Meet the team: James Atlloud

The Hypergrid International Expo has a Technical Director with a flair for filming and a deep rooted love of scifi.  James Atlloud shares here a little bit of his story.

James Atlloud: I had a very pastoral upbringing in the country where I read a lot of science fiction books which encouraged me to imagine wondrous things.  In work I had natural inclinations to electricity and to computer tech.  I studied educational technology and concluded my studies with Second Life as my Master’s thesis subject.   Since then I’ve applied myself as time allows to explore and support virtual worlds and in particular support Open Simulator.

In Opensim James is well known for his weekly appearances on Youtube shows MBTV and Inworld Review, and he is a fixture among the Safari crowd that grid-hops for fun on Wednesdays. Thanks to all this hypergridding experience, he knows a thing or two about opensim's more interesting foibles. 

The HIE event in October will be held on Craft grid - how do you feel about that?

James Atlloud: I think Craft is perfect for HIE for several reasons.  From a technical view Craft grid servers are really good.  The Hypergrid Safari is known for taxing servers to the ultimate but Craft grid servers have support the safari quite well.  Also, Craft grid has some of the most amazing builds I have experienced in OpenSim so the community of creative people is one of the best.

Is it challenging to figure out the technical aspects of this event?

James Atlloud: I do think this is a difficult event to plan.  I’ve participated in the Open Simulator, Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference and most recently, the Second Life 20th Birthday.  There are so many moving pieces in planning an event like this and it really depends on the great intentions of the organizing team.  I will be working on streaming the presentations and with every event I’ve run issues with graphic performance and lag.  For my small part in this event, those will always be concerning to me!

James in the Auditorium Park, on HIE 2, Craft grid.

 After all this hard work, what do you hope people get out of the event?

James Atlloud: I hope that the presenters will come away with a sense of validation that their work is understood and appreciated.  Similarly I hope that participants will also have their interests and curiosity validated by knowing others appreciate similar things.

The Hypergrid International Expo has a lot of moving parts. Is there an aspect of the event that you feel is particularly important?

James Atlloud: At my day job in population health we are focusing on diversity, inclusion and equity.  I am a firm believer in the benefits of diversity and what I really enjoy about our international Open Simulator community is just that - it’s so diverse and I find that incredibly energizing.