The rednosin twitter account made me aware of the excellent addition to the comic relief donation options. That of buying a digital rednose picture. Whilst many of us can bolt a red nose onto a picture that is not the point. The ability donate and join in with the excellent charity that is Comic relief is something we should all do. We use avatar pictures all over the place and you will see twitter full of them next few days. Check out Rednosin Chinposin so see more
So what are you waiting for! It works for Graham Norton :0)
Author Archives: epredator
Eightbar featuring on Metanomics
I thought that those of you who read this blog might be interested to know I am appearing live on the Metanomics show this coming monday. Whilst I am appearing in my role as Director of Feeding Edge Ltd the conversation will be about how I see the industry going from IBM’s and corporate enterprise perspectives, how eightbar has been something that many of us have a deep affinity for, some talk of 3d printing and maybe a few surprises.
There are plenty of ways to attend, and full transcripts and videos afterwards.
I was at rehearsals for it yesterday and the operation itself is certainly leading the way on Second Life shows.
See you monday.
A new era begins
Today is a day of mixed emotions. Today I resigned from IBM having been there for 18 years, 19 if you count my year out from university.
In all that time I have worked with some great people, and felt a tremendous sense of belonging.
Its been quite a journey, both in technical education and in personal growth. It is the extent of that growth and the speed that has not always been kept up to pace with by the system that I worked within.
I started back on green screens in 1990, very quickly moved to the PC’s and client server applications that followed shortly. Over the years the groups I worked with morphed from back office systems to customer facing ones, but in 1997 I made a break from what was traditional IT development. I threw myself into the web and the fantastic Interactive Media Centre. That itself morphed into the centre for e-business innovation but the group of people were known as Blueroom. An ecletic mix of can do people, graphic designers, producers and techies all bundled into one. That taught me that diversity of skills, coming up with ideas on the spot and good old fashioned teamwork for a common cause were what I thrived in.
For me that was the start of who I have become, the birth of epredator if you like.
When I decided that we should look in to the metaverse with Second Life back in 2006 I knew the industry was going to be big, but I was not expecting the evolutionary changes to happen to me. Getting this going turned me into a intrapreneur. The speed with which my fellow eightbars rallied and the spirit of innovation, just getting things done was simply amazing. It is something we should all be immensely proud of.
In leaving IBM I am not leaving eightbar, it is not something that can never really be left. The focus may change but I think we have made a decent enough mark in the history of virtual worlds.
Of course the question is what next? I left in order to be able to carry on and push this industry further. So in a few weeks you will see the birth of my own company, and I will seek to work and advise, speak and write just as I have done up to now. There are some significant projects that I already need to give some attention too.
There is, as I have told a few people, quite a story to tell on all this. The personal ups and and downs, the formation of our tribe and I suspect I will have to write that book after all. It will probably be called “Who says Elephants can’t Rez” or something similar.
So a huge thankyou and goodbye to all my friends, and thankyou for the support on twitter and see you all on Linkedin
I will also post this on http://www.epredator.com
See you all out there very soon.
***Update Feeding Edge is now live here, my new home
Lecturing MBA’s at Babson in Second Life
Last night I was invited to speak to a very diverse class of MBA students and entrepreneurs at Babson as a guest (Thankyou Linda for the invite). The conversation of course happened in Second Life, and also happened to be around midnight my time. That in itself is almost routine now, though for a change I was using voice and watching for text questions. However what was great was that the subject was not the metaverse itself, though I did throw in some futures like 3d printing and augmented reality. No the subject was the story of eightbar, the steps to get to the point we are at, how despite various things stacked against many of us we just carried on and did the right thing.
***UPDATE @abelniak who was at the meeting twittered that he had this post on his perspective as an member of the class. Once again the power of social media and willingness to share and build is in action.
Also some honest statements about the risk of being a pioneer, and the fear that self organized group can generate in traditional control structures.
I really enjoyed talking to the group, and there were some great questions from some clever minds.
We discussed leadership in particular, and what differs or is the same in virtual worlds. My general answer is a good leader will adapt, those true leaders already in traditional places of power have the emotional skills to lead and inspire anywhere. However the new connected world and removal of local as barrier unleashes the abilities in anyone who wants to lead.
Anyway, a huge thanks to everyone who came along, thankyou for listening, and following up. It became clear to me there is a huge value in sharing this story now, its constantly evolving for me, epredator, eightbar, metaverses, IBM. At any point in time it has things to learn from and things to share.
A teaser trailer – SHASPA
This trailer has just hit youtube. I am sure more will become clear as this project moves on, for now just enjoy.
Augmented reality anywhere from MIT
Thankyou to AnnieOk for pointing me towards the video and articles here on the MIT Fluid interfaces that got such a good reception at TED 2009. This is brilliant work. You have to see this and go to wired to read the rest of the article.
Projection, mixed with gesture and finger tracking, whilst looking a little cumbersome this is showing some very clever things actually working.
What I like about projection (though I do find the personal ways to get an AR experience relevant too) is the potential to share with others. Just as it has become common, as I have mentioned before, to see people gathered around and iphone on the table.
Its been quite a weeks for seeing things often talked about actually working.
Mirror Mirror on the wall
Over at Redmonk, James Governor has written a very interesting piece on what has happened to the Microsoft ESP platform. Mirror worlds, accurate representations of real things, ideally instrumented by a raft of sensors from the real world are a very specific, and obvious, use of virtual worlds. After all pilots already spend a large amount of time training in such environments and we entrust out lives to them. (It would be interesting to know how much virtual training the Hero of the Hudson has had, re water landings).
James said of ESP “the single coolest initiative I have seen from Microsoft in the 13 years I have been watching the firm”, but now it appears there is a drop in focus on it.
There are of course lots of other mirror worlds and hybrid mirrors out there, but as yet there is not a good commercial high fidelity toolkit that can be used to build specific mirrors.
Google Earth is clearly the most rich in terms of global level instrumentation, but it is at a much more finite and realtime level that we will see the benefits.
I am not sure what we would do with a live as-is model of the world accurate and instrumented in every way possible, but as a concept and seeing the fascination people have for maps, photos, and satellite images of their part of the planet it seems a worthwhile goal to make a true mirror world.
Also an accurate model of an environment is a base requirement to help enhance the real world with augmented reality systems. i.e. like the ones we already have for our GPS tracking. Without the accurate map(digital model of the world), the GPS position is of less use to the average user.
As James also says though ,there is some speculation in the future of the ESP platform. So I guess we will have to wait and see.
Coca Cola Avatars in the real world
Whilst we may have missed the advertizing-fest that is the US Superbowl, we do atleast get to see some of the great ideas courtesy of youtube. For me the most significant was this one. (Thanks Roo for finding it first 🙂 )
It speaks for itself, but does have some subtle little niceties. What is does show is a mainstream appreciation that we all have various avatars and visual persona’s that we engage with anywhere and everywhere, on mobile devices, in coffee shops.
Mainstream appreciation of the adoption of this way of interacting?
Duelling eightbar twitterers – I “win”: sort of!
The last few days fellow eightbar Andy Piper had pointed out that he was approaching 1,000 followers on twitter and that I was a tad behind him. We ended up engaging in a “first to 1,000 though it does not really matter or mean anything, conversation is about quality… etc” competion.
Something happened somewhere, I am not sure what got out there, but I tapped into a network, or commented to some mover and shaker and boom, I hit over 1,000 very quickly. Andy has now topped that too so there was not a lot in it.
I pointed out this is a bit like gamer points on xbox live. They can mean something in context, and mini competitions and bonding experiences can happen, out of the main context of the plot of the game. So yes, a huge twitter following can be a bad thing, but equally it did not do any harm to recognize one anothers proximity to the “magic” 1,000. In fact its like watching your odometer on the car roll over to 30,000 miles or Andy SC’s unix time frame tick over a significant boundary.
Anyway you can find us both on Twitter and bask in what ever celebrity glory this is, Andy and me
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.
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 !