BoingBoing has an article linking to danah boyd’s now public PHD thesis on Teen Sociality online.
What I have read so far has been very interesting, I was looking forward to seeing it as I got to meet danah at the Handheld learning 2008 event where she made some great points around the evolving of the generations coming through with social media as part of their discovery of who they are in the world.
Why is this relevant? Well for anyone who is a parent understanding the difference and the dynamics of social media in the context of teenage development should be understood. Also for those in business the emerging workforce will have experienced what danah has researched. To look upon all social media (and include virtual worlds) as irrelavent friend gathering frippery misses the point that the socialization of these young people is occurring in these environments. To extrapolate some of the conclusions for the enterpirse audience. They are not places to be demonized (as were the physical spaces when we were growing up) fill in you own parents worst nightmare, snooker halls, discos, amusement arcades, shopping malls, skate parks. The reason being that these virtual places, and the skills to understand them, negotiate and establish social norms will also be the skills of enterprise 2.0.
danah also makes the point that people are growing up with these environments, it is how they establish their pecking orders and social mobility, as opposed to many adults who are busy trying to translate their current order into the current social media.
Anyway, just as with the byron report I suggest you have a look at this serious piece of research, combine it with tribes and Tapscott’s grown up digital. Then start to work out what that is going to mean for us all.
danah has been snapped up by Microsoft Research (which had already happened back when I met her), so I wish her good luck in her career there.
Category Archives: Technology
An odd comment to make on virtual worlds Leo Laporte?
Andy Piper was telling me that he was listening to a podcast with Leo Laporte where he basically dissed Second Life as a gimmick and suggested it was not all that. Well I did have a listen to the end of this podcast and sure enough both Leo and Amber Macarthur made some throw away comments about the value of Second Life. Now to be fair, it was not a rant. In some ways this was about the time and effort required to engage, and they did give a shout out to the great communities that have formed. Though Leo did use the word gimmick.
Clearly they only said Second Life, they did not say virtual worlds in general, so they may have been dealing with a specific experience and press bubble, but it is a little odd position to take when someone has a reputation for transitioning across media. Yes it can take a little bit of time to engage with people in virtual worlds, but that is the point in many ways.
There is room for text, for twitter, for podcasts (that I sometimes find very time consuming to have to listen to), for virtual world events and for whats next.
Without virtual worlds we have no place to take this further, no mirror worlds, no augmented reality, no 3d printing/rapid fabrication.
It is of course different horses for courses, but I dont think any of us in any field should consider excluding any of the others or writing them off out of hand. Text and voice still work of course.
The journey of discovering good ways to interact with one another is one I think we are all on so I am just let them off this time 🙂
If they want a metaverse evangelist on the show to explain…. well happy to help.
So there’s nothing going on in Virtual Worlds?
I did seriously have someone (in fact more than one person) suggest that there was not much happening in virtual worlds these days. I think they may have been referring to less press based “me first” stories. Of course I should not mock as if people’s touch points dont see whats happening and if they dont engage with the mass of social media it pretty unlikely to know anything.
It is therefore good to see such a bug roundup, even of one week such the last one just past as the one Caleb Booker has done on his blog.
You will see in there small, medium and massive funding announcements, things new to PS3 Home, Nortel’s elounge/Lenovo project, Entropia spin off etc etc. Obviously many of you reading this are in the know on many of these, but its the breadth and depth of all this that we need to share to help push the industry even further.
I just twittered “I do wish I was an investor. seen some great opps for business that need a little push and look very profitiable, worthy and interesting!” as there are obviously projects that have not made it to the light of day yet that that will add to this list over the next year+. Though clearly with the starting premise of this post being some people not realizing this my/our work is cut out still evangelizing all this to people who dont know what they are missing out on!
Dogear-nation podcast takeover
It may sometimes seem as if eightbar is taking over dogear nation, but the founding two Michaels(Martine and Rowe) are honoury eightbars anyway, so Andy Piper doing the recording and editing for the show is not quite so bizarre.
Anyway this weeks show features your truly as a guest. I almost missed out the podcast in my web evolution, but I am circling back around and finding it a very good way to explain my passion for all things. The only fly in the ointment being my broad Norfolk accent, but the other guys sound great 🙂
Yes I did do a Clarkson impression, and I did mention my disdane for Vista so it was not all virtual worlds!
So thankyou Dogear-nation for having me guest. Enjoy the programme let us know what you think its on itunes and everything :).
For those that don’t know tag things of interest on delicious.com with dogear-nation and it can become part of the running order for discussion on the show.
Reaction time is a factor in this test – serious games
During a recent twitter exchange @Renzephyr tweeted an @slhamlet post on GigaOm about the 10 potentialy game changing games for 2009. The list is in part compiled by David Edery so it is worth take note of.
Of course many people will see games and 2009 and think about more driving, shooting, puzzle games etc. and may not pay attention. However there are some very significant elements in this list.
One of the very interesting elements is an isurance company looking at using a reaction test serious game for older drivers in order to offer cheaper insurance. That, as Wagner James Au says, will herald the incorporation of gaming elements in many other business. Not just the sort of virtual worlds real leaders that we often share or simply business meetings and education and training. The game becomes part of the channel, and clearly much of that will reach into virtual worlds, and not solely be stand alone mini games. The brand/business is also immersed in the game or across other channels.
Also of note on the list is the Augmented Reality pet on PS3 but I will let you read the article and enjoy the near future.
How to respond to posts – as a big organization or individual
Over on his web strategy blog Jeremiah Owyang has posted a great flowchart for the USAF on how they should respond to blogs. Of course this should not just be a large organization approach but each of us with our own stake in our personal brands and reputations.
The basic premise is to engage in a positive manner where it makes sense. This also needs to extend past blogs, but it takes a while to ripple these through to social media guidelines but it does indicate the correct awareness of the conversations that occur.
Many organizations treat commentary with disdain, either seeking to remove, purge, cover up anything not released by them or just ignoring it. It is interesting this a military organization initiating a hearts and minds scheme before many companies have.
It all gets much trickier when you are representing yourself and/or your company live in a virtual world, but that just increases the need to think on your feet and respond appropriately without too much spin of faffing around.
Honest conversation, up front about who you are and done for the right reason. Great chart I think.
Tapscott does it again – read and heed
A few weeks ago I got my copy of Grown Up Digital by Don Tapscott. I had only skimmed it initially, but recently managed to finish reading it properly. Cleary many others have too.
Netociety tweeted a few links to some articles about the book and with Tapscott’s thoughts and that discussion reminded me I needed to share some thoughts here. For any of us who have changed the way we work and play with social media it resonates. The book is primarily a prod and push to people entrenched in certain ways of working to look at what people born post 1977 do. To not try and stop the flow of conversation and actions that occur using the web, but to embrace and change to benefit from them.
Those of us outside that demographic, but who none the less have made some sort of transition know the unsettling nature of that change initially.
Given the reputation Don Tapscott has, and the depth of research facts and figures presented this really should help a few more people understand what has changed.
In many ways its the same as Seth Godin’s Tribes. Tribes is the motivational short sharp go for it book, Grown Up Digital is the much longer, evidential text book. They both say the same things we all say though.
You MUST embrace the tools(as here in Computing’s article), the style of operating with them. The top tips in that article being
• Hire more young people.
• Start using next-generation tools. “If you are not using Twitter, Digg or blogging, it is about time you got started.”
• Empower your workforce. “Don’t have a big master plan – let people self-organise, invest and bring their own tools to increase productivity.”
Start using, means everyone. i.e. as I keep saying Web 2 is Web do. The self organizing is probably the most scary for people to come to terms with, (back to tribes again).
The FT also has a great write up on Tapscotts book ending with “The book is a thoughtful antithesis to entrenched and sometimes alarmist managerial opposition to internet-influenced behaviours”
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.
Some more good news Forterra Olive and Lotus Sametime
I just saw (via an internal blog post props to Luis Benitez and also some other people mailing me) this press release from Forterra
It is the next stages of what many of you may have seen with the integration of some of the Lotus product set from IBM with Forterra
A shout out also has to go to the Ron and the guys are Ambient Performance who are the UK representatives for Foterra Olive.
You will see from the blog post statements like
“Forterra believes the fastest path for large-scale virtual world adoption within organizations is for 3D meetings to be an easy-to-use extension of the existing unified communications tools employees already use every day. Forterra’s integration of OLIVE with Lotus Sametime is the first robust offering in the market to pursue this strategy. When integrated to Lotus Sametime, immersive 3D environments built with OLIVE provide an interactive communications platform that is unsurpassed for collaboration, training, and knowledge management use cases.”
Also Chris states “Most enterprise-grade teleconferencing systems charge $0.10 to $0.25 per person per minute which can equate to thousands of dollars of expense per employee every year”. That is a direct cost to go with my much quoted 9.4 years a week we can waste waiting for telecons to start as we have no sense of presence, and in VW’s we seem to enagage in those seredipitous conversations because we can see people arrive.
Integration with regular business tools, and continued development of this sort is all good news.
It is good to see this as it helps remove some of the confusion/news that I have had to set straight here
TED talk with Philip Rosedale
The TED talks are a great series of talks and here we Have Philip Rosedale creator of Second Life talking. I suspect this will generate some interest as TED reaches places and provides credibility for a large number of subjects.
I like the reminder that visual memory is stronger than textual. One of the main elements that seem to catch people by suprise when I refer to “meetings” and people refering to “whex you were sat opposite in hursley house and you said….”. For the metarati this is less essential watching other than maybe for validation, however for those still wavering, who knows a TED talk may just swing it. So spread the word.
Props to Annieok for twittering it 🙂