Tribe 2.0

What is eightbar? As the About page for this blog states:

We’re a group of techie/creative people working in and around IBM’s Hursley Park Lab in the UK. We have regular technical community meetings, well more like a cup of tea and a chat really, about all kinds of cool stuff.

That’s all still true. That’s who we are. Over the past four years this blog has featured lots of cool things. It started with an small group of folks into emerging tech talking about life at Hursley (who remembers Roo’s post about the dome of cups, in his pre-metaverse days?!). It continued to grow to cover virtual worlds topics as we began to explore those spaces. eightbar became a bit of a tribe and expanded to include many others who were into interesting technology. Increasingly we’re seeing the technologies that we talked about in the early days of this blog hit the mainstream – take 3D printing and augmented reality as just two examples.

eightbar is more than just a group of people. It’s a mindset, a grassroots culture. If you asked me to sum it up, I’d use phrases like “the frontier spirit”, “bleeding edge”, and “Web 2.0 is Web Do” (with a very definite nod in the direction of epredator for the last one!).

We’ll be including more folks from the lab as authors and guests here over the coming months – eightbar has always been a kind of “shop window to the world” for the things we are up to. The kinds of people you’ll find writing and contributing here are also likely to be found out and about at unconferences around Southampton, London, or other places. There may be a few changes to the look and feel as well as to the content, but the spirit is absolutely going to remain the same. Oh, and by the way, check out the links in the sidebar – you’ll find that many of the contributors have great content out on their own sites, too.

Why is this post entitled Tribe 2.0? Simple: fresh thinking and fresh ideas FTW! 🙂

Just thinking out loud – Metaverse snapshot

I moved offices today and having a bright new whiteboard I could not leave it clean for long.
Its not really a mindmap, just some association of thoughts and bits of linkages. I am sure it will alter, but right now this is what was in my head in a mad flurry. The underlying red part is really the substrate of the whole thing. Just my personal thoughts linked to some of the things I have seen and been involved with one way and another.

Thoughts on the metaverse
Note: edited to show smaller version of the board as it was cropping the right hand important side for those that did not click through to flickr. 3d printing FTW and high value professional social networks one there too !

Personal Branding and Corporate Life, quite a challenge

A few of us seem to have accidentaly moved into an arena where we have made a name for ourselves, connected with all sorts of other people, worked the web and web2.0, delivered and shared ideas, led the way despite never being asked to. That has led to some personal branding and in the case of eightbar some group branding.
It is a tricky area for many people to come to terms with, when the have only up to now kept a local “office” reputation. People understand that, there is an order of things to that. It may be a regimented promotion and exposure process. Now of course we have suddenly been landed with the ability to share and work anywhere. The early adopters in all this typically being the ones who have not always felt comfortable with traditional structures.
So we find ourselves in a cultural place, some of the world values our reputations, much of it does not but would really like to have one, an equally large percentage has no idea its happening.
Jeremiah Owyang (of Forrester) started a thread over on his blog that I recommend you all dive in on if you have particular feelings about your personal brand, how it impacts your future career, how you protect it, how you value it and choose to use it for the good of your company.
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