Virtual World sig

Here’s that list from 03/19/08 from Mike Rhodin  of IBM Lotus that references 5 trends to embrace in the virtual workplace.The press release is here:
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=834515&sourceType=1 

Here’s my own description of them:

1) “The Virtual Workplace will become the rule.”
Laptops and mobile devices will allow us to move beyond the “desk - typewriter - phone” model of the workplace. For many people of course this is already a way of life.  Social networking aspects of the virtual world will give the feeling of community.  The need for business travel will be reduced as virtual worlds and telepresence tools get better.

2) Real-time collaboration will become the norm. 
Email is too slow, and should be used (as it is in Second Life) as merely a cache of stored messages which arrived for you while you were asleep.  Again, already many young workers consider email too slow, having grown up on texting on phones.

3) “Beyond Phone Calls”. 
If you value productivity and time, the telephone is one of the least effective ways to communicate. Here IBM again mentions IM as being a tool for replacing many phone communications.  Now, of course the telephone is not going away, that’s not the point.  But there are huge benefits available in shifting select communications from phone to IM.

4) Interoperability desired.
IBM focuses on interoperability and open standards as inevitable as the space matures.  A lot of this just hasn’t been figured out yet and may not be, since platforms are generally competing business entities with different competencies. They are not necessarily interested in interoperability, whereas business just requires a coherent set of tools that does a few basic things flawlessly. That might not be found in any 1 platform, hence the cry for openness. They also mention increased ease of finding resources which could refer to ease of finding things in virtual worlds or better access to the correct individuals.

5) “Meetings” replaced with new models.
Fewer meetings - Woo-hoo!  It’s a conceptual leap - “gaming technologies will significantly influence online corporate meeting experiences”.  As I said at Virtual Worlds Fall 2007 in San Jose “gamers are using it now” and in fact, “collaborating ” much more effectively and with less cost.

-Bob Ketner

There were big announcements over the last couple of days that IBM and Forterra are teaming up to create collaboration tools for intelligence agencies. Both companies (IBM on 01/22/07 and Forterra on 06/25/07) have presented at the Virtual World SIG over the past year.

The article on applications for intelligence agencies are here:
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/0377901.htm

and here: http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/03/20/

Covered by VirtualWorldsNews.com here: http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2008/03/ibm-and-forterr.html

That article references another release in which Mike Rhodin of IBM Lotus describes 5 future trends in this direction of “Unified Communications”. That release is linked here: Marketwire IBM press release.

And more discussion about the IBM view of virtual worlds here:
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/0377261.htm

This type of news could be an early glimpse of the slope of enlightenment, which would be welcome, as there are indications that this could be a trough of disillusionment period. It’s good to see these virtual world concepts that have been talked about for so long put into some concrete plans. Now let’s just hope that today’s version of the ARPANET is online and their version of “the grid” is up when the red phone rings at 3 am!

-Bob Ketner

[UPDATE]
Thanks for staying posted, I wish this could have been streamed.  As it happened, the camera was not hooked up to a  laptop so it did not happen.  Apologies.  Normally I do the streaming myself on my own dime, but in this case I had to run the real-world stage announcements etc.  I invite you to our other sig meetings and will post any links I can to the archived video of today.  Thanks and wish this could have happened.  Best, Bob Ketner

Hi,
Bob Ketner here, I’m not running the camera or audio today, but I’m going to try to direct any media here via ustream. I won’t be in SL either due to organizing the RL conference.

For an SL meeting place, meet as usual at: Innovation Island (this link will start the Second Life program)
You can view the presentations with the embedded viewer. Video will be active during the presentation.
If not working please try: http://ustream.tv/channel/virtual-world-sig

Hello,
Tomorrow’s the day to be part of the conversation as Virtual Worlds Go Mobile with talks from Nokia, SKT, 4 VC’s, MBlox, Veepers, Gemini mobile, WiFi Army, and Smith Micro.

This afternoon conference coincides with alongside a flurry of press releases and announcements from virtual world platforms and media companies that are taking virtual worlds to the new platforms of phones and mobile devices. Get the inside forecasts and views on these new developments!

Register here:
http://www.sdforum.org/

Virtual Worlds Go Mobile

11:45am - 5:00pm February 26, 2008

Virtual Goes Mobile
Crossing the Chasm from the Internet

Event Overview:
At the speed of light, three dimensional parallel universes and their immersive communities -whether they be virtual worlds of shopping centers, nightclubs or interactive gaming- went from “radical fringe” to mainstream, with multinationals around the world setting up their own islands to be represented in this new part of the internet galaxy. Now the next frontier may be the most complex one to cross yet - mobile platforms. All players in the tech eco-system are setting stakes to offer consumers new options in social interactivity of all forms:

* Companies already entrenched in virtual worlds and interactive gaming, where mobile devicese the next BIG opportunity
* Social networking and community enterprises hoping to add a third dimension to their community and/or “go mobile”
* The enablers and supporters, whether they be investors who fund and help scale these enterprises or technology plays, such as payment systems, operating systems and platforms…

This conference is the first of its kind to listen to all the voices in the eco-system as they discuss what opportunities will be available and what the challenges are to realize this goal, when communities are able to connect, communicate and share content on these mobile devices, how the location-specific abilities and information be integrated, where should we look for emerging markets for web content when it becomes accessible to billions of cell-phone users.

Agenda:
11:45am-12:30pm Registration and Networking Lunch
12:30pm-12:45pm Welcome Remarks
12:45pm-1:15pm

Opening Keynote Speaker:
Anders Nancke-Krogh, Nokia
1:15pm-2:30pm

Panel Discussion: “The Venture Landscape”
Baris Karadogan, Velocity Interactive Group
Nate Redmond, Rustic Canyon
Sharon Wienbar, Scale Venture
Richard Wong, Accel

Moderator: Mike Doran, Fish & Richardson
2:30pm-3:00pm

“The Global Perspective”
Keynote Speaker: Joe Jasin, SKT
3:00pm-3:15pm

Entrepreneur Profile, Virtual Perspective
Martin Dunsby, Vollee
3:15-3:30pm Afternoon Break
3:30-3:45pm

Entrepreneur Profile, Monetizing the mobile Experience:
Steve Livingston, MBlox
3:45pm-5:00pm

Panel Discussion: “Paths for the Future: Success Stories and Learned Lessons”

Paul Anderson, Veepers
Rob Osborn, Gemini Mobile Technologies
Tomasz Wojtowicz, WiFi Army
Mandar Shinde, Smith Micro
Moderator: Ewan MacLeod, SMS Text News

5:00pm-5:15pm Closing Remarks

Price:
Platinum Pass: $25
Members: $65
Non-members: $85

Location:
Tech Mart Center, Fremont Room,
5201 Great America Parkway
Santa Clara, CA 95054
Directions

Here it is, what we have discussed at the SIG before, a mixing of RL and SL and representation of both on screen of some kind. These folks at Georgia Institute of Technology (http://arsecondlife.gvu.gatech.edu/index.html) show how avatars and humans, both seated within a designated AR stage area mix in a video. They also discuss MMO’s in general. Looks slightly odd and hard to tell what’s going on but this is right on the edge of the augmented reality direction for sure.  You can even teleport to their location:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Augmented%20Reality/41/74/38

They also have a longer video at: http://arsecondlife.gvu.gatech.edu/defensearmmoref.mov.

Ouch, watch the mic in the first minutes of this video. The birds and crickets also have a really good time in the background.

Got a heads up from California Condor (in-world SL) that there’s a Metaverse Meetup “Crossroads to the Metaverse” in Hoboken, NJ.
tomorrow Sat. Feb. 23. Organized by Thodore Wright, Andy Fundinger,  and long-time SL’er Hiro Pendragon.

Details at:

http://gamedev.meetup.com/166/calendar/7312910/

Looks like all the details will be posted there.  Hopefully it happens simultaneously in SL.  If so, I’ll be there!

Virtual Worlds Go Mobile is shaping up to be a groundbreaking meetup/mashup of virtual worlds+mobile+open platforms. This is the first convergent meeting where the mobile virtual world space meets up on the same stage as the Android open handset movement and mobile hardware.

Here’s a list of the speakers lined up - it all happens Tue. Feb. 26:

Full Program

Keynote: Anders Nancke-Krogh, Nokia

Panel Discussion: “The Venture Landscape”
Moderator: Mike Doran, Fish & Richardson
Baris Karadogan, Velocity Interactive Group
Nate Redmond, Rustic Canyon
Sharon Wienbar, Scale Venture
Richard Wong, Accel

Keynote : Joe Jasin, SKT “The Global Perspective”

Entrepreneur Profile: Martin Dunsby, Vollee

Entrepreneur Profile,: Steve Livingston, MBlox

Panel Discussion: “Paths for the Future: Success Stories and Learned Lessons”
Moderator: Ewan MacLeod, SMS Text News
Paul Anderson, Veepers
Rob Osborn, Gemini Mobile Technologies
Tomasz Wojtowicz, WiFi Army
Mandar Shinde, Smith Micro

Register Here

Demo tables still available please contact Bob Ketner atfor more info.

Hi Virtual Worlders,

We’re pulling together this afternoon conference to advance the discussion on virtual worlds - how and when they will “go mobile”.
It’s lining up to be an interesting mix of vc, Android, gaming, and hardware takes on the topic - not to be missed, details how to attend below.

“This conference is the first of its kind to listen to all the voices in the eco-system as they discuss what opportunities will be available and what the challenges are to realize this goal, when communities are able to connect, communicate and share content on these mobile devices, how the location-specific abilities and information be integrated, where should we look for emerging markets for web content when it becomes accessible to billions of cell-phone users.”
Keynote Speakers:
Joe Jasin, SKT, and Anders Nancke-Krogh, Nokia
Panelists:
Paul Anderson, Veepers
Martin Dunsby, Vollee
Baris Karadogan, Velocity Interactive
Steve Livingston, MBlox
Rob Osborn, Gemini Mobile Technologies
Nate Redmond, Rustic Canyon
Sharon Wienbar, Scale Venture
Tomasz Wojtowicz, WiFi Army
Rich Wong, Accel
Event Overview:

At the speed of light, three dimensional paralle universes and their immersive communities -whether they be virtual worlds of shopping centers, nightclubs or  interactive gaming- went from “radical fringe” to mainstream, with multinationals around the world setting up their own islands to be represented in this new part of the internet galaxy. Now the next frontier may be the most complex one to cross yet - mobile platforms.  All players in the tech eco-system are setting stakes to  offer consumers new options in social interactivity of all forms:

* Companies already entrenched in virtual worlds and interactive gaming, where mobile devicese the next BIG opportunity
* Social networking and community enterprises hoping to add a third dimension to their community and/or “go mobile”
* The enablers and supporters, whether they be investors who fund and help scale these enterprises or technology plays, such as payment systems, operating  systems and platforms…

This conference is the first of its kind to listen to all the voices in the eco-system as they discuss what opportunities will be available and what the challenges are  to realize this goal, when communities are able to connect, communicate and share content on these mobile devices, how the location-specific abilities and  information be integrated, where should we look for emerging markets for web content when it becomes accessible to billions of cell-phone users.

Agenda:
12:00pm-12:45pm              Registration and Networking
Lunch
12:45pm-1:00pm     Welcome Remarks
1:00pm-1:30pm
Opening Keynote Speaker:

Anders Nancke-Krogh, Nokia
1:30pm-2:00pm

“The Global Perspective”
Keynote Speaker: Joe Jasin, SKT
2:15pm-3:15pm

Panel Discussion: “The Venture Landscape”

Baris Karadogan, Velocity Interactive
Nate Redmond, Rustic Canyon
Sharon Wienbar, Scale Venture
Richard Wong, Accel

3:15pm-3:45pm     Keynote TBC
3:45pm-4:45pm

Panel Discussion: “Paths for the Future: Success
Stories and Learned Lessons”

Paul Anderson, Veepers
Martin Dunsby, Vollee
Steve Livingston, MBlox
Tomasz Wojtowicz, WiFi Army
Speaker TBD, Smith Micro
Rob Osborn, Gemini Mobile Technologies
Register

Hi Virtual Worlders:
I’d like to invite you to participate in a survey put together by our friend and associate Eilif Trondsen of SRI Consulting Business Intelligence.  It’s about 15 mins or less to complete and you will get the report and analysis too.

Here’s the link: http://tinyurl. com/yrhzmm

About the survey:
A wide range of applications and uses of virtual worlds (VWs) by consumers and enterprises have emerged in the last couple of years. The objective of this survey is to focus on one broad use category—Collaborati ve Work—and to get your views and perspectives on what role virtual worlds are playing in these kinds of applications today, and what you expect to see in the future.

The survey is a collaborative effort between the following organizations:
• Special Interest Group (SIG) on Virtual Worlds of the Software
Developers Forum (SDF) in Silicon Valley (led by Bob Ketner)
• The Serious Second Life group in Bolder, Colorado (led by Richard Hackathorn)
• Metaverse U at Stanford University (led by Henrik Bennetsen)
• The Virtual-Worlds Consortium for Innovation and Learning of SRIC-BI (led by Eilif Trondsen)

Everyone who participates will receive a report with analysis of the survey results. We may also organize a SDF-SIG meeting on this topic, and in this case we will alert all participants so they can join us in Palo Alto or in Second Life. No personal information collected in this survey will be used for any commercial purposes and your answers will be confidential and will be used only in combination with those of other respondents.
The survey has four more sections and should take about 15 minutes or so to complete.

Join us in Second Life at: Innovation Island (this link will start the Second Life program)
You can view the SIG presentations with the embedded viewer.  Video will be active during the presentation.
If not working please try: http://ustream.tv/channel/virtual-world-sig