In 2008, the Stanford Humanities Laboratory (SHL) held the first Metaverse U conference, which explored the cultural, technological, legal, and social aspects of virtual worlds. Attracting more than 300 academics, artists, journalists, and industry leaders, the conference fostered an in-depth discussion mapping the various uses of collaborative 3-D spaces, and looked to the future with a vision of an expanded online technological ecosystem.  To continue the dialogue beyond the event we produced and distributed videos of the full program online under creative commons licenses. These videos proved popular on the web and in them we thanked our sponsors and included their logos.

We are now pleased to announce this year's conference: Metaverse U – Exploring the Open Space, which will focus on how the potential for collaboration, co-operation, and participation within the virtual world can be realized. Those following the topic will know that we are on the tail end of another hype cycle, largely engendered by Second Life and rapidly-advancing cellular technologies, but concurrently we have begun to see strong open source alternatives that point to exciting applications. The core challenge is that this effort appears fragmented, so related efforts are often unable to leverage each other.

The main purpose of this conference is to define a strategy for advancing open source platforms and explore their potential in a broad variety of contexts, including scientific research, education, private enterprise, and cultural programming. Our mission statement is as follows:

The Metaverse U conference will explore the cutting edge applications of virtual worlds and the open platforms that drive them.

Such ambitious goals require a broad vision and col-ordinated efforts. Accordingly, we have invited a broad array of researchers, engineers, artists, grassroots leaders, scholars, Fortune 500 employees, and those from the non-profit space to participate and share our objectives:

1.  to shape the discussion about the future of virtual worlds
2.  to discover breakthrough applications of 3-D environments
3.  to engage the open-source community for sustainable and supportable solutions

Your Support

The first conference initiated a conversation about virtual worlds and assembled a wide array of interests. With a limit of 150 participants, this year's conference will have a tighter focus on "Exploring the Open Space": to advance the insights developed over the past years, crystallize understandings, and identify the key challenges as well as opportunities for collaboration ahead.

We intend to reduce the cost of attendance to USD 50 (10% percent of last year's USD 500) to make sure that all can afford to take part and also we also plan to stream the event for free over the Internet. Your sponsorship will help us lower the barrier of entry, thus helping to insure that the best minds working in this field will share their vision. It will also guarantee you and your organization participation in this event while in return providing an opportunity to prominently display your brand to the top thinkers, engineers, content providers, and innovators in the virtual worlds scene.

If you are interested in sponsoring the event and would like to learn more about how to do so, please contact Henrik Bennetsen, Conference Chair for Metaverse U, at bennetsen@gmail.com