The IMMERSIVE X Metaverse Conference, November 11-13, 2025

I’m laid up with severe neck and shoulder pain, off sick from work today again, lying on the sofa and blogging via iPad, my neck propped up on a good pillow. In addition to visits to my family doctor and my physiotherapist (who also does acupuncture), I’ve started seeing a massage therapist. I had a one-hour massage session Friday morning, and felt wonderful afterward—only to have rebound neck and shoulder aches and pains which scuppered my Friday night plans and put me in a foul, cranky mood all weekend.

This is all coming at a time when I need to be well enough to attend a metaverse conference coming up this week! It’s the IMMERSIVE X Conference, organized and run from Berlin, Germany, but with events taking place in various social VR platforms and flatscreen virtual worlds. Instead of getting on a plane to go to a physical conference in meatspace, I just put on a VR headset and attend in cyberspace!

However, my physical pain today does not bode well for my metaverse excursions on Tuesday (Remembrance Day here in Canada, if not in Germany), Wednesday, and Thursday. Wish me well! I’m probably going to have to take breaks between sessions to pop painkillers, apply cold and heat packs, and do my prescribed physiotherapy exercises to get through this. But come hell or high water, I am going!!

I started preparing for the conference last week, revisiting some social VR platforms that I had not visited in many months, and making sure that I could still remember how to log in and move around in my Vive Pro 2 PCVR setup in my office (sadly neglected since I began my well-documented love affair with my Apple Vision Pro).

I must admit that I was surprised when I signed into my VRChat account on their website, to discover that I first joined VRChat 8 years ago! (You can find all my blogposts about VRChat here.)

And likewise, I had first joined ENGAGE in July of 2018, which means I have been using the metaverse platform for over seven years at this point! (You can find all my blogposts about ENGAGE here.) I am especially excited that the organizers were able to squeeze me into Andy Fidel’s keynote State of the Metaverse presentation in ENGAGE (a big thank you Thomas Zorbach and his team!).

In addition to VRChat and ENGAGE, I signed up for sessions being held on three other metaverse platforms: Spatial, Foretell Reality, and Hubs. I’ve been in Spatial and (formerly Mozilla) Hubs before, but Foretell Reality is new to me.

So I hope to be able to post my session notes to the blog, starting tomorrow. And, in the meantime, I will rest, take painkillers, do my physiotherapy exercises, and pray my body holds up. Stay tuned!

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