Partying away from Wimbledon

As play wound down tonight and after hundreds more conversations with hundreds more visitors on IBM 7 wimbledon build Algernon Spackler and I popped over to see the Second Fest.
Rivers Run Red with the Guardian and Intel are running a festival. Great music, and a great build.
I turned up and started dancing, but put my Wimbledon brolly up in case it it became a bit glasto like.
Fest
Lyr Lobo was there with an awesome scripted dance partner
lyr lobo
We invited some of our friend list over too so asanyfule wollongong popped in.
It was Vimto Spackler (no relation to Algernon) who pointed us in the right direction and it was most relaxing and enjoyable, given we were still in the bunker at Wimbledon.
asanyfuleno
RenZephyr Zircon popped by too but was having some crashes so twittered he was off to watch big brother.
Fizik Baskerville and co has even laid on tents to have a rest
tent
A nice touch
This looked like the turnstiles they will use as this ramps up as if it anything like the radio 1 gig last year it will get very full.
turns
I almost turned into Mary Poppins with all the dancing
poppins
The whole vista is well worth looking at too if it does not get too locked out. Some very nice spread out zones over a whole lot of sims.
I hope I get some time to go back and party

More real world virtual world and back again at Wimbledon

Today Wimbledon and our customers visiting us in Second Life and Real Life had the benefit of both of eightbar/IBM’s metaverse evangelists onsite. Today we continued work along with the other guys on creating the extra behind the scenes experience now we have the event up and running.
After the mixed mode press conference it was a natural thing to try and bring things into SL and out again using some extra pieces of ambient instrumentation.
So using veodia and a webcam to pipe back into Second Life our real life presence.

rl sl

Whilst giving a customer tour Adam Reuters popped by. So he got to see the people on the tech tour, and also became part of the tour himself as he was on my big screen. The impact of an avatar waving due to the mixed mode of video ambient presence and a two way interaction across the worlds had a massive wow factor.

wow

Come On Tim!

Whilst Ian and Roo are busy on site, keeping the virtual Wimbledon wheels turning and evangelising as they do best, I’ve found myself spending more and more time hanging around the build on “IBM 7”.

So much so, I felt I needed to show some good old-fashioned biased support for the Brits. My suggestion of making the virtual Henman twice the size of the other players didn’t get very far. These views are my own and not necessarily those of IBM. 🙂

Come on Tim

Update: seems my support wasn’t quite enough.

Explaining Web 2.0 state of mind – great slides

I saw this posted on our internal blogs. As many of you may know every IBMer has access to blogcentral powered by lotus connections and much of what is in these slides is what many of us try and do already.
The patterns of working and simple reasons expressed here are really powerful. It was these sort of approaches that got us to where we are in Virtual Worlds, and why eigthbar exists at all.

The principle of starting small and just letting things grow from passionate user contributions is a hard one for many people to grasp. It is not the only way, but it seems to be a good way.

Wimbledon is Live – Learning all the time, and yes we do need Sir Cliff

Well despite lots of rain we have seen some play at Wimbledon and had our first day of visitors. Andy and I have been busy talking to people and taking feedback.
Several interesting points have come up.
We don’t have scripts running on the public IBM islands to reduce griefing. This has a knock on effect for people wanting to bloghud and twitter from in world. This is a pity, but its better to be safe.
Secondly, we have some things we would like to automate but have never had to with the regular scoring feeds at Wimbledon. Things like player change overs and rest breaks take time. The regular score feed has been about getting the point data out to the web. Point data is that, not data about the rest of the things happening around it. So whilst we might imply from the tennis data what is happening we don’t have the direct instrumentation to saying player A has stopped to change his raquet. Interesting set of things that need to now be gathered.
gather
Picture from snapzilla
Also whilst we have created seats, many people choose to stand where the other people are standing. This is actually good as it is because are interacting, which is the whole reason I am in the Wimbledon build to help.
The other comment was that it was hard to find. We have not advertised as such. This is a deliberate ‘soft’ launch. Though people who read this blog will know about it, or follow me on twitter. That combined with 4,000 IBMers is more than enough to be going on with!
With the rain I have also had lots of conversations about Cliff Richard and needing an AV of him. I bet there is not one already!

Eduserv revisited

Back in May I shared the presentation I gave at the Eduserv Foundation Symposium. It was an interesting conference, bringing academics and policy makers together to discuss the opportunities of virtual worlds. Very interesting for me, as it was the first time I’d spent much time seriously getting to grips with what education in virtual worlds might mean (something I’ve been increasingly doing ever since actually).

On Wednesday the organizers ran a follow up event; a discussion in Second Life.

Eduserv had set up a chat queuing system. While on the seats we pressed page-up to request permission and speak, and page-down when we were done. This might have been useful as a tool for moderated conversation in really big groups,  but for the 35ish of us it felt like overkill, and we soon agreed to drop it and chat normally.

The chat was being simultaneously tweeted on Twitter, and the complete transcript can can also be found online here.

Two choice quotes:

Babbage Linden: It’s easier for it [SL] to be a chemistry set than a chemistry class I think

Four Bailey: I think it’s compulsive for human beings to build – why do we enjoy the beach so much – its creative and constructive and helps you represent your thoughts regardless of your subject specialism

Andy Powell (AKA Art Fossett), who organised the event, wrote up his thoughts about the moderated vs unmoderated session as well as blogging a couple of areas which come up in the discussion; ‘being where the students are‘ and ‘building as pedagogy‘.

Wimbledon 2007 – Virtual Worlds video

With qualifying for Wimbledon starting this week and the official website up and running with live scores and information ,and the Second Life presence reaching readiness on IBM 7 for monday, I decided to finally look around at what was being officially said about everything this year, before I descend into the Wimbledon bunker for 2 weeks of virtual world and Real life presence at the event.
I very soon came to our official advert/micro site this has some very nice flash, very rez like, but also click to the Wimbledon on the web link to see this humble Eightbar metaverse evangelist discussing the merits of all things virtual world like.
Wimbledon has been a very special part of my working life since 1998, so this video makes me very happy. Also the fact that we are being somewhat more official than my mini proof of concept from last year, which had some interesting challenges thrown its way but managed to survive, really does make me feel like something has been achieved.
The experience of the real bond we have all formed centred around Wimbledon is very powerful, it may seem a clique to some, but it is very special to all those who end up being part of it. As John Tolva wrote over on his Ascent Stage blog. Some projects and experiences bind. Just as the rise of the virtual worlds this year and last have formed quite a buzzing community inside and outside of the company.
All this makes for great experience and analysis of what works with people, what does not work which I guess I put into practice on a day to day basis.
Maybe I should write that book, 10 years of Wimbledon and 16 months of Virtual Worlds in a corporate environment may make an interesting intersection of joy, war stories, mistakes and successes.

Web 2 is Web Do

 

I think that we are in the age of just being able to get on and do thngs. It changes the nature of many interactions people have and “power” structures. In web 2.0 if you want to do it, you just start. No great plans, just some ideas and using channels that suit

Our recent press conference, the Wimbledon Build, the presence in Second Life, this blog etc. all just examples of using whats there and just doing things. That does not mean it has to be reckless, nor does it mean it has to be unambitious. However, just start by starting and see where you end up, using whatever is available and fits