Next, Chuck Hamilton from IBM gave us a deeper look at the how to leverage affordances of virtual worlds to create immersive learning and collaboration environments. He has been asked to write a book on this….so watch this space.
Next, Randy Hinrichs of 2B3D led a GREAT panel covering cases of a Virtual Chocolate Factory, A Virtual Gym, and a Trading Floor. The panelists mapped their cases to the Design Model. It was wonderful to see such a broad array of virtual world applications!
Last but not least, Koreen Olbrish of Tandem led a great panel talking about real ROI of virtual worlds. Again the panelists ranged from MBA Onboarding to Border Patrol Training, to Automotive, to a wide array of applications from ACS.
If you want to learn the detailed scoop. Go to Twitter and search on #3DTLC!
Karl Kapp and I got the galleys for the book yesterday. It looks GREAT!
Here is a look at the cover:
On Wednesday at 3DTLC I will be doing a Chapter by Chapter Highlight and cover 4 or five cases to demonstrate how early adopters are leveraging 3D to improve their competitive position in the market.
Here is a short rundown of the Chapters: Part I: Exploring the Possibilities
The first part of this book revolves around three words: Progress, Problems, and Possibilities.
Chapter 1, Here Comes the Immersive Internet, answers the following questions: What is the Immersive Internet, and how is it impacting the businesses that the learning function serves? It describes how Immersive Internet technology has progressed to a point at which it is beginning to redefine both society and industry. This chapter also examines how business-as-usual is becoming “business unusual” as a result of the convergence of four technology vectors that are driving the business environment towards the creation of new economic platforms based on social production.
Chapter 2, Learning to Change, answers the following questions: What is wrong with the learning function’s current approach to addressing business unusual, and why must it change? It describes the problems that a modern-day organization faces due to its inability to adapt and change as rapidly as the environment within which it operates. This chapter also highlights the growing disconnect between the learning needs of the modern-day enterprise and the ability of the traditional learning function to address them.
Chapter 3, Escaping Flatland, answers the following questions: What is 3D learning, and why is it better suited to meet the needs of business unusual? It explores the possibilities of a new learning paradigm that is enabled by the same Immersive Internet technologies that are revolutionizing business. This chapter also introduces two vignettes that compare a “Flatland” 2D learning experience to an immersive and engaging 3D learning experience.
As was the case in building a house, once the possibility space has been explored, the next step focuses on architecture.
Part II: Building a Blueprint
The second part of this book revolves around three words: Principles, Archetypes, and Examples.
Chapter 4, Architecting Learning Experiences, answers the following questions: What are the 3D learning design principles, and how are they applied to create a 3D learning experience blueprint? It describes the key design principles required to build engaging 3D learning experiences. This chapter also presents a comprehensive 3D learning architecture that can be applied to create a blueprint that ensures alignment and balance in the design of compelling 3D learning experiences.
Chapter 5, Designing by Archetype, answers the following question: How can learning archetypes be applied as building blocks in the design of engaging 3D learning experiences? It describes eleven learning archetypes that form the basic building blocks for creating 3D learning experiences. This chapter also presents comprehensive definitions of each archetype and provides examples of how the building blocks can be applied to create compelling 3D learning experiences.
Chapter 6, Learning from Experience, answers the following questions: Who has successfully designed 3D learning experiences, and what can be learned from their experience? It describes nine case studies of successful 3D learning experience designs and maps these designs back to the archetypes that were used to create them.
As was the case in building a house, once the blueprint has been created, the next step focuses on execution.
Part III: Breaking New Ground
The third part of this book revolves around three words: Process, Adoption, and Rules
Chapter 7, Overcoming Being Addled by ADDIE, answers the following question: How does the traditional ADDIE process change when it is applied to create 3D learning experiences? It describes how the existing ADDIE process must be augmented to address the nuances associated with analyzing, designing, developing, implementing and evaluating 3D learning experiences.
Chapter 8, Steps to Successful Enterprise Adoption, answers the following question: What key steps are required to drive adoption of 3D learning experiences within the enterprise? It describes the steps required to drive adoption of 3D learning experiences by mapping them to the diffusion of innovation attractiveness criteria: Relative Advantage, Compatibility, Complexity, Trialability, and Observability.
Chapter 9, Rules from Revolutionaries, answers the following questions: Who else has successfully driven 3D learning adoption, and what can be learned from their experience? It presents four essays from front-line revolutionaries who share their insights on how they changed the rules and convinced their organizations to adopt 3D learning.
Part IV: Just Beyond the Horizon
The final part of this book revolves around one word: Future.
Chapter 10, Back to the Future, answers the following questions: What’s next for 3D learning, and what will things look like in 2020? It describes a maturity model that argues that immersive technologies will evolve from learning to eventually encompassing all work activity and how you can move your organization toward that eventuality. It also presents two essays that envision the future of 3D learning from two of the industry’s leading visionaries.
In short, the ten chapters in this book can be summarized in ten simple words: Progress, Problems, Possibilities, Principles, Archetypes, Examples, Processes, Adoption, Rules, and Future.
Look forward to sharing my insights with you at the conference!
June 1 was my one year anniversary at Fuqua. How quickly a year passes. It was also the day that Karl Kapp and I turned in our 3D Learning Manuscript to Jossey Bass.
When we started out we said we would hold each other accountable to keeping the book under 200 pages. Oh well, here it is….all 403 pages.
It is due out in January 2010 and we will have a website and 3D Community space to go along with it.
We are not final on title yet but it will be something along the lines of:
Learning in 3D: Adding a New Dimension to Enterprise Learning and Collaboration
Here is an overview of the chapters from the Preface.
Part I: Exploring the Possibilities
The first part of this book revolves around three words: Progress, Problems and Possibilities.
Chapter 1, Here Comes the Immersive Internet, answers the following question: What is the Immersive Internet and how is it impacting the businesses that the learning function serves? It describes how immersive Internet technology has progressed to a point where it is beginning to redefine both society and industry. This chapter also examines how Business-as-Usual is becoming Business Unusual as a result of the convergence of four technology vectors that are driving the business environment towards the creation of new economic platforms based on Social Production.
Chapter 2, Learning to Change, answers the following question: What is wrong with the Learning Function’s current approach to addressing Business Unusual and why must it change? It describes the problems that the modern day enterprise faces due to its inability to adapt and change as rapidly as the environment within which it operates. This chapter also highlights the growing disconnect between the learning needs of the modern-day enterprise and the ability of the traditional learning function to address them.
Chapter 3, Escaping Flatland, answers the following question: What is 3D Learning and why is it better suited to meet the needs of Business Unusual? It explores the possibilities of a new learning paradigm that is enabled by the same immersive Internet technologies that are revolutionizing business. This chapter also introduces two vignettes that compare a “Flatland” 2D Learning Experience to an immersive and engaging 3D Learning Experience.
As was the case in building a house, once the possibility space has been explored, the next step focuses on architecture.
Part II: Building a Blueprint
The second part of this book revolves around three words: Principles, Archetypes and Examples
Chapter 4, Principled Design, answers the following question: What are the 3D Learning Design Principles and how are they applied to create a 3D Learning Experience Blueprint? It describes the key Design Principles required to build engaging 3D Learning Experiences. This chapter also presents an a comprehensive 3D Learning Architecture that can be applied to create a blueprint that ensures alignment and balance in the design of compelling 3D Learning Experiences.
Chapter 5, Designing by Archetype, answers the following question: How can learning archetypes be applied as building-blocks in the design of engaging 3D Learning Experiences? It describes eleven Learning Archetypes that form the basic building blocks for creating 3D Learning Experiences. This chapter also presents comprehensive definitions of each archetype and provides examples of how the building-blocks can be applied to create compelling 3D Learning Experiences.
Chapter 6, Learning from Experience, answers the following question: Who else has successfully designed 3D Learning Experiences and what can be learned from their experience? It describes nine case-studies of successful 3D Learning Experience designs and maps these designs back to the Archetypes that were used to create them.
As was the case in building a house, once the blueprint has been created the next step focuses on execution.
Part III: Breaking New Ground.
The third part of this book revolves around three words: Process, Adoption, and Rules
Chapter 7, ADDIE in 3D, answers the following question: How does the traditional ADDIE process change when it is applied to create 3D Learning Experiences? It describes how the existing ADDIE process must be augmented to address the nuances associated with analyzing, designing, developing, implementing and evaluating 3D Learning Experiences.
Chapter 8, Accelerating Adoption, answers the following question: What key steps are required to drive adoption of 3D Learning Experiences within the Enterprise? It describes the steps required to drive adoption of 3D Learning experiences by mapping them to the Diffusion of Innovation Attractiveness Criteria: Relative Advantage, Compatibility, Complexity, Trialability and Observability.
Chapter 9, Rules from Revolutionaries, answers the following question: Who else has successfully driven 3D Learning adoption and what can be learned from their Experience? It presents four essays from front-line revolutionaries who share their insights on how they convinced their organizations to adopt 3D Learning.
The final part of this book explores what lies ahead for 3D Learning.
Part IV: Just Beyond the Horizon
The final part of this book revolves around one word: Future.
Chapter 10, Back to the Future, answers the following question: What’s next for 3D Learning and what will things look like in 2020? It describes a maturity model that argues that immersive technologies will evolve from learning to pervade the enterprise and encompass all work activity. It also and presents two essays that envision the future of 3D learning from two of the industry’s leading visionaries.
In short, the then chapters in this book can be summarized in ten simple words: Progress, Problems, Possibilities, Principles, Archetypes, Examples, Processes, Adoption, Rules and Future.
This book could not have been possible without all the help from the pioneers in this field who shared their insights and time selflessly to help us make this tomb the best it can be.
Karl and I really hope that it contributes to the field by helping organizations cross the chasm more quickly so that we can get on with committing to the obvious: The Immersive Internet will have a profound impact on how we live, work and play over the next 5000 days.
The good folks at UT Austin were kind enough to post a video of my Keynote from the Virtual Worlds Conference they hosted a few weeks back.
For those of you who were at other Keynotes or Presentations I have done recently (Enterprise Ireland, LSU Virtual Worlds, Training Conference, Federal Virtual Worlds Consortium and Training Leadership Summit) much of what I cover here should be familiar.
Want to hear more about the program for the upcoming 3DTLC program?
Got three minutes to spare?
If so click here to see what we have in store for you in Washington D.C. This is the FIRST conference totally dedicated to the enterprise applications of 3D technology to drive business value.
I hope you agree that this promises to be a very energizing conference! So go ahead, sign up and plug in to get POWERED UP to become a 3D Champion within your entrprise.
Chuck Hamilton (aka Longg Weeks in SL) and I go a long way back. I have always enjoyed his keen insights and easygoing nature. He was kind enough to send me a very thoughtful reply to my plea for help.
Here is what he said: To create the Uber Web 2.0/Web 3D we need to sort out all these collaboration tools and processes into some sort of participation era filter ― a blended matrix of options that we can use to weed out the tired pieces and expand the use of more evolved pieces.
Below is a sort of filter I have in mind.
This is a sort of old and new ideas/models across a time and space axis. If we started to fill this matrix out with all available options, we would see that we can not only narrow the field, but also understand what the blend of activities and approaches will be most applicable.
I feel that there will always be a blend ― a mix that makes sense in the context of our life/work/play balance. When we are collaborating and working there is always a time/space context to consider and there are different approaches that work best in each case. Certainly the spaces are converging, but we are a long way from the sort of ‘one size suits all sort of Uber landscape’ you are hoping for. Let’s embrace mixed media and just position it properly and see if that starts us down the right path.
Right on Chuck! Funnily enough a number of us at Fuqua started building this very matrix as a foundation to allow us to understand how and when to integrate/build bridges across the time/space continuum (Watch out Einstein).
Also, another fellow IBMer, and “tribe” leader for Eightbar, Ian Hughes recently pointed us to the video showing ST integration with Forterra. You can see it here:
Right around 1:37 in this demo there is a jump from 2D (Sametime Conversation) to 3D a Room in Forterra. What I am trying to figure out right now is HOW that Interface looks. Is is simply a “Go 3D” button within the Sametime Client and there is a standard issue Room on the Other End? At timestamp 3:36 one of the engineers asks the others to hold on while he brings up a chart. Again, what I am looking for is the interface that makes it intuitive do do this.
Most of what I am seeing out there, including my own initial forays into this space, it appears are all about what things look like once you get into the 3D space. At Fuqua we are coming at this from a more nuanced (I hope) perspective. 3D is but one modality and even when that modality might be optimal, there will be ACCESS issues the do not allow certain participants to “GO 3D.”
The trick here, we believe, is to create an interface that marries 2D and 3D interface taking into account the most important and value added Time/Space connections to afford more immersive and engaging collaboration. If ANYONE has seen such an interface….please do let me know.
My students in Management of Innovation and Technology this semester were tasked with evaluating the disruptive potential of 3Di for a given set of industries. The team focused on Education highlited WiloStar3D . While focused on collaborative home schooling I found this diagram useful in emphasizing all that must go on in terms of Content, Contacts and Connections (thanks to Lisa Bobbitt from Cisco for those 3C’s) around the 3D world.
Additionally, at around 1:02 timestamp, the video below starts to get into the notion of 2D meets 3D with Calendaring, Assignments etc in the 2D space…but, IMHO, we need to be a lot crisper on how this works and leverage the power of contextualizers to take maximal advantage of the small real estate we have to make things intuitively obvious and immediately actionable.
If anyone has seen examples of flat 2D interfaces that integrate the formal learning context (Courses, Content, Deliverables) with Informal learning (Communities, Context, Conversations) while optimizing the multiple time/space technological affordances in a thoughtful way, please let me know ; )
I can’t move on from that reference without sadly recognizing the passing of Geary Rummler. He truly was a giant in the field and his works were very influential on my own perspective and practice. RIP Geary.
OK, Investigating this question takes the tension of topic/content/formal versus task/context/informal we’ve been wrestling with for some time in learning/KM to the next level. It forces us to examine how Web 2.0 impacts the enterprise of the future as we migrate from database centric stocks of tagged explicit knowledge to social computing enabled flows of digitally enabled people with ability to find each other to innovate and problem solve in real time. In short, I am in a hurry to figure out the Enterprise (or Eduprise in my context) 2.0 IT infrastructure looks like…because we need to BUILD IT here at Fuqua by August of next year ; )
Mc Kinsey’s “Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise” Global Survey Results found that companies are using Web 2.0 technologies more frequently for INTERNAL purposes. Similar to its Web 1.0 cousin, it looks like the B2C period of inflated expectations has passed and we are moving to focus on pragmatic, internal applications with a focus on efficiency. Within the internal use category, the top six enterprise application areas were:
Managing Knowledge
Fostering Collaboration across the Community
Enhancing Company Culture
Training
Developing Products or Services
Internal Recruiting
Interestingly, as I look at analyst reports on the trends and lists of internal application areas where virtual worlds will have impact, the list is strikingly similar to those outlined above for Web 2.0.
Steve Prentice of Gartner has long maintained that the Business to Consumer Marketing focus of Virtual Worlds will retreat to the Enterprise and seek safe haven from the treacherous waters of an increasingly unpredictable market in the safe harbor of productivity focused internal applications of Collaboration and Learning.
Thinkbalm’s Erica and Sam Driver in their recent Immersive Internet report break enterprise applications into 8 High Impact use cases. They further hypothesize that these 8 use cases will array across three phases moving from Cost Savings, through Harnessing Unexpected Business Value, ultimately leading to Business Transformation.
Their time chart for how these enterprise applications array across the phases and time is shown below:
So what gives? If BOTH Web 2.0 and the Immersive Internet/3Di forecasts promise to have enterprise application in the areas of collaboration and learning, it seems to me that these emerging applications can only be a thoughtful and nuanced Mash Up of both. The trick here is figuring out what mix of what technologies for what outcomes.
Justin Bovington and his team at Rivers Run Red appear to have spotted this early. Here is a nice video that explains their Immersive Workspaces 2.0 offering developed with the Lindens:
From this overview, it is clear that much thought must go into the orchestration and coordination of digitally mediated presence, connection, conversation, sharing, presentation, co-creation, discovery etc…in order to enable a seamless 2D/3Di experience that allows people to work at a distance with mind-numbing ease.
Here at Fuqua we are right in the thick of prototyping/iterating/co-creating the Uber 2.0 Eduprise Mashup. We not only need to integrate Web 2.0 and 3Di but we also need to plug it into (or more appropriately position on top of) our existing technological infrastructure that enables the orchestration of World Class MBA programs at a distance (i.e. our LMS and LCMS).
In guiding our Itervation (Iterative Innovation that is), there are a few sources that provide direction:
FIRST is the Seven Sensibilities of Virtual worlds mentioned earlier in this blog. Our guiding premise here is to only leverage 3D where it makes a strategic and significant difference. No good doing 3D just for its own sake, much better to apply where it makes a marked and memorable impact on the end-to-end educational experience for our stakeholders.
Context: Today users have to make conscious decisions about when to use which tool to collaborate with others on a document or deliverable. To overcome this issue we need to clearly define what “contextualizes” and what is “contextualized.” Profile/Role, task and Connection Mechanisms will contextualize content and connections in real time around the endeavor at hand. This will lead to a more intuitive and usable immersive workspace that allows users to more rapidly get to the “Doing” rather than dealing with the overhead of planning, co-ordinating and connecting before getting to the “Doing”
Individualized: The user (Prospect, Student, Staff, Faculty, Alum) must be at the center of the design of our next generation learning Collaboration and Learning Intuitive Learning Environment (CLIVE). The technology must adapt to the individual, not the other way around. CLIVE must have both a social/personal and personalized programmatic component. Leveraging our understanding of the Contextualizers (i.e. WHO the user is, HOW they are connected to the environment, WHERE they are in the workspace, and WHAT they are trying to do) allows CLIVE to tune the interface to the individual context and shift the burden of orchestration and coordination of resources required to accomplish a given task from the individual to the environment itself.
Seamless: CLIVE must seamlessly integrate new Web 2.0/3Di service apps with our existing LMS/LCMS infrastructure. It must mask the complexity of back end applications and interfaces with elegant and intuitive simplicity on the front end. People must be able to invoke and act upon the information, contacts and tools they need with minimal effort. We should not burden the cognitive load of users in preparing to do work. Rather, we should provide a “draggy, droppy, clicky” environment that allows them to get on with the REAL work of collaborative co-creation.
A consistent look and feel must be maintained across the various components assembled in the environment even when multiple back end systems are being leveraged. To the user, it should NEVER feel like they are switching back and forth between applications or telescoping up and down within a rigid navigation system to marshal resources to accomplish a task. CLIVE orients the world of content, contacts and connectivity around the user and shrinks the world to surface relevant resources to solve the task at hand.
CLIVE must also accommodate the seamless movement back and forth between structured formal learning and unstructured collaborative peer learning in a way that both approaches are honored and activated where they are most appropriate and where the whole learning experience yields moments of synthesis for the participants that are greater than the sum of the pedagogical/technological parts. CLIVE must continuously strike the balance between structure and serendipity in the service of enriching the learning experience.
Visual: Our mash-up should resonate visually and allow people to quickly grok content and intuit context (i.e. Tags and Social Network Representations in 2D space and avatar interactions with each other and data/models in 3D space). Traditional Web-Based navigation schemes are information-centric and thus challenged in their ability to keep pace with a user’s need to quicky scan, interpret, and act on contextually relevant information. Clearly there is an opportunity to leverage visualizations of meta-data via tag-clouds and social connectedness via Social Networking technologies have relevance here as does the opportunity to leverage the third dimension (avec ou sans avatar) to improve the “grokability” of the environment.
Multimodal: Our system must recognize that, as Kevin Kelly so ably suggests, there is only One Machine and the Web is its OS. We need to strive to be able to accommodate all the devices that connect to the one machine in a seamless way (can we please hurry up with visualization and the cloud?) – Timestamp 3:15 to get to demo.
Quick: Does this need explanation? Wiki is a Hawaiian word for Fast! CLIVE needs to work. CLIVE needs to work without a manual. CLIVE needs to ignite talent opportunity and passion around ideas and endeavors at an an accelerated pace, and CLIVE needs to activate the growing and incredibly talented network that is Fuqua (over 14K strong today) to address the pressing issues of our times. What am I missing, oh yes…..CLIVE needs to work YESTERDAY (OK, not yesterday, but late March at the latest).
The THIRD source of guidance for itervating CLIVE comes from Gartner’s analysis of the Business Impact of Social Computing on Higher Education. In this report, Harris and Lowendahl suggest that, “the incorporation of social software features and integration capabilities with institutional applications will become necessary to accommodate the higher education user expectations, while closing the gap between personal and institutional structures.” They go on to say, “If positioned strategically, social computing can fill a gap between the inflexible structures in place in most higher-education organizations and the chaotic personal structures that have spread across the desktops of both student and faculty.”
So CLIVE must bridge the gap between the existing enterprise infrastructure and the personal chaotic structure that has emerged to compensate for the ridgidiy and inflexibility of that enterprise infrastructure. CLIVE needs to provide an adaptive structure that allows users to CREATE, ORGANIZE, FIND AND INTERACT more intuitively. To do so CLIVE must:
Provide Persistent Presence to allow ongoing openess for participation
Render Content, Contacts and Connectivity that is contextualized to user role/workflow
Organize Content, Contacts and Connectivity to reflect users current use and needs
Encourage natural and serendipitous group formation based on location, activities and interests
Leverage links, tags, ratings and usage to determine relevance, importance and quality
Find content through people links and vise versa
Dynamically update profiles based on content/tags created, involvement in interactions and aggregation of user-generated commentary,co-creation, content, filtering and organization.
The FOURTH area of inspiration for itervating on CLIVE comes from Anderew McAfee’s work on Enterprise 2.0 that I discussed in an earlier post here. Contextualizing his SLATES components to CLIVE comes out something like this:
Search and Serendipitous Discovery trump Interface Navigation/Hierarchy. In fact, just as Thomas Friedman suggest that the world is FLAT. A core design point for our CLIVE is that the interface itself must be FLAT and that the content, contacts and connectivity elements are surfaced within that FLAT interface based on the contextual factors at play.
Links, Tags and Extensions and Signals are the domain of User Generated Commentary, Content, Filtering, Organizing and Distribution that CLIVE must provide. The trick here is that it must work across all the underlying apps that the FLAT interface masks. How do we take all the richness of web-serviced applications, mash them up with existing enterprise platforms and allow the informal serendipity of fortuitous interaction to prevail in a system that is optimized to create a flow state for formal and informal learning and inquiry that rivals that of World of Warcraft?
The very interesting thing about the participatory web approach is that it not only helps others find explicit knowledge but it also exposes the patterns and processes in knowledge work that others use. As McAfee says, these participatory systems make an episode of knowledge work more widely and permanently visible.
This is going to be a fun ride….anyone with any experience, advice, wisdom, counsel, please bring it on. This is new territory to be sure and none of us is as smart as all of us. Ideas and insights PLEASE.
I had a very interesting meeting with some folks from Microsoft and members of Fuqua’s Health Sector Management program last week. We were exploring how emerging technologies might help with disseminating best practices in clinics in Africa, among other concepts related to improving healthcare on a global scale.
As we were talking about the power of Web 2.0 technologies to allow stakeholders in different countries to connect through the web asynchronously via the power of the participatory web…I was reminded of Andrew McAfee’s great article in Sloan MIT Review where he developed the SLATES components of Enterprise 2.0 technologies: Search, Links, Tags, Extensions, Signals.
Navigation and Interfaces are moving into the background as SEARCH dominates
LINKS inform search and empower the prosumers who power the participatory web
TAGS democratize the categorization of content making the patterns and processes of knowledge work more visible
EXTENSIONS of tagging allow for services like Stumbleupon to optimize around your search preferences like Pandora does for music
SIGNALS of new input are fed via RSS.
Our discussion, I thought, was moving in a predictable direction we were where we would begin to examine how to leverage what Michael Wersch has described as the “User Generated” revolution:
User Generated Commentary (Blogs)
User Generated Content (YouTube)
User Generated Filtering (Digg)
User Generated Organization (Delicious)
User Generated Distribution (RSS Feeds)
But then, being that we are human, the discussion began to shift. We talked about Microsoft’s Virtual Earth as a 3D scaffold upon which all kinds of digital content can be hung. Think of it as a navigation interface we are already familiar with (the globe) and then think about being able to hang content on this mirror world scaffolding with one click.
Immediately my mind jumped to an awesome TED talk I saw on Microsoft’s Photosynth research project that is now available here.
If you have not seen the Photosynth video yet you should check it out here (Go to 4:32 for demo):
Now imagine that all cameras are location aware and that if you were to map all the pictures Flicker of locations like the Pyramids, White House or Notre Dame onto the Virtual Earth scaffold you essentially have a 3D User Generated Context (UG3DCx) where users (sans avatar representation) can navigate a 3D rendering of the location.
OK, I get the “UG3DCx” part you say…but what is with the “(t)”? Well, those of you who read my blog know I have a keen interest in time travel. So, if the photos taken can be tagged in three dimensions and they also have a standard timestamp, we not only can navigate a spacial representation of a given location we can also do so temporally…and that is very cool. Imagine being able to walk through the rebuilding or the Twin Towers 100 years from now, or more personally navigating thorough your ancestors homes and cities.
It also strikes me that there could be a very cool application here where Peter Gabriel’s effort to enable user generated “watchdogging” using cell phone cameras to capture the human rights injustices in Africa.
User Generated 3D Contexts that allow us to navigate Space and Time. Bring it on I say ; )
Now, just to push it one more notch – or, more accurately, to look at location based contextual exploration from another perspective – imagine really (not virtually as above) being in a physical space and being able to use a device like an i-phone to get contextually relevant data about where you are in real time. Sound impossible? ….like most things these days, it is already…see for yourself below:
This could be a great new tool for enabling immersive location based Alternate Reality Games.
One of the most wonderful rewards of being an educator is to sit in a Dissertation defense and be totally awed by the work of one of your students. It is even more rewarding when that student is a close friend.
Steve Garcia and I met many moons ago when he was interviewing for the Marketing Leadership Development Program at Nortel. We hit it off immediately and have crossed paths many times over the years. Steve and I worked together in the New Services Development team at Nortel and he decided to follow my lead and take the plunge to pursue his doctorate at NCSU more years ago than I can remember.
I had the pleasure of having Steve in class and always appreciated his focus, pragmatism and keen insights. At his dissertation defense the other day he mentioned that it was in my class that he first became interested in Social Network theory. Yet another moment that makes your hart sing as an educator ; )
Well, Dr. Garcia took this interest to a whole new level in his dissertation. He has developed a theory to apply social network analysis to determine the impact of large group interventions. His Chapter 2 is a must read for anyone who wants to get up to speed on where this kind of analysis stands and how it can be used empirically to show variance in outcomes on large group interventions.
Today I am proud to be an educator and proud to call Steve a friend. Most importantly I am proud to welcome Dr. Steve Garcia to the academy. Congrats Steve…now lets get some of your great work published ; )
Great day yesterday! Erica and Sam Driver gave us a readout on how the barriers associated with getting the industry across the chasm. You can get the report here Next Ron Burns from Proton Media gave a great demo/presentation and lots of buzz created when he demoed SharePoint integration! Next, I provided an overview of my book (written [...]
