Metaverse Society:
Familiarizing the society with the Metaverse, educating the general public about the new opportunities, use cases and business opportunities in the Metaverse society.
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Ensure good governance, predictability, and continuity in the Metaverse development. These practices are applicable to all Metaverse In Action Programs.
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Address how privacy and trust are ensured in the Metaverse. These practices are applicable to all Metaverse In Action Programs.
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Create virtual Team Finland organizations, virtual Finnish embassy and virtual Finland of Businesses (including well known Finnish brands) in the Metaverse and arrange virtual events to introduce the general public to the Metaverse and its possibilities.
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Mapping Finnish XR hubs, R&D infrastructure and platforms that could be used by SMEs, research organizations and also ordinary citizens.
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Visualize the Metaverse and its use cases in 2D to explain metaverse to ordinary citizens, this could e.g. involve having one slider about actual use cases, newspaper articles or video content.
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Identify Finnish cities with strong commitment to metaverse development, ensuring their resources and skills/competence. “Cities as a platform” pilots could be a good way to use a public platform like this to drive metaverse enablers and their interoperability standards. It would create customers for the technology developers, beyond public funding, and references that can be used in marketing.
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Ensure the participation of different Finnish organizations and population groups in the Metaverse development process.
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Make it easier for international experts and students to work in/from Finland and stay after their studies.
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Ensure access to the Metaverse for all citizens, possibly via public libraries and other public spaces.
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Launch public awareness campaigns to educate citizens about the Metaverse and its potential benefits.
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Engage and educate the cultural and creative sector about the Metaverse and its business potential.
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Promote Finnish culture, heritage, and creativity in the Metaverse by supporting artists, musicians, and content creators. Sufficient resourcing for Immersive Game and Creative Business to support this.
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Helping Finnish people and organizations to adopt Metaverse, e.g. AR-tagged content for wayfinding and citizen guidance and shared smart city digital twins.
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Start new educational programs on Metaverse also on university level and launch sandbox development on European level.
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Use the Metaverse to educate people about socially important topics such as sustainability, bullying, loneliness, poverty and addictions.
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Start publishing an annual “Metaverse maturity index”, which measures the Metaverse capability of each country, consultancy help could be used for this.
Metaverse Society Working Group
Visio/target
The society should be activated to use the Metaverse so that its benefits will be realized and broadly distributed. This includes:
1) Public services,
2) Urban development and government (e.g. libraries, social services, citizen engagement, urban planning),
3) Content creation and artistic production and cultural institutions (e.g. museums, science centres, theatres),
4) Formal and informal education and training for all (including other MIAs)
5) Smart Cities, Living Labs and Citizen Engagement.
First steps/actions
Stakeholder negotiations with ministries (to plan a Metaverse curricula and its pilot activities) and cities (Oulu, Tampere, Espoo, Turku, Helsinki Metropolitan Area), Digivisio 2030.
First joint projects with other actions (first one agreed with Industry MIA).
Markku Turunen, Tampere University
Co-chair of Metaverse Society
Santeri Saarinen, Metropolia
Co-chair of Metaverse Society
Blair Stevenson, Oulu University of Applied Sciences
Co-chair of Metaverse Society
Risto Jurva, University of Oulu
Co-chair of Metaverse Society