Mar
20
Second Life is not a fantasy world.
Filed Under Community, Digital Engagement, Innovation | Leave a Comment
- My avatar at an IBM conference auditorium
I had numerous people email me this news item about Second Life this morning. It is one of the frequent articles talking down or trivialising Second Life, the online virtual world. Maybe it is because 3D worlds are more obviously connected in people’s minds to gaming environments, but it seems to take more than its fair share of criticism from people who really don’t ‘get’ it.
I find the best way to understand the value of metaverses like Second Life - and what works and doesn’t work - is little different from the social web as a whole. Once you have got over the WOW factor of developing your own avatar and the ability to walk, fly or teleport to an almost infinite number of environments. If by then you have not engaged in any meaningful dialogue, relationship building, or found another source of self expression, connection or ongoing interest, then like thousands of others you will probably end up thinking ‘what is the point of this?’
However if you have participated and become an active member of the community with the extra dynamics that a 3D virtual world provide (for example proximity and simulation) then your experience will be completely different.
As a tax payer, I am glad that government departments are experimenting with comparatively very low cost systems to investigate if there is value - financial or otherwise - in engaging with these large scale communities. I remember the very early days of the Internet and have seen how what seems extraordinary and exotic today, can become commonplace and essential tomorrow. If they don’t investigate emerging platforms we will soon be moaning about why the public sector has again fallen so far behind the technological curve when it comes to the dramatic gains in productivity, efficiency and capability experienced by increasingly web savvy consumers.
Second Life requires a powerful PC with an advanced graphics card and decent broadband connection. It is not easy compared to the likes of Facebook - Second Life has a notoriously steep learning curve, especially to master the valuable physical and community building tools. There is still some considerable way to go yet.
But despite this the 3D web is coming whether we like it or not, and the smart people are learning early lessons on Second Life in anticipation of other more accessible and usable alternatives already in development.
Mar
16
What if work was social again?
Filed Under Community, Digital Engagement, Enterprise 2.0, Innovation | Leave a Comment
Double click to go full-screen.
This neat little piece from Jive is for the launch of their new edition of Clearspace now named Jive SBS (Social Business Software) and is certainly putting the cat amongst the enterprise 2.0 pigeons! This is one of the first enterprise level systems that has a truly credible suite of usable social media tools with an engine integrating them all together. There are many other options emerging on to the market but for me Jive SBS is clearly in the lead with full marks for digital engagement tools - a very powerful offering.
A high percentage of large scale organisations across the world have their electronic communications systems entwined with either Microsoft, IBM or Oracle. Despite this, Jive software has already been adopted by 15% of Fortune 500 companies - and this before the recent update.
Due to legacy systems there will still be a strong preference - especially from IT departments - for using Microsoft’s Sharepoint 2007 (MOSS) platform. Sharepoint has some powerful and highly configurable Web 2.0 tools to add to what is still essentially software based on a document management model.
However, Jive SBS is corporate software for the Facebook generation where software is a commodity and the challenge for implementation has people, community, engagement, collaboration and personal choice centre stage - not the technology.
Mar
10
Spotify the end of iTunes?
Filed Under Community, Innovation, Mobile | 1 Comment
Just as we started to get used to iTunes being the Grand Central Station for the majority of digital music purchases for the foreseeable future, barging uninvited into Apple’s party comes a quite stunning application called Spotify.
Spotify offers free and legal access to a huge library of music. All you need to do is create an account and download the player, available for both PCs and Macs - even the iPhone. There are other tools provided such as the ability to collaborate when creating playlists, and importantly for business they are now adding podcasts, but it is its simplicy that counts.
I have been using the application as I work on my laptop for a few weeks and find its ease of use truly compelling - it really does have an (original) Google like usability.
Mar
8
Two, Twelve, One Hundred and Twenty
Filed Under Community, Digital Engagement, Enterprise 2.0 | Leave a Comment
A sociologist once explained to me that friendship and community have natural ‘limitations’ relating to scale. Due to both the natural capacity of human beings and pure mathematical implications of the increased complexity of our lives by adding even say just one person to a few close friends or relations.
If I remember correctly the approximate boundaries were: family intimacy – two to six; group – maximum of 12, and community or village – up to 120. While you can’t apply it as a strict formula, I’ve often found it a helpful guide.
For example, when doing multi-disciplinary design workshops I try to limit participants to 12. Beyond that number the natural pressure to form sub-groups increases dramatically and the coherence of the meeting starts to degrade.
The next step up is around 120 people. This is the realm of ‘village’ or ‘community’, where you could class those people as close acquaintances. That means know their face, remember their name and have made some kind of connection or conversation with them. Beyond 120 it is hard to keep up even this level of relationship, again simply because of the limitations of our memory, time and attention.
Recently the research emerged again in an article in the Economist, this time being applied to online social networks. They even quote the 120 figure - saying that on Facebook members with more friends than this are just ‘broadcasting’ themselves.
Mar
3
Sport 2.0
Filed Under Innovation, Mobile | Leave a Comment
If you ever wanted a better example of the case for pocket-able video to convey practical but complex information and insight, quickly and efficiently, look no further than the heat of the dying moments of the Cup Final on Sunday.
At full-time and with a penalty shoot-out imminent, Ben Foster the Manchester United goalkeeper instead of grouping together with the rest of the team for a morale boost - was seen walking to the back of his net and plugging in his iPod! My immediate reaction was to assume he was going to listen to some hard-core heavy metal or such like to ‘wind himself up’ for the shoot-out.
However it transpires that Ben was watching videos of how the other side took their penalties! (Presumably it was an iPod Touch or and iPhone - anyone know?). One of the backroom staff had put a video pack together for this very eventuality. Foster said. “It’s an amazing tool to have, it means you can brush up straightaway”. Manchester United won the shoot out 4-1.
UPDATE March 10th: Matt Dickinson reports in The Times today…
“The use of iPods as training tools by Manchester United does not extend only to penalty shoot-outs. The players are offered bespoke highlight clips, cut for them by in-house staff, that can be downloaded straight to MP3 players or laptops and taken home for perusal after a game.”
This innovative, albeit obvious, use of mobile media for learning raises great possibilities for parallel situations. Think - modern apprenticeships, engineering, health and safety, medical surgery etc?