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Abstract

Virtual worlds aren't new! Today, most young people and students will already have accounts on virtual reality sites such as Second Life. What is new are the developments of these concepts in the Open Source community and how they are being used in areas such as remote collaboration, distance learning and the ability to mix “virtual” and “real” worlds in a collaborative way without the need for any special hardware. These virtual realities are a natural extension to what network technology already does for and to us with technologies such as those provided by the Internet and the social networking sites. In those "worlds," people may have identities, personas and attitudes that are quite different than the ones in their other (physical) reality.

About the speaker

Kevin attended Canberra University gaining a BA in Computer Science in 1979. He became a Researcher at CSIRO for many years. He co-published many research and technology papers while at CSIRO. His main research areas included remote sensing, GIS, numerical taxonomy and spatial data analysis. Kevin joined Sun in 1990 and has been involved with operating systems and systems design since then. Kevin has held the position of Chief Technical Officer for Global Government and is in this role is involved in working on many large Government systems. His key role has been in the development of solutions in areas such as emergency response, massive data acquisition systems and crisis management systems. This has included work with various APAC police and emergency response agencies. He has also been part of the team that has recently implemented the Thailand National Disaster Warning Center. Currently Kevin is the Chief Technology Officer for Education and Research for Australia and New Zealand. He has been working on large HPC projects such as the Australian Square Kilometer Array project and on many University projects around massive object stores.