bob ketner

* See sdforum.org for Mar. 24 2008 for full  paricipants list.

* Sander Ruiter – Dutch Ministry uses os. For interoperability, less
depndent on suppliers, no complex licensing agreements

* Arnaud Le Hors, IBM
- os.now due to internet
-  even including retraining, switching to open office saves 60%, wow
- govt can’t distibute in prop. standards to public
- consider the ROI on linux
- IBM branded open office requested

* Mark Radcliffe, DLA Piper
- even DOD is interested
-  “if you’re writing software you’re infringing patents” so
you need your own pile for defense but file selectively. 15% of patents
are even worthwhile or active

* Tony Wasserman, Carnegie Mellon
- piracy of windows inhibits uptake of linux in dev. world
- open office big w. govts. esp. due to cost
- devices, nokia tablet ex. has 90% os.
- some companies won’t buy anything w/o svc. contract
- bus model: service, premium functions,

* moderator Dirk Riehle SAP
- SAP is leading os projects, linux, eclipse,

[Bob K commentary: what will pirates sell in an os world?]

MySQL
- everyone worked from home
- best way to organize is to not have an office
- business model on subscription or ads not license
- keeping “what works” is just inertia in the market
- Zuckerberg used it because it was free
- commodity hardware- open source- 2.0- SaaS – this is the new terrain
- open source is not a business model
- software patents are harmful
- 50m developers worldwide – who cares how many Ph Ds you hire, harness
the vast group for the speed of evolution
- MySQL employees at 110 airports – all you need is an internet
connection
- 60,000 people show up to the MySQL site daily
- “free” does not mean “free of charge” – just
means it’s free
- those who spend time to save money innovate – those who spend money
to save time pay for the service

- 90% of the features at 10% of the cost
- itls not an “exit” for him because he’s still running it.
The acq. was like IPO only better
-  “never be defensive” is the strategy
- key metrics was sales, downloads, traffic, blog posts, search
results, bug reports

Here’s that list from 03/19/08 from Mike Rhodin  of IBM Lotus that references 5 trends to embrace in the virtual workplace.

The press release is here: http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=834515&sourceType=1 

Here’s my own description of them:

1) “The Virtual Workplace will become the rule.”
Laptops and mobile devices will allow us to move beyond the “desk – typewriter – phone” model of the workplace. For many people of course this is already a way of life.  Social networking aspects of the virtual world will give the feeling of community.  The need for business travel will be reduced as virtual worlds and telepresence tools get better.

2) Real-time collaboration will become the norm. 
Email is too slow, and should be used (as it is in Second Life) as merely a cache of stored messages which arrived for you while you were asleep.  Again, already many young workers consider email too slow, having grown up on texting on phones.

3) “Beyond Phone Calls”. 
If you value productivity and time, the telephone is one of the least effective ways to communicate. Here IBM again mentions IM as being a tool for replacing many phone communications.  Now, of course the telephone is not going away, that’s not the point.  But there are huge benefits available in shifting select communications from phone to IM.

4) Interoperability desired.
IBM focuses on interoperability and open standards as inevitable as the space matures.  A lot of this just hasn’t been figured out yet and may not be, since platforms are generally competing business entities with different competencies. They are not necessarily interested in interoperability, whereas business just requires a coherent set of tools that does a few basic things flawlessly. That might not be found in any 1 platform, hence the cry for openness. They also mention increased ease of finding resources which could refer to ease of finding things in virtual worlds or better access to the correct individuals.

5) “Meetings” replaced with new models.
Fewer meetings – Woo-hoo!  It’s a conceptual leap – “gaming technologies will significantly influence online corporate meeting experiences”.  As I said at Virtual Worlds Fall 2007 in San Jose “gamers are using it now” and in fact, “collaborating ” much more effectively and with less cost.

-Bob Ketner

There were big announcements over the last couple of days that IBM and Forterra are teaming up to create collaboration tools for intelligence agencies. Both companies (IBM on 01/22/07 and Forterra on 06/25/07) have presented at the Virtual World SIG over the past year.

The article on applications for intelligence agencies are here:
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/0377901.htm

and here: http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/03/20/

That article references another release in which Mike Rhodin of IBM Lotus describes 5 future trends in this direction of “Unified Communications”. That release is linked here: Marketwire IBM press release.

And more discussion about the IBM view of virtual worlds here:
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/0377261.htm

This type of news could be an early glimpse of the slope of enlightenment, which would be welcome, as there are indications that this could be a trough of disillusionment period. It’s good to see these virtual world concepts that have been talked about for so long put into some concrete plans. Now let’s just hope that today’s version of the ARPANET is online and their version of “the grid” is up when the red phone rings at 3 am!

-Bob Ketner

I was talking at Virtual Worlds Go Mobile on Tuesday and it occurred to me the crucial difference between social networking and virtual worlds.
In social networking, you are you – singular – with the attributes you have as you the person we can meet.
In virtual worlds, you are an avatar or more than one avatar with attributes that exist only in the virtual world.

Doesnt’ mean you can’t create fictional social networking personas, but it does mean that the expectations are totally different and should not be confused.  Trying to drag your RL identity into virtual worlds is like trying to game the system – it simply doesn’t work.

Likewise, there is some resistance in the idea of overlays of digital information over the real world perceptions we have.  I have encountered this in speaking about augmented reality .  Who knows if these two realms will ever recruit converts from the other side.  Stay posted here for updates!

[UPDATE]
Thanks for staying posted, I wish this could have been streamed.  As it happened, the camera was not hooked up to a  laptop so it did not happen.  Apologies.  Normally I do the streaming myself on my own dime, but in this case I had to run the real-world stage announcements etc.  I invite you to our other sig meetings and will post any links I can to the archived video of today.  Thanks and wish this could have happened.  Best, Bob Ketner

Hi,
Bob Ketner here, I’m not running the camera or audio today, but I’m going to try to direct any media here via ustream. I won’t be in SL either due to organizing the RL conference.

For an SL meeting place, meet as usual at: Innovation Island (this link will start the Second Life program)
You can view the presentations with the embedded viewer. Video will be active during the presentation.
If not working please try: http://ustream.tv/channel/virtual-world-sig

Hello,
Tomorrow’s the day to be part of the conversation as Virtual Worlds Go Mobile with talks from Nokia, SKT, 4 VC’s, MBlox, Veepers, Gemini mobile, WiFi Army, and Smith Micro.

This afternoon conference coincides with alongside a flurry of press releases and announcements from virtual world platforms and media companies that are taking virtual worlds to the new platforms of phones and mobile devices. Get the inside forecasts and views on these new developments!

Register here:
http://www.sdforum.org/

Virtual Worlds Go Mobile

11:45am – 5:00pm February 26, 2008

Virtual Goes Mobile
Crossing the Chasm from the Internet

Event Overview:
At the speed of light, three dimensional parallel universes and their immersive communities -whether they be virtual worlds of shopping centers, nightclubs or interactive gaming- went from “radical fringe” to mainstream, with multinationals around the world setting up their own islands to be represented in this new part of the internet galaxy. Now the next frontier may be the most complex one to cross yet – mobile platforms. All players in the tech eco-system are setting stakes to offer consumers new options in social interactivity of all forms:

* Companies already entrenched in virtual worlds and interactive gaming, where mobile devicese the next BIG opportunity
* Social networking and community enterprises hoping to add a third dimension to their community and/or “go mobile”
* The enablers and supporters, whether they be investors who fund and help scale these enterprises or technology plays, such as payment systems, operating systems and platforms…

This conference is the first of its kind to listen to all the voices in the eco-system as they discuss what opportunities will be available and what the challenges are to realize this goal, when communities are able to connect, communicate and share content on these mobile devices, how the location-specific abilities and information be integrated, where should we look for emerging markets for web content when it becomes accessible to billions of cell-phone users.

Agenda:
11:45am-12:30pm Registration and Networking Lunch
12:30pm-12:45pm Welcome Remarks
12:45pm-1:15pm

Opening Keynote Speaker:
Anders Nancke-Krogh, Nokia
1:15pm-2:30pm

Panel Discussion: “The Venture Landscape”
Baris Karadogan, Velocity Interactive Group
Nate Redmond, Rustic Canyon
Sharon Wienbar, Scale Venture
Richard Wong, Accel

Moderator: Mike Doran, Fish & Richardson
2:30pm-3:00pm

“The Global Perspective”
Keynote Speaker: Joe Jasin, SKT
3:00pm-3:15pm

Entrepreneur Profile, Virtual Perspective
Martin Dunsby, Vollee
3:15-3:30pm Afternoon Break
3:30-3:45pm

Entrepreneur Profile, Monetizing the mobile Experience:
Steve Livingston, MBlox
3:45pm-5:00pm

Panel Discussion: “Paths for the Future: Success Stories and Learned Lessons”

Paul Anderson, Veepers
Rob Osborn, Gemini Mobile Technologies
Tomasz Wojtowicz, WiFi Army
Mandar Shinde, Smith Micro
Moderator: Ewan MacLeod, SMS Text News

5:00pm-5:15pm Closing Remarks

Price:
Platinum Pass: $25
Members: $65
Non-members: $85

Location:
Tech Mart Center, Fremont Room,
5201 Great America Parkway
Santa Clara, CA 95054
Directions

Here it is, what we have discussed at the SIG before, a mixing of RL and SL and representation of both on screen of some kind. These folks at Georgia Institute of Technology (http://arsecondlife.gvu.gatech.edu/index.html) show how avatars and humans, both seated within a designated AR stage area mix in a video. They also discuss MMO’s in general. Looks slightly odd and hard to tell what’s going on but this is right on the edge of the augmented reality direction for sure.  You can even teleport to their location:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Augmented%20Reality/41/74/38

They also have a longer video at: http://arsecondlife.gvu.gatech.edu/defensearmmoref.mov.

Ouch, watch the mic in the first minutes of this video. The birds and crickets also have a really good time in the background.

Augmented reality video from the “EZ4U team” Portugal.

Got a heads up from California Condor (in-world SL) that there’s a Metaverse Meetup “Crossroads to the Metaverse” in Hoboken, NJ.
tomorrow Sat. Feb. 23. Organized by Thodore Wright, Andy Fundinger,  and long-time SL’er Hiro Pendragon.

Details at:

http://gamedev.meetup.com/166/calendar/7312910/

Looks like all the details will be posted there.  Hopefully it happens simultaneously in SL.  If so, I’ll be there!