An NPC can be created in OpenSim based on the current appearance of a specific avatar, including any attachments it has.  This allows a range of reactive capabiities and web service connections to be established through scripts running in attachments on the NPC itself. OpenSim NPCs are being epxlored as potential tutors in the "I-Zone" - a space to support mixed-initiative scenario-based training. See http://atate.org/mscel/i-zone/ for more resources.

The interview was conducted in Second Life by:

• Robin Teigland (www.knowledgenetworking.org) is an Associate Professor at the Center for Strategy and Competitiveness at the Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden. Her research interests focus on the relationship between knowledge flows in networks and performance at the individual, organizational, and national levels.
• Paul M. Di Gangi (http://paulmdigangi.com/) is an Assistant Professor at the Loyola University Maryland, USA. His research focuses on the intersection of social and digital networks and organizations for value creation purposes.
• Zeynep Yetis is a PhD student at the Center for Strategy and Competitiveness at the Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden. Her research interests focus on the dynamics of open-source communities and user-driven innovation.

Image without Second Life Viewer GUI.

On my research project related to supporting the OpenVCE communities at http://openvce.net/ I was engaged in setting up a new group portal on the APAN (All Partners Access Network) hosted by the US Government for non-classified work between government agencies, NGOs, organisation and individuals across the world. This replaces the previous HarmonieWeb portal. the APAN network uses the Telligent Collaboration framework to provide the usual blogs, discussion forums, wikis, group chat, etc. And then provides an Adobe Connect service attached to that for the supported communities. We provide "web observer" meeting access to virtual words meeting spaces via Adobe Connect services through these portals.  I was involved in a number of training programmes and setup exercises as I took on the group owner role on APAN.

I did some further experimentation with the Unity3D platform, and used a Collada mesh translation of the OpenVCE OpenSim region buildings created via a converter service from Tipodean technologies in the USA.  We are further experimenting also with the OpenSim-based MOSES grid hosted by the US Government also for work with non-government agencies internationally.

We believe that a combination of the APAN OpenVCE Group for a community web portal and a simplified meeting space in either the OpenSim-based MOSES grid or on a Unity3D setup might offer a long term stable basis for continuing work in the OpenVCE.net community.  Currently a Drupal server at Edinburgh is used for the community web portal, and the virtual words service is hosted on the VCE region in Second Life.

Here is Supercar in full flight in OpenSim... My other car is a Toyota :-)