Ian already posted his morphed green-and-spiky / Predator avatars. Here are three morphs I made over the weekend showing myself, Irving and Sam changing between our respective avatars and real life photos. Enjoy.
Category Archives: Life
Tired and croaky: busy day yesterday
I’m tired and slightly croaky after a long day yesterday. As Andy already pointed out, much of it centered around NMK’s My So Called 2nd Life conference at 01Zero-One, right in the middle of Soho.
Once it got underway, the speakers were:
- MMOs: where are they now, and where are they heading? – Michael Smith
Michael (the CEO of Mind Candy, the makers of Perplexcity) spoke on MMOs (including Habbo Hotel, Cyworld, Second Life, Virtual Laguna Beach, etc. He also talked about ARGs (Alternate Reality Games) and tangible stuff. Afterwards, we chatted about the growing phenomena of tangible web things. If Perplexcity is a tangible virtual world it’s interesting to see Moo‘s Flickr cards (I see they’re doing Skype cards now too!), The Friday Project which brings websites to print, Fabjectory‘s 3d-printed avatars as a growing trend. - Collaborative and innovative working inside virtual worlds – Andrew ‘Roo’ Reynolds
That would be me then. I explained the impact virtual worlds such a Second Life are having on business and how some companies are already using them to work collaboratively on a global scale. My (by now fairly well-practiced) talk on what virtual worlds are and why IBM cares was just as informal and conversational as ever. I pretty much managed to forget that there was a gaggle of press in the room (Reuters, BBC, New Scientist, …). Hence, Adam from Reuters got some pretty choice quotes which sounded (at least to me on the first reading) frighteningly casual.
- The artistic, creative & entertainment opportunities inside MMORPGs – Esther MacCallum-Stewart
An academic (but interesting) overview of MMORPGs. She pronounces MMORPG “more-peg”, which is a new one on me. I’d like to see a copy of Esther’s slides, as there was some really good theory about what makes MMOs work. - E-learning business opportunities inside virtual worlds – Gauti Sigthorsson
Gauti, while enjoying Second Life, does not think it can be used for e-learning. Apparently it’s too hard and the barrier to entry is too high (“it’s a gated community due to its resource intensive nature and the skillset required”). He has a point with this stuff, and it was an interesting counterpoint to the more gung-ho speakers (e.g. almost all of the rest of us). - Business opportunities inside Second Life for creative industries – Justin Bovington
Justin (Rivers Run Red) shared some of the history of business and marketing in Second Life, along with some of his interesting projects. Vodafone, Penguin books, Duran Duran, BBC, Adidas, Reebok, … quite a list. Justin said two of the major milestones of Second Life have been the BBC event (“the Woodstock of Second Life”) and the Reuters office. Both of these events have been responsible for driving up the population of Second Life very quickly.
There was then a Q&A panel session, in which we were joined by Jim Purbrick (Babbage Linden; the only full-time Linden employee in the UK). As you can imagine, Jim got a lot of questions. He said some very encouraging things about Open Source, and opening up the client (and eventually the server). Adam’s Reuters piece covered this pretty well too.
I met a lot of interesting people, got to know some people a bit better. Thanks to NMK for inviting me; I really enjoyed myself. Today I am croaky and barely have any voice left. Probably a good thing so I can shut up for a while and catch up on what I was missing having been off the net for a day.
The Darren and Roo show: Day 1
We’re still in Nottingham, enjoying the first full day of the IT Specialist Institute, 2006. Since we’re staying in the University halls, the rooms are not quite hotel-quality, but definitely not bad. Probably the worst bit (for a 6’4″ freak like me) is the small bed.
The breakfast was great though, as was the opening presentation from Sudhir Chardha, who presented on innovation and the GIO (Global Innovation Outlook). We are not giving our presentation until tomorrow afternoon (2 – 3pm if you’re attending the Institute and want to attend). Today we’ve been mainly hanging around underneath Darren’s very cool posters, chatting to people, demonstrating Second Life and talking about why Virtual Worlds are important.
There has been a fairly steady stream of conversations. We’ve also managed to add two more people to our (probably not very comprehensive) list of over 100 known IBM SL users who can access Ian’s island.
Baby Linden Second Life in Second Life
After a late night at the SL baseball last night, I had to excuse myself early from the event. I announced to all in earshot that I had to be awake for my RL Wife’s scan on our new baby. This scan is the 13 weeks one. I also mentioned, as people do, that we have a nickname for the baby. Last time it was Herbert/Herbertina. This time I have started calling the baby Linden.
My Regina Spektor cd had arrived that morning too so things were all getting very circular.
I could not resist putting little Linden into Second Life, the baby being our second.
Now this is getting confusing!
I dont think this causes the same problems as Scoble letting his son use second life
Thoughts on Professions
I’ve been spending most of the weekend writing my professions case. Professions cases are used to qualify for certain levels of accreditation within the Professions structure. It is, essentially, an internal IBM qualification. There are different Professions streams for different job types (Project Management, Architects, Software Engineers etc.) and I am in the IT Specialist one, which is probably the biggest one and covers the widest range of people, ideal for generalists like me. As well as a qualification it also acts as a large community, the UK has yearly get togethers for the different streams of professions. While I’m normally anti any kind of qualification/title/status, I do admit to having a level of base respect for anyone with a qualification in the various professions disciplines (ok maybe not the project managers 
), it is done by peer review after all.
The main incentive for people to gain their qualification is that many areas of IBM have it as a prerequisite for promotion. Not all of IBM follow this, which is a problem, but a large enough part do to make it seem fair. People who don’t actually do their cases probably underestimate what a large piece of work it is. I’ve spent two solid weekends on it so far and it’s probably half finished. Your case is really a set of evidence to show that you have been working at a level that is necessary for the status you’re applying for. I’m writing my Senior case, which is the prerequisite (in my area) for becoming a band 8 IBMer (bands are a whole other thing!).
Anyway, here’re some thoughts I had while writing my case:
- There’s nothing more boring in the world than writing about yourself.
- As much as you may hate corporate buzzwords, it’s hard not to include them.
- Personally, there’s too much structure enforced in the case. Some people prefer this, but I’d prefer a blank piece of paper where I could just prove that I reach the required level by writing (or probably drawing) anything I want.
- Lots of the things I’m most proud of being involved in at IBM are actually the hardest to fit in to the structure.
- I’m much better at knowing what other people are good at, than what I’m good at.
- I think blogs could be made better use of in cases, lots of people write more detail about what they’re doing in their blogs, so some easy way of incorporating that in would make sense.
- I shouldn’t put off writing more of my case by blogging about it instead.
Taking risks and Blogging
Robert Scoble talks about the risks and intent of blogging
It links to a very good video of the man himself, and one that all bloggers and people doing things that are considered “risky” outside of their normal role should watch.
As a blogger, and having created a bit of a Second Life movement, as you can see in the rest of this blog, I can really relate to what Scoble is saying. The knowledge that there are risks in talking publicly, whether in blogs, at conferences, in presentations and that you have to be mindful that social networks work both for the positive and the negative is very true and something I have pointed out to people. The fact that many people do not want to talk to groups of people and share their ideas is an interesting and correct observation, whether as a blogger or as a face to face presenter. People do get to practice they public speaking persona in a less risky environment of a blog, gain a voice and a position on a subject, then present and talk to people.
The motivations for blogging, of having something to say, and having some sort of reason to take a risk in putting that agenda forward certainly resonates with me too.
The rise of user created content, the blog,wiki and metaverse effect applied to any form of media which now allows anyone to get their ideas out to the world at the click of a button is a key theme that we should all ponder how that might change what we do, just as e-business has.
Ambient Orbs, Rabbits, Penguins and the Availabot
Ambient (or ‘calm’) technologies, as demonstrated by the lovely creations of Ambient Devices and the whacky French Nabaztag rabbit, unobtrusively display ever-changing data. Something which can be left on the desk and ignored, but catches your attention as it softly changes throughout the day, is a valuable tool in this information-overloaded age.
Eightbar has previously reported on a friend and colleague who is responsible for a wireless ambient penguin (see the a description and video). Using bi-colour LEDs, this ‘Wallace And Gromit’ inspired creation keeps track of our manager’s instant messaging status (off for online, green for active and red for away).
When I read about the Availabot recently, I was very impressed. It brings together not just ambient online status awareness, but also rapid-prototyping ’3D printing’, for a truly personal touch. Having a desktop avatar which not only represents a friend’s online status but also looks like them is a great idea. The fact that it physically falls over in such an amusing way helps too. (Don’t miss the video of the Availabot in action.)
When 3D printing becomes a bit more affordable, this sort of hack is going to be wonderfully easy and popular. I’m looking forward to a world overrun by hobbyist gadgets.
Wimbledon, Shuttles and July 4th
I am currently onsite at the Wimbledon Championships. This involves sitting in the basement of the media centre with my collegues from Hursley, Atlanta and Raleigh. Being couped up delivering wimbledon.org always brings an interesting group dynamic. We have a strange 14 hour day, with a mixture of customer visits (a.k.a. tech tours), checkpoints, testing out new things and the day job.
With my Wimbledon second life demo as part of the tech tour it was natural that a few of the guys in the room would get into it too. Yesterday was a prime example and trigger. It was July 4th. There was a shuttle launch. We have lots of bandwidth. So streaming media of the launch both for the Uk and the US guys in the room was a must.
The difference this year was that some of us had Second Life running, and were at the excellent spaceport alpha. It turned out that of the 70 or so people at the event in the prime location 5 of us were IBMers from eightbar in Second Life, including a husband and wife team. The event was the first one I have seen that had overflow areas as more areas of land were turned over to streaming the video.
The nature of the event and the buzz we had in RL and SL in an enclosed space made it all very exciting and enabled a few more people to ‘get’ why metaverse technologies really do work.
More pictures are on snapzilla and the SLURL to spaceport alpha
The Warner Music man who ‘gets it’
Having written a , for me, quite deep expression of my experience with the Regina Specktor album pre-release by Warner it has been great to see all the coverage and postive bloggage about Ethan Kaplan ‘blackrim glasses’ at gnomedex. He is a person who ‘gets it’. The people writing about him ‘get it’ such as Eric Rice and the people I meet in Second Life and related places all seem to have the same approach and same ideas. Not identical, but birds of a feather. It is important, as Eric writes, that we still work with the rest of the world. No technology or social change just happens overnight. I think that they guys and I here in Hursley have both a creative and future looking point of view, but mix that with practical uses. So it feels like the Metaverse is the place to express this and make a serious and innovative contribution.
Amazonians push the envelope
3pointD are reporting on the recent news from Supernova 2006 about pioneering ‘Amazonians’. Some Second Life users, who also happen to be Amazon employees, are exploring the potential of “a bridge between Amazon Web services and Second Life so you can go into Second Life and actually try things on there and buy them”. Interesting news indeed.
I have been wondering for a while which existing major online brand will be the first to make the move from e-business to v-business. American Apparel recently announced its virtual store, but if the Amazonians can get their company’s support might Amazon be the first company to really start the blur the boundaries between the real, the online and the virtual marketplace?
The fact that it’s “not being done under the auspices of the company” is not necessarily a bad sign either. The need for early-adopter employees to try some things out before their employer really ‘gets’ something (or can feels it can support it) is something most bleeding edge types can probably relate to.
A tool for browsing and choosing items to be sent to your home in meatspace would be the next baby step for online shopping. At its most basic, using a virtual world to act as a store and shopping cart for existing real life goods will be a refreshing change from current online shopping models, and provides some pretty interesting possibilities for a richer user experience too. In the same way that some booksellers already offer a PDF download while the dead tree is in the post, I wonder how long before Cafepress (or one of their competitors) offers avatarwear as an option for its user-designed products. Here’s my design. I need that on a T-shirt, a cap, oh and something off-the-shoulder for my avatar while I’m waiting.
Gradually, the metaverse matures.