This was some fantastic news from eightbar alumni Roo Reynolds. He has made it, along with our shared job title of Metaverse Evangelist, into the Private Eye magazine. Private Eye is a satirical master piece and hugely respected here in the UK and around the world.
Twitter was full last night of the link flying around. Roo has it fully documented (of course) on his blog here. I fully expect an appearance on Have I got News for You next.
Metaverse Evangelists FTW
Category Archives: Virtual worlds
Business week predicts a resurgence in 3d this year
A colleague Bill Chamberlin(*updated with full name and link to his external blog 🙂 ) had spotted this article in business week and shared it with us. (Business Week provided great coverage back in 2006 when our CEO Sam Palmisano entered Second Life )The stand out line is of course “3D returns in a big way” not that it ever went away of course.
The prediction refers to the increase in 3d capability from Nvidia, and also James Cameron’s Avatar project (film, game, world etc). I am waving at Corey Bridges at Multiverse of course as he has very close ties with this project and the production team from what we heard in LA this year
If you tie this to my epredictions around companies needing to do something to engage and communicate across organizations strapped for cash and not travelling it really is an obvious step isnt it?
Still as I saw a quote used on twitter by Kathy Sierra “You can’t reason people out of a position they didn’t use reason to get into” I am sure there is still some convincing to do.
So if you are out there and wavering, not knowing why your business can benefit from virtual worlds, even it if is just for the sake of an argument give us a call here at eightbar 🙂
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.
2009 eprediction, wishlist, speculation.
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 🙂
Paved paradise put up a parking lot
Over at Ugotrade once again Tish has done a fantastic post about Homecamp which includes a stack of my fellow eightbars. There is also a great interview with Andy SC about all things Current Cost meter, Second Life visualizations of his automated house and Smart Planet in general.
Many threads are coming together now, a more eco minded but technology driven approach to things. Much of this has been bubbling around for ages and lots of us take it for granted people know this stuff. However, read the post and get the full vision from the leaders in this field of eco automation.
Andy’s house is currently seeking a new more official home as it was demolished from Hursley island this weekend and replaced by a Seigmancer Nino Empress Condo which is actually the same sort of thing by the same creator that was there before I cleared the space for Andy’s house.
The house will be missed on Hursley island, a great (first!) build by eightbar alumni Laronzo Fiztgerald/Mark Alexander of Uproar Design, but look for a public place to view it very soon.
As you know I like the flow of linkages between things, back in the early days of the internal metaverse the project leader that Roo and I worked with was David Currier, he left to go and start a… Home automation company homespace integrators 🙂
There is also of course our good friends and collegues over at Eolus where mirror worlds and real world instrumentation are making huge savings on running properties and facilities.
Whilst showing the linkages here I also have to say thanks to James Governor/Monkchips for tweeting “my Team of 2008 award goes to IBM’s Eight Bar at Hursley Labs. RedMonk celebrates makers and doers – these guys exemplify getting on with”
****Update James has written a whole blogpost on us, and very nice it is too. It’s brilliant to have had this sort of impact. We dont do this for fame and glory, but to start a conversation, to engage with people as IBMers in ways that they may not be used to, and then to be thanked for it. Brilliant 🙂
Things coming to fruition, linkages flowing and people saying thanks do mean a great to to this humble little band in Hursley and also the wider band of eightbars across the company. One heck of a tribe I reckon 🙂
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.
IBM Academy of Technology meets in a virtual world
Irving has a very good write up over at his blog about extremely important and highly influential gathering of veyr senior and influential IBMers that occured on our behind the firewall Second Life servers.
“The early feedback indicates that about 75% of the participants thought that the event was successful, not a bad number when you consider that the whole virtual Academy meeting was put together in the short four weeks from the time the physical meeting was canceled.”
Eightbar, an emotional hello
We had a bit of a gathering today on my Hursley island in Second Life. Since mid 2006 I have been providing us as eightbar with a bit of a haven. A place for IBMers and now some exIBMers and guests to call home in the crazy world that is Second Life. As this has always been an unofficial space, just as this is an unofficial blog the island(s) have existed out of a need for community but not in anyway paid for by the community. I viewed it as a duty upon myself to grow the community and provide the islands. I thought we had reached a point where we no longer needed them, and that maybe it was time to free up the hundreds of pounds a month that had been such an important investment.
So, a core bunch gathered to hear me tell the story of Hursley, some of the oldest eightbars and some of the newest. I should not have been suprised, but I was moved, by the waves of support from the gathering and agreeing that we all still wanted this place of history and future to exist. It is something that any of the masses of eightbars woudl have been proud to have been at.
I am not sure we worked out exactly how to pay for this all, but we have so many people that its really a no brainer to cover the costs of 2 islands. There was certainly a willingness and some fabulous donations to get that going.
So why has Hursley and IQ remained so long as our personal island? Well because it was the right thing to do, and now by mass concensus and action, sharing the message with our fellow eightbars it still is the right thing.
Its not a server, its a place, and its our place. We started our tribe in that space and the tribe has even more heart than ever and is quite a force to be reckoned with.
Go eightbar and thank you all who atteneded, who wanted to attend and who will hear the message for the support! 🙂
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