Virtual Worlds: Where We Were, Where We’re Going, What Does It Mean to YOU?

September 30, 2009

On September 25, 2009, FountainBlue held a conference at Sun Microsystems’ Santa Clara (California) campus.  The title of the conference, “Virtual Worlds: Where We Were, Where We’re Going, What Does It Mean to YOU?”.

What follows is an event summary and guest post by Linda Holroyd – CEO, FountainBlue

Introductory remarks, framing the discussion were provided by:

  1. Michael Gialis, New Business Development for Sun Microsystem’s Lab and Chief Technology Office, Founder of Virtual Worlds Roadmap Group
  2. Barry Holroyd, CTO, Masher Media

An Overview of the History of Virtual Worlds – What is it, Where Has it Been was provided by Benjamin Duranske, Associate, Pillsbury Winthrop.

Our first Panel Discussion: Virtual World Business Trends featured:

  1. Moderator Sibley Verbeck, CEO, The Electric Sheep Company
  2. Panelist Joshua Bell, Director, Technology Integration, Linden Lab
  3. Panelist Tim Chang, Principal, Norwest Venture Partners
  4. Panelist Benjamin Duranske, Associate, Pillsbury Winthrop
  5. Panelist Michael Gold, CEO, Electrotank

Our Second Panel Discussion: Virtual World Case Studies featured:

  1. Moderator Jeffrey Pope, Founder of Virtual Worlds Roadmap Group, Former Virtual Worlds VC and Virtual Worlds Entrepreneur
  2. Panelist Jack Buser, Director of Sony Playstation Home
  3. Panelist David Helgason, CEO, Unity
  4. Panelist Damon Hernandez, Lead, Web3D Outreach, Web3d Consortium
  5. Panelist Greg Nuyens, CEO, Qwaq

Below are notes from our conversation, along with resource links from our presenters.

Virtual Worlds offer a dynamic, ever-changing landscape of technology, community, interaction. Although Virtual Worlds have evolved over the past few decades, it is now coming to the mainstream, and its impact is deep and broad. It affects many facets of the way we do business from the financial, economic, technology and legal aspects, as well as HOW business is done, leveraging software the enables creative and dynamic interaction between people with virtual presences and online communities overall.

Virtual worlds are evolving from the walled gardens of the 1990s to more and more dynamic, interactive and creative sites that incorporate user content and creativity. This seems to be following the familiar evolution of the web itself; America Online and Prodigy became supplanted by more open browser standards from Mosaic.

Indeed, Virtual Worlds are evolving from a fad and a toy to a valuable business tool, serving and connecting various stakeholders. The graphics abilities introduced in the 80s and 90s brought in the era of avatars and games which were wildly popular, with some running still today. Now these graphics are being harnessed in virtual environments to effect value in a variety of non-game related use cases.

As more people got more deeply engaged, user communities arose and questions on policies, procedures and how users can interact and communities can grow arose. In addition, a business model evolution is now occurring where we are redefining who developers, publishers and retailers are and how they work together, as well as who is funding, marketing, and servicing these individual users and user communities. Users continue to raise the bar for what they can do and how they can do it, increasingly demanding more customized solutions and experiences tailored to themselves personally, and to the communities they join.

Adoption has not reached explosive double-digits figures yet for most virtual world communities, but with that said, in general the virtual worlds for kids sub-industry has benefited from the fastest and broadest adoption rate and continues to grow, showing that this is not a transient fad, but a real opportunity. Indeed, savvy publishers, manufacturers, producers and others selling to the kids market are factoring in web sites, books, toys, and virtual world communities as part of their marketing and outreach efforts. Successful examples of this maturing mass market segment include Webkins and Club Penguin.

Both panels remarked on the huge opportunities available in the media and entertainment industry. According to latest PriceWaterhouseCoopers Q2 2009 report, media and entertainment investments, totaled $115B, averaged $2 million per deal and totaled 52 deals, mostly from Silicon Valley (19), but also 10 from New York, and 6 from LA/Orange County. https://www.pwcmoneytree.com/MTPublic/ns/print.jsp?page=industry&industry=7100&region

The panelists and presenters had the following advice for virtual worlds entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs:

  1. The growth of an individual virtual world, and the industry altogether might grow in fits and starts, depending on technology availability, user communities, adoption of standards, bandwidth constraints and other factors. Awareness of these challenges and addressing them headlong, in collaboration with other stakeholders will help drive the growth of the industry.
  2. Minimize the barrier to adoption and drive the user base for your community: making adoption friction-less a critical factor for success. Make sure that there are no technology hassles (installing separate plug-ins and technologies), process hurdles (logging in, taking surveys, confusing steps), or marketing/branding confusion (they have to know where to go and that their trusted colleagues have recommended the experience), for example.
  3. Take advantage of the ‘Hybrid Tiered Solution’, where general users (about 85%) get in free, and a certain percentage (around 15%) pays through micro transactions for premium services and a smaller percentage (1-3% for example) pays for ongoing subscription levels. The successful organization will offer a solution which would serve the individual needs of all three types of users, treating them all as valuable members.
  4. Leverage the social communities (FaceBook, Twitter, iPhone, etc.) of the audience to leverage the growth of your community.
  5. Content is king. Everyone wants more content, richer interaction, more activities, more engagement, etc. The successful company offers solutions which engages users while also setting appropriate controls and boundaries.
  6. Focus on the needs of your target audience, whether they are frequent texters, or users of Twitter or FaceBook, creating a virtual world that lets them interact the way THEY want to will attract the audience you’re targeting.
  7. Research patents in your space, and consider IP issues associated with user-generated content. Find the edge of the law to remain competitive, but stay on the right side of the law to avoid litigation and other problems.
  8. Policies, regulations and enforcements in the virtual worlds space are rapidly evolving. Leverage resources to stay informed and be prepared to help shape, respond to these changes.
  9. Adoption of hardware such as headsets and webcams etc. will continue to occur, but not nearly at the pace of the evolution of software. Therefore, if your virtual world incorporates hardware components, create games which work with existing hardware, and leverage existing markets.
  10. Create a simple communication device to share information to the whole community, like a leader board, as it would generate discussion, invite more engagement, and help with the viral growth of the community.
  11. Ease of use can be defined as the first 30 seconds, the first 30 minutes, the first 30 hours, and the first 30 days. Strategies for retaining and securing users for each of the ‘first 30s’ may vary, but they are also inter-dependent, and must always focus on the needs of the customers.
  12. When designing a virtual worlds solution, speak to the people who would use it, like nurses or service station attendees rather than doctors (if they are not the ones who will use the solution) and managers (if they are not the ones serving the customer).

The panel raised some questions which could lead to hot virtual world business opportunities:

  1. What are the challenges and opportunities in synchronist and asynchornistic communication? How can solutions bring more people from more places together and more richly interact?
  2. How can virtual worlds assist with visualizing and modeling to support the innovation process and more cost-effectively make real technology- based solutions?
  3. What opportunities can data analytics and data visualization provide?
  4. Solutions across sectors offer opportunities. What might work for the education market, for example, might also serve a life science market. In addition, the technology for conducting a quest for a game might be adapted to organizational and productivity tools for businesses. What could this mean for YOUR company?
  5. What are the intersections of where gaming meets music or education or homework and what solution could you create to serve the needs of that market?

In summary, our panelists and presenters have shown and told us that Virtual Worlds:

  1. Are not only becoming more and more useful, they are also engaging and fun and potentially profitable.
  2. Are being adopted in different ways to create and serve communities for personal and business benefit.
  3. Are being increasingly more integrated into everyday business functions from training to education to service, branding and outreach. As such, challenges such as IP, security, privacy, and other factors will arise.
  4. Are mature enough that metaphors and examples exist, making it easier for potential customers and partners to understand new technology and business model solutions. Second Life, early games, Mosaic, Silicon Graphics, Tivo, Qwaq and other others have forged the business, technology and cultural grounds and helped grow the industry. They have been around long enough so tools and technologies and solutions are available, and the technology adoption curve is not as steep.
  5. Is not dominated by the US, as adoption of virtual goods and mobile platforms for example is 4-5x faster in Asia and Europe.

Additional information and resources:

  1. Presenting Entrepreneur Brian Bauer, OnTrack Health, winners in the Enterprise, Other Category (Collaboration in Health Care): http://ontracktechnology.blogspot.com
  2. Panelist Joshua Bell, Director, Technology Integration, Linden Lab http://www.lindenlab.com
  3. Linden Lab: Second Life enters the realm of the enterprise. Joe Miller, VP of Platforms and Technology Development, at Linden Lab talks to CNET’s Dan Farber about the challenges in developing dynamic and reliable backend operations for the 3D virtual world of Second Life. Miller also discusses how they’re incorporating new hi-tech conferencing tools for business users such as VoIP solutions and video streaming technologies. http://video.zdnet.com/CIOSessions/?p=310
  4. Linden Lab’s Blog on the Economy https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2009/04/16/the-second-life-economy–first-quarter-2009-in-detail
  5. Second Life Starts To Grow Again, Wagner James Au, Wednesday, April 15, 2009 http://gigaom.com/2009/04/15/exclusive-internal-second-life-data-shows-returning-growth/
  6. Panelist Jack Buser, Director of Sony Playstation Home: http://www.playstation.sony.com
  7. Panelist Tim Chang, Principal, Norwest Venture Partners http://www.nvp.com
  8. Presenting Entrepreneur Dustin Clingman, Immediate Mode Interactive LLC, winners in the Enterprise, Virtual Meetings Category: http://www.immediatemodeinteractive.com
  9. Presenter, Sponsor and Panelist Benjamin Duranske, Associate, Pillsbury Winthrop
  10. Entrepreneur with display booth, Andrew Filev, CloudMach, http://www.cloudmach.com
  11. Emcee and Sponsor, Michael Gialis, New Business Development for Sun Microsystem’s Lab and Chief Technology Office, Virtual Worlds Roadmap Group and Survey: http://virtualworldsroadmap.blogspot.com/
  12. Panelist Michael Gold, CEO, Electrotank http://www.electrotank.com
  13. Presenting Entrepreneur Sherry Gunther, CEO, Masher Media, winners in the Consumer, Six to Twelve Category: http://www.mashermedia.com
  14. Panelist David Helgason, CEO, Unity: http://www.unity3d.com
  15. Panelist Damon Hernandez, Lead, Web3D Outreach, Web3d Consortium http://www.web3d.org
  16. Presenting Entrepreneur Troy Hipolito, CTO and Owner, ISO Interactive, winners in the Consumer, Teenagers to Adult Category: http://www.isointeractive.com
  17. Presenter Barry Holroyd, CTO, Masher Media, http://www.mashermedia.com
  18. Presenting Entrepreneur Stevan Lieberman, SpotON3D, winners in the Enterprise, Other Category (Virtual Real Estate and Office Tools): http://www.spoton3d.com
  19. Entrepreneur with display booth, Greg Howes, IdeaBuilder, http://www.ideabuilderhomes.com
  20. Panelist Greg Nuyens, CEO, Teleplace, formerly Qwaq http://www.teleplace.com
  21. Demo presentation by Chris Platz, Creative Director, Sirikata, Stanford Humanities Lab and Computer Science, projects: Virtual Museum and Virtual Live Music Performance: http://www.sirikata.com and http://shl.stanford.edu
  22. Panel Moderator Jeffrey Pope, Founder of Virtual Worlds Roadmap Group, Former Virtual Worlds VC and Virtual Worlds Entrepreneur, and Founding Partner, Spark Sky Ventures: http://www.sparksky.com
  23. Presenting Entrepreneur Terry Thorpe, Chairman, KohdSpace, winners in the Enterprise, Virtual Events and Tradeshows Category: http://www.kohdspace.com
  24. Panel Moderator Sibley Verbeck, CEO, The Electric Sheep Company http://www.electricsheepcompany.com
  25. Demo presentation by Nicole Yankelovich, Principal Investigator, Collaborative Environments program including Wonderland v0.5, Sun Labs will demo the new features / functionality and capability of our re-architected platform: http://www.projectwonderland.com

In conclusion, the opportunities in the virtual worlds space are massive, with the convergence of technologies and markets and solutions. And it will take basic business principals, including strategic leadership and superior execution, constant education, lots of hard work, and a network of influential contacts to remain competitive in this rapidly growing and evolving space.

At FountainBlue, we support transformative leadership, one conversation, one leader, one organization at a time. We therefore hope that you have enjoyed the meeting, and that the meeting and these follow-up notes, along with the attached updated list of attendees, and the attached bios, provide you with both food for thought and great connections. We will also post our notes to our community on both BigTent https://www.bigtent.com/groups/fountainblue and LinkedIn and invite interactive conversations around these notes through those communities. Although we welcome you to share our notes, with proper acknowledgment to FountainBlue and our sponsors and speakers, we ask that you DO NOT forward the contact list as it is intended to be shared with fellow attendees only.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

A Second Look At Second Life

June 3, 2009

Source: San Francsisco Business Times

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

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

My Earth Day Visit To IBM’s Green Data Center

April 22, 2009

Source: IBM Green Data Center in Second Life

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

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

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.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

How To Use Social Media To Stay Current On Virtual Events And Virtual Worlds

April 21, 2009

In 2009, I’ve seen a surge in the volume of content published around virtual events and virtual worlds – coverage in mainstream media, blog postings, videos, podcasts and even entirely new web sites developed to cover these specific industries.  It’s all great – but with a rising volume of information comes the challenge of how to efficiently stay current.  I’ll highlight a few social media services that I use to keep current on events, track emerging technologies and find relevant commentary on all things virtual.

  1. Twitter (http://www.twitter.com)  – I published a prior blog posting regarding some of the specific people I follow on Twitter for virtual worlds information. To stay current on virtual worlds, find the authorities in that space and start reading their blogs or articles.  If you like what you find, see if they publish their Twitter handle – or, search for it yourself – and start following them.  I can easily stay current on virtual worlds by following a few select experts.  Their posts to interesting content serve as a virtual wire service for me (pun intended).
  2. Tweetbeep (http://www.tweetbeep.com) – I follow over 300 people on Twitter.  And as you may know, some of the A-level Tweeps obtain that status because of  their verbosity.  I tend to notice that a core set of 15-20 people (that I’m following) contribute about 80% of the tweets that I scan at any moment.  What’s the downside to this?  Well, that virtual events pioneer who only sends 2 tweets per day gets lost in the shuffle, as I’ll miss his tweets.  That’s why I use Tweetbeep to set up Twitter alerts by email – it’s like a Google Alerts for Twitter.  I set up search terms such as “virtual event”, “virtual tradeshow”, “virtual worlds” – and when I wake up in the morning, the alerts are there in my email inbox.  Now, if that pioneer tweets about virtual events, I’ll know what he said.  Also, I do have parallel Google Alerts configured, so that I learn about new content that Google has crawled on these same search terms.
  3. Google Reader (http://google.com/reader) – I’ll find blogs and web sites that focus on virtual – and subscribe to them (via RSS) in Google Reader.  This requires a bit more time, to skim through RSS headlines and determine what’s worth reading (similar to scanning an email inbox).  So it’s not quite as efficient as Tweetbeep or Google Alerts, but very valuable nonetheless.
  4. Friendfeed (http://friendfeed.com) – similar to Twitter, but also different – I find myself following a unique set of people on Friendfeed – and the neat thing with this service is that I can see not only their tweets, but links they’re reading via Google Reader and pages they’ve bookmarked with del.icio.us, to name a few.  In addition, I’ll check in on a Friendfeed Room called Metaverse News, where Gaby Benkwitz posts links to interesting articles about the virtual world.
  5. Facebook (http://facebook.com) – I created a Virtual Events Strategists Facebook Group – so I’ll check in there from time to time to see what’s been posted by group members (articles, images, questions, etc.) – and I’ll try to contribute to the group by posting articles that I’m reading about the industry.  I’ve also noticed that virtual event producers are leveraging Facebook Groups to promote their event – which is neat.
  6. Linkedin (http://linkedin.com) – I’ll use Linkedin to connect with folks I meet in the industry – and to keep current, I’ll check in on a few Linkedin Groups when I can (e.g. Virtual Worlds, Virtual Edge, Virtuual Events Forum, Event Managers, etc.).  Some groups tend to be more “spammy” than others – so I’ll find those with the best signal-to-noise-ratio and receive postings via a weekly digest email.

All in all, this probably involves a bit more effort than it needs to – that’s why I think the future of staying current will be about services like Tweetbeep and Google Alerts – you configure what you want to see and an “agent” goes out, finds it and delivers it to your doorstep.  Virtually, of course!

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

How A UC Davis Professor Leverages Second Life For Research

April 8, 2009

Professor Peter Yellowlees of UC Davis

Professor Peter Yellowlees of UC Davis

Dr. Peter Yellowlees, professor of psychiatry at UC Davis, has done some innovative work using Second Life to help educate people on schizophrenia.  I referenced Professor Yellowlees in an earlier blog posting about virtual worlds technologies that benefit the real world.  I contacted Peter to get some more information about his research and his thoughts on virtual worlds, Web 2.0 and the future.

  1. Tell us a little bit about yourself? I am a professor of psychiatry at UC Davis in Sacramento California, and I also run the UCD Health Informatics Graduate program, where we currently have over 40 graduate students enrolled in our masters and certificate programs. I trained in medicine in London, England, then spent 20 years in Australia, before being offered a position at UC 5 years ago. I am married to Barb and we have 4 grown children, and one “furry daughter” – a puppy called Lucy who  thinks she is human.
  2. Tell us how you are using technology (including virtual worlds) in your research? I use it to teach about the experience of schizophrenia. It is hard for students to imagine what it is like to hallucinate – to hear voices and see visions – and the capacity to have the avatar undergo those experiences is very helpful for the students and lets them understand about the lived experience of psychosis.
  3. When you heard of the concept of a virtual world, what was your first thought? I have been working with virtual reality for more than 10 years – I started with a CAVE (collaborative virtual environment) in Australia and developed software applications for that type of environment, and then moved “downscale” to the much cheaper more available internet environment when I came to the US.
  4. Besides Second Life, do you participate in other virtual worlds? Not currently, although I am constantly looking at other software systems, particularly the ones used by USC to model the Iraq war environment and treat PTSD.
  5. What’s missing in virtual worlds technologies that could benefit your research efforts? In SL the main missing element is the relative lack of realism of the environment – it is still rather cartoon-like and can’t compete for “reality” with the very expensive VR games that are now widely available. I would also like to see the avatars being able to change more easily on the fly, although the creation of avatar bots is great.
  6. What Web 2.0 services or social networks do you participate in? I blog regularly at http://informationagehealth.blogspot.com and am also on facebook and twitter. I have recently published a couple of ebooks at www.smashwords.com ( one of them is free) and have my own website at www.informationagehealth.com that is set up to both support patients that I see in the real world, as well as to promote my book on internet healthcare – “your health in the information age” published by iUniverse and available through Amazon and most online and f2f bookstores
  7. Do you see benefits of social networks as they relate to your research interests? I am very interested in them and would really like your readers to comment on how they think that social networks could be used in healthcare – they clearly can be a support and information system for patients but I feel they should have more capacity than this and am looking at how they can be combined with mobile environments –  I carry both a blackberry and an iPhone for instance, and am interested in how they could be used for monitoring behavior and symptoms.
  8. What are related fields of science that could benefit from virtual worlds? Certainly the social sciences – also probably genetics, by allowing us to link with unknown family members better…and many others…
  9. What does the future hold? Read my book!!!! – go to www.informationagehealth.com – the last chapter is all about the future of healthcare on the internet – lots of fascinating areas, and I think visualization of large data sets is particularly important – in 3D in virtual worlds – allowing scientists to literally get inside their data – amazing possibilities.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

Virtual Berlin Relocates To Downtown San Francisco

April 6, 2009

Source: Twinity

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.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

How Virtual Worlds Technologies Benefit The Real World

April 5, 2009

Source: Hopecam

Source: Hopecam

Let’s play word association.  “Webcam” – for me, the association is about keeping in touch with family or perhaps collaborating with colleagues and partners on business topics.  “Virtual Worlds” – my association here is 3D, fantasy, escapism and gaming.  While those associations will likely remain that way for quite some time, there have been numerous uses of virtual worlds technologies that go beyond the “neat and fun”.  It’s not an overstatement to say that they are helping humanity.

Take, for instance,  Hopecam, whose motto is “Connecting Homebound Children to LIFE”.  Founded in 2003, this Virginia-based non-profit connects children (undergoing treatment for cancer) with their friends at school with nothing more than a laptop, webcam and high speed Internet connection.  Hopecam has brought this “connection” to over 75 homebound children.  Their web site has an “Our Kids” section that profiles some of these children – and on this page, you can make an online donation to the organization.

Note: I did an earlier interview with a similar, Ireland-based non-profit, Vizitant.

The Washington Post published an article titled “Webcams Allow Students to Stay Connected“, which profiles 7-year-old Becky Wilson, who’s able to virtually attend class at Jamestown Elementary School in Arlington County via a webcam.  Becky, who was diagnosed with leukemia, is a full participant in classroom activities, according to her teacher, Lainie Ortiz:

The webcam has exceeded Ortiz’s expectations as an academic tool. When Becky tunes in for class and has a question, she raises her hand and Ortiz calls on her. During story time, Ortiz will bring the book she’s reading up to the computer, so Becky can see the pictures, too.

At the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, researchers are leveraging a grant from the US Department of Education to “develop an intervention program in Second Life® that focuses on self-esteem, a critical element in health and wellness.”  For women with disabilities, virtual world technologies mean that access to rehabilitation services require nothing more than a computer, an Internet connection and a virtual world application:

“Second Life® allows women with disabilities to experience virtual life as an able bodied person,” said Dr. Margaret Nosek, professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at BCM. “They can be who they want to be in the virtual world rather than living by the standards set by others,” said Nosek.

“Second Life® allows them to interact with other women while learning and practicing new self-esteem building skills in the virtual world,” she said.

The program will be available in late 2009 – the Baylor College of Medicine published a news article about this virtual intervention program.

Finally, a BBC News article titled “What it’s like to have schizophrenia” tells the fascinating story of Dr. Peter Yellowlees, professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Davis, who is leveraging Second Life to take you inside the mind of someone afflicted with schizophrenia.  Currently on a password-protected island, the purpose of this initiative is to educate people on the condition – there are clear benefits to understanding what it’s like to be afflicted schizophrenia:

“We welcome anything that proposes better understanding.”

“It broadens people’s experiences and narrows the gap between ‘us and them’.”

UPDATE: I published an interview with Professor Yellowlees regarding his use of Second Life.

The next time I login to Skype or Second Life, I’ll be thinking about the wonderful applications of these technologies and how they’re able to deeply improve the human condition.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

Philip Rosedale On Building A Business: Practice Extreme Transparency

April 2, 2009

Source: Linden Lab

Source: Linden Lab

At the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Philip Rosedale (Founder and Chairman of Linden Lab) gave a fascinating presentation titled “Extreme Transparency: Virtual Worlds, the Love Machine, and Other Practical Things That Actually Work in a 300 Person Company“.  Rosedale spoke of his methodology for growing Linden Lab (creators of the virtual world Second Life) from a small team working out of a warehouse on Linden Alley (in San Francisco) to a 320-person, profitable company with multiple locations across the globe.

Instead of a top-down approach to building the business – which starts with a grand vision and then trickles down to all the details that allow that vision to unfold – Rosedale decided to take a bottom-up approach.  An Engineer (and physicist) by trade, Rosedale was very hands-on during the early days – code that he wrote back then still resides in the Second Life software today.

Rosedale’s concept of extreme transparency means that each individual knows what every other individual is working on, accomplishing, doing, etc.  His analogy is one of a sports team (where transparency comes in the form of player statistics).  That’s not to say that Rosedale believes employees should be represented by numerical scores – rather, information should flow freely regarding each and everyone.  When that occurs, Rosedale belives that traditional management (of people) is simplified – and you end up spending much less time managing and more time doing.

Rosedale spoke of an interesting internal application called The Love Machine – an internally developed web site that allows employees to send a message of thanks to another employee.  The web site lists “Sender”, “Recipient”, “Description”, “Time Posted” and scrolls in real-time as new Love is posted.  A posting of Love autogenerates an email, such that if Rosedale entered a posting, the recipient would receive an email with a Subject heading of “Love from Philip”.

I think the point here is that “thanks” is such an easy thing to say, but how often is it really done in a business setting?  Not enough – that is, unless you have a tool (like Love Machine) to foster and facilitate it.  Rosedale noted that transparency needs to be granular – and these love posts are as granular as it gets.  Linden Lab has a data and metrics-driven culture – so of course, Rosedale presented a slide that plotted average love received per employee – to show that the trend line goes up (as more people use the tool to give thanks).

Rosedale next spoke about a Linden profit sharing plan – a certain amount of the company’s profits are divided equally among all employees – everyone from Rosedale down to individual contributors receives the same amount.  But then, employees are asked to distribute their shares to colleagues whom they feel deserving of it.  Rosedale found that profits were shared equally across functional roles (so as an example, Development did not receive an unfair share of the profits compared to another department).  This goes against conventional wisdom, which might say that certain groups would receive more favor than others.

A neat side effect of this plan is that executives get to uncover the hidden heroes of your business – those who did not have full exposure to senior management, but are highly appreciated by the masses.  The result is that their visibility in the organization is heightened – and those heroes become better appreciated.

With regard to data – Rosedale suggests that companies define the metrics that are important to the business.  Then, visualize them and keep them constantly updated.  Linden Lab leverages flat panel displays in many of their offices to display key metrics (via real-time charts).  Total simultaneous users is an important chart – if the count suddenly drops, everyone stops what they’re doing!  Linden Lab provides each employee with a personalized dashboard tool, where metrics can be dragged and dropped in – so, each employee watches (in real-time) data that’s important to them.

On measuring engagement within Second Life, metrics of importance to Linden Lab include average session length, number of Linden dollars spent and retention (since 85% of new sign-ups are gone within the first month).  Of course, a natural platform for transparency within Linden Lab is Second Life itself – and Rosedale spoke of its use for internal meetings.  Rosedale did a demo of the famed Virtual Isabel conference room, which is an in-world representation of a physical conference room at Linden’s headquarters.  A video stream of the physical conference is piped in-world and in the physical conference room, folks can go in-world from their laptops.

One audience member asked how Rosedale handles the media hype cycle – with media coverage today not as positive regarding Second Life compared to a year or two ago.  Rosedale pointed back to his key metrics – and noted that those metrics (e.g. total hours, total Linden dollars spent, etc.) continue to maintain a steady and healthy trend upward.  And that’s what matters most to him (and not what the media thinks).  Rosedale then made a casual reference to the open source movement, in which he’s become more involved of late.

For more info on the culture of Linden, their web site has a page focused on The Tao of Linden.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

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

March 31, 2009

Source: Genkii

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.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

Call for Virtual World Executive Summaries

March 23, 2009

FountainBlue produces “monthly events for clean energy, high tech, and life science entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley (US / California)”. Earlier this month, FountainBlue held its first Virtual Worlds event, ” Virtual Worlds: The Hype, The Reality, The In-Between”. I attended the event and provided a summary of the virtual worlds panelists’ discussions. FountainBlue now plans to produce an annual virtual worlds event, with the first one on September 25, 2009.  According to FountainBlue:

This annual conference will showcase where we’ve been and where we’re going in virtual worlds, featuring key stakeholders, including entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, and investors in this space. There will be two morning panels: one on Virtual Worlds – What is it, Where Has it Been? And the second one is on: Where Will Virtual Worlds Take Us. As part of this event, we will also feature Corporate Exhibits on Virtual World and profile Six Virtual World Entrepreneurs, the winners of this business plan competition.

Here’s a draft agenda of the September event:

8:00    Networking and Registration
8:30    Welcomes and Thank Yous, Audience Input On What They Would Like Covered
8:40    Presentation on Virtual Worlds – What is it, Where Has it Been?
9:00    Questions from the Audience
9:10    Panel Discussion: Where Will Virtual Worlds Take Us?
9:40    Questions from the Audience
9:50    Morning Break, Corporate Virtual World Tables on Display
10:20  Six Virtual World Fast Pitches, 15 minute rounds each
11:45  Awards, Closure and Networking
12:00  Adjourn

FountainBlue notes the following criteria for submitting an executive summary:

Early stage, funding-bound entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs are invited to submit their executive summaries by visiting http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=180447, completing the questions on the registration page (following the format available at http://fountainblue.biz/images/Executive_Summary_Submission_Form.pdf) and paying the $20-$30 registration fee by noon on August 14.

Process for Submitting Plans

March 20    First Call for Exec Summaries
August 1    Last Call for Exec Summaries
August 14  Deadline for Exec Summaries Submissions (@ noon)
Sept 15      Announcing Six Finalists (by noon)
9/15-22      Informal Meetings with Finalists
Sept 25      Annual Virtual Worlds Event, with Presentation by Finalists

Process for Pitching During the Annual Event
The Six Virtual World Entrepreneurs will be conducting fast pitches, 15 minute rounds each, broken down as follows:

  1. 3-minute pitches
  2. 3-minutes Q&A with judging panel
  3. 2-minute feedback from judges
  4. 1-minute additional feedback from the audience

For more information on this event, contact: info@svvirtualworlds.com

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