CTO Blog

Andy,
I just had the opportunity to meet IBM on their investment in SL and what they expect to do in it. They were pretty enthousiastic about bringing virtual world environments to businesses, and they mainly mentioned collaborative meetings, new added value help-desk for the seller (like kitchens prototype for your need), new type of marketing events with clients.

So I decided to test myself. Created an account, donwloaded the software, searched for places to go, learned the commands. It took me several hours to learn on how to interact with this world.

I come to my point of view on the speed of adoption of this kind of tool for collaborative meetings. I don't think it will happen in the next couple of years. We have Internet since more than 10 years, netmeeting since more than 10 years, instant messaging since more than 10 years, webcams since more than 10 years. Would you like to guess the percentage of people in business using that today to run meetings? Even when the firewall does not prevent them to do so? Even when they work in IT?
I think that business flights will remain full and expensive again for a long time...

Two threads come out of this blog entry, and my personal experience of exploring Second Life for the past few months:

First, Second Life does provide an interesting new medium for communication and interaction. There is a general consensus that the immersive experience of SL interactions are more rewarding than simle "chat". Furthermore, (and perhaps this is more down to the personalities who are the early adopters in SL) it appears to be easier to contact decision-makers and influencers within SL. (See http://slmascot.blogspot.com/2007/03/myspace-or-msn-for-execs.html)

Secondly, my explorations of SL have been a collaborative exercise with a number of colleagues and friends met in SL. This work has led to extensive blogging, use of Google Notebook, Google Homepage, web page counters, development of a wiki, stumbleupon, flickr, slideshare, podcasts. It has been quite an education to see how easy it is to use such tools, and how valuable they have been in collating the information gathered. Also, as you indicate in your blog entry, it is interesting to see how these various resources interlink, and how much information can be gleaned from such resources. Furthermore, on reflection, hardly any of the informaiton gathered has been as a result of google searches - it has all come about from snippets of news linked from one blog or news-source to another.

A final observation; the various information sources referred to above are only of use if there is a constant flow of fresh news and information flowing through them, which, in turn, relies on enthusiastic contributors.

These two last posts represent my own rather split feelings rather well. on the one side there is definately something in the technology that under pins SL that will be a building block towards a 3D web as IBM likes to call it. On the other its not there yet and the fantasy side of SL certainly doesn't help the business side to come to terms with it.

Francois' experience will be the same as many coming into SL. It takes a long time to get the basics of movement and communication sorted out, and furthermore the interface is quite clunky.

However, it is something that only needs to be learned once. Thereafter, one should not need to top up with new training. You're not trying to find a reason to justify building up those Air Miles, are you, Francois? :-)

It is true that the initial entry into SL could be easier - and indeed, the release of a Registration API is now allowing companies to provide their own routes into the environment. This has allowed simpler orientation, and a much faster way to get up to speed. Right now, the main exponent of this is "The L Word", which has its own "portal" into SL. Forget all that fancy stuff, it provides enough info to let you move around, talk and Get Shopping!

I attended a presentation from Mike Askew, Fidelity Centre for Applied Technology at the GM Architecture Day and he presented on 3D Internet. His company are making significant inroads to collboration techniques using a Second Life style of approach - he showed whiteboard style activities etc. He expects a pilot to be introduced into Fidelity this year for further evalution of the approach.

One of the interesting statements made was that this requires a move back to a 'thick' client, although he has seen work to try to address this.

They major on 'user experience' and the GM crowd were positive about this new approach given the skills etc. of students now emerging from Universities.

Perhaps worth touching base with Mike if we do not already have contact.

but don't you feel that sitting in front of a computer all that time hurts your ass? (please excuse the language)

'Normal websites' v second life virtual worlds - I see it as becoming a kind of radio v TV situation. You get more fluff and nonsense on TV, it's easier to just sit and waste time - but it can be very useful.

kmt

Francois,

Railroads were introduced in England in the 16th century and 200 years passed before they were introduced in the US (ignoring the railway/railroad distinction). In Kubrick's Space Odyssey, some 40 odd years ago, the characters communicated via the modern-day equivalent of video phone. It has taken a while for the appropriate technology to develop (in terms of quality and speed of transfer) and it will take a good deal of time for it to be adopted. All it takes is one successful entrepreneur or big-dollar company to find a creative and advantageous use for virtual technology and the rest of the community will slowly but surely follow.

I have played a little of SL (less than 3 hours) and the interface isn't horrendously difficult. I feel that the only thing preventing from using it more frequently is the "sitting on your ass" bit that John brought up. I can't help but feel wasteful to come home and eat free time, encapsulated in escapism. I'd appreciate a more "take it with you" type of virtual world: Recently, a set of glasses has come on sale that, when worn, present a screen that appears several feet away, so that when you can hook up a movie to the glasses and it will appear as though it is being projected onto a large screen at a distance. I would love to see some sort of interface built that combines this technology with SL or other virtual systems. If I could be anywhere, slip on these glasses (perhaps have some sort of wireless keyboard etc. for interaction) and enter into a meeting or a discussion room.

Andy,

I think your fantasy v. business concerns will resolve themselves naturally as the virtual world evolves. Once more and more of it becomes for profit, companies will have a vested interest not only in marketing virtual wares within the virtual community, but also outside of it, not to mention the sale of real products within virtual worlds. The evolution to a social marketplace, I feel, based on the incentives of corporations will ground the virtual world in a business domain.

excellent post - great comments that capture the two situations. i think the 'tipping point' comes to each of us individually when we find its personal value.

Capgemini employees who are interested in SL have formed a community in SL to experiment further called 'friends of the blue spade' and we all hope this will provide further insights.

andy

Yep, great post! We are just starting to explore all possibilities with Web 2.0 techniques. And as far as the user interface is concerned: mouse and keyboard were great for 2D... there will be new devices for 3D, soon.