Life at the Feeding Edge

My own TV show?

3 commentsApr 11th, 2009 in branding, business, conference, public by epredator

Aside from the comparisons in some of my attitudes to Jeremy Clarkson, or my passion for sharing information with people and making then feel involved I have only really ever done on stage presentations, unscripted, face to face meetings, the odd podcast, TV appearance and a stack of virtual world gatherings in Second Life.
I recently came across something Dassualt Systemes have put together that enables us to edit up virtual TV shows mixing simple content and interesting camera movements. Its called http://www.tvnima.com/

It also lets you do the 2 photo facial avatar creation which for a first attempt on my part seemed to work quite well I think. (Not really done much with my hair).

You have to currently do this all on IE due to the plugin wanting to be the uploader for content from your machine, and they have not put in an easy to find player (to let you just see my first attempts), and Fraps cant capture it on my machine as the colour palette gets messup. However, apart from that it shows great promise as something very simple to use.

I basically laid down 1 minute timeline, 2 shots form a keynote pitch, picked some camera pans, closeups the odd gesture and then recorded a voice over to go with it. If I can get the content out as easy as I put it in I will do my most recent pitch all in this as an advert for what I do here at Feeding Edge.

The various panning camera movements and simplicity to string them together was very impressive. No real fighting the interface or trying to sort out a dolly for a camera to move across.

This is not a live performance tool (yet) and is a single user, but it does show some of the simplicity of interface and user functions that lets us just get on with the content.

Of course having got a a real rush from all the presenting I do and the enthusing I do, if I now get a taste for a TV studio….. Well I am open to offers, failing that I will just create my own show.

Latest merger news : Work and play combine

2 commentsApr 8th, 2009 in conference by epredator

Last night I had the pleasure of speaking at a Nokia connecting worlds event in Second Life. The subject for the panel of us invited to talk was that of human and non human avatars. In particular we represented people with avatars in SL or multiple looks in SL that were not regular real world mirrors.
It was a very interesting set of perspectives that we all brought to the event I think. The discussion of identity and the prejudice and also the power of using particular ways of interacting in virtual environments is a rich subject. It is also full of personal experience and though for each of us.

Faced with an avatar based experience everyone who enters has to choose something, even if the choice is to do nothing, to represent them. However as they engage and act the avatar starts to not just be a visual but a repesentative of attitude and action.

The panel was formed of Blue Linden, Myself, Digistar Brouwer of Nokia, Hiro Pendragon, Selkit Diller and Flea Bussy, moderated by Hydra Shaftoe.

Also for me the conversation and answering the questions ranged from my experience at a large corporation having represented both myself and their interests as epredator, flowed into how I show the fact I am clearly a science fiction fan with my AV and also how I try and act with the same strength and honour blended with the ethos of another character.

Clearly all that in conversation blends business and play in many complicated ways. The need for personal brand, for ego and for championing a business cause yet all being described to a group of people world wide when for me it was 8pm and I was at home having just put the predlets to bed.

It was captured by the newly forming Treet.tv (link to follow once the archive is up)

So clearly work and play (which can be the same thing if you enjoy the work) have already merged. Sharing personal experience that some people may use for commercial advantages, or for personal enhancement crosses the boundaries.

As I often say all this is about people. Thats the bottom line. People connecting and getting done what they need to do, direct to one another with reduced overheads.
As is also customary at any online gathering there is a post event mingle, this shows the great leveler that virtual worlds are as the social construct of audience, stage, panelists just stops and intermingles as it does at any good conference event.

We ended up discussing WoW, Female/Male potential prejudices and sandwiches.

There were a few eightbars (both current and former IBMers) who came along too so it was good to see everyone again.

Thanks all for the discussion ~~and look out for the video when its posted to hear everyones point of view.~~
The video is now ready

Or a direct link is here (Thank Digistar 🙂 )

Heading for Washington and 3DTLC

No commentApr 4th, 2009 in business, conference by epredator

Well its official. Feeding Edge is on the road and heading for Washington in a couple of weeks for the 3DTLC. I have the honour of being on a panel with some very cool people. This is a little change from when I was not sure of my travel budget, but this is well worth the investment.
EXPLORE: The Enterprise Applications Emerging Over The Next
Two Years

The Virtual World Roadmap team will EXPLORE the enterprise
applications they see emerging over the next two years and the
technology features that will enable them. Topics
to be discussed include: key applications seen emerging in
Education/e-Learning/Training; key technological functionality that
must emerge for learning; key technological functionality that must
emerge for Connecting; and other applications should we take note of
(Visualization, Design, Customer Facing).

Koreen Olbrish, CEO, Tandem Learning (interviewer)

Eilif Trondsen, Research and
Program Director, Virtual Worlds @ Work

John Hengeveld, Senior Business
Strategist, Intel Corporation

Sibley Verbeck, Chief
Executive Officer, Electric Sheep Company

Ian Hughes, Managing
Director, Feeding Edge Ltd

So I hope to catch up with a good few people and see where we are going with all this over the next few years too.

Second Life behind the firewall

No commentApr 3rd, 2009 in Uncategorized by epredator

As I dont think the Linden blogs are very track back friendly I thought I would post my comment on the Second Life behind the firewall article here too, having had a small part in driving the demand that has led to this 🙂

I have to say that this is nothing but good news. Way back in the distant yonder when Roo and I sat there wondering how to get IBM into the industry we certainly by about day 2 realized how great it would be to also be able to run secure instances of something similar to the public grid. There was a great google video from about 4 years ago of Cory and Philip aluding to that direction.

The public SL grid has a massive role to play still, but, just as with the web, there really is no reason to have it all served out of one place. The resistance in the early days to us corporates turning up (even though it was unofficial to start off with) has in fact generated support for an industry that we can all enjoy in our own way.

Developers are able to go off and build new virtual world platforms and explore extending existing ones. Residents of SL are able to carry on being who they are and who they want to be, company employees are able to explore ways of better, richer and quite frankly more enjoyable communication at distance.

Second Life has sparked many directions, the open source movement with opensim, other providers with products to help in other sectors.

There is plenty of room for every application and every personal need for many of these ways of interacting. We often get caught by the real world analogy of a single planet working a single way but we have a chance to explore a whole new set of ways to interact, for grids to interact, to augmenting real world with virtual information. The list goes on.

SL is evolving, peoples expectations of a virtual world are evolving. We are moving from “why bother?” to “can we?”. As soon as the “can we?” deman arrives that brings change and innovation.

How this all is structured at the moment clearly is not the end of the journey. We have not solved every technical, social and philisophical puzzle, but we have opened up many people eyes.

I am really looking forward to seeing where we all take this.

3 years in Second Life – Autovatar Biography time!

4 commentsMar 29th, 2009 in branding, business, conference by epredator

Today is my 3rd anniversary rez day in Second Life and time to reflect on everything that has happened in that time. Of course I have been online as epredator for a lot longer than just the Second Life existence but the past years have been the most formative of my career. Much of the anecdotes and experience of driving innovation across social media and in large enterprises has been triggered by those early days in SL. It is those years and the successes, failures, highs and lows combined with the personalities involved that really form the basis of the book I am mapping out in between all the other things I am doing. I am even more convinced than ever that people really need to hear the complete story as at every conference and event I go to people ask about it and are usually amazed at just how mad this roller coaster has been.

Visually in SL things have changed a little, but not a greta deal, but my understanding on the depth of engagement, the positive and negative stories alters every day. So despite having this 3 year period of exploration it does not stop here. I often tell people we are all forever N00b.

Part of the most formative story elements are captured here in a Flickr set via Snapzilla.

Clearly these pictures on their own need the narrative woven into them for what was going on in the physical world, but thats part of my job. As the person who experienced it I need to share what I have learned. Just as I have learned to present and to convince as well as my background of being able to create and invent with code and technology this will be an interesting experience. It may end up that many people will benefit from what I have been through, or it may just be a cathartic experience. I will let you know.

So we go from Roo and I trying to make a space hopper on first land

A few days later turning a light on and off via a webpage in april 2006 to show external messages being able to interact with this virtual world.

Before I knew it Rob had joined me too and I was busy showing my message broker in world.(Just another few thousand to go after us 3 got going and 40,000+ people personally talked to up to now.)

… and now director of Feeding Edge ltd with 2 islands to my name and starting as a rental landlord,

Those three years have also ended up with a press highlight reel. The most recent being some fantastic coverage in the Irish Times which was a result of being invited to do the opening keynote at the ACE conference.

This of course is part of the continuum that has been the past 3 years, hence the signpost. You can’t go and meet and greet great people, share what you know if you have not spent time doing it and making sense of things. A common misunderstanding that people have of social media in general is that of overnight success. Computers are thought to make things happen quicker, process equations solve problems, move data really really fast. However, people work at their own pace, adoption curves, politics and experience all get enhanced by digital technology but reputations still require effort and building. So in sharing what I have been doing on blogs and in social media and metaverses, and the next phase of sharing, hopefully in print and on Kindles all over the world the personal story is really the key. Of course understanding the balance of the positive nature of the support and the less than positive challenges that have been faced on the journey will take some thinking through.

Wish me luck and any authors want to offer their perspective please feel free to share 🙂

Ace Conference Keynote

3 commentsMar 26th, 2009 in business, conference by epredator

My keynote to the ACE conference in Derry seemed to go down very well. I have just uploaded a version to slideshare, though it will be available soon as a recorded webcast so you can hear the words that go with the pictures.

The base is that we have set ways of doing things, the cave painting mentality, once we have cave paintings we have human communication sorted. Which is clearly not the case. I added the important fact that we are all connected, that the traditional structures and boundaries we have from countries, corporates, factories etc can be bypassed by everyone being able to interact with everyone.

Anyway, see what you think, and if anyone wants to hear this in person let me know.

Washing away cave paintings

View more presentations from epredator.

Space as a memory aid

No commentMar 21st, 2009 in conference by epredator

Many people instantly ask of any virtual world, can I get my powerpoint presentation in there. All of us in Second Life and other worlds know full well its not that hard. Of course people also assume that they only need one screen and that the physical restrictions of one screen one projector one slide need to prevail. After all thats the way we have “always” done it.

I was prepping my new pitch, using keynote on the Mac and decided to see what it looked like layed end to end. So I just uploaded the images and dropped then on my parcel in IQ. It has a side effect that I know how a visual and spatial memory of what I have as material. It will of course adjust to whatever I need to say on the day. However, in prep terms this is a useful exercise that I can recommend. It also gives you the simple options of layering and grouping the ideas as I have at the back with a stack of three slides.

This is not new news, but as I still have the conversations with people about real life presentations I thought I would write this now to point people at, or allow them to visit in SL.

Of course the key is to go past this and to represent the ideas with 3d interactive objects not flat screens. So I may make this an exhibit over the next few weeks, see how the pitch (very much subject to change) goes first 🙂

Friendly landlord seeks friendly tenants

No commentMar 20th, 2009 in business by epredator

Very often in Second Life the renting of land is based around trust of the Landlord. The land controls and ownership of sim’s requires that tenants know the landlord will work in an honourable fashion. Of course these works two ways, especially when a high degree of access is available and control available for the tenant.

I hope that my constant honorable actions for the good of virtual worlds both in the enterprise and in personal uses provides some of that degree of trust to any new tenants.

I have decided to start being a rental landlord with the famous Hursley island in SL and also in part with IQ that is next door.

I am selling parcels, so that the new owner has a great deal of flexibility. The initial purchase is the first months rent.

Parcels are usually 4096 sq m, 937 prims and start at L$8000 a month. Coastal parcels and corner plots are slightly more.

I also am putting up half of IQ for rent as one big block, ideal for an event.

Hursley sim can be found on the main map or here

IQ sim can also be found on the main map or here

****Update. Parcels are listed on Xstreet now too here

Should anyone need an entire sim, I am willing to discuss pricing and terms for all of IQ.

So a piece of Second Life history, Hursley and IQ used to be provided free as a sandbox by me to all my fellow eightbars. Its where we started Wimbledon in SL and where thousands of my former colleagues found a spiritual home. It was part of my personal VC investment to get my previous company to have enough critical mass of understanding of virtual worlds to take it seriously.

To many these may just be a server in a network, but to us it has a history, if you would like to be part of the next phase of that, or just need a little place to call home come and join us on Hursley or IQ as a resident. You will also find you have a few very skilled and influential resident neighbours and island admins.

Learning in Virtual Worlds

1 commentMar 19th, 2009 in education by epredator

Another fellow ex-IBMer Tony O’Driscoll has put together a description of all the people and ideas that are going to be covered in the up and coming 3DTLC conference in Washington DC.

Clearly learning training and collaboration are key applications of virtual worlds and the surrounding technology. Not the only ones of course, but the sort of thing that will drive enterprise adoption.

I have recently been working with several education and training based clients that sit on top of all the technology we have available. It is very clear that this is a growth area.

With the release of applications to support some elements of education such as Daden’s new open source Pivote and applications such as Sloodle there is a clear trend forming.

The interesting subject I would like to see addressed is this separation of the learning content and structures and where the boundaries are of the virtual world platform. i.e. is the virtual world just another front end, or does it contain some of the essence of the learning experience.

I am not sure I will be at this conference, being a fledgling startup doesn’t sit well with buying plane tickets and hotels just yet 🙂 I will of course attend on whatever digital channels are made available.