Looking back on what has happened the last few years, both here on eightbar and for me personally I can still see we have a long way to go to get to a point where we can sit back and say, yes virtual worlds/metaverses/3d web done!
Of course that is never actually going to happen, we are talking here about cultural change aswell as technical evolution. There will not be one product, one offering, one service, one answer. Everytime you catch yourself thinking that thats when disruptive innovation comes along and does something you never could expect.
So, what should happen next year? eprediction time.
1. I expect to be asked to share the war stories and consulting experience with people about how eightbar evolved and how we got our large corporation to sit up and take notice. Its a matter of record the journey is documented here, in books, articles, anecdotes. Its a story of traditional enterprise having to adjust to the 2.0 of all things. Virtual worlds are a subject, a rich one, but the journey has been one of a different form or organization, growing out of necessity and passion and with good intent. I have enough chapters for the book now!
2. I would like the progress to continue, all the platforms getting better and stronger, but the reason some have worked up to now is the initial free approach. I could not have got anyone to follow inot any virtual worlds really that cost money to set up and run. The very nature of public and free to sample dropped a huge barrier, as with blogs, all the major web2.0 sites. Being able to say, whats stopping you then? and the answer being either IT policy or apathy/fear is a great lever to help people.
3. Cloud will grow hugely. This really is a no brainer and relates to 2 above. People, normal people, do not want to run servers, patch things, have kit sitting around. Us techies might love it, but a service that does stuff, somewhere else. Well thats the obvious solution. We have been around this before too, but as with all these things, we now have everything aligned and utility computing/grid computing/network computing, on-demand etc is a reality. It will improve, it will get better and more user friendly. You can see the start of a VW trend and cloud with Simondemand on Amazon EC2
4. Financial doom and gloom will spark some very strong entreprenarial activity. Yes startups, not all silicon valley. Its times like this entrepreneurs take risks, dive in and get on with it. Things will either pick up, or we end up back in the stoneage, either way sitting not doing anything is not an answer. Fear, like failure is not an option. Fortune favours the brave and all that 🙂
5. Business use of virtual worlds will get so easy, so pervasive, people wont even question the point any more. Wishful thinking, but richer human communication that costs less that the current options, phone, plane, real estate in a world that is seeking to find better ways to do things. Whats the problem, get on with it already!
6&7. These intentionally left blank, there are a few very exciting things going on that I cant blog about yet, but I predict these will be rather huge and massively revolutionary*, when I can say I will retrofit into this post and say a hindsight told you so.
8. 3d printing a.k.a rapid fabrication the rise of the fabricaneur in manufacturing, just have to add that in as its so important for the evolution of products.
There that’s it. Now, as it says on my Xbox 360 profile “can we get on with it?”
Lets rock 2009!
*updated to masssively revolutionary after complaints from those who know about it that evolutionary is too soft 🙂