I recently did an interview with Lukas Chadbourne over at the Second Life News Network
Lukas has put it together into a very nice article, so thankyou Lukas.
Also Irving WB has joined us in Second Life as he writes on his blog.

Picture from snapzilla

I was keynote speaker for the eHampshire 2006 conference at the Guildhall in Winchester today.

Other speakers and panelists included

• David Lennan (Chief Executive of Work Wise),
• Peter Knowles (BT’s teleworking Director),
• Peter Thomson (Director of the Future Work Forum at Henley Management College),
• John Rees-Evans (Head of Economic Development at Hampshire County Council),
• Tony Corbin, (MATISSE Project Manager),
• Patricia Vaz (South East Regional Director, BT),
• Prof. Glenn Lyons (University of the West of England)
  and more.

My talk was on (guess what?) Web 2.0 and Virtual Worlds. I hope I managed to evangelise more than I confused and frightened. 🙂

Some highlights…

• My ‘Metaverse Evangelist’ title seemed to catch everyone’s attention, and nearly every speaker made a reference to it. I think everyone wants to be an evangelist.
• It was great to meet Peter Thomson. (My favourite quote from him, which will keep me going through any hard times to come, was “evangelists need faith”.) His very interactive presentation highlighted that the conference delegates thought one of the biggest challenges facing managers regarding home-working is trusting their employees. He also pondered why managers seek to monitor and control employees rather than motivate them to want to be at work.
• All delegates were given a USB memory stick to take the presentations home with them. It’s just as well it’s a 256MB one, as my image-heavy presentation weighs in at 17MB these days.
• Peter Knowles from BT said explained why teleworking has such a dramatic effect on absenteeism and sick days “I will hide behind voicemail, working on my email, being 70% productive until I’m better again”. I must confess to doing the same sometimes too, though I have misgivings about the sanity of doing it.
• Jim Tuckwell, Silver Surfer of the year, was there and thanked me afterwards for the presentation. We chatted about Wikipedia. I want to be the silver surfer of the year when I’m 77.

Interesting facts…

• 95% of Hampshire’s businesses employ less than 5 people.
• 70% of businesses in Hamphire use the internet, while only 30% use it to sell.
• eHampshire’s Hotspots Hampshire initiative aims for everyone in Hampshire to be no further away than ten minutes from a wireless access point. Given that I am currently without wireless at home, I am very much in favour of this sort of project.
• Patricia Vaz from BT pointed out that a desk costs £10,000 (or £15,000 in London) and BT saves £6,500 for each home worker.

I met a lot of intereting people and heard a lot of interesting things, so all in all I had a great day.

New World Notes features an interview with our very own epredator Potato in Second Life, including information about the Hursley build.

Rob Lawrence of dna.co.uk, who used to work with us all here as Creative Director sent me this link to Sketch Furniture by FRONT.
Using 3d motion capture in real space, capturing the sketch and putting it off to a 3d printer.
This is the sort of advance we will start seeing as we all become more accepting of 3d. Which used to be afew skilled designers with high end workstations, but now is open to many more people.
Imagine sculpting Second Life objects in real space, let alone printing them out.
We have lots of people who are now navigating 3d space in SL, and feeling that the mouse and keyboard inetrfaces are restrictive. We have had to adapt to using the keyboards and mice but many more styles of interaction are just around the corner, and commercially viable. You only have to look at the wii controller.
I am sure as the MMO clients get more open source we will see more stylish and human friendly interaction with the building tools and ways to explore the space.
So just as many other things are all reaching maturity at the same time to create this user created, 3d, multi user experience metaverse experience (which used to be VR) its time to start looking at all those haptic devices again.

Well done to our IBM Virtual Universe Community on arranging another great event. This time the halloween helpfest.
It is great to have a theme, and one so well suited to Second Life.
Lots of people have been showing up in all sorts of cool costumes with gadgets galore.
The pictures explain it a lot more, but it was great seeing Judge work the crowd into a frenzy of pumpkin building, whilst the rest of us went around showing off
Whilst the subject matter is fun, the reasons are serious, as a social networking and learning experience it has grown our community a bit more, and let people gte more up to speed on what can be done. It would be very unlikely to get all those people in the same physical space for a 30-60 minute gathering.
No avatars were harmed during the course of this party.


I was very much enjoying my new AFK animation, involving the gallows from “Sick-N-Wrong” (just search in world you cant miss them and my blood gushing from Nicka whippet

Someone got killed

With this crowd who knows who did it !



Lots more pictures on including these on snapzilla

I was really happy to see Aimee Weber’s post on 3d Weather Visualization over on the Second Life Herald.
Partly becuase people kept asking me if I could do rain clouds over the Wimbledon build instead of my single line of text, and partly because real data and pushing that into Second Life is the main reason I and my eightbar collegues started in Second Life.
The principle of using Second Life as a Situational Application (or in web 2.0 parlance a Mashup) builder seemed obvious to me and it is good to see these builds appearing. Ok so its only a mashup if it is next door to another data driven application. But as we know with SL its very easy to rez two builds together.
By combining the tech feeds with Aimee’s talent for building has created something way more engaging.
We do off course need a UK one as we are the most obsessed about weather, then I can rez a working tennis court next door to one and have a full mashplication working.

With the advent of services such as fabjectory and now having come across this fab@home on the rebang blog it would seem we are beginning to get the glimmers of where all this Second Life and metaverse technology may take us.
What was holding back home fabrication was a way to create and distrubute 3d models suitable for home fabrication. We previously had also been lacking the social, open source, user created content skills and acceptance of this being a way to work. Now we have the collision of both, Second Life an ability to share and experience 3d models, and easier ways to build in 3d and then eaiser ways to fabricate.
There may be environmental reasons to home fabricate, or at least local area fabrication. Whilst the fabrication materials have to be shipped to the point of use they must travel much more efficiently that odd shaped products on a lorry. Consumers also have to travel less distance in order to receive their product. True the fabrication units are using electricity and chemicals, but I am sure that a trade off and carbon footprint can be established and measured for this.
If nothing else we are learning to all be both consumers and providers of service. Its very “Long Tail” to consider selling specialized things, one or two in a run to customers who really want the widget.
If nothing else the need to hold products, to feel form factor and to have an increased attachment to the experience whether in Second Life or Real Life will drive this to a commercial size proposition.
I would love Yossarian’s Hursley House printed out on my desk.

I really want my custom Reeboks from SL in RL.

All images from Snapzilla