For Software Development Teams, The World is Flat (And Virtual)

Source: flickr (User: reinholdbehringer)

Software development teams are traditionally located in the same (or nearby) physical office location(s).  It’s useful for these teams to work from adjacent cubicles (or offices) as the close proximity facilitates collaboration, mentoring and joint code reviews.  In fact, the increasingly popular agile software development methodology lists the following in its Agile Manifesto: “The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation”.

I won’t debate this particular point, but I do think that the trends are pointing towards distributed (vs. centralized) software development teams.  Some of the factors that are causing this trend:

1. Outsourcing and off-shore development – while the core software development team may be based out of a single physical location, corporations are increasingly leveraging off-shore development – both for its lower costs and its ability to tackle ad-hoc product requirements and requests.
2. Working from home / telecommuting trend – whether it’s a child’s doctor’s appointment or the local outbreak of the H1N1 virus, workers are spending more and more time getting their work done outside of the office.  Ever walk into a large software development shop’s offices during the afternoon?  You probably noticed that more than half the developers’ cubicles were unoccupied.
3. Good developers can be hard to find – your software development team’s most attractive developers may be located half-way around the globe.  Talented developers are hard to find these days – so why not extend your team’s depth but bringing on remote workers?  As an example of a distributed team working together on a large project, consider the development of the Linux kernel – according to the Linux Foundation, “over 3700 individual developers from over 200 different companies have contributed to the kernel”.
4. Software developers and product owner in separate locations – it’s not uncommon for the software developers to be in a different location than the business or product owner who’s driving the product and project’s requirements.  As the internal customer, the product owner is obviously a key member of the team.

With all of these factors at play, it seems reasonable that alternatives need to be in place when face-to-face meetings are not possible.  And I have good news on that front – with the emergence and maturation of virtual worlds / virtual meeting technologies, there are plenty of solutions available.

Some technologies available to distributed software development teams:

1. Virtual Meetings – e.g. WebEx Meetings, GoToMeeting, Adobe Breeze, etc.  These technologies allow users to share their desktops and participate in shared whiteboards.  With the desktop sharing, this allows one developer to “look over the shoulder” as another developer codes.  The New York  Times recently published an interesting article on pair programming – with virtual meeting technology, the “pair” can reside in separate physical locations.  A shared whiteboard may not be useful for writing code together – however, it could certainly come in handy during the pre-coding stage, to map out an architectural diagram or outline a software program’s flow chart.  For a no-cost alternative, developers can interact with audio and video on Skype, which now includes a free desktop sharing feature.
2. 3D / Immersive Technologies – these solutions provide similar features to a virtual meeting, but add a layer of 3D and immersiveness.  There’s Second Life, of course – and there are also solutions tailored for very specific enterprise use.  Options include Teleplace (formerly Qwaq) and Forterra Systems.  Teleplace offers a solution called Program Management that seems well suited to the distributed software development team – it offers text chat, VoIP chat, video via webcam, shared documents and shared applications (all in an immersive 3D environnment).  Similarly Forterra’s OLIVE platform enables collaborative meetings, training and more.

In this “flat world” that we now live in, I expect software development teams will increasingly collaborate virtually.

College Recruiting 2.0: The Virtual Campus Experience

Source: flickr (User: Heidi SeraKorea)

I read an interesting article in the New York Times this week – titled “M.I.T. Taking Student Blogs to Nth Degree“, the article describes how M.I.T. (and other colleges and universities) is leveraging student blogs as a recruiting tool.  The idea is that the blogs allow prospective students to get a glimpse into life on campus – and help them determine whether they’d like to apply for admission.

The dean of admissions at Haverford College was quoted in the article: “High school students read the blogs, and they come in and say ‘I can’t believe Haverford students get to do such interesting things with their summers.  There’s no better way for students to learn about a college than from other students.”

While I’m certainly a big fan of blogs, it occurred to me that virtual world and virtual event technologies could extend this concept to a whole new level.

3D Virtual Worlds

Hundreds of colleges and universities have a presence in Second Life (and other 3D virtual worlds).  Professors have been using 3D virtual worlds to complement their real-world classes – and in some cases, classes have moved entirely into a virtual world.  Universities who created 3D replicas of their campus (in Second Life, for example) could leverage the existing island(s) as a recruiting tool.  One could provide links from the student blogs, inviting high school students (who are so inclined) to enter the virtual campus for a real-time and interactive experience.

Recruitment activities you could facilitate in a 3D virtual world:

1. Student-led virtual campus tour – the same exact concept as the real-world – prospective students meet the student guide at a designated place and time and the guide takes visitors (and their parents!) on a tour of the campus.  Of course, in a 3D virtual world, visitors would be required to download the client (if needed) and familiarize themselves with the user interface – they’d also need to teleport to the tour site and learn the basics of navigation / walking.  For colleges who built extensive campus replicas, however, the virtual tour gives prospective students a great feel for the real-world campus.  Later, prospective students can return at their own leisure to explore the campus at their own pace – and have random encounters with enrolled students or other prospective students.
2. Student blogs -> 3D virtual dorm rooms – existing student bloggers can create “in-world content” to complement their blogs.  How about an in-world replica of your real-world dorm room?  It would come complete with in-world residents (you and your roomates), along with renderings of your wall posters, unwashed clothes (strewn across the floor), collection of beer cans, etc.  What better way to give a taste of campus life than taking prospective students into some 3D virtual dorms?

Virtual Event Platform

While the 3D virtual worlds facilitate outreach from enrolled students to prospective students, virtual event technologies could be leveraged by admissions and administration (of the university).  Instead of an immersive 3D environment, admissions and administration could utilize a 2.5D rendering of the campus in a virtual tradeshow fashion:

1. University Departments as “booths” – Admissions, Administration, Law, Chemistry, Mathematics, etc. – each department could have a “booth” in the virtual environment, where they provide information on the department – and, representatives can staff the booth to greet and interact with prospective students via text or webcam chat.
2. University Resource Center – a convenient one-stop-shop for all content placed in the department booths, allowing students to find the documents, web pages, videos, podcasts, etc. that interest them.
3. Auditorium - allows your administration and departments to put a face and voice to your university – by way of live (or on-demand) video, podcasts, etc.  How about a monthly live videocast from your University president, provost or dean of admissions?  Prospective students would get a lot of value from that.
4. “Lead” and engagement tracking – by requiring prospective students to provide a minimum amount of demographic information, you can use activity reports (provided by the virtual event platform) as a gauge of applicants’ interest level in your university.  This type of data may be quite relevant to the admissions department.

I don’t think that virtual worlds and virtual events will be adopted by all prospective students – there will still be quite a few who prefer the simplicity and low-overhead of browsing blogs.  That being said, those who are so inclined to participate virtually may signify the more “engaged” of the prospective student base – and next Fall, they’ll be the ones leading the virtual campus tour.

The Advantages Of Virtual Meetings

Source: Forbes Insights

Forbes Insights published a study titled “Business Meetings: The Case for Face-to-Face“, in which the key finding was this: “the majority of executives polled believe face-to-face meetings are still crucial for building stronger, more meaningful and profitable business relationships.”  Excellent points were made in the blogosphere this week regarding this study:

1. Forbes in a Funk over Virtual Meetings and Events (Virtual Edge)
2. Virtual Augments Face-to-Face – Reply to Forbes and HSMAI Surveys (Virtual Insights | InXpo)

I don’t wish to question the conclusion of the Forbes Insights study – nor do I wish to have a debate on “face-to-face vs. virtual”.  Despite the fact that I’m passionate about virtual, I’m a true believer in the value of face-to-face.  What I would like to highlight is that face-to-face and virtual have unique capabilities.  Meeting planners must consider these capabilities and apply them appropriately.

With virtual, an often-touted benefit is that they’re green and carbon-friendly.  And while that’s certainly a nice side-effect, I think it’s important to focus on unique in-meeting capabilities of virtual – here are a few that come to mind:

1. Participatory training with seamless presenter transitions – while it’s true that a face-to-face meeting is hard to beat with regard to audience participation – in a virtual meeting, there’s still plenty of room for audience participation.  In fact, with a shared whiteboard, participants can annotate a technical diagram simultaneously, which is trickier to do with more than 2 people (annotating) in a physical space.  In addition, participants can be “handed the ball” and take turns serving as the presenter – without having to stand up, walk to the front of the room and plug their laptop into the projector.  In an instant, a new presenter can start sharing her desktop applications for the rest of the meeting participants to see.  In a 3D virtual meeting (e.g. Second Life, Lotus Sametime 3D), participation becomes even richer, allowing medical students, fighter pilots (in training), computer technicians, etc. to learn by interacting with 3D objects.
2. Meetings On Demand – what if your technical meeting needed to split up into a set of smaller focus groups?  In a physical meeting, you’d need to gather up each sub-group and go seek out new conference rooms (or, migrate into corners of the same room, which could be distracting for everyone).  Or, take another scenario whereby a senior executive wants to faciliate an ad-hoc face-to-face meeting during the coming weekend – all required participants would then need to make the necessary travel (and lodging) arrangements to get to the meeting venue.  With virtual, meetings are truly on demand – you create the meeting with the click of a mouse and the participants arrive with the click of a mouse.
3. Putting the cards on the table – while this is difficult to quantify or prove, I believe that participants are more “at ease” in a virtual meeting and more likely to reveal thoughts that they’d otherwise be hesitant to do in person.  A virtual tradeshow is a good example.  Exhibitors have found that visitors to their booth are more transparent and revealing about budget, timeframe, decision making process, etc.  – when interacting via text chat.  The same person in a physical booth may be hesitant to reveal those details.  So for meetings that can stand to benefit from more transparency and openness (and not all of them do!), virtual can be a boon.
4. More efficient person-to-person interactions – if you’re the chief executive of a company with 500 or more employees, I’m sure it’s hard for you to achieve the same quality time (with employees) as when you had 50 employees.  If you assemble the company at a physical meeting, it’s a challenge to mingle with the crowd and achieve any true quality – you’ll be more akin to a president or dignitary, who walks down a receiving line shaking hands and patting folks on the shoulder.  If you invite the same 500 employees to a virtual meeting or virtual event, you’ll find an easier ability to have meaningful interactions (via text chat) – including the potential to carry on multiple chats at the same time.  Employees will also find that they receive more access to the chief (and other execs) than they would in a (crowded) physical space.

So those are some advantages that come to mind for me.  What advantages have I missed?

Low Cost Options For Virtual Events And Communities

Source: flickr (User: businesspictures)

Can you run a virtual event with zero budget?  Maybe, but maybe not.  Let’s consider one use case – the B-to-B Editor or Editorial Director.  For the Editorial side of b-to-b publications, virtual events can be quite productive and rewarding.  They put you in direct contact with your readers, allowing you to engage via interactive tools (e.g. text or webcam chat) while both parties remain in the comfort of their office or home.

During the virtual event, attendees (who often come from across the globe, no matter what the time of day) can provide direct feedback to Editors regarding the event content, theme, speakers, presentations, etc.  Often, Editors will also receive input regarding the online content they’re publishing (on their web site) – and even find sources for upcoming articles.  I’ve spoken to a number of Editors who were thrilled about the attendee/reader interactions they experienced at a virtual event.

There’s an economic model to a virtual event, however – and that rests on the fact that the event needs to generate revenue – enough to cover the cost of the event, with room for a profit margin.  Thus, at a b-to-b publisher, it’s not the Editor that drives the virtual event, but rather the Publisher, VP Sales or Sales Director.  If there’s no forecasted revenue around a particular event topic, budget isn’t approved and the event has no funding to move forward.

I was recently contacted by an Editor, who was interested in pursuing virtual events (or virtual communities) – he wanted to facilitate interactions around new topics.  However, as with many new topics, they were not mature enough to achieve the right revenue model for the Publisher.  As such, the Editor asked me for available low cost (or no-cost) options.  Here were my initial responses:

1. OpenSim - according to the FAQ, “OpenSim is a platform for operating a virtual world, and supports multiple independent regions connecting to a single centralized grid. This is somewhat similar to the web, where anyone can run their own web server, tied together through the internet. It can also be used to create a private grid, analogous to a private intranet.”  I noted that OpenSim has no hard cost, but there’s soft cost (e.g. your time).
2. BlogTalkRadio - a web-based, free service that allows you to create your own Internet radio show.  Your host and your guests call into a standard telephone bridge and the audio is streamed over the web in real-time.  For the free model, you may have house ads served up around your content – there are premium service options available, however.

So my off-the-cuff response was based upon two concepts: (1) try out a no-cost, 3D virtual world environment and/or (2) generate a community discussion (via streaming audio) with no hard costs.  In thinking about my response further, however, I realized I could do better.  First, about OpenSim.  I think OpenSim is great, but it’s probably not the tool of choice in this particular scenario.

First, the build instructions and configuration instructions indicate to me that a fairly technical person  (e.g. SysAdmin) needs to build out your grid.  Second, end users (e.g. the Editor’s readers) need to install an OpenSim client in order to participate.  That might work in some industries (e.g. a gaming publication), but probably not for a b-to-b audience (as they rarely use an OpenSim / SecondLife client on their work computer).

BlogTalkRadio has a lot of potential – in fact, I think b-to-b publishers would be well served by hosting live broadcasts for their readership.  However, the nature of a call-in radio show (even if you have active callers participating) is fundamentally different from the private and group chat activity that occurs in a virtual event.

Source: Metaplace

Taking all of these considerations into account, I felt that Metaplace might be an interesting solution – it allows the creation of a customized 3D world (with avatars) that requires no software download (as it’s Flash based) and can be easily embedded in web pages or blogs.  That may fit nicely at a b-to-b site – in relevant blog postings or article pages, you cam embed the Metaplace world.  So you pair your created 3D world (it’s theme) with content you’re already developing  for your sites – and then use reader traffic to drive participation in the Metaplace world.  And then that community can grow on its own (hopefully).  Again, no software download and no hard cost.

After all that, I’m still not satisfied with my answer – what tools or technologies would YOU recommend to this Editor?

Create More Effective Virtual Events With Web Analytics

Source: flickr (User: kantan2007a)

Melinda Kendall wrote an interesting posting on her Event View blog titled, “Improving event flow“.  Her blog posting begins:

Run across ethnoMetrics yet?  They put 45 video cameras with 360-degree panning in the ceiling of a convention center and watch what really happens at an event.  A lot of the value comes in analyzing the behavior of attendees at individual booths…information that, if acted on, could really improve an exhibitor’s results from an event.

Melinda references a May 2009 issue of Expo that highlights optimizations and improvements made by the RSNA (Radiological Society of North America) event team for their conference.  For me, the technology from ethnoMetrics is intriguing, but what most interests me is their methodology - that is, capture detailed information from an event (that otherwise would have been “lost”) and perform in-depth analysis to improve an event’s ROI.

Can an equivalent approach of analysis be applied to virtual events?  Of course – because virtual event platforms already track all activities – meaning the 360-degree panning ceiling cameras area already installed.  Today, however, most virtual event show hosts view event data in a tactical, results-based manner.  Important metrics include number of registrants/attendees, number of visits per booth, number of viewers per Webcast, number of chats, number of document downloads, etc.

And while that’s all fine and good, both the show host and virtual event platform provider might want to take a step back (once the event is done) and analyze the overall attendee experience.  I’ll call this Web Analytics for your Virtual Event.  For content and e-commerce sites, web analytics can be a very effective tool to increase page views (content site) or online purchases (e-commerce site).  So in the same way that an e-tailer may analyze “shopping cart abandonments”, a virtual event show host (and provider) may want to analyze why the average visit time to an exhibitor’s booth was only 5 minutes long.

Other analytics exercises that come to mind:

1. Greenscreen video -  did you invest a lot of time and money to have your CEO welcome visitors to your booth?  Have a look at average view time of that greenscreen unit.  Then, look at the number of return visitors who “clicked to play” to replay the greenscreen video a second time.  If you score a lot of replays, your use of greenscreen was effective.
2. Where is my traffic coming from -  or, where is it not coming from?  On the web, we frequently look at “referral URL” – for virtual events, the same need applies.  If I had 1,000 booth visits, did they come from the Exhibit Hall?  Or, did they come from a search result – or, somewhere else?  If 70% of my booth visits came from sources other than the Exhibit Hall, then I need to assess (a) the amount of traffic to the Exhibit Hall in the first place and (b) the effectiveness of my Exhibit Hall layout.
3. Biological tracking – this obviously adds to your costs, but consider pairing your web analytics with physical instrumentation – have a panel of users experience your virtual event and track eye movement, heart rate, facial expressions, etc.  If I spent 2 months creating a visually rich 3D environment, did it make an emotional impact on the user who saw it for the first time?  Are users looking at areas of the event that I want them to?  Or, are they skipping past the important areas?

The possibilities are nearly endless.  This is an important next step for the  industry – with video monitors already installed, tapping into the existing data will be a key to creating better and more effective virtual events.

Related links:

1. Event View blog
2. ethnoMetrics home page
3. Wikipedia entry on web analytics
4. NY Times article: Lab Watches Web Surfers to See Which Ads Work

A Look Inside Virtual Job Fairs With IMASTE

IMASTE Co-Founders: Miguel Fernandez Lapique, Aitor Zabala, Miguel Arias

Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Madrid, Spain, IMASTE has a mission statement that reads, “We create innovative contact platforms for our customers and their potential users”.  According to Miguel Arias, Director-Partner at IMASTE, “We founded IMASTE with the purpose of enabling a bridge between companies and university graduates. We first started organizing real events and after two years we became the Spanish leader in university recruitment events in Spain.”  As technologies began to emerge, IMASTE found it natural to leverage the web to complement their physical recruitment events with virtual job fairs.

Today, IMASTE has three primary product categories:

1. Virtual Fairs – Virtual Job Fairs have been produced in Spain, France, UK, Brazil and Portugal – and IMASTE is working on a sustainability virtual fair in France.
2. Virtual Environments Lab - based on Adobe Flex, IMASTE builds rich internet applications for clients.  Arias notes, “We have developed the virtual corporate office for Deloitte, the virtual campus for Everis, a virtual music festival for Universia and a virtual petrol station for CEPSA.”
3. On-Campus (Physical) Job Fairs – IMASTE organizes more than ten Spanish university job fairs, a primary source for Spanish employers to tap into a pool of young graduates.

Monster Edays Event, Powered by IMASTE

IMASTE worked with Monster to produce Monster Edays, a 2-week virtual job fair that leveraged instant messaging and video chat and enabled more than 90 online company presentations.  IMASTE leveraged Adobe Flex for 3D renderings and animations, as well as the Red5 video conferencing application.  With the event targeting the French market, IMASTE enabled French language support in their platform and coordinated video production activities from Paris.

According to a Case Study posted on the IMASTE web site:

With more than 35 participating companies, over 100,000 unique visitors and over 8,000 collected CVs, the project was a huge success. The media buzz generated more than 350 referring sites and great blogger reviews.  Thus increasing heavily the brand awareness among jobseekers.

Like many providers of virtual events and virtual event technology, IMASTE has a fairly healthy schedule of events.  In the Fall of 2009 alone, they have virtual fairs planned in Croatia, France, Spain, UK and Ireland – with a second edition of a Brazilian virtual job fair scheduled as well.

Speaking of the European market, Arias notes that Europe encompasses many countries, languages and cultures – for virtual event success, “one needs to take into account the cultural differences of each country and localize your platform to each specific need.”  Sprinkling in a bit of humor, Arias concludes, “Therefore, you need to be very flexible and code a lot.”

Arias believes that vast growth opportunities lie ahead, since the European market has not yet fully embraced virtual events – “corporate and marketing executives are not so keen of web innovations and there is a very strong culture of the importance of physical events to enable networking.”

Perhaps IMASTE should leverage their physical job fair business – and prove the ROI and benefits to the European market by turning them into hybrid (phyical+virtual) events.  This way, European exhibitors/sponsors still experience a comfort level (with the physical event sponsorship) and begin to experience the corresponding benefits of the virtual experience.

Related links

1. A list of IMASTE’s products
2. The IMASTE blog
3. The IMASTE Team
4. IMASTE blog posting on SEO and social networks
5. Blog posting: For Virtual Events, Globalization Means Localization

A Second Look At Second Life

Source: San Francsisco Business Times

“A lot of Silicon Valley has written Second Life off.  The tech world will have to revisit Second Life as a phenomenon in the next six months or so.”

Thus spoke Wagner James Au, noted virtual worlds author and blogger in a San Francisco  Business Times article on Second Life (note: the full article is available to paid subscribers only).  Au, who blogs at New World Notes about Second Life, notes in the article that Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon has renewed the Second Life brand that was created by founder Philip Rosedale.

While the revenue model for Twitter is slowly coming clearer (judging by the accounts in the business media), Linden Labs’ strategy under Kingdon is becoming quickly self-evident with the announcements of the past few months.  From my perspective, Kingdon’s growth strategy is around a few core pillars:

1. Enterprise use of Second Life – makes sense, as enterprises and corporations can be monetized at a higher clip than individuals, artists, hobbyists, etc.  Enterprises (in the former of marketers) were a big portion of Second Life during its initial peak – and it seems the current focus is to bring marketers back into the fold, along with complementary uses in non-marketing disciplines (e.g. training, enablement, collaboration, etc.).  In the past 6 months, Linden Lab has hired 25 marketing and product people as part of their push for enterprise clients.  In addition, the company recently hired Amanda Van Nuys as Executive Director of Enterprise Marketing, signaling a further endorsement of the opportunity in the enterprise.
2. Nebraska - an on-premises software version of Second Life  (compared to their Software as a Service model), which enterprises can run on their own servers behind the firewall.  IBM has been an active partner with Linden Lab on behind-the-firewall integration – the telltale sign will be how many other large enterprises opt for the Nebraska model.  For “behind the firewall” use, I have to think that we’re talking less about marketing and more about collaboration.
3. Voice - not mentioned in the Business Times article, but Virtual Worlds News covered it well – Linden Lab is poised to go after the Skype market with capabilities to bridge voice calls and SMS messages between the real world and Second Life.  In the Virtual Worlds News article, Linden Lab Vice President of Platform and Technology Development Joe Miller notes, “The opportunity to monetize at a significant added value for our business is there”, regarding the opportunity in Voice.

IBM marrketing executive Karen Keeter notes in the San Francisco Business Times article that nearly 100 IBM’ers are “working on virtual world tools for commercial sale in Second Life and on other platforms”.  As such, IBM stands to achieve commercial gain from increased use (by enterpises) of Second Life and related virtual worlds.

In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me to see IBM leverage virtual worlds to generate services revenue.  Two things come to mind – IBM Global Services and IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative.  IBM Global Services could assist enterprises on their virtual worlds strategy (e.g. build me a virtual world representation of my data center, so that I can run heating and cooling simulations) – or, IBM could go in-world to enterprise’s private virtual worlds to provide traditional consulting services within the virtual world.

So a manufacturer who’s replicated their factory in a 3D world can have Global Services visit (in-world) to optimize their factory floor workflow.  Then, of course, Global Services could help facilitate the parallel action in the real world.  On the Smarter Planet project, IBM might create 3D models of the next generation power plant to show utilities how to become more energy efficient.  In a virutal world, I’m sure the possibilites are limitless.

Finally, Dan Parks of Virtualis is featured in the article.  Virtualis created a compound in Second Life with 34,000 square yards of meeting rooms.  Quite an interesting model – an event producer that leverages a re-usable area (virtually) to host meetings for corporate clients.  Companies who have done events with Virtualis include Deloitte, Oracle and Trend Micro.

I’d be interested in your thoughts – what do you think about the potential of Second Life for enterprises?

Related Links:

1. Blog posting on Virtual Offices, with reference to Amanda Van Nuys’ use of Second Life
2. Blog Posting: Virtualis and Trend Micro Put On Quite A Show
3. Blog Posting: Philip Rosedale On Building A Business: Practice Extreme Transparency
4. Blog Posting: IBM’s Second Life ROI: The Headline Beneath The Headline

My Earth Day Visit To IBM’s Green Data Center

Source: IBM Green Data Center in Second Life

To commemorate Earth Day 2009, I decided to head off this morning and visit IBM’s Green Data Center.  However, to ensure that my visit was carbon neutral, I left my car keys on the coffee table, grabbed my coffee mug and visited the data center in my pajamas.  My visit took place in the virtual world of Second Life, in which IBM has built an impressive Virtual Green Data Center.  The screen capture that you see above shows my visit to the data center lobby, with an interior design around a green (colored) theme [of course].

My interest in IBM’s Virtual Green Data Center was based on an article in Virtual Worlds News, which describes IBM’s partnership with Conversive on the deployment of automated avatars that “will greet users, answer basic questions, and direct them to other locations. The avatar also offers a guided tour”.  I did receive a welcome from the avatar and here’s the transcript of our chat session:

Source: Transcript of author's chat

I’ll have to try again, but on this visit, the IBM Concierge did not respond to my inquiries.  My journey continued, nonetheless – upon opening the door to the data center’s mantrap (“a small room with double doors used to control entry to the data center and temperature levels”), I walked through the mantrap and into the data center.  Here’s the view from the first floor:

Source: First floor of IBM's Virtual Green Data Center

After walking past several racks filled with servers, I decided to teleport to the second floor.  Upon arriving there, I skimmed through a number of information kiosks placed there by IBM.  On a small display monitor mounted to the wall, I clicked to view some video footage from IBM executives.  I then walked over to additional information kiosks that provided customer case studies – highlighting success stories of IBM data center customers.

Interestingly, clicking on a kiosk that asked for feedback on my visit launched an external web page, on which IBM provided the survey questions.  I thought it would have been neater to capture my feedback in-world – but perhaps this capability (and the associated tracking and reporting) isn’t yet available in Second Life.

All in all, I was impressed with the layout of the data center, along with the information available.  I think that 3D virtual worlds are effective vehicles for explaining and promoting a company’s products and services.  That being said, I found it interesting that on Earth Day, I did not come across any other visitors – and, while the data center is supposed to be staffed 7×24 by live sales assistants / avatars, I did not see any of those, either.  I’ll return in a week or two to try again.

Virtual Berlin Relocates To Downtown San Francisco

Source: Twinity

At Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last week, one of the exhibitors who caught my attention was Twinity – the virtual world from Berlin-based Metaversum.  On occasion of their appearance at Web 2.0, the company issued a press release with the entertaining title, “Metaversum Takes 16 Square Miles of the German Capital to San Francisco with Twinty.”  I stopped by the Twinity booth (which, interestingly, was part of a larger presence from the city of Berlin) and received a demo of Virtual Berlin from Twinity’s CMO, Mirko Caspar.

Twinity is not unlike other virtual worlds businesses – but their unique angle is in the creation of real-life representations of cities, with each block, each building, each sidewalk recreated down to a pixel by pixel level of detail.  In fact, the Twinity motto is “powered by real life”.  I find their approach to virtual worlds interesting:

1. Real world cities – with generic virtual worlds, any given resident has only a certain likelihood of visiting the land or island you create.  What Twinity does is start with world famous cities (e.g. Berlin, London [coming soon]) – places that everyone on Earth has heard of and might want to visit (virtually).  Whether I’ve visited Berlin or not, I might like to visit its virtual represetation – to explore a new city (if I’ve never been there) or to recall spots from my past visit – and, see how the current city has changed from the last time I visited.
2. Land scarcity – unlike a generic virtual world, where land development is only limited by the dollars invested in new land sales, Twinity’s approach is a methodical launch schedule of selected cities.  This creates a certain level of demand and pricing power (in the cities that do exist) compared to a virtual land grab where hundreds of islands are developed over the course of a few months.  I compare it to a baseball park that consistently sells out its 30,000 seats (at a premium) vs. a McStadium of 70,000 seats that may never sell out a game.

The Twinity business model is based on four pillars:

1. Dynamic in-world advertising (via partnership with JOGO Media)
2. Product placement and sponsorship – with sponsorship, one can host events, in-world, for instance
3. V-commerce and E-commerce – generate sales in-world – or, generate an e-commerce transaction that occurs outside of Twinity
4. Virtual real estate market

In addition, Twinity has a freemium model, where basic membership is free, with premium membershp benefits available at additional cost.

I asked Caspar about the potential for cybersquatting of land assets in Virtual Berlin – for instance, what if I purchased the virtual office of a Fortune 500 company, but they come in later to claim the rights to it?  Caspar responded that certain real estate is reserved by Twinity (e.g. a national musuem, a government facility, etc.).  For business-related land, however, it’s all fair game and “first come, first served” with regard to virtual land purchase.

Twinity, however, enforces certain rules in its user agreement – if Adidas purchased the virtual land of Niketown, then Adidas would not be permitted to use their logo on virtual land associated with Nike (as an example).

Twinity is currently in public beta with Virtual Berlin the first available city.  Virtual London is on tap – and, Twinity was awarded a grant from the Singapore government to build a Virtual Singapore.  Given Twinity’s recent visit to the Bay Area, one has to wonder whether San Francisco is up next.

There’s A Sparkle (IM) In My Virtual Eye

Source: Genkii

Related coverage: TechCrunch – “Sparkle: The iPhone Gets Its First Virtual World (And It’s Completely 3D)”

There’s a sparkle in my eye – it’s from a Tokyo-based company named Genkii and the product is, of course, Sparkle.  Genkii announced two products – Sparkle IM and Sparkle 3D.

Sparkle IM is an app available in the iPhone App Store (for $4.99) and supported on both the iPhone and iPod Touch.  In essence, Sparkle IM is a lightweight gateway to Second Life and OpenSim.  So you get to send and receive IM’s with your Second Life or OpenSim avatar, but without the download of the thick client.  Instead, you do it all from your iPhone.  You can find a short YouTube video on the Sparkle web page: http://sparkle.genkii.com.

Why is this exciting to me?

1. This is the first step in the placeshifting of virtual worlds experiences – analogous to what podcasts and portable MP3 players did for music consumption.  Now, you no longer need to be tethered to a laptop or PC to experience a virtual world – you go in-world from wherever your iPhone takes you (assuming adequate cell coverage).
2. This could foreshadow virtual event support on PDA’s (see my prior blog posting on the notion of virtual events in a wireless world).  I’ve participated in many virtual events where exhibitors told me they were on the go – but, able to check in from their BlackBerry.  And today, what’s the most critical “application” in a virtual event?  Most would say it’s the chat application.  So apply the Sparkle IM “gateway” principal to virtual events – and presto! – virtual event chat on BlackBerry’s and iPhones.  Exhibitors would love it.

On to Sparkle 3D.  The TechCrunch post provides full details (with images).  Essentially, Genkii has developed their own 3D virtual world – for use on the iPhone and iPod Touch.  The support on the iPhone is interesting enough – but what might be the game changer here is Genkii’s vision of integration – they’re considering an integration with Sony’s Playstation Home virtual world and there’s speculation concerning integration with browser-based clients, the Nintento Wii and non-Apple phones, such as those running the Android OS.

Sparkle 3D can be quite powerful and pervasive if they’re able to integrate their platform this broadly.  No other virtual world is supported across this spectrum of devices and platforms (e.g. gaming systems, PDA’s, browsers), which could make Sparkle 3D the de-facto, cross-platform standard.  What other platform has been able to gain a footprint across an equally broad ecosystem?   Adobe’s Flash.