Well it is official. Chris and Tonda have asked me to MC 3DTLC 2.0 in San Jose in September. Those of you who managed to make it to the first show know first-hand the energy that we managed to create. Please tell ALL your friends.
Submission deadline has been extended through end of week so please consider sharing your wisdom with the community.
Call for speakers link is here
I sincerely hope to see you all again in San Jose.
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.
Metanomics launched in its fantastic new digs today. What a wonderful place.
At 3DTLC, Rob Blooomfield asked me to become a correspondent for Metanomics covering the application of virtual world technologies to enterprise learning. I am honored and excited to be a part of this incredibly well produced show.
Today I covered the Expectation Gap and the Routinization Trap when it comes to the application of Virtual Worlds to Training. The basic message was that we need to reframe learning if we are to avail ourselves of all the incredible affordances that the virtual world brings. If content is king, then context is the kingdom. We need to become contextual engineers to create compelling immersive learning experience, not digital content conveyers in a virtual classroom. We also talked about how the twitter backchannel at the conference brought some of those affordances from the virtual world back into meatspace to enrich conference participant connectedness.
More importantly, Mark Kingdon, CEO of Second Life, goes over his strategic plan and addresses audience questions in today’s show. Lots of good stuff in the discussion. For those of us steeped in Virtual Worlds a great set of insights into where Second Life is headed. As a business prof, the conversation is also a great exposition of how a new CEO comes into a very strong culture and works to move the company from pathfinding, across the chasm to main-street.
You can check out the show by clicking here.
Well, it is just about midnight, a perfect time to double-loop/synthesize what happened over the past 48 hours at the conference.
I am in that happy-but-exhausted place that is both sad it is over but glad at the same time. Sad because I think we managed to get a solid groundswell of positive energy going around Enterprise Virtual worlds, glad because channelling the energy of such passionate and innovative people for two days straight can drain your own reserves quickly ; )
We definitely had the right people in the room. We were not lacking in passion, or opinion, as a fledgling community that wants desperately to become legitimate in the eyes of the enterprise.
Taking a page from my research into MMORPGs a few years back we decided as a community to bring the affordance of backchat into the real world by leveraging Twitter. In fact at around 3PM today the ” #3DTLC” hashtag trended on Twitter – Ashton Kutcher and Oprah better be looking over their shoulders the TLC tweeterrati is onto them.
If you want to check out the whole Twitter Stream, this link should do the trick (warning over 100 pages worth of tweets):
Some Teasers from the Twitter Stream:
“The first-time user experience in virtual worlds, to put it bluntly, sucks.” – Steve Prentice
“If you can’t get peple to use GoToMeeting, how r u going to get them to use VW? – Steve Prentice
“Nobody can miss the irony that we’re the leading lights in virtual worlds and we’re having this physical meeting.” – Steve Prentice
“The middle layer of the company is where the resistance is the greatest.” – Joe Little
“We dont know where we are going but we are going to invent new things that do not compare to existing models of learning and working.” Dick Riedl
“You should have to justify a lecture just as much as any other learning approach” – Intellagirl
“Education abuses students when it is monlogic. Lets not treat students like receptacles that need to be filled.” – Intellagirl
“Bad teaching is bad teaching no matter where you do it.” – Dick Reidl
“We will have pedagogy that is purpose built for Virtual Worlds” – Karl Kapp
“For Diversity Experience there is nothing Better than Walking in Another Person’s Shoes” – Margaret Regan
“Trying to do training the old way in this new environment is not effective” – Debbie Dalmand
“It is not about ME, it is about WE” – Randy Hinrichs
“It is not about BEING there, it is about DOING there” – Randy Hinrichs
“It is not about the DATABASE, it is about the HUMAN RACE” – Randy Hinrichs
“The only actions taken by user should be ones that reflect end goals and intermediate steps should be taken automatically” – Sibley Verbeck
“We need to move beyond “one size fits all” software and see specific applications of VW tech to much narrower use cases” – Sibley Verbeck
“There is a gap in the maturity of virtual world vendor business models versus what enterprise expects in doing business” – John Hengeveld
“We will have arrived when the tool becomes part of the workflow and dissolves the ‘virtualworldness’ away – Ian Hughes
“The power of the immersive is in the emotional impact” – Robin Williams
“In the recruitment sphere there is no better way to reach so many in so many locations.” – Keith Dugdale
“The US Holocaust Memorial Museum was created in Second Life to educate via learning thru movement – Learning Kinetically” – David Klevan
“Technologies succeed when they meet a need that people care about” – John Hengeveld
“The last thing we want to do is increase the efficiency with which we’re ineffective.” – Your’s Truly ; )
OK, I gotta go to BED now. Thanks to the community for the coming, connecting, contributing and co-creating new insight.
Over and out.
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.
more about "WiloStar3D Virtual Worlds Video Demo", posted with vodpod
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 ; )
Randy Hinrichs of 2b3d turned me on to this cool video called 50 Virtual Worlds in 7 minutes. It is well worth a look:
Given the explosion of virtual world new entrants, K-Zero did a nice job of trying to tag a lot of these worlds by sector in this plot:
So, it would seem with all this activity the movement up the s-curve of adoption should be significant right? Not so fast says Gartner. According to their most recent Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle, public virtual worlds have not yet hit the bottom of the Trough of Disillusionment but they have been moved from the 5-10 years to 2-5 years column in terms of years to mainstream adoption.
So what gives? Linden Labs is about 2500 days old. Yesterday I waxed on Kevin Kelly’s observation that the web is merely 5000 days old. Why have we not crossed the chasm and gotten on main street yet when it comes to virtual worlds?
Well, because there are so many of them and they serve different niche needs. To my mind this won’t pan out like Web 1.0 did. I don’t think I will be teaching the Virtual World Interface wars case like I have the Browser Wars case where Microsoft and Netscape go at it full force. There are worlds that serve different niches and need and they will stay vibrant to that community. Everquest continues to enjoy active participation by 250K folks year over year and they are not going anywhere.
That being said, I do believe that there is a line between social/entertainment worlds and business/enterprise worlds. Forterra recognized this by setting up There to address the entertainment market using the same underlying platform but customizing it in different ways.
I also agree with Steve Prentice’s comments lately at the V-Business Expo. The B2C applications of virtual worlds have gotten a punch in the gut, and similarly to how things went down in the Web 1.0 era, on the enterprise side of things companies are looking to take the technology inside the firewall and try it out in a controlled setting (in Web 1.0 parlance this would be a Business to Employee application).
So here is the big question. In the video above, the front runners for B2E enterprise applications were not prominently covered. In K-Zero’s Virtual Worlds by Sector, I don’t see an Enterprise Learning and Collaboration Sector and Gartner is not yet breaking out public and private virtual worlds on their hype cycle?
What gives? If this is the very place where most pundits are suggesting the industry is moving why is it not showing up on these analytical constructs? Am I missing something? Help me out. Am I wrong in assuming that for Virtual Worlds B2C was the Sizzle and B2E will be the Steak that enables companies to make money selling steak in the B2B space? If so…should we not be placing more emphasis on Private virtual worlds focused on enterprise learning and collaboration?
I am about 60 days into my new role here at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. With each additional day I become more and more aware of just what an incredible institution I have been privileged to join.
The vision of the administration, the caliber of the faculty and the sharpness of the students are truly something that must be experienced to be understood.
Besides my teaching role here at Fuqua, I am also tasked with identifying key leverage points where web 2.0 and 3D internet technologies can be leveraged create distinct and differentiated learning modalities for our MBA programs.
If you stop to think about it, as Kevin Kelly so ably recounts, the web is just over 5000 days old. The amount of change that this innovation has brought to society at large and to industry and business is quite astounding.
On the societal front, the Myspace generation is truly wired. Or is it wireless?. In either case, their connectivity to others is both pervasive and persistent. They view the computer as a connector not a cruncher. They are not willing to be passive consumers of broadcast media, instead they demand to be active co-creators of content and insights and they want ongoing push-pull/dialogue to occur in the sensemaking process that amounts to traveling on many vectors of successive approximation toward the truth.
On the business front, we are moving to the era of the Globally Integrated Enterprise, one where work seeks its own level and supply and demand for various components of the business are optimized in real time through the IP network.
As I thought about my new role I began to wonder how my perspective on the thoughtful application of technology to learning would change if I put on my IBM Consulting hat and thought of my students as clients. How would they rate my service as a teaching professional? How would they rate me in terms of engagement and transformational learning given that they live in an age of permanent, persistant and pervasive access to information and experts with the touch of a button. How would I stack up relative to the array of technological affordances they have at their disposal to figure stuff out for themselves?
If I reframed my role from that of professor teaching student to one of service provider educating client would my strategic approach to the application of technology to improve the educational experience be different?
Suddenly my mind flashed to a great video by Michael Wesch, Digital Ethnographer from U of Kansas (you probably know him from the Machine is Us/ing us fame). The video below provides a pretty compelling look at what my clients most likely want to say to me but don’t dare to because I am not their service provider or experience coordinator, I am their Professor.
As a student of disruptive technology who has spent the past 20 years working in enterprise learning I believe we are now at a true inflection point where one of the most powerful sets of transformational technologies of our time is training its sights on the one institution/enterprise function that has heretofore managed to emerge unscathed from the application of technology: Education.
So here I sit in the nexus. In one corner, a set of technologies that are fundamentally transforming how we live work and play and, in the other, an institution (i.e. University or K-12 School) and or enterprise function (i.e. Learning Function) that has largely deployed technology not to transform how we facilitate learning but simply to automate how we teach.
There is an old adage that says that the diffusion of innovation follows a predictable path: A scientific discovery, informs the creation of a new technology, which ushers in a new set of business opportunities that end up reshaping the structure of industries and organizations. An apple falls on Newton’s head leads to the creation of the laws of physics, leading to the invention of the internal combustion engine, which dis-intermediates the thriving “buggy whip” manufacturing business and ultimately leads to Sloan’s notion of the Bureaucracy and Ford’s Assembly Line.
The is another adage which suggests that for change to occur there is a precondition that learning take place. With all the change that has happened in Society and Business over the past 5000 days due to the arrival of the internet and significantly more on the way in the wake of Web 2.0 and the 3D internet, I believe it is safe to say that individuals and organizations will have more than their faire share of change to deal with in the next 500 days.
So the real question is, how will they learn to deal with that change? Will it largely be self taught through the network or will those of us in the education business recognize the huge opportunity that lies before us and begin to redefine what education should look like in the era of the first-person interface.
Technology has fundamentally transformed society and business, can it do the same to transform education to help us cope with change in the 21st century. In his video on the next 5000 days of the web Kevin Kelly suggests we need to get better at believing in the impossible because if we don’t we will be more unprepared for the future when it arrives.
I don’t know about you, but I am ready to rumble ; ) Let us all reach for the impossible when it comes to changing the game in learning rather than speeding up the past.
Thirteen years and one day ago my wife and I were married at Virginia Tech chapel. I sent her a 12 red and one white rose yesterday to recognize our special day. One year ago today, our world was rocked by the news from Virginia Tech. From here on out we are destined to carry the joy of our union and the pain of the Hokie Nation within the span of 24 hours.
I think we all should take some time to reflect on how lucky we are to be alive. My own catharsis is captured in my post to the Hokie Nation a year ago. You can read it here.
Perhaps the rest of us could take 3 minutes and truly be present with this You Tube:
Stay Strong Hokie Nation.
Virtual Worlds III is in full swing up in New York and around the blogosphere. The big news is that IBM announces a development deal with Second Life to bring their platform to the enterprise. This is yet one more piece of the puzzle that falls into place for a vision for what I am calling the i-web singularity: A technological black hole at the apex of four technological vectors that is moving forward at an exponential pace and integrating across vectors at the same time.
I have noodled on this topic before, but this time I think the focus is getting sharper.
Vector 1: Flatland 2D Learning applications integrate with Knowledge sharing repositories. The outcome here is that truly NETWORKed Virtual Spaces emerge. These spaces will integrate Synchronous Sharing with Asynchronous Storage so there is finally a one stop shop for storage and sharing of content. Since MS owns Sharepoint and Live Meeting they could create a slam dunk in this arena. Cisco bought Webex for 3.2Billion dollars (Austin Powers comes to mind) recently so they must be looking for some kind of value-added play here too and I know that know that my students would love nothing more than more jumping back and between Illuminante to Vista (Blackboard) and Yahoo Groups to get their work done.
Vector 2: Web 2.0 meets Knoweldge Sharing Spaces. I won’t go over well trodden ground on how Blogs, Wikis and Social Media sites like Facebook and Myspace are revolutionizing real-time interactive KM concepts. However, the true transformation lever in the Web 2.0 revolution for me is is the one least discussed: Tagging/Folksonomy. Pretty much everyting created and stored in the Web 2.0 domain (people,profiles and content) is TAGGED. This means that contextually relevant knoweldeg through people or content is much more easily or even serendipitously encountered. More tagging means more knowledge accidents of both the people-to-people and people-to-information kind. In the attention economy, information is the currency, people are the transport mechanism and conversation is the transfer mechanism. The mash-up between real-time tagging and NETWORKed Virtual spaces will jack up knowledge accidents and drive the immediacy of access to key information and interaction with key people around a given task or activity. In this emerging virtually afforded, contextually relevant matchmaking world, knowledge discovery and expert encounters becomes like air, it just happens and people don’t give it a second thought.
Vector 3: The 212 degree point for for both Trend 1 and 2 is when the web enters the next dimension, literally. With the infusion of 3Di technology, it is only a matter of time before 3D Social Networking taking off. The 3Di space is a different kind of cottage industry. It is the first one I have encountered that is run on blogs. The time between idea and actualization is tending towards zero. Case in point, at Virtual Worlds II in Christian Renaud’s Keynote introduction Ruben Steiger predicted that one of the key Social Networking sites (Facebook or Myspace) would go 3D in 2008. Later that SAME AFTERNOON the Active Worlds booth was demoing a 3D Facebook page mash-up that someone had sent them. When you think about it it just plain makes sense. Look at MySpace. They will truly become MySPACE (and not MyPAGE as it is today) and actualize their brand promise by integrating 3D technology. It is just too obvious an outcome for it not to happen. This social movement will, in turn – like its more stripped down relative instant messaging – will then force corporate CIOs to develop enterprise grade 3D Facebook/Myspace mash-ups for their for corporate citizens. Forterra is already playing with integrating sametime into their platform and Proton Media already has enterprise grade 3D Myspace built into its archtecture. So from both the consumer, enterprise and vendor side of the equation we are seeing convergence here.
Vector 4: Last , but by no means least we see how Synchronous 2D learning platforms will enter the third dimension. As is the case with social media, it just plain makes sense that flatland distance learning systems like Webex, Adobe, Citrix and Illuminate will be pulled into the 3D realm, particularly given the activity in the other four vectors. Karl Kapp and I have written extensively on this and I have a summary of our notion of learning applicaitons escaping flatland here.
These four vectors are on a collision to creat the i-web: Immersive, Interactive, Immediate and Intuitive. When this world-wide, three-dimensional, avatar-mediated Cognosphere emerges we will truly reach a singularity: a point where technological progress reaches infinity as it relates to leveraging and enabling human capital.
The i-web will become a worldwide virtual platform that allows people to exercise their skills and abilities passion around endeavors that matter most to them (and get paid for it too). The i-web will be like e-bay for trading work rather than second-hand products. No one will work for the i-web. Instead the i-web will work for them. Providing i-web dwellers the opportunity to find both work and people to work with on endeavors that they share a passion around. e-Bay allowed people to sell their personal items in a world-wide yard sale, the i-web will allow people to sell their personal skills and abilities in much the same way.
Free agent nation – nay virtual planet – here we come! If you think the i-phone was cool, wait until the i-web consumes us (or our avatars).
Here is the 2minute 30 second romp through the model on YouTube:
Learning Matters