Kreatya Shannon appeared as part of a panel previewing the Summer of Communities Faire being held by the Virtual Worlds Education Consortium beginning May 30th, 2026. This celebration of the 5th anniversary of the Virtual Worlds Education Consortium also is intended to illustrate the power of community cooperation. Kreatya Shannon spoke about Community Virtual Library partnering with Nonprofit Commons to update their Nonprofit Resource Center.
Thank you very much for Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education 2026 for allowing me to present on “From Spokespeople to AI Chatbots” following twenty years of literature from my Communications Masters Thesis and its theoretical basis in part using Bandura’s social theories., to how Bandura’s theories have applied in other virtual worlds research.
The recording of the live stream is available now.
I have started a new venture to work on having a regular feature of my working in OpenSimulator grids as an Emerging Educator
Virtual Worlds Educast features reflections, walkthroughs, and I am hoping over time maybe a few guests as well. You can find out more at the website.
Here is a sample of one of the videos I have been working on for YouTube.
On January 9th, 2026, I was given the opportunity to present at Nonprofit Commons on the topic of knowledge management for nonprofits.
The goal was to show people how they could begin adopting knowledge management at any scale or level. The structure was an overview followed by a guided discussion.
It was great to hear a variety of insights from people as part of this lively event.
This year, I was asked to showcase information about the Elizabeth Barrett Browning House (called the Browning House for short) as part of the Dickens Project 2025 in Second Life. I was given my own house in the Christmas Present area of the Project, where I displayed my first presentation about creating the Browning House while still a Masters Student at San Jose State University. This particular display had been part of a display with our VCARA group from San Jose State University in the past.
To complement the original presentation, I created two more to debut as part of Dickens Project 2025. One talked about later changes I made to Browning House since the initial presentation. The other tied together the themes of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Charles Dickens as contemporaries and how much they interacted.
It was an amazing experience to have on my own after graduating from school.
A big thank you to OpenSim Community Conference 2025 for an incredible event. Not only did I get to speak as part of several panels and presentations, it was my first time moderating. I met so many incredible new people, and got to better know some I met in other venues.
As a presenter and moderator, when an exhibit block opened up, OSCC was kind enough to let me put some of my materials there. One project I worked on throughout 2025 was to see if the wellness information area I worked on during my school time at San Jose State University in FrameVR, Second Life, and Spatial could translate to an OpenSimulator world such as Kitely. Using the standard island from Kitely as my base, I created an area with interactivity similar to the notecard givers I used in Second Life, with the open island feel of the FrameVR template I selected. I was pretty happy with the results.
The OSCC team was also kind enough to let me set up two post-conference events on short notice.
The first of these was a gathering on December 8th at 8 am grid time over at the Kitely build. Here, several people came to a Wellness Meet-Up. We discussed considerations for building spaces for wellness information and practice in Open Simulator, including ways to approach topics in a way that is accessible yet considerate to others.
The second event on December 15th at 10am grid time was designed as more of a drop in event. Entitled “Virtual Environments for Mindfulness,” this event was billed for those looking to build a wellness mindfulness routine in your virtual world of choice for this holiday season, or for a new year’s resolution. They were invited to join Kreatya Shannon (Shannon Broden) for some basic tips and tricks to consider to build your own virtual wellness mindful routine. Mostly, the goal was to stimulate discussion regarding personal application, and have others contribute their thoughts.
Again, many thanks to the OSCC staff for providing the opportunities.
One thing I became very passionate about during my student journey at San Jose State University was the idea of wellness in a virtual world setting. After all, sitting at a desk for long periods of time in a virtual world is just as much a thing for working in virtual worlds as the corporate office worker.
Personally, I also had been studying the concepts of chair yoga and using yoga techniques for office workers, originally to help myself. This led into looking into what was available in terms of research on mindfulness and virtual worlds.
The result was my presentation August 23, 2025, for VWMOOC2025 on “Educating About Mindfulness in Virtual Worlds Spaces”.
