Comments on: Our private island is a little less secret now

By: IBM and Virtual Worlds for Business « The Electric Sheep Company

IBM and Virtual Worlds for Business « The Electric Sheep Company — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:37:59 +0000

[...] Wladawsky-Berger, IBM’s vice president of technical strategy and innovation. Through various reports and blog entries it was clear that IBM was interested but this post shows just how bullish they are on using Virtual [...]

By: eightbar » Blog Archive » The Unofficial Tourists’ Guide to Second Life - factcheck

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 15:55:42 +0000

[...] I can only assume the wording must have been written a while ago, since we’ve been quite open about what goes on at Hursley island since September 2006 and the IBM cluster of sims since December 2006. [...]

By: eightbar » Blog Archive » It amazing where Eightbar turns up now

eightbar » Blog Archive » It amazing where Eightbar turns up now — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 20:33:07 +0000

[...] Last night Roo and I donned our eightbar t-shirts and popped along to the book launch for Tim Guests “Second Lives” at the offices of Rivers Run Red. I have not been to a book launch before, but then who does? So whilst this was still work related, it fitted nicely into the combined social nature of what has been happening with the metaverse. A collection of us gathering in real life, from disparate sources but with the bond of Second Life, and business in Second Life. It had been a very long day with other events and meetings in London. One of the reasons we just had to go was that eightbar and IBM get quite a mention in the book, Roo and I also got Tim to sign copies. It was good to skip to our section and see Tim’s view of the event we ran way back, when I specifically asked if we could invite Tim to the press event due to his articles in Edge magazine. The event we ran was way back in September 2006 and was given a huge amount of credibility by the presence of Irving Wladawsky-Berger . On the train home Roo and I were looking back, seeing statements like “200 IBMers in Second Life” when we have over 4000 interested parties now. It just shows how quickly the interest has developed and it seems, via our collective diaries, to not be letting up. I still get emails from people who have just caught the buzz and are still amazed when they see the history. One of the benefits of blogs over up to date web pages is being able to show provenance. I am looking forward to reading the whole book, it is the BBC Radio 4 book of the week, which is significant too. Now there was some amusing talk about film deals, which was funny as on the way up to London Roo and I had been discussing what it must be like to be a technical advisor on a movie that has tech in it. We have all seen movies that have all the right words but none of the right fact. So when hollywood gets around to making movies about this cycle of virtual reality who are they going to get to advise them. I think its safe to say the door is open and we are happy to help. So thankyou to Rivers Run Red and Tim for a great gathering. I also now know what to get my dad for fathers day, another copy of the book. [...]

By: eightbar » Blog Archive » Sun are having a press conference in SL now too

Mon, 09 Oct 2006 19:13:12 +0000

[...] As reported in a few places (but 3pointd is where I saw it) Sun is having a press conference in SL. Its great to see some other major tech companies come into this space. We know there are a few of them out there in various shapes and sizes, its just we have been a bit more public as IBMers over the past year blogging and experimenting with what this all means. I thought we had done the first fortune 500 press conference, but I suppose we had a more direct one to one with each of the particpants over the 2 days, though the event we were showing was real SL interaction across the world. This is a big area and there are a lot of avenues to pursue. The important point will be, as with the web, open standards. [...]

By: The Daily Graze » Blog Archive » IBM and Virtual Worlds for Business

The Daily Graze » Blog Archive » IBM and Virtual Worlds for Business — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 14:02:12 +0000

[...] Brands in Games points to this blog post by Irving Wladawsky-Berger, IBM’s vice president of technical strategy and innovation, about Virtual Worlds. Through various reports and blog entries it was clear that IBM was interested but this post shows just how bullish they are on using Virtual Worlds for business use. They are using Second Life to gain practical experience with Virtual Worlds. In the post, Wladawsky-Berger discusses IBM’s efforts in holding virtual meetings and thinking about redefining e-commerce and visualizing business processes. In the post he states the following: As Yogi Berra might have said, this feels like deja vu all over again. When we started our Internet efforts in IBM about ten years ago, the Internet was already being used by millions around the world, and we had a very strong sense that it was going to have a huge impact on businesses and institutions of all sorts, but we honestly were not quite sure what that impact would be. [...]

By: Roo

Roo — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 07:50:52 +0000

I always thought of Hursley island as 'private' rather than 'secret'. After all, it has been written about quite a bit here on Eightbar.

By: epredator

epredator — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 01:52:54 +0000

Yes that our more public almaden island. We have that, we also have Hursley that is a more private sandbox, and a few others.
We have a lot of people all loking at all sorts of things.
Thanks for finding Almaden :-)

By: Michel Leblanc

Michel Leblanc — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 23:12:08 +0000

For your info, here are some pictures of the now not so secret IBM island in Second Life http://www.michelleblanc.com/2006/09/28/ibm-second-life-photos-exclusives/. Bravo for the guts of going there…

By: epredator

epredator — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 13:58:29 +0000

We (as in a royal we) or I fully agree with Roo.
Eightbar is merely a handle that we use, a nickname for the group of us and our blog and more recently our presence in Second Life.
The interesting transition is that some of “us” now are full time on exploring the potential of metaverse technologies, and its not a secret so we can talk about it.

By: Roo Reynolds

Roo Reynolds — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 23:48:24 +0000

Hi ‘i luv blogs’. My honest answer would be neither. The people who contribute to Eightbar do not necessarily represent IBM, but we can’t really be said to represent (or act as) ‘Eightbar’ either, since Eightbar is a blog and not a corporation. We write as ourselves. We are individuals with our own interests, friendships and hobbies, who also happen to work at IBM.

Sorry if we have sometimes slipped into using plural pronouns such as ‘we’ (see how easy it is? I did it right there). I personally find that quite hard to avoid when writing here, as a lot of us know each other and work together.

There is bound to be some overlap with what I do personally and chose to write about here, and what IBM does as a company. This might appear to be confusing sometimes. Especially so when the two overlap and what I do and what IBM does just happens to be the same thing. The disclaimer does say “The postings … don’t necessarily represent IBM’s position’s, strategies or opinions”. I guess on a really good day, they might. Not really something to be relied on though. :-)

I (and I hope, we) will always aim to write in the first person, as individuals.

Does that help?