You may have noticed that Wimbledon this year was doing lots of interesting social media related things. Letting people join in with the Wimbledon experience wherever they are. One of the things that was going rather well was the facebook page. I mentioned it way back a week or so ago in this post. Well a few days ago the Facebook page dissapeared. We initially thought it was an admin error from one of the writers, but now it turns out that Facebook decided to remove the page as it breached some elements of the terms of service. This was a pity as in the few weeks of the championship it had grown to over 9,000 fans. Maybe it was that volume of interest that attracted some attention.
Anyway with my social media strategist hat on, i have to say I am more than a little annoyed at this. All the groups and pages that exists on Facebook in a grey area of companies and political parties and pressure groups. A globally loved tennis event with lots of interest was kicked off Facebook for the smallest bit of administrivia around whose ID created.
I am not going to get into details as thisis really between Facebook and the AELTC, but as our I and my collegues are very passionate about Wimbledon we feel part owners, as I am sure do those 9,000+ people who know have to be told that Facebook doesnt want them to use the platform for gathering together around and event like this.
Web 2.0 is as much as anythng about letting go of brands, putting things in the hands of the people that consume them. Attempting to “own” customers and make strange laws will lead to the end of a platform. People will cotton on and drift away. Just sayin’
Judge Hocho says Dont Press this Button
Judge built a button, and placed it on IBM 7 at Wimbledon. He keeps telling people not to press it. (just saying)
A slight change from Wimbledon SW19 – Learning Grid
Last night as Andy Murray made his triumphant comeback in a massive 5 setter I was driving away from Wimbledon and on to Corby. I am presenting at the Learning Grid for the next 2 days and Helen from Hursley is coming up to do the other half of the gig here.
We are presenting to visiting schools from around the area at the Rockingham Motor Speedway as an event called the learning grid.
As part of an hour long presentation in the auditorium here we get about 7 minutes to help show why what we do is so interesting and fun aswell as important. The aim of the event is to inspire kids into engineering. So far what I have seen this has got some fantastic exhibits.
My office for the day (when not presenting is a tad different from the Wimbledon basement)
The cars in the car park are a bit different too.
Still the message is the same. we have 2 minutes of video of our VP of the Virtual Worlds/Digital Convergence business talking, then the rest is Helen or I, Hursley. Wimbledon, Second Life, Say it Sign It, Battlefield2 and all the chips in the games consoles to finish.
There are 2 MC’s here, about to go and meet them Michael Rod (from tomorrows world and screen test) and Michaela Hyde from kids tv.
The videos all seem to work, running in a decent resolution.
Wish me luck and go Murray !
Wimbledon the final week get your widgets here.
This year more than ever before the Wimbledon web experience is much more what us Web 2.0 geekanisters would like to see. Letting people experience Wimbledon wherever they happen to be. I am not just talking about the Second Life presence
This widget is another prime example, able to be embedded and posted all over the place, facebook, blogs etc. It is also personalized to the user, the players they choose to follow. Its been a quiet revolution for a website that got 266,311,332 page views last year over the event, but one that I am very happy to see.
So props to Stephen Hammer and the Atlanta sports event crew for putting this widget together. You have the next 7 days to enjoy its live features.
Christian Renaud leaving Cisco – to go to ?????
Christian Renaud, Cisco’s metaverse evangelist has just announced today is his last day at Cisco. He explains quite clearly in his post that its not a bitter move. The thing he is off to do is a startup of an unspecified nature, so we look forward to seeing what that is, and everyone at eightbar wishes him good luck.
As the CEO of Cisco really gets the whole metaverse drive we know that it does not mean the end of Cisco’s drive into this. So its still IBM and Cisco pushing the envelope.
So another change, another indication as with my previous post on the growth of this industry.
Virtual Universe Community – Guildmaster(s) visit Wimbledon SL
Last night the VUC meeting popped into Wimbledon and annouce that Robi is the new guildmaster vote winner. It was brilliant to suddenly have a whole load of people, the acitivists in all this, pop in to say hi. Such a rush I cant really explain how good it made me feel. Thanks all.
Metaverse-tv and SL5B opening ceremony
Over at the IBM 7 Wimbledon build we just spent a little while chatting with Recka Wuyts of http://www.metaverse-tv.com/. I had not been able to get along to SL5B at the start, mainly because of needing to be in Wimbledon all the time to be able to talk to people like Recka and our other visitors about IBM and Wimbledon
By way of a thankyou for popping by and staying and taking the tour, and becuase I am interested in the whole dynamic of this years 2 week 5th birthday of Second Life and because the event coincides with Wimbledon and because its good to here Phillip talk and because….. enough already, here is the metaverse-tv video from blip
Wimbledon roof garden – Pimms or Prims
Judge has built a roof garden based on the real life media centre roof garden. When Tara5 Oh came to visit we had a misunderstanding on the bottle of Pimms (a Wimbledon tradition of sorts) and the word prim (somewhat popular in Second Life)
I cut a video of both the real and the virtual to illustrate the interpretation
Cisco CEO John Chambers on future of virtual worlds
Tish over at Ugotrade has just posted some transcripts from the an event in Second Life yesterday. The Cisco CEO John Chambers appeared and answered some questions. Now I know I am biased, but it is good to hear many of the same themes and reasoning I/We use when evangelizing coming from someone else, and in particular a CEO of major company like Cisco.
Read the full article on ugotrade
“John Chambers: …..very often if there is one thing that I have learned in my thirty years in high tech is sometimes concepts are a little bit too early but when they do take off they take off with tremendous speed and efficiency.
This where I think it is important especially for the business communities and the entertainment industries to understand what is possible because when the market does move it usually moves at speeds faster then anyone anticipated. ”
“I think what is exciting to here is that where last year we were talking about that in theory and this year we are beginning to see people grab this is going to happen. We may disagree on the time frame but it is not longer a question any more of if, it is now a question of when. ”
Real Life Wimbledon still Rezzing
Wimbledon is building a new court number 2. I got to go and have a look. The whole place is currently plain concrete and also has some terracotta warrior style statues of the players. All in all it looks like a Second Life render of a place that has not had any textures applied yet. (It was Ricky that pointed this out first yesterday to me and so I had to go and see, and he is right I think)
The avatars of the players ar in the video below, along with a nice particle effect (they were watering the real grass with real water and getting a real rainbow)
Replacement video as the other one was incorrectly identified as copyright infringement. Still doing the paperwork to clear my good name