Where did December go???

So class is over, funny it still feels like November to me. Anywho, in my last post I promised some pictures of my recent projects. I don't have anything on Vizrt yet, but I do have some from the Federal consortium on Virtual Worlds. This is a picture from NOAA, the venue for the inworld meeting. I got there early which was a good thing, evidently the grid became overloaded and wasn't letting people in after 8:00am. I met a few avatars from the DoD and Civil agencies which had surprisingly varied roles. Some had agriculture intrests, others worked for DoD and thats about all I got out of them. They wern't really there to talk about their work. I sat next to a colleague and spent my time watching the video on the screen listening to the real world presentations which ranged from what IBM is doing in Second Life, to what NASA has created in second life (its very cool, go check it out!)

In terms of Vizrt, a collague of mine was tasked with making the script so after my creative consulting before Thanksgiving, I haven't had to contribute much to the production of the actual clip. I think i'm in some of the video though! If I do get a copy and it isn't huge, i'll post it on my blog (pending export control)

As for the presentations, I think everyone did a great job. The RFID stuff is really really big, I know retail is taking off with it as a practical security and tracking measure, but many other communities are taking aim at utilizing active tags and tinyOS. I think i did a report on TinyOS a while ago, and focused on the wine industry using RFID to transmit conditions on the grape vines to a centralized point.

The video gaming obviously was a hit, (note everyone kept interrupting them, which i'd take as a sign of interest, not rude-ness) I'm interested in the use of gaming as a training mechanism for cultural sensitivity and negotiations. While doing my research on virtual teams, I found quite a bit about gaming for the war fighter. Sandia had a project (now public knowledge) to train the war fighter on peaceful negotiations.

The Second Life team had the unfortunate luck to go last. I think your presentation was great, well researched. I was absolutely exhausted by the time the last group came around, and I apologize to the group for the collective mood. You guys were great, and second life defined had enough substance to turn it into a final project.

I give kudos to the wiki team for having a virtual member. Michelle presented very well even over the phone. Wiki's are a very large part of the organization I currently work for. The obstacles that plagued the team that rolled out our wiki was huge. We had legal and communications blocking us most of the time, and when we finally got a beta version out, we were only allowed to release it to a selected group of people (kinda kills the point)

As for my team, Virtual Teams. Its a huge topic and I struggled with my globalization part because when i think of a virtual team, i think of those who work in different parts of the country. I've never experienced a global team (since you have to be a US citizen to work in my area) so all the stuff i presented was from research, not first hand knowledge. I use virtual technology almost daily, whether it be awful netmeeting or think tank, I'm constantly jumping on a tool to show somebody something since my team is out of Fairfax and I sit in King of Prussia.

Alright if you are still reading this Thank You for your attention. This posting serves as my last post as a grad student (providing I don't fail) I enjoyed discussion in class and research I was able to conduct. If anyone wants to get a hold of me, feel free to email me at mmp190@gmail.com

Happy Holidays!

More adventures in Second Life and Vizrt

It feels like a while since i've been talking face to face with classmates, so regrettably I have a lot to say...

I feel lucky because work and class have seemingly run parallel this semester. I've been on a "special topics" run where Second Life and Vizrt's Green Screen visual studio have occupied my last week and a half before the holiday of course.

On Friday, November 19th I attended the Federal Consortium on Virtual Worlds. It was an inlife and in real life meeting held in DC. We utilized the NOAA's space and their beautiful island to listen to governmental agencies collaborate on advances and usage of virtual worlds. I have some neat screen grabs from the event that I will post and met some people involved with the CDC, dept. of Agriculture, and the DoD. Amazingly, the DoD was very up on secondlife. Their avatar was pretty stylish, not quite what you think of when DoD comes to mind.

Vizrt was an interesting journey to Manhattan last monday and tuesday. I worked out of the NYSE in a virtual studio that is supplied to users of the NYSE (namely media and traders) who can broadcast market news with green screen technology controlling thte background. The easiest way to explain it is the weather person on local news. They use a green screen so in life they are presenting infront of a blue/green screen, but over the air it appears they are in front of a map giving us the cold weather predictions. I don't have any cool pictures, but before xmas, we will have scripted and filmed a movie that advertises LM. Sorry to be short, i'm in the Tampa Airport ready to board a flight...more to come tomorrow :) HOpe everyone had a great turkey day!

5 Classes Left

WOOHOOO, thought i'd start a count down. How many other people are graduating this semester??

Facilitation in Second Life

Last Thursday, I got up infront of the class and talked about my job as a facilitator. I also mentioned that we are facilitating part of an offsite in Second Life. The details keep rolling in and today I've been tasked with creating a "how to" for attending a meeting in second life. We aren't sure how many people will have microphones for Voice Chat, so we are going to rely primarily on text chat. I'm getting headset from the company so I can at least present through voice, but I can't deny that I'm pretty nervous. I'm familiar with Second Life, and feel like i'm out of the novice stage, however, to get my avatar ready for prime time with directors and a few vice presidents, i'm not that comfortable with. The things I need to prepare is our Vote box. Part of our team created a box where everyone who wants to participate must collect a ballot from teh box by clicking on the box and collecting the ballot. Any person who has a ballot can also call a vote. This happens by posting a note int he top right hand corner. It will display the question and the vote options. This isn't a sophisticated vote, but more of a "yes" or "no" or rank order type vote.

My job will be to make sure the avatars are able to communicate with my facilitating avatar and that everyone can see the presentation materials (which will be in Second Life as well). Additionally , I need to supply a CONOPS, (concept of operations) on how to attend a meeting in Second Life.

The challenge we face is that we do not allow Second Life at work. Therefore, we are relying on personal computers and people sitting either at designated lab sites, or in their homes paying attention while we bumble our way through a meeting.

Additionally, a developer on the team has created a space for happy hour. He created a pool table, a bar and darts to play in our simulated happy hour.

I have to admit, i'm not exactly thrilled at the propsect of embarrassing myself in front of a lot of potential bosses. This will take a lot more work than traditional methods, and i'm afraid of what the attendees will experience. Many of them have never been to Second Life before...I know a few of them are having their kids help them during the offsite...

More to come on my adventures on teaching second life.

Proposal Template

Did anyone use the template for the proposal? I didn't even know it existed!!

Wiki while you work

Already, one in four U.S. corporations employs some manner of wiki, according to market analyst IDC. By 2009, Gartner, a tech consulting firm, anticipates that will bump up to one in two.....

Does your Corporation use Wiki's in some capacity? If so please leave a comment.

Wiki while you work

Wikis,” based on the Hawaiian word “wiki wiki” for “quick,” are online communities that encourage users to collectively write and edit articles, and even override and delete other contributors’ work. The end product can be thought of as a community’s shared knowledge.

As my team is doing wiki's as the technology de jour: here are a few sites regarding wikis while you work (my piece of the presentation)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20011277/site/newsweek This article discusses how wiki's are invading the workplace and even conservative organizations like the United Nations.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19999898/site/newsweek/ This is a Q&A with Jimmy Whales, founder of Wikipedia.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8300420/ wiki abuse in the LA Times... As this technology is just reaching the corporate world, we have had wiki's for many years now. More to come...

Second Life Chat

I find it very strange that when we talk about something in class, I end up doing it in second life with co-workers. I'm sitting in a meeting right now and we are talking about real chat in Second Life and i'm the only one in the group who can't voice chat, its almost as if i'm deaf in second life! Looks like i'm going to have to buy a mic!

Group Project

As a reminder-Group project is composed of individual papers that you present in a group. Our project is Wiki's. Our team name is wiki racers. Our topics are Wiki's in the work place, the ways people use wiki's and the technology involved in wikis. Ok, the end.

Dr. Dobbs SL Quarterly Symposium

Life 2.0 Summit, produced by CMP Technology/Dr. Dobb's Journal, is a quarterly conference on metaverse technology and best-practice for software developers and business stakeholders seeking to understand and use Second Life and other metaverse environments for customer engagement, commerce, collaboration, education, simulation and research.

CHECK IT OUT, FREE TO REGISTER http://www.life20.net/registernew.php
Schedule of Events: http://www.life20.net/program.php

Taking place September 15-21, 2007 on Dr Dobbs Island in Second Life, the Life 2.0 Fall Summit program will commence with a two-day, eight-hour weekend bootcamp on LSL application building, SL-to-web integration, opensource client (libsecondlife), developer tools and new SL features like atmospheric effects, voice, and sculpted prims -- everything professional developers need to become productive in the fast-evolving Second Life environment.

Thereafter, our four-day (M, T, Th, Fr) program will include tracks on:

• The Opensource Grid: Technical and business implications of opensourcing the Second Life server and scaling the existing grid. Sessions will cover the role of HPC, cluster-computing and backbone network architectures in the private and corporate grid, security, the scope of business opportunities around opensource server, and other topics.
  
• The Extended Metaverse: How will 3D environments like Second Life play with fast-growing Geospacial worlds like Google Earth, applications like Microsoft Virtual Earth, and other MMORPG, buildable-metaverse and flat-web platforms and communities?
  Alternative Worlds/Virtual Workplaces: Sun's MPK20, Forterra, Metaverse, Gaia, The Lounge, IBM Virtual Workplace and other platforms are providing a continuum of diverse options -- flat web to 3d -- for professional and business collaborators, application and asset creators. Learn from the platform-builders how these metaverse systems work, where they're aimed, and how it's all, ultimately, connected.
  
• Second Life metrics and analytics: More sophisticated understanding of traffic, audience qualification and behavior are essential for earning long-term ROI on metaverse investments. This track covers current Metrics products, best-practice tips from users and developers, SL analytics for ROI, the controversial emerging field of 'engagement metrics,' privacy and anonymity, and more.

Group Project

For our group project, we are going to tackle wiki's. Focusing on wikipedia, corporate wiki's and one other we as a group haven't identified yet. I'm in a group with Dave Weber and Mike Current. We haven't selected a name for our group yet either.

In other news, my beloved Mac crashed today, i'm starting over technically with my case study and will not be able to get into second life this week, unfortunately. I should have my new harddrive by friday.

For the Case study, I'm a bit confused about the question that relates to business model. Technially when Zuckerburg started facebook, he had no business model. He was just creating a social utility. Now he relys on venture capitalists that align with his goal of improving the facebook product and working to expand the capability of social networks around the world.

Learning something new every day...

So this morning I participated in my first meeting for the Second Life Pilot program that I'm involved in at work. One our members is a guru and gave our group quite a show. We all met at a specified location in second life. As we are all getting accliminated, he pronounced "Avada Kedavra" which in harry potter is the "unforgiveable" spell, which in the books and movies, kills whoever the spell is cast at. Suddenly my avatar was laying face down! he chuckled and told me how to stop the script that was forcing my avatar to play dead. I was amazed, no only did he know harry potter, but he scripted himself a wand and figured out how to use it in second life. Amazing. The sky is truely the limit.

I also learned how to create objects and manipulate objects. I've also noticed that the Window's Second Life application is easier for me to use than my mac's Second Life application. I explored Cisco's presense (which was empty) and IBM's which had a few stragglers, but at 8:00 am EST I didn't expect a crowd.

Overall, the more you venture In Life, the more you want to learn. Until next time...

Strange Coincidence

So, Monday morning I get this phone call regarding an innovation pilot study on Second Life. In casual conversation I mentioned that I had experience "in life" and that my final class at GV is using many virtual tools like Second Life. Now i'm able to be a part of what my company may use in the future to create a "presence" in Second Life....very interesting. Thought i'd share that little nugget of information :)