Liveblogging the Virtual Worlds Forum - Day 2 - Afternoon

I have been continuously giving demos of the immersive Second Life setup, and talking about Second Life analytics suite, etc. Thanks to Tishe for pulling lots of interesting people in to see the stuff I was showing!

14:30 Bjorn from HiPiHi is talking about their world, to be released in Q1 2008, and takes a vote from the audience if they should be High-Pi-High, or Hippy-High.

15:00 Electric Sheep are very, very happy that their setup, and the entire Second Life grid survived the airing of the CSI episode which leads people into SL to keep solving it, as it was left as a cliffhanger, and will be resolved only in February.

16:00 Venture capital panel. I will ask if possible how the VC business itself is changing and adapting.
17:00 I have been able to ask the question! And the answers were actually supporting my view that there is some change, and more is needed.

Closing panel
END!

Liveblogging the Virtual Worlds Forum - Day 2 - Morning

09:00 A presentation by BP was, I am sorry to say, impossible to follow.
09:30 Paul Ledak from IBM is speaking on interoperability. His introduction setting the stage is longish, I wonder if he is actually going to say something concrete. The announcement that Linden and IBM made in San Jose has been met by skepticism by other vendors and players in the field. They have to start deliver soon, otherwise their credibility is going to be put in serious peril.

I am going into interviews, so it is likely that I won’t be able to blog for the rest of the morning, sorry.
Yesterday night there were three separate parties, luckily not totally overlapping, and we had great chats until approximately midnight. Which means that we don’t have an excuse of an excessive wear and tear not to follow
Missed the panel with Ginsu Yoon from Linden, and was told that it was pretty good.

Robert Gehorsam, Forterra Systems “One hour of backed up traffic on a busy highway costs the US 100 million dollars of lost productivity. We are helping with the development of virtual worlds that can help teams quicken the reopening of the highways. Zillionics, as defined by Kevin Kelly: the immeasurable amount of data that is coming out of all the sensors. Information about the world is becoming more complete!”

A really good speech. Meaningful, and well delivered. Forterra is funded by InQTel, the CIA’s venture arm.

12:10 At the end of the panel on “Harnessing the power of virtual worlds for corporate collaboration” I asked the question if the flattening hierarchies of corporations as experienced in virtual worlds are being brought back to the physical world, and if they are capable of adapting.

12:40 I am showing the immersive SL video on my Mac in an unedited form to Gartner, IBM, Linden, and others. Must finish editing soon, and post to YouTube everybody wants to cover it, and learn more.

Liveblogging the Virtual Worlds Forum - Day 1 - Afternoon

13:50 Lunch was very good. Just finger food, so nobody had to sit, and could keep shaking hands, and gesturing. I have to start preparing for my panel, so I don’t know how long I will be able to keep writing at this time.

14:10 Kidalicious panel. “Are kids and teenagers the future for virtual worlds?”. Adam, the moderator asks: “Why is it that virtual worlds geared to kids or teenagers are the most profitable apparently?” Answer from the panel “It is a fact that for these kids, they are not even virtual, these worlds are just must part of their day to day lives. They have grown up buying ringtones, downloading screensavers, music, and they are the digital natives.”

15:20 Daan Josephus ABN Amro “You can offer financial services in an online world if it is run within the walls of your own company. And then of course your challenge is to market it to your capte audience.”

16:20 Quoted Kurzweil on the panel “Opensource and nanotech will deliver the goals of communism”.

16:40 Done with the speech and panel about v-tail. Moderator asked “should we be afraid”, answer “yes”. The likelihood of big companies today being able to adapt is low. I recorded the video which I will be posting online asap. Cory Doctorow listened to my speech, asked a question, and after it came and patted me saying “Good panel!” woot!

16:50 The future is blurred panel with Cory Doctorow (aha! Is that why he stayed through mine?)

17:00 Nuanced relationships are key to the healthy development of social networks, within virtual worlds, and without.

Google and Multiverse are building the online world to show 3d models built on Sketchup, but Corey Bridges is not commenting on it, even when baited.

Liveblogging the Virtual Worlds Forum - Day 1 - Morning

I am in London, about to speak at Virtual Worlds Forum (just realizing that I won’t be able to blog live too much while speaking!), and will try to cover as much as possible of the event, with reporting, photos, and more.

This post is going to be updated for some time, then I will switch to an other for the afternoon, and the same for the second day. Please reload the page for updates regularly (maybe every 10 to 20 minutes is optimal…). (I also put some stuff on Twitter as soundbites…)

09:10 Lord Putnam “Since achieving consciousness umankind has lived in a virtual world”
09:34 “People in virtual worlds have agency”. “An eminent historian told me a couple of weeks ago that he would have written his works differently had he had access to virtual worlds. This is a very important indicator from a very serious observer”. “Virtual worlds have very little sense when you are alone”. “I am old enough to remember that cinema, and television received the same treatment of virtual worlds now regarding the possibility of addiction. Online gaming is almost certainly not as addictive as it has been reported. The conversation has to be very nuanced, and deep.”
09:39 “I promise you that it is only question of time for a serious crime to be committed under stimulation by an avatar.” (Wonder if he heard of the CSI episode about to air which involves Second Life, and exactly this scenario.)
Lord Putnam’s speech was very, very good. I hope that the transcript is going to be available as well. (Looks like it will…)
09:48 Lord Triesman is Minister of Intellectual Property (!) He is talking about his Ministry’s work, and about IP Crime (!), the WIPO, and I am waiting for Cory to jump on him 10:04 “As a government we have to embrace these technologies” Well, it looks like they are.

10:08 Paul Jackson of Forrester and Jess Mulligan from Cyber Sports converse about Virtual Worlds (definitions, markets, and there will be also Q/A.

10:09 Jess “Virtual World is any connected computer space, with an avatar (not necessarily human), persistence, and persistence of your growth”. “Twenty percent of the Ultima Online players who started with the game which is ten years old now, are still participating, playing every month!”

10:20 “Issues looking forward are legal mainly, with governments worrying about a lot of stuff, but it all comes down to making sure that it can tax the income.” The presentation was very dense with data, and the slides should be available for further analysis.

10:25 Paul is using cartesian plane of engagement vs game/social axes to plot the various worlds.

10:40 Jess “The elephant in the room is Google. They hired all our friends to do their stuff, so even if they are not talking we know they are about to release an online world. What will that do to the rest?”

Coffee Break and Networking

11:15 James Au Wagner is moderating a “Consumers or Community - what is the direction for brands” panel. He says “The fashion reporter for our blog went to the Armani store in Second Life, and she was not impressed. The suits, and apparel designed by an independent couple of residents with a similar fashion style as Armani were much better!”

Each member of the panel is showing short videos. I don’t even bother to watch, and wonder how to others. The backchannel is more interesting any minute, then smoothed out corporate machinima.

11:47 “We are quickly seeing the move from 3D worlds to the 3D operating system”. “An other SL fashion designer is getting her clothing made into physical products by a Chinese textile production house”.

Chatted with Bjorn from HiPiHi, and I am really looking forward to see their platform launching next year. It is very ambitious!

12:30 Vivox CEO confirms that they are bringing voice changer functionality to Second Life to better match the avatar’s voice to its image.