The third Digital Biota conference is to be held on November 6th and 7th in San Jose CA. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ---------- If you have interests in the intersection of: artificial life with virtual worlds, computer games, artificial characters, evolutionary biology, paleontology, philosophy, and microbiology then you are just the tip of an iceberg of people who will find this conference fascinating. Unlike other events where great minds come to soothe you to sleep Digital Biota conferences aim to keep you bobbing in your seat. Informal, dynamic, brimming with people you want to drag off into corners to talk to or famous faces you just want to gaze at in awe, this is the place to be if you want to see new lifeforms arise on the Internet. This years event will take place at San Jose State University sponsored by the Math and Computer Science department and with the kind assistance of Rudy Rucker. An exciting list of speakers will address current ALife issues in virtual worlds and examine the possibilities that an open source approach can provide. Friends and colleagues of attendees are welcome to attend Saturday's industry bash at Winchester Mystery House sponsored by Ur Studios; scheduled for fantasy, networking, and entertainment late into the night. The event has been put together by the familiar faces of Bruce Damer, Steve Rooke, and Sue Wilcox, founders and veterans of Digital Biota. Building on the success of previous conferences, this year DB3 offers a broad range of speakers and new stimulating topics. Appropriately for it's location in Silicon Valley DB3 will look at the technical side of ALife and the worlds it inhabits. Joining the efforts of both Biota.org and OWorld groups DB3 will look at both sides of the life and environment issue. Jan Hauser from Sun will walk attendees through the five flavors of open source, making it easier to tell the players apart. Stephen Pettifer, attending from England, will discuss the free 'ware created at the University of Manchester for developing and managing aggregations of multi-user 3D worlds. Gerald de Jong is joining us from Holland for an update on his progress with elastic geometries for ALife. His five minute presentation last year aroused enough interest to warrant a full session! Chris Cole, President of Ur Studios, will present GEL, a new open source initiative for multi-user internet 3D. Newcomer Andrew Phelps, from the Rochester Institute of Technology, will focus on how ALife can make all the difference when it comes to making multi-user worlds more compelling. Rodney Berry of ATR reminds us once again that ALife can be heard as well as seen with his presentation about evolving musical agents. His Feeping Creatures were a big hit at the '98 ALife Conference in Los Angeles, so don't miss this chance to see his latest work. Artist Jane Prophet and her associate Mark Hurry of Digital Workshop, both from England, will show the completed real-time, 3D, ALife world 'TechnoSphere' which was only a twinkle last year. Their next plan is to develop it into a full fledged online game. Representing the professional gaming world Ed Annunziata, Head of AndNow, makers of the ALife games 'Virtual Ocean' and 'Nooks and Crannies' will share the realities of making commercially viable ALife entities. Jeffrey Ventrella will talk about his new company, There.com, his development plans and show some of his new experimental creatures. With a background in programming games, his current work focuses on extending ALife into avatar environments. >From the truly stellar end of the ALife universe Tom Ray will examine our misconceptions about how we approach ALife and its worlds. A panel discussion immediately after his talk will work on developing a consensus about virtual world building codes. Tom will also review his latest work with Tierra. Another veteran of the Digital Biota process is Demetri Terzopoulos who will kick off the conference with his vision of VR and ALife. Professor Rudy Rucker, who presented at Biota last year and is this years host, will talk about the Web as a model of the human mind. And on the visionary track, as usual, Biota's founder Bruce Damer will look at parallels between real life and cyberlife. Taking the ALife discourse even further is Bruce Sterling, sci-fi author of books ranging from 'The Difference Engine' to 'Islands in the Net'. His speculative prospects on the future of ALife are always deliciously twisted yet insightful. Our last speaker slot is being contested by Saul Kato of Sven Technologies, who wants to present a paper on using artificial chemistry as the basis for ALife. His rival is Dr Richard Gordon whose book on the Hierarchical Genome is being published at long last. He's been working on it since stimulating and perplexing us with his ideas at the first Digital Biota conference and we're eagerly awaiting a copy. Sue is sure it will influence her talk on the lessons ALife programmers can learn from nature. Representatives from NASA Ames will attend DB3, proving that once again attendees are as interesting as speakers. Expect coffee and lunch breaks to be busy with demos and discussions. We have a computer lab where you can check your email, run demos, and surf around the presenters sites. Upstairs there will be a breakout room for conversation, networking, portable demos and splinter groups. Again old friends and new converts will be joining the Biotians. We hope you will come again to re-experience the complexities of working in the exciting field of ALife development. Come share your work and be part of the international discussion that is Digital Biota. Please let us know ASAP, if you plan on attending this years conference. Let Sue know, via e-mail, if you're planning on attending so that we can finalize our budget for all the little things that make a difference. It all starts on November 6th at 9 a.m. Check out the website at: oworld.hitl.washington.edu or hop across from your usual favorite site: www.biota.org We hope you will join us this year for another exciting Digital Biota Conference! Sue Wilcox, Steve Rooke, Bruce Damer Co-Chairs DB3 Full speakers list: ------------------------ Bruce Damer President Contact Consortium and CEO DigitalSpace Tom Ray Professor of Zoology at the University of Oklahoma Demetri Terzopoulos Professor of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto Rudy Rucker Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science San Jose State University Chris Cole President Ur Studios Jan Hauser Principal Architect High Performance Computing Sun Microsystems Gerald de Jong CEO Beautiful Code Andrew Phelps Assistant Professor at the Rochester I of Tech. I.T. Department Stephen Pettifer Research Associate Advanced Interfaces Group, University of Manchester. UK Sue Wilcox CEO Biota.org Jane Prophet and Gordon Selley Developers of TechnoSphere Rodney Berry visiting researcher at ATR Media Research Laboratories. Japan Bruce Sterling SF author Ed Annunziata The Boss AndNow Jeffrey Ventrella Creative Director There.com Saul Kato President Sven Technologies end
