Innovation Jam results
This years Innovation Jam was the third of IBMs jams. It was mainly web based, with over 150,000 people (IBMers as well as their families, business partners, universities, clients, …) apparently generating over 46,000 ideas.
Of course, as you’d expect, some of the fun happend inside Second Life too. This was a joint effort between IBM’s Virtual Universe Community and the NMC, with the Alliance Navy providing security and joining in the discussion too.
All the ideas generated went into a multi stage selection process, in which they were filtered and refined down, with $100 million in funding to make the top 10 ideas happen.
As was already reported by Reuters (as well as Business Week and, well, pretty much everywhere) this week…
Chairman and Chief Executive Sam Palmisano (right, with his Second Life avatar) is set to visit Second Life on Tuesday, Nov. 14 following a “town hall” meeting with some 7,000 employees in China
The 14th is finally upon us so I thought you’d be interested to hear what happened.
The event itself was a ‘townhall’ IBM meeting, held in an IBM location in China, in front of more than 6,000 employees. Sam Palmisano presented in person, but when he started talking about Virtual Worlds and the 3D Internet, he first handed over to Irving (who recently blogged about signing up to Second Life) whose avatar was surrounded by a decent sized bunch of IBMers from across the world.
Later, Sam’s avatar (samatar?) entered as well, and, nimbly assisted by our own Rob Smart, delivered his message both to the IBM China employees gathered there in person as well as those of us in the Second Life portion of the event. Rob was also joined in Beijing by Holly Stewart and Ian Smith, whose tireless work recently resulted in their being invited to attend (read: be camerapersons and generally make it all work) in person. Huge respect to John Tolva for his tireless efforts in making this event happen too. John has written an excellent post on his blog about the logistical challenges of pulling something like this off.
I didn’t get any great screenshots of the Sam avatar (I hope to add some more later), but here’s a quick grab of Sam and Irving presenting together.
So what are the ‘winning’ Innovation Jam ideas Sam announced? They are…
- Smart Healthcare Payment Systems
- Simplified Business Engines
- Real-time Translation Services
- Intelligent Utility Networks
- 3D Internet (building a seamless, standards-based 3D Internet)
- “Digital Me” (personal content service)
- Branchless Banking for the Masses
- Integrated Mass Transit Information System
- Electronic Health Record System
- “Big Green” Innovations (new business unit)
You can read the list in full, complete with an explanation of each one, in a recent IBM press release.
As with so much of the recent Virtual Worlds related work, this was a lot of fun to be part of. It doesn’t look like much, but it is a bit of a milestone, and will no doubt increase the internal interest in Virtual Worlds still further.
Because of the timezone, the US employees attending virtually were up late (1:30 AM EST) and those of us in the UK were up early (6:30 AM GMT). While the rent-a-crowd were excitedly waiting in Second Life we were listening in to the event over a phone call and getting gossip from those embedded locally over IM. The atmosphere was tense, but also slightly hysterical due to the late night/early morning/what on earth are we doing nature of the event. Total madness of course, but what else would make us all want to get up at crazy times and dress up in suits?
November 14th, 2006 at 11:09 pm
“3D Internet (building a seamless, standards-based 3D Internet)”
Oh, my!
November 15th, 2006 at 8:10 am
What a day! This was such a cool thing to be a part of. It came in at the start of an already hectic day. I had stayed up late trying to get my wireless stable (am in a hotel in Frankfurt) and then got up for the event only to have the wireless go down 5 minutes before we went live! Arrrggghhhh!!!!! I hot footed it down to Jack Mason’s room to watch the event and join in the back channel chat, which was hilarious, and as Roo says I think we were all a bit nervous that something would go wrong. I was very proud to hear that Wayne Smith had gone over to join Holly and Ian in Beijing and that the camera techniques that he and I worked hard on for the Virtual Bloc Party were put into good use and improved for the Beijing gig.
Well done guys - fantastic. It’s a line in the sand and I think that the coming year will be one crazy rollercoaster.
BTW… will be blogging on my internal blog
http://blogs.tap.ibm.com/weblogs/page/airesk@uk.ibm.com
and probably on the Greater IBM blog ( http://greateribm.typepad.com/) on this and more later today.
November 15th, 2006 at 11:37 am
It’s a shame that most of the readers of Eightbar won’t be able to get to your internal blog Kevin, but thanks for sharing the URL with those of us who can. :-)
November 15th, 2006 at 2:52 pm
Adam Reuters offers Sam’s avatar
http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2006/11/09/ibm-accelerates-push-into-3d-virtual-worlds/
November 15th, 2006 at 5:57 pm
[...] Reports at over at eightbar here and a Reuters, here. [...]
November 15th, 2006 at 6:46 pm
Thanks to Wayne for videoing the event as you mention Kevin, I think he did it from wherever he is based though as I didn’t see him in Beijing :)
November 16th, 2006 at 10:24 am
Update: Ian Smith took some fantastic backstage photos.
November 17th, 2006 at 5:16 pm
a few more backstage photos here
Not as good as Ians, but there’s some shots of him in there to complete his set.
November 20th, 2006 at 1:12 am
Hi, I am not connected in any way with any of this, simply an observer with a keen interest in viewing/visiting the Forbidden City in SL… so far I haven’t been able to access it in anyway, and it appears to be either unfinished, closed, or restricted. Can you provide any information about its current or future accessibility to everyone/anyone? thanks very much …
November 20th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
Irving has blogged about the event too. Enjoy.
November 20th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
Hi kangarool. It’s currently closed to the public, but you can read about it on John Tolva’s blog.
November 22nd, 2006 at 6:18 am
Thanks for the reply Roo. I wrote John, who was kind enough to write me back and told me the same thing, and that it isn’t being created in SL. I then replied, asking if there are plans to ever, eventually, open it to the public, and if so under what format/platform, but haven’t yet heard back (only been a day or so). As I wrote to John, I have a keen interest in the Forbidden City, and think SL or another 3D world would be a spectacular way to present it/experience it.
November 25th, 2006 at 7:51 pm
[...] eightbar » Blog Archive » Innovation Jam results 3d Intranet as one of top 10 ideas coming out of this year’s IBM innovation jam (tags: press business secondlife) [...]
November 27th, 2006 at 10:07 pm
As you will see once you read my question, I have absolutely no experience with Second Life, however I am very interested in learning more. When IBM is holding their Town Hall Meeting, how does it work? When the presenter is giving the presentation is there audio streaming involved? Is the entire meeting conducted more like a chat room with everyone typing out what they have to say?
December 1st, 2006 at 6:42 pm
where is the location of the jam i have been looking for days?
December 2nd, 2006 at 2:43 am
[...] Reports over at eightbar here and at Reuters, here. Tags -economic info comms metaverse November 15, 2006 at 4:57 pm by autoassemble In categories: metaverse, economic, info-comms … With Leave a Comment [...]
January 14th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
[...] eightbar » Blog Archive » Innovation Jam results 3d Intranet as one of top 10 ideas coming out of this year’s IBM innovation jam (tags: press business secondlife) [...]
July 17th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
[...] The speaker list is a star-studded cast of dozens from thought leaders in the virtual worlds space. Ren Reynolds (no relation) will be there, and I might even finally get to meet Alice Taylor. As you’d expect, IBM are well represented. Colin Parris (IBM VP, Digital Convergence, which is where the 3D Internet work in IBM) is giving the keynote on Thursday (”Cross-world, cross-platform; how close are we to a multi-world integrated framework?”) and Ian is joining a panel later that morning (”Harnessing the power of virtual worlds for corporate collaboration”). [...]
September 19th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
[...] Wenn die Schwarm-Entscheidungen gut sein sollen, dann lassen sich aus den Themen bereits die Trends ablesen - ob 3D-Internet oder Green Computing. Mehr dazu in dieser Presseinfo von IBM. Gute Eindrücke liefert auch eightbar… [...]
February 8th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Coming Soon 3D World Capture Things… And Robots Control Human…..
March 29th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
This is awesome.. virtual reality finaly alive..
Cheers,
June 6th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Technology is advancing beyond anything we could have imagined just 20 years ago.