Virtual Worlds: Ready – Fire – Aim

Virtual environments have become significantly places for innovations in social interaction, business collaboration, and learning. The development phase of the basic information communications ended around the time of the dot-com crash. Now, we are in thedeployment phase of virtualization. This trend will create an unstoppable pull toward pervasive use of virtualization that will affect many aspects of commerce and society.

What are the forces that make these questions particularly urgent? What technologies will be needed to overcome the barriers faced in virtual world deployment?

Join a panel of IBM researchers to address these issues in light of the company’s recent forays into virtual worlds.

About the Presenters

Doug McDavid, IBM Academy of Technology
http://Second Life avatar: Doug Mandelbrot

Dave Kamalsky, IBM Almaden Research Center and other IBM representatives

Biographies

Doug McDavid is an Executive Research Consultant with IBM’s Enterprise Architecture and Technology center of excellence and the Almaden Research Lab. He specializes in bridging the gap between business people and technologists. He wrote much of IBM’s standard methodology in the business domain and is currently leading an initiative to define the role of “business transformation architect” within IBM. He is also exploring new methods of rehearsing services techniques in virtual environments, such as Second Life. He has taken leadership roles and performed hands-on modeling and requirements definition on numerous successful customer engagements in such diverse areas as insurance, public utilities, telecommunications, manufacturing, travel, aerospace, and defense. He has 6 patents, and numerous articles in such publications as IBM Systems Journal and was on the editorial board for the Handbook of Object Technology from CRC Press and authored a chapter on “Systems Envisioning.” In 2000 Doug was elected to the IBM Academy of Technology.

Dave Kamalsky has a diverse career at IBM spanning 16 years working as a VM Systems Programmer, I/T Architect, Software Engineer, and Project Manager. His career goals have always been directed towards working with latest software technology, in small teams which make large impacts on the company as a whole. Starting with co-founding alphaWorks under John Patrick’s Internet Division (in 1996), Dave lead the team which created and managed the industry’s first online research incubation lab. Following this in 2000, Dave contributed to the opening of IBM’s Extreme Blue recruitment program at IBM’s Almaden Research Center. In 2001, Dave helped launch Almaden Research’s Webfountain EBO (emerging business opportunity), in large scale text data analytics. Currently Dave is helping to grow IBM’s internal community of over 1500, embracing 3D Virtual Worlds, earning the title of IBM’s “Guildmaster.”

Location

Pillsbury Winthrop Office Silicon Valley
2475 Hanover Street
Palo Alto, CA 94304-1114
Directions

Agenda

6:30 PM Registration and Networking
7:00 PM -8:40 PM Presentations

Price

$15 at the door for non-SDForum members
No charge for SDForum members
No registration required

Media: MP3 Files

intro
part 01
part 02
note
presentation

Blog and media coverage:

http://www.djcline.com/?p=772