Results tagged “virtual worlds” from Converjed

Just been playing with the export/import feature of Hippo and managed to get the Apollo LEM I did for our Tranquility Base build out of SL and into my Virtual Mars build on OpenSim. Very nice. Next step must be to make a 9 sim version of the Tranquility Base build, complete with the overlays and then maybe make it available as an OAR file.

Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch has an interesting blog post comparing Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, based primarily on a Google Trends plot of both search terms in Google.

His conclusions:

• Augmented Reality has now over taken Virtual Reality, and
• "You can take your virtual reality and get lost on Second Life. I'll take augmented reality any day. It's just more real."

As Mark Kingdon's New Year post says though virtual worlds such as Second Life are likely to become even more real (Second Life HD - SLHD Mark calls it), and anyway:

• The current killer apps for virtual worlds and augmented reality are different - the VW strength is in training and learning, collaboration and whole building and data visualisation, AR is currently in navigation and interpretation
• Increasingly the two will blur - we will have more AR with VW, and be able to our VW on as a AR overlay on real-life (see Halting State by Charles Stross)

So in most respects while the "tension" between AR and VW is interesting to me it is ultimately pointless as the future involves both.

But then I looked at Erick's graph again. He plotted virtual reality against AR - which apart from being a poetic balance is actually the wrong thing. All my (and most other people's talk) is about virtual worlds. VR is very much the 70s/80s term - no wonder its declining on his graph - and the VW "bubble" was in 2006 well after his graph shows VR declining.

So I did my own Google Trends - plotting AR against not only VR but also "virtual worlds" - having checked of course that my AR/VR graph was the same as his. The result:

That looks a truer picture. VW steading growing with something of a step change around 2006 and then growing steady til it was overhualed bythe AR hype of mid 2009, but then actually taking AR back over (just) at the end of 2009!.

As ever lies, damn lies and statistics!

As I said earlier this isn't to say that VW is better than AR or more important - they are both going to be important and vital to the future - all we need to know is which to use for which application, and how to get them to work together.

In response to one of the comments on my Semantic Web post I dug up the roadmap diagram I did 2 years ago. I still think the areas and steps are pretty valid, but we've not made as much progress in the last 2 years as I'd thought we would. Really little has changed since then, although signs are that by 2010 we might actually start tikcing some of the things off. I'll try and find time to update the whole docuemnt this came from.

Nice post by Ian Hughes/ePredator from IBM on the EightBar blog about my mirror worlds presentation at Virtual Worlds London

"The post lunch session began for me with the "Rise of Mirror Worlds and Mirror World Applications". Now dont get me wrong I like mirror worlds, but I was more taken with the sort of augmented mashup approach that David Burden of Daden took in showing the mirror world potential than initially the approach of Alex Wrottesly of Near and Mirko Caspar of Metaversum (Twinity). Alex was basiclaly coming out of "pseudo stealth" and sharing the Near concept of a 100% accurate model of a city with managed shop fronts and interiors for all the parties involved in the real place. Twinity was showing virtual Berlin and the sort of activities and popularity of having a real place to socialize in.
David showed google maps mashups with aeroplane arrival data and layering of reality with augmentations from various places."

After 2 days at Virtual Worlds London I am more convinced than ever that we need to find a new approach to conferences.I've been watching the unconference movement for some time, and it was great that Virtual Worlds Europe emerged phoenix like from the cancellation of their venue as an unconference. But I am sure that there is more to Conference 2.0 than that. I work in the highest of tech, and go to conferences where others are as tech'd (or even more tech'd) than I am. But Conference 2.0 need not be the sole preserve of the geeks - although that is probably the right place to start.

I would love to just work with some conference organisers (and speakers and attendees) to try and start with a clean sheet and think what a Conference 2.0 conference would all be about.

THE SIMPLE STUFF

So what should Conference 2.0 be like? Well lets start with the retrofits - the things we can do with changing the current "big room" format to much:

- shorter presentations - does anyone need to speak for more than 20 minutes, watch the YouTube video or visit the web site or talk to the presenter if you need more
- have free wifi - otherwise we can't do most of the things that follow
- have lots of mains sockets for charging laptops - otherwise we can only do the things that follow for 60 minutes
- an effective back-channel. Twitter is emerging as a great way to let the audience comment on presentations and discussions mid-flow, and to talk about the subject themselves, and to contribute their knowledge. If your audience isn't Twitter friendly use a bespoke IM solution, or even SMS - BUT WHICHEVER YOU USE HAVE A BIG SCREEN DISPLAYING THE FEED THE WHOLE TIME (and an echo screen for the presenters)
- if you're using Twitter promote the hashcode (eg #vwlondon) before the event so delegates can hook up and start networking before they come
- beware of using conference specific networking systems - people only have so much time and you're better off bringing your event to their space (Twitter, Facebook etc) than having your own. And if someone is Twittering etc the conference then it will hit their own network as well.
- publicise YouTube and Flickr tags so that everyone can access all the post-event media
- in panel sessions have someone Googling whatever is being talked about - web sites, projects etc and show this on the big screen - and have their searching fed through to delicious or another bookmarking site so the audience can refer to it later
- have panel chairs who know the audience (easy if informed by Twitter), and can challenge the audience as much as the panelists

The neat thing is that most of the above won't cost you a penny (apart from the electricity and wifi bill).

SOME SOCIAL STUFF

Then we need to start opening the conference out a bit. With most of the conferences I go to the real business is done in the break-out spaces. So:

- make sure you have lots of spare comfy seating (close to mains power and with WiFi)
- relay the conference into the exhibition are and comfy seating areas (many delegates will prefer to watch the conference from here whilst they deal with real work - yet can still contribute through Twitter)
- make sure that tea and coffee are available THE WHOLE TIME, not just at breaks

Exhibition spaces? Still not convinced about the best way of handling those if your event is big enough to warrant a shell scheme type system. But how about:

- poster displays like academic conferences, encouraging a lot of people to put some basic information up for minimal cost, but they can hang around their poster or have their mobile/Twitter ID prominently displayed for easy content
- let all exhibitors have a slot in an exhibition area presentation area

A BIT MORE PARTICIPATION

Now what about making the whole event more democratic:

- let the audience decide the content. put the potential speakers/topics up on the web months before hand and let your audience vote for speakers (but ok, keep the keynotes for yourselves)
- have at least one stream which is an "unconference" - people sign up to speak on the day, just choosing from the available timeslots - they can even enter details on the web there and then so your on-line programme is up to date

Hell, why not run the whole conference as an unconference? It can, and does, work. Shouldn't your golden rule be that everyone who comes to the conference contributes something?

GOING VIRTUAL

So far so safe. If you know what I do for a living then you know what's coming next....

Take your conference virtual. By this we mean:

- create a conference space in a virtual world (eg Second Life). For fun make the space reflect the topic not a conference room (Annual Conference of Sewer Managers or Gut Surgeons anyone?)
- stream the video and audio of the speaker into the space (OK this may cost if you're not already videoing the event - but if not why not - you can put the video content up on the web, an create a podcast with the same material)
- either stream the slides in as well, or have a full slideset in the virtual world (gives better quality but needs to be synchronised)
- have a member of you team in both the real and virtual space - so they can relay questions from the virtual space to the real conference
- ideally have a video screen showing real life attendees the virtual attendees, and a video feed into the virtual space showing the virtual attendees the real attendees (either as projected screens or as "virtual mirrors")
 

By setting up a parallel event in a virtual world you can:

- let delegates save carbon, energy and time by attending virtually
- let delegates who couldn't travel to the event still attend
- let virtual delegates network with each other far more efficiently than if they were each watching web site video feeds - and we're even finding now that the virtual networking is more efficient than the physical networking
- use automated networking tools like Intronetworks in ways that we can still only dream of in the real world (each avatar being told its % interest match with every other avatar in the room!)
- have an event which can live on afterwards - and where visitors can still benefit from serendipitous networking with other late-comers

Of course you still need to make money, and at the moment most delegates will still prefer to come in the flesh - but we are getting to the point where we have enough experience of delivering a good virtual event that delegates would be willing to pay real money to attend them.

STARTING OVER

Now all that might sounds like a great leap forward (and a great challenge), and I'm sure if you did all this you'd have a far more effective conference. But all we've really done is bolt stuff on to a format that probably goes back to the 19th Century. We didn't change things when vu-foils came in,  we didn't change when Powerpoint came in. Please let us change now Web 2.0 and virtual worlds have arrived.

What I would like to see is a root and branch review of how we hold these events. And we've got to start with the audience and what they are trying to achieve. Are they there as passive recipients of knowledge (not sales pitches), are they there to learn, are they there to contribute, or to interact and network? And what constraints do they have in terms of time, cost, energy? And what are they going to do when they get back to the office - I've always felt I'd like a day after each conference just to work out how I spread the stuff I've learnt back at the office - how great would it be if I could use the virtual space to hold my own mini-best-of conference with the event video and commentary all to hand? Then we shouldn't think about venues but about how we can use formats and technology TOGETHER to create the best possible pre, during and post conference experience for our delegates. Only then should we worry about the venue - and my guess is that venue will not be the cavernous halls (or concrete sleeping bags as we used to call them in the Army) of most current conference venues (if I see one more chandelier I'll scream).

So that's it, that's my rant over. Please conference organisers read this with an open mind and try and find time to have a hard think and a good look at the technology before you hold you next event. Yes your delegates might still rate your conference as good - but unfortunately most of them don't know just how stunning it could be.


 

http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/Virtual-Space-Travel-Part-2-Surfing-to-Mars-63387.html?welcome=1213444242

Great post on NASA and Virtual Worlds/SL. Time to post the blog entry I wrote whilst at Being Digital on virtual worlds and space exploration.

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Nice video from Mitch Kapoor looking using 3D imaging to control avatars - just the answer to what I was talking about to someone the other day about how we will interact with virtual worlds in the future

This is the second Greg Egan book I've read. The first was Permutation City and that was excellent and the first book in which the idea of copies/upload/personality constructs (PC) made some sort of sense. With Diaspora Egan goes well beyond that, 150 pages in its an excellent book. Even though written nearly a decade ago it visualisation of a future for humanity is far better than most modern SF authors, and it should be quoted as much as Snowcrash when it comes to talking about virtual worlds. The opening chapter describing the "birth" of a new PC, and that PC's first interaction with external data streams, and then its avatar and its virtual world home are superb.

For the record, and it doesn't include any spoilers, Diaspora identifies a future only 100 or so years out when humanity has post-signularity fragmented into about 4 different "species" (compare with the BT future evolution chart I posted a fortnight or so ago):

- Statics - organic, unmodified humans (i.e. us)
- Exhuberants - organic modified humans, whose modifications range from cosmetic to the extremes to cope with hostile environments such as the sea and space
- Gleisner robots - "uploaded" and (I assume) digitally evolved humans who live in mechanical bodies
- Polis residents (I don't think he gives them a name as the story is from their point of view) - uploaded and digitally evolved humans who live in virtual worlds (although those worlds have feeds of the physical world, have agency in it through robots, and can step out into it through Gleisner robots.