've got the restaurants available there, you've also got the nursery. Could you talk to me more about what is available for residents? Maybe not only from say a purchasing point of view or an eating point of view, but are there clubhouses available and the green belts that you have available? Can you talk about that? Yes. So, okay, as I said, there's the Diskier restaurant. And what's nice is that there's obviously the restaurant part, but then for residents of the 55 plus village or for the inside the land actually, you can also order meals. So very convenient. I mean, you can order your meals for your family and pick it up when you get back from work. So it's super convenient and it adds to the entire land lifestyle. Then also the care center underlying the state is situated in the 55 plus village. Now, the care center is operated by the Port of Ström Service Center for the Aid. They are very well known and very well trusted, I think, which is more important even. And they offer the care services at the 55 plus village. Now, what is very interesting about that is that the care center is only an 8 bed care center. And I think a lot of people hear that and they are like, oh, hey, that's not enough. But the fact is they believe that the care services they offer are best offered inside the comfort of your own home. So anything that they can offer you inside the care center, they can offer you inside your home in the 55 plus village or for that matter in the greater land to state. And nurses and care workers that can really offer you everything as I said in the comfort of your own home. So they run that and they run great programs, socializing programs during the entire week they offer traveling or trading services with a little combinator. So everything that you might need, if you do want to retire, they will offer trips, holidays. They go on their most amazing trips more than once a year. So you really buy into an entire new community and friends, etc. But there's a library, there's a hair salon. So a little boardroom. And then the restaurant also has conference facilities. So I think it really is a one stop.  So the nursery school opened a year ago. And as I understand it, they are fully booked for next year as well. So really, there definitely was a big demand for that. I think it's so convenient. I mean, when you go out to work, you drop the little ones at the nursery school and you pick them up and they're at the same state where you are. So once again, it adds to the convenience of the lifestyle. And then the land state also has a lot of green areas on offer. So as I said, we did a lot of research regarding the security so that you can enjoy the lifestyle on offer inside the security. So there's the, there's green areas, walkways. There's a boulevard, a tree land boulevard when you enter. And with paved walkways. And then there's also a park with items for the kids to play on. There's little benches where you can sit and relax, watch the sun fade or watch the kids play. When you go to the land state at four in the afternoon, there's this buzz of people. Now, somebody's walking their dog, somebody's cycling, somebody's juggling. So there really is a lot of activity and you can see that the people living there are really enjoying the lifestyle that there is an offer. There are also communal fruit, a fruit, communal fruit orchard. So that's very nice. And I mean, especially imagine you can go and quickly pick some lemons for your dinner or for your salad. And then there are herb gardens. So you can quickly go and pick a few leaves or something for your salad as well. And then just the green areas where you can enjoy being outside.  But here you can actually do that. So if your kids want to go for a cycle in the afternoon, you don't want to see anything into the streets. But now you can. They're going to cycle inside their state, inside the security of the state. They don't have to worry about cost. They'll pay for walkways and cycle routes. So you can really have the peace of mind and the lifestyle. You know, it's always great to see just how much effort some developers put into their states. And you can see with what you've talked about, as we've spoken about, sorry, my English has run away from me, what you've spoken about. Just the thought process you put in, because it's not often you see so much available. And purchasing a house is something I say all the time. Purchasing a house, that's a 20 year investment. That's a 20 year relationship that you've made.   I mean, I can only imagine taking a walk through your herb gardens or your fruit orchards on a summer afternoon with a fresh air, because you're away from the city, you can watch the stream as well. So that's super fresh air, that beautiful breeze. It is so relaxing knowing that your kids can go and have a cycle without them. You're wondering where they are, or do they need to be back off the dock? And that leads me to the next question. That is security. We've touched on it a bit. We haven't really went in depth. And that is what security is an offer. Yes, I just want to add on what you said, the all screwed developers really thought about this a lot. And we did a lot of market research with them. And they always deliver. So when they said they're going to do something, they do it and they do it very well. So I think that really is part of the success of this development is the developer actually, the all screwed with a fantastic job and they are still doing a fantastic job. So regarding the security, we have 2.7 meter security walls. As I said, we really did a lot of research, maybe just to recap. So we visited the security estates in Halting and we learned from them firsthand. I don't know what to say from their mistakes, but almost we learned from them firsthand. And then we implemented it. So now we have the 2.7 meter high boundary wall. The wall as a cavity for steel, etc. On top of the wall, they also additional electrical painting. We have a really set of the art entrance regarding security and access control. Because I think that's where a lot of the security mishaps happen. The access control, but we really have excellent access control at the non-state, especially obviously since they are also still construction in progress. So that did a lot of work there. And then the camera systems are monitored 24 hours, 24 hour access control. And then also inside the perimeter of the non-state, there is a three meter zone. So it's 2.6 kilometer route inside the perimeter wall. That is there for security reasons. Obviously, you can enjoy the 2.6 kilometers on your afternoon exercise grounds as well. But the 2.6 kilometer perimeter route is actually monitored and frequently watched and the cameras are there as well. So that's really all the access points to the states are being monitored all the time. Well, Eleni, the next question then is, you've sold me, I want to purchase within the land estate. What is the process? So I'd pick up the phone, I'd call England Focused Purchase Trove. I'd probably be redirected to one of your agents there. What happens? What would the agent tell me? What do I possibly need to have in preparation for speaking to one of your agents? And how does it move on for there? Are there show units that I can possibly take a look at? Could you run me through what purchasing within the land estate feels like? Yes, definitely. So actually, very fortunately, we have a very large open day coming up the 6th of November. So Friday 6th November from 9 in the morning until 6 an open day of the inside land estate. We have a really large offering show houses for each of the developments on offer. Obviously, as well as the stands and everything, the restaurant will be open. And we have OFM radio on site that day as well. The nursery school will be there. So you can really, it's like an open day for everything. You can visit the nursery school, visit the 50 plus village, check out the stands. So our agents will be there the entire day to show people around. And now people always want to experience first and so they want to walk through the units. They want to see all the available units. They want to see how the gardens look. So of course, if you are an investor and you are only looking to invest, you can just contact us directly and focus. And we obviously will then help you with all the information that you need or financials, et cetera, for making the correct investment choice. But if you are the end user, then you want to do everything that is on offer. So we have shown units of every complex inside the land estate. And then obviously we would love to take you through. And even the open day is a great event and we are very excited about that. But we are available agents are available 24 seven. So whenever it suits you, you can just contact England Focus. We are very proud to exclusively market the old strips developments. And we will anytime take you through the development, it's always nice to go through everything and then stop at the restaurant for a coffee or a lunch and talk about everything that you've viewed. So I think I would definitely suggest to make an outing of it and visit the entire estate. And we hope that we would see a lot of the views actually on the sixth of November. Well, that brings me then to our closing question. That is, you've got a relation with private property and how is that relationship helped you with marketing these different developments? Well, I think this actually is another excellent example. So we appreciate the platform, the private property offers service, the response. It's nice to know who to contact if you have a question and the private property we have that. And also to know you will get an answer and you will get it quickly. As well as all the marketing exposure on your websites as well. And I think this is just an example of going the extra mile because this is an offering, the development show that is very unique that we haven't seen before. And I think you saw the gap in the market and you offered it to your clients, something that we obviously very appreciate since it's an additional above and beyond exposure more than what the agreement actually was. So I think really definitely great service.  Delanda State, what an incredible offering. So I think guys, 6th of November, pack some snacks, grab the family, take a trip down to the car, just take a look at the offering there. Go away with it, Helandi, if you see her. But Helandi, thank you so much for taking some time out of your day to have this conversation with us. Thanks, Jeff. The pleasure is ours and we really appreciate it. It was great talking to you about Delanda State. I enjoyed it as well for everybody tuning in. Thank you so much for taking some time out and also spending this half an hour with us. We will see you again for another episode of The Developer Show next week. Thank you all and goodbye.


I am Sav. Sergeant Michael Soto, I'm with the 4-3-9-9 and I am instructor for the cadet command. I'm the primary instructor for the HIPP Apparel Seat, ensuring their safety while building their leadership skills and confidence. And we go through the essential steps like creating the square knot, safety knot, and ensuring it's securely fastened. The HIPP Apparel Seat is for them to repel down the slant wall and the open side and tall wall. What I love about working at Repel Tower is seeing how they start to finish. Coming may be nervous, not so confident, but as you go through the steps they're building confidence. They may be intimidated or afraid, but they have the willingness to strive through, making them a better leader for the future.


A whole new theory has arisen to explain the mystery as to why so many plant molecules interact with and modulate key regulators of our physiology in ways that are beneficial to our health. A theory called Xenohormesis. I touched on Hormesis in my liquid smoke video. Basically, it's the biological principle of no pain, no gain. Mild stresses like exercise can trigger a protective response that leads to strength and defenses in the short term. But instead of exposing ourselves to the stressor to trigger our body's defenses and shore up protection against future stressors, why not just let plants take the hit? Let the plants get stressed, because incredibly the stress response molecules in plants may activate the same protective responses in humans. Xenohormesis explains why environmentally stressed plants produce bioactive compounds that can confer stress resistance and survival benefits to animals that consume them. We can then piggyback off their sophisticated stress response. Indeed, the majority of known health beneficial effects of edible plants are attributable to the pharmacologically active substances of plants' stress response. Hormesis may be why dietary restriction can lead to lifespan extension. The mild stress placed upon the body by not eating enough may activate a wide variety of protective pathways within the body, a whole cascade ramping up anti-inflammatory and antioxidant defenses. Our body is preparing itself for the coming famine, and it thinks it's about to occur. So is there a way to exploit the benefits of dietary restriction to prevent chronic disease? Obviously, chronically restricting food intake is not a realistic health strategy for the majority of people. It's hard for most people to even cut food intake 10 or 20%, given the powerful evolutionary drive to eat. As a more feasible alternative, we may be able to activate dietary restriction and do stress response pathways by other means, in other words, zeno-hormesis. If you starve plants, they do the same thing, activate preservation pathways. So let's let the plant face the adversity to create the molecules that trigger cell stress resistance, ultimatabilism, and disease resistance, then just come along and appropriate them for the same uses in our own bodies. The reason phytonutrients like resveratol and grapes, or curcumin in the spice turmeric, or ECGC in green tea, are called dietary restriction mimetics, is that they mimic the physiological effects of dietary restriction. And this may be no coincidence, because that's why the plants produce these compounds in the first place, to save their own green butts from scarcity. So instead of having to walk around starving all the time, thanks to zeno-hormesis, we may be able to let plants bear the brunt and enable us to harness other species hardships as a means to promote our own health.