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.
Category Archives: Second Life
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.
Metaverse Evangelist hits Private Eye
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
Second Life in a different scale
PatricaAnne Daviau, goddess of the small, builds miniature tableau in Second Life. When so many people spend time building full size mirror worlds, one of my fellow eightbars has focused on a suprising niche. The film by NextworldDesign shows some of the work which I think you will agree is a great twist. Feel free to contact PatricaAnne in SL for a demo too.
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 🙂