Virtual Worlds 2008 – Reuben’s Pitch

Today started with a keynote from Reuben Steiger from Millions of Us. There was an important message in it that I felt worth iterating in a single post rather than a mass roundup. That is one of not fixating on the difficulties, not to obsess about the tools in virtual worlds, but to think about people. Making work more interesting and dare I say fun for people is what we can do with virtual worlds. All of us in this industry know that this is work, but it is enjoyable work. Surely we can appeal to the masses by actually making their day to day drudgery better.
It may sound mad, dreamer talk but I do think that as virtual worlds and metaverses are primarily about people (usually the first slide of any pitch I do). Helping people feel better about what they do is a worthwhile investment. I think we have been doing that inside IBM, having 5,000 people gathered and focused on virtual worlds has been beneficial to the entire company and people want to be involved.

4 thoughts on “Virtual Worlds 2008 – Reuben’s Pitch

  1. And it was great when Reuben talked about the huge risk MTV was taking when they launched a virtual world. People who believe in virtual worlds and work in the field for no money, hoping to advance something they believe in are taking a risk. Rich corporations pushing well established brands into a new space is not a risk. VWC was about patting eachother on the back. There is so little to show of value in the industry, I think we’d be better served by honestly reflecting on our efforts and mistakes and figuring out together how to improve.

Comments are closed.