metaverse

Metameets – Lazy teachers and revolving doors – Part 2 of n

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In my previous Metameets post I stopped half way through day 1. So we pick up on a change in conversation this time with education.

(image from http://walyou.com/street-fighter-blackboard-fight/) As I took hardly any pictures at the event!
Education is always a good subject for virtual worlds yet is always a fight against the status quo. It is good to hear where the experts in the field are taking it.
Jolanda Verleg from Insperion started her presentation with a vision of a “Lazy Teacher” getting us to imagine a class full of students busy at work whilst the teacher sat back with their feet up on the table. This was a deliberately provocative image to challenge the nature of teaching. The premise put forward is that traditional broadcast teaching, stood in front of the class needs to be put aside in favour of more engaging techniques that use the immersion of virtual worlds with the students and allows classes to take on a life of their own. The full presentation is here and is a well thought out description of Adventure, Background, Competition and Drama (Jolanda calls those the ABCD of learning) that provide very human focused ways of learning to learn and discovering. To quote directly “Be there for them, just don’t step in front of them to block their way…”

To continue the education theme Ineke Verheul stepped up to describe a school learning project using virtual worlds with the The Chatterdale Mystery. She described an environment that recreated a village and within that a task was set for students to travel the village asking questions of residents to try and discover the location of a bomb. The aim of this was for the investigation team to be exercising their investigative skills needed in the curriculum. It has another fascinating side though in that the people they talked to were not bots but role playing fellow students. For those students this was then an exercise in practising their language skills (in this case english). So there were in fact two lessons going on with different groups interacting in the same environment.

On the schedule next was going to the the Fenêtre sur chambre, which for various reasons as it was a remote presentation did not happen. However we all agree that it is one of the most important and worthy uses of virtual worlds. People cannot be anything but touched by its impact.”windows in the bedroom” uses virtual worlds as a connection between children in long term hospital wards and their parents and friends. Creating and playing together. (It’s not about ROI or profit or efficiencies etc its about people connecting in difficult emotional situations and that is very important)

Our final education slot of the day was down to two students Lars Dijkema and Mathijs Hamers from Elde College. We had to make a fuss of them as they had just graduated the day before, so to come and talk to us was a fantastic commitment and they arrived with a lot of enthusiasm and vigour to share their project with us. The project was a computer science one, but their mentors (such as Rick Reesen, a good friend and still at IBM doing some interesting things all with virtual world flavours) and teachers helped set them on the explore the use of virtual worlds. The overall project for the class was to investigate eco friendly and positive school environments. The guys decided that the idea they wants to explore they would do by building a virtual classroom exhibit. They quickly found that expanding that idea to build the whole school and providing a shared environment for their fellow classmates to show their ideas had a powerful social effect too. In their demo of the build the first thing that struck me was the revolving door. It was spinning away at the entrance. I thought it was just there as a graphical trick but it was spinning to attract attention because it was part of an idea to generate electricity for the school from motion of the door. I thought that was a great idea, and the visual cues and where and when I saw that will stay with me. It may have already been created elsewhere but the guys had taken the idea and implemented, then shared it and now I have that idea in my head. Great stuff!

This does of course link back to Jolanda’s presentation on how to teach and engage. The ownership and drive of the students was enabled and shepherded by the teacher and the attitude of the school. Elde College has a very open attitude to the technology and what can be used and accessed. It is a model that every school should take a look at over the risk averse control mentality.

That’s enough of that for now. Still to come, entrepreneurship, TPV’s for SL, AR and a vision for the future

It only takes a few clicks – Kitely Virtual World(s) on Demand

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If you have strayed a little from virtual worlds recently, or if you are intrigued by the bigger environments but just don’t want to dive in fully or if you need a quick private virtual world to test and idea, or if you need a quick online 3d meeting place….(lots of use cases) then just spend 5 minutes (or less) with Kitely.
http://www.kitely.com press the register with facebook button. Create a world (there is a mini plugin to install to be able to launch) then hit launch and the SL client you have on your machine will spark up and drop you into your shiny new on demand opensim.
When you create the world you can specify it is only for you or for friends.
When you are not there the sim is parked in storage rather than being always on. That makes sense for most applications. The fact this is opensim too is great. The technology has got to a point where a service like kitely can build upon it.
using kitely
Pretty much in the time it took to read this you could have sparked up and entered a virtual world with full creative control and prim building.
They have also added importing of your own oar files, and exporting too which is very handy.
The images are form my little private OAR but include things like the Cool Stuff Collective set we used on S2Ep13 of the show.
So far so good, it all looks very promising 🙂 I think I will have to drop this into my Opensim presentation at Develop this year to show just how far and fast things are moving.
My "local" opensim presentation hosted on demand
I often run a local opensim to show how I prepare presentations, which in turn could make them an exhibit. Whilst I have some live opensim servers they were for private work, never opened them up due to confidentiality. I also ever got around to sparking up another one. So now if I build a nicer OAR file of the idea. Make it available online, that OAR can be used by people who only need to have a moderate vw knowledge to create their own instance of it, or visit my instance and share with others.
It’s a subtly different model, but an intriguing one that works, and as the tech works smoothly why not just use it 🙂

Sharing more ideas, Rockliffe and Metameets

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The next few days are both busy,exciting and enjoyable with a bit of pressure thrown in for good measure.
Tonight I am on a show online in Second Life and on Metaverse TV for Rockliffe University
“Like oil and water, virtual environments offer a rare and complex mix of technical and social extremes where all the really interesting bits are occurring along the thin edge of the emulsion between the two. This week Kevin and Ian discuss the various perspectives of how technology and social constructs are merging and how far we have still yet to go.”
So I have to have my future brain wired in and see where the conversations take us. As this is just that there is no specific prepared content which is great as I enjoy to buzz of riffing on the ideas. See you there 🙂

The tomorrow I jump on a plane bound for Amsterdam, on the same flight with Justin CC or opensim fame so the southampton virtual world massive is on tour. We, and lots of our european fellow evangelists are heading to Metameets which is always the most vibrant gathering on the subject, mixing art and business and innovative ideas.
See you there too ?

Scaling – It’s all relative

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Holiday’s give you time to ponder and inject serendipitous thoughts and events into your life. For me this time is was seeing an episode of Coast telling part of the story of Albert Einstein in Belgium. It got me thinking about relativity and points of view that people approach things with. In particular this related to just how many people and things need to be in a virtual space at any one time.
Cloning me in OpenSim
If you arrive at metaverse interaction from a “business” perspective or are used to Second Life and/or Opensim then having more than 50 avatars in one region or space at a time is viewed as an unfortunate limitation. The point of view being used is that of needing to be a mass communication vehicle, running huge events for thousands of people who will all listen to your message. That however is a flat web mentality. A billboard, even with interaction and a sense of belonging.
If you arrive at metaverse interaction from a “games” perspective. Having 32 people in once space performing a task is pretty much the maximum (in general). Having more doesn’t always add to the experience. Ok so Eve Online has 60,000 users on one server but you don’t really get to see them. It is also the exception. A few games have dabbled with FPS scenes with 128 people battling. You battle however is with the few dug in around you seldom the people the other side of the map.
So we have two relative view points. It is odd that the “business” perspective where it is about meetings and communication, sharing ideas and understanding will use the objection of “oh only 50 people?” when in fact the gathering it needs are targeting small groups collaborating on fast ideas. The games industry direction is one of “whats the point having all that freedom and that many people” when that industry is about mass take up and use of produced resources.
If we had the ultimate virtual environment that could house an infinite number of objects and avatars at amazing resolutions would we be any better off in working out how to communicate or play with one one another?
It is the restrictions of the mediums themselves that brings the greatest creativity?
If everyone could log on and all be in one place surely we would still have sparse areas where no one was or over crowded areas where it seemed to busy you would use your client to not bother rendering quite so many people.
I am not saying we should not strive for more and bigger spaces, I would love to see them. I am also not saying lets stick with 32 soldiers in a war torn town. I am saying that everyone should consider the other perspectives of what they are trying to do and why and not discount the other view. The chances are the other view may be what you actually want to do.
I was also struck by scale and relative size whilst wandering around the amazing sand sculptures in portugal. It was like a texture free virtual world.

Each of these is crafted from millions of particles of sand. It is not just a surface rendering, the whole thing is sand right through. No computer style rendering shortcuts. So each particle is a physical pixel, a phixel ? It takes up space and can only be viewed by the number of people who can fit in the space. The constraints of the medium again make it interesting. There is a choice to sculpt in lots of materials, yet this huge gathering chose only to use sand, because of its properties and impact and a craft and talent required to use them.
This all blended in mentally with Minecraft.

The predlets got interested seeing me start to play and actually understand the point and pointlessness of Minecraft.
I was only really doing a few bits and pieces, but once you start digging and rebuilding, combining and digging some more it is (as it success has shown) a totally intriguing experience. I think it works because of its lego like qualities. You are restricted in the medium and in the resources, but challenges you set yourself become very real despite the old school doom like block graphics.
So once again it is all relative, it is not everything to everyone with one perfect ultra solution.
In the mean time it is good news that Intel is pushing forward with 1,000 avatars in a sim (i.e. more than most high end games would dream of going near) as reported here http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2011/06/1000-avatars-soon-coming-to-a-region-near-you/ and there are some interesting papers on how Opensim scales and works from Intel here

Develop Brighton 2011 – featuring Virtual Worlds

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I just got the great news that my application to present at the Evolve portion of this years Develop conference has been accepted. It will of course be an elective session. Having attended Develop the last couple of years, and really enjoyed the sessions I felt that the virtual world industry and the crossover into social media was missing. So this year I thought I would throw my hat in the ring and do a version of washing away cave paintings.
Develop 2011 Brighton
Evolve is a part of the conference on day 1 that is about emerging trends and tech. Michael Acton Smith of Moshi is keynoting the day too 🙂
I submitted this as my talk.

EVOLVE: So You Think Virtual Worlds Aren’t Important?
Session Details
User generated virtual worlds may seem a sideshow. Open source development is making inroads, with Opensim, into fully user generated environments hosted anywhere run by anyone. These are used for entertainment and in training medical staff or school education.

They are an innovative platform for the next wave of designers and programmers. We have shown, on the kids ITV show The Cool Stuff Collective, these virtual worlds are growing to be a distribution platform for goods that will not remain solely as digital properties. Virtual things are getting real. Come and pay attention to virtual worlds and the future.

Wish me luck and maybe see you there (early bird registration finishes june 15th )

My takeaway from FCVW2011

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FCVW11 was a great conference for several reasons. The first was to be able to meet and talk with the IEEE VW standards group that is forming. We got to discuss at length the Sep 20/21st summit that is planned for L.A. this year. As a group we have a number of VW old hands and gurus and I am honoured to be in the loop with them all.
Another reason was to meet quite a few people in the industry that we have only met briefly physically or it was a very long time ago. That made this conference a bit of a homecoming.
The third reason was hearing so many presentations and panels by practioners, educators, military, government and alike who are busy doing some really influential and great work.
To hear about the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder helper experiences, or Bill May’s US to Cairo project showed real, tangible and positive uses of virtual worlds.
It was less comfortable to hear about the military uses, but it shows the power of training and simulation in something that in the end could save lives.
Ren Reynolds did point out when on our panel that we were having questions asked about identity and behaviour in virtual worlds, e.g. what about furries. He bravely pointed out (given we were at the National Defence University) that using virtual worlds and games to work out how to actually kill people more effectively was far more offensive than any roleplay elements or socially awkward situations.
However, the military uses can be separated out into organisational analysis or education that applies to more regular applications.
Two of the keynotes that stood out for me, mainly because of the validation or handy terminology they provided were.
MK Haley – Faculty and Associate Executive Producer at the Entertainment Technology Center, Carnegie Mellon University
and
Dr Chris Dede -Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies, Technology, Innovation, and Education Program, Harvard University

MK was a powerful and sparky presentation that talked about looking at things differently, how creative thinking is possible by everyone but that it is often beaten out of us.

Dr Dede talked (and showed) some kids education environments that were around explore an eco system at a lake. On the surface it was a lake, trees and some overlays, but there were some innovative ideas that he helpfully referred to as “magic”. This magic is where you move from a straight simulation and help with pointers or tools that would not otherwise exist. The first was a submarine that scales you down to microscopic levels to explore the environment. The other was the ability to virtually geotag a single atom and then a HUD that tells you were it is over time as it is absorbed or moved around the environment. The “magic” layers can conflict with the “real” layers but are essential in the balance of immersive environment use. Otherwise there is little extra that the place give you. As a true educator and very well respected he, and his team, are doing the work to compare the virtual experiences with traditional teaching. Though he was very clear that if you compare something to nothing it will always be better. Of it you compare something the the worst example then you are not really helping. So he is making sure in helping explore how kids develop their reasoning.
Botgirl created some great cartoons to sum up each panel, this is the Dr Chris Dede one
FCVW 2011 How Immersion in Virtual Worlds Helps Learners in the Real World
So there are even more people doing real work with the technology and the socially changing impacts of virtual worlds and related tech. It is not dead, it is not all Second Life (in fact increasingly it appears to not be Second Life for some very good reasons). However it is well on its way, and it is helping people. Kids are learning more, patients are being treated better, entertainment is more engaging. Standards and exemplars are being re-enforced and more new people are becoming evangelists. The previous generation and generations of activists in the field are also not going away but supporting everyone else too.
So I am really happy to see this become so normal, yet keen that we push it further and make it extraordinary again.
Well done all 🙂

Pixelated Truth – Art, music and performance in Second Life

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It’s not all powerpoints and offices in the metaverse you know.
Claus Uriza from the wonderful PopArtLab was the driving force behind the creation of this excellant Machinima music video for Giana Factory’s new song Pixelated Truth. FuzonAcid directed the video and I think it shows that we often forget the depth of creativity that makes Second Life such an interesting medium. 20 actors performed in real time with their avatars being filmed for this. You can think of it as a form of very rich puppetry. Which when combined with great editing and and storytelling set to music is a very powerful package.
Enjoy, and think of the possibilities. You can create create things like this in a virtual world.

Experiments with SL and green screen

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I had not explored the options in iMovie other than the recent movie trailer additions and a little bit of picture in picture. I realized that it had a green screen processor, which means it will composite in one video with another treating the green as a replacement.
So I thought I would try something. This is just a render test rather than a finished article, but it shows the principle.
I built a green studio in Second Life, just some prims, full bright and green. Placed my epredator avatar in the scene, pointed the camera at me and recorded the result with SnapzPro.

Next I dropped the result in iMovie onto some of the Predlets movie trailer footage. I had to adjust the green screen crop but it actually worked!
I bought a new camera for the business today, a HD Kodak ZX3 waterproof minicam (like a Flip HD but more robust). The iphone is handy for video but thought I needed something, still homebrew, but dedicated. I popped a 16Gb SD card in to give a good few hours of filming.
I will be giving it a test at the Gadget Show Live press day on Tuesday. As if there was not enough to see there already !

Five Years of Second Life – Rez Day

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It is amazing but I almost missed the fact it was my 5th Rez Day in Second Life. Two years ago I wrote this as I started out on my journey into entrepreneurship without the protection of a giant corporate entity.
My Rez day was actually spent preparing and getting ready to present Opensim on The Cool Stuff Collective TV show! That is quite a bizzare serendipitous coincidence. That show is yet to air so we will have to see how the piece turns out later 🙂
Just for the record again my original post on Second Life just after I had figured out what it was
Postcard from Second Life
Second Life is still there, people are still doing interesting things, Opensim has grown and the whole world has gone social media crazy and is playing angry birds and bejeweled.
I am still a metaverse evangelist, still in the industry and life and loads of my friends and colleagues are too. I would have to say that was FTW 🙂

Selling your friends down the digital river

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There seems to be a little bubble of interest growing in the social media trading site Empire Avenue. I only really started to take notice of it last night and created a profile and ticker for epredator

It even encourages you to increase you wealth by asking people to share links like this to sign up
I was intrigued as it reminded me of a site I was introduced to way back in 1998 by some American colleagues who said look at this. I was wracking my brains trying to remember it and luckily its still there HSX.com. My id has long since expired on that though it would appear. The aim was to get info about films and stars and to buy into them with pretend shares. As the time it was a very spreadsheet like site but told you about films that were in pre-production and you could place buy orders on them. I do remember I made a fortune though on a relatively unknown Helena Bonham-Carter as her career broke.
Empire avenue alters this formula and makes us all the stars and our activity on social media, as we link our accounts to it, becomes part of our “worth”.
I am always intrigued about the meta stories that can be applied to our web contributions and this is certainly one of them. Buying shares in someone, is that like friending or more “stalking”. Selling shares (not done that yet) is that a snub or just a virtual commercial decision.
It also reminds me of the political web based RPG erepublik where people live within a political system of work and taxes, but gather to be countries and provinces of interest. Rather like minecraft people manufacture virtual goods and produce that are bought and sold on the market. (I had not visited for a while so my citizen had died, but is now back in good health).
All these applications now wire nicely into facebook and twitter as the main substrate, yet do not exist in those environments. It is almost as if twitter and facebook are social media operating systems.
There is certainly more to be done in this area (thats what I am working on now in relative secrecy BTW ) 🙂