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April 30, 2007
Seriously Mobile Video Archive Ready
The video archive from the 20 April Seriously Mobile Summit is here. You can email a link to your favorite presentations to share with colleagues. I posted some photos here on flickr from the event. I'm off for a quick holiday where I hope to microblog with my new Nokia N95 but this site will fall quiet for a few days.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 05:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 23, 2007
Follow Up Resources for Seriously Mobile Summit
The video archive from the event will be added in a week or so once it has been chopped up to be easier to use and to forward to colleagues. I thought it was a thought provoking day, one which I hope serves as a catalyst for action.
I've found two summaries of the day in the blogosphere so far, Jay Cross here and Paul Coyne here. I'll add more as I find them.
The upcoming events I mentioned at the end to learn more include:
Mobile Performance Solutions, May 17 in London produced by Ambient Performance and partners,
Moving Learning, June 13 in London where I'll be delivering a keynote on Serious Virtual Worlds between great sessions by Nick Van Dam, Elliott Masie and Bob Mosher (ask me for a discount code),
Giunit Labs Training in Action June 7,8 in Sesti Levante, Italy
Serious Virtual Worlds will be produced by Ambient Performance and the Serious Games Institue in Coventry and will be held September 13, 14 in Coventry.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 09:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 19, 2007
Seriously Mobile Summit 20 April Live Webcast Link
Hi! We will be broadcasting our Seriously Mobile Summit live from Reuters in London on 20 April.
Here are the links for the Webcast and the 3G streaming video for mobile phones link:
Webcast (Real or Windows Media, click on "Live Broadcast in player (not archived content from last year).
Mobile Phone (Real Format only this time (should work with Nokia and many other phones), link will be added tonight)
The agenda is below. You can ask questions and leave comments using Twitter. (send messages to my Twitter account RonEdwards) We'll get to them when we can! Try to add yourself as my friend, your comments should be listed below this agenda.
The Mobile Internet: Working in Real Time
20 April 2007, 9.30-16.30, Hosted by Reuters @ Canary Wharf, London
Format:
Supporting Mobile Workforce Capability
The Seriously Mobile Summit offers presentations and discussions with thought leaders from an eminent range of commercial, academic and independent organizations. Which business and cultural drivers are requiring new approaches?
Why is traditional event-driven training no longer meeting needs?
How are readily available new technologies including Networked 3D Simulation Environments, Mobile Learning & Performance Support on platforms such as BlackBerrys, PDAs, iPods and Smart Phones making a real difference as part of the blend of informal and formal learning approaches?
Creativity is no longer about which companies have the most visionary executives, but which have the most compelling architecture of participation. That is, which companies make it easy, interesting and rewarding for a wide range of contributors to offer ideas, solve problems and improve products - Tim O’Reilly, O’Reilly MediaAgenda 9:30-10:00 Tom Glocer, CEO, Reuters Charles Jennings, Global Head of Learning, Reuters 'Mobile Learning, Getting Serious About the Potential' Nigel Paine, Conference Chair Opening Remarks
10:00-10:45 Fabrizio Cardinali, CEO, Giunti Labs. 'Towards Personalized Ambient Learning'
10:45-11:10 Break
11:10-11:40 Kristina Nyzell, Director, Working Play Playing Work 'From Playing Work to Working Play… New Work(ing) Models in a Seriously Mobile World'
11:40-12:30 Jay Cross, Founder and Chief Scientist, Internet Time Group 'Free Range
Learners in the Ubiquitous Chicken Yard'
12:30-1:30 LUNCH (view Nigel Paine talking about Podcasting, Wikis and Blogs at the BBC here while you wait)
1:30-2:00 Case Study: Paul Landers, Strategic Product Manager, Ericsson Learning Consultancy Services 'Taking Learning Mobile'
2:00-2:30 Case Study: Hanif Sazen, CEO, Saffron Interactive 'Learning on the Move'
2:30-3:00 Technology Showcases: Datmedia Mobile IPTV & Me2B Next Generation Mobile Hardware
3:00-3:15 TEA
3:15-3:35 Case Study: Lizbeth Goodman, Director, SMARTlab Digital Media Institute and Magic Gamelab at UEL 'Lost & Found > A system to track missing and exploited children (and adults) using mobile technology'
3:35-4:00 Case Study: Claus Nehmzow, Partner, PA Consulting 'Virtual World Applications'
4:00-4:20 New Technology Implementation Panel with Leading Experts including Mark Oehlert, Booz Allen Hamilton, Brent Shlenker, Hospice of the Valley and David Metcalf, PhD, University of Central Florida
4:20-4:30 Closing Remarks: Ron Edwards & Nigel Paine
Posted by Ron Edwards at 03:18 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 17, 2007
Seriously Mobile Summit Agenda for 20 April
Wow! It's really coming together. I've just added SMARTlab colleagues to the agenda but not sure where I'm going to fit in. Here's the latest agenda. Still a few seats left for those of you on the fence or forgot!
The URL for the live webcast will be ready tomorrow.
Seriously Mobile Summit 20 April, 2007
The Mobile Internet: Working in Real Time
9:30-10 Tom Glocer, CEO, Reuters
Charles Jennings, Global Head of Learning, Reuters,
Nigel Paine, Conference Chair Opening Remarks
10-10:45- Fabrizio Cardinali, CEO, Giunti Labs, Towards Personalized Ambient Learning
10:45-11:10: Coffee/Tea Break
11:10-11:40 Kristina Nyzell, 'Supporting & Engaging Flexible Workers'
11:40-12:30 Jay Cross, 'Free Range Learners in the Ubiquitous Chicken Yard'
12:30-1:30 Lunch
1:30-2:00 Case Study: Paul Landers, Strategic Product Manager, Ericsson Learning Consultancy Services
2:00-2:30 Case Study: Hanif Sazen, CEO, Saffron Interactive 'iPod, BlackBerry and PDA Learning'
2:30-3:00 Technology Showcases: Datmedia Mobile IPTV & Me2B Next Generation Mobile Hardware
3:00-3:15 Break
3:15-3:35 SMARTlab Technology Showcase
3:35-4:00 Case Study: Claus Nehmzow, Partner, PA Consulting 'Virtual World Applications'
4:00-4:20 Experts Implementation Panel including Mark Oehlert, Brent Shlenker, David Metcalf virtually
4:20-4:30 Closing Remarks Ron Edwards, Nigel Paine
Posted by Ron Edwards at 11:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 12, 2007
My Second Life experience...
Wednesday's 'chat with Ron about Virtual Worlds' session in Second Life with the SCOPE community didn't exactly go as I had anticipated. I didn't realize that some of the participants wouldn't be on the skypecast for audio, so I had to try to type and talk at the same time (near impossible for me!). Focussing on just typing chat started to get a discussion going since that's what most had available and that was great, but then trying to get back into the skype cast nearly crashed my laptop and didn't work too well. Chaos, but the participants and facilitators were nice, patient and asked some great questions.
I liked how cool it was to see everyone's profile to know where they were from - all over! It was a beautiful environment that seemed perfect for an engaging dialogue - it just was tough for me to get used to getting my thoughts out quickly on the keyboard. Even when the audio worked, the avatars were just sitting there though. I wasn't too sure how to indicate that I was talking or how to gesture easily. I think in these early days we can expect participants to have trouble with this, too - while there were many veterans there were also some that created memberships that day. I'd love to know what their expectations were and are now.
I'm really glad to have tried the live session as I learned a lot about how to facilitate when you don't have embedded VOIP, and reminded me about the need for a dry run and ample, clear communication with participants about how it will all work. I don't think mixing audio/no audio in the same session will work too well. What do you think?
I've offered to host a follow up session in There.com where we can have voice and more expressive avatars. We'll be using it at our Seriously Mobile Summit on the 20th to connect panelists in the US with our onsite panelists in the UK. While it will still be a bit tricky to blend with a room full of conference partipants, it should be fun.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 10:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 10, 2007
Serious Games & Virtual World Chat Tonight + Community
I'll be chatting tonight with up to 400 community members about virtual worlds and serious game applications.
You can join us at 8pm London time, 3pm EST in Second Life and a SkypeCast, or check out the rest of the three week seminar here: http://scope.lidc.sfu.ca/mod/forum/view.php?id=428
Posted by Ron Edwards at 07:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 06, 2007
RSS 4 Learning Articles
The article I wrote for Learning magazine about RSS applications for learning was published this month. They don't have an online version so I've posted it below and if you want a print friendly version, use this: Download file
I noticed Brent Shlenker is speaking at the eLearning Guild about RSS next week from his blog where he gave the heads up on a good article about how RSS works and where it may be going from the Read/Write Web blog - 60k subscribers!
Brent will be joining us live via virtual world at the Seriously Mobile Summit April 20.
RSS, LMS, PSP?
Subscribing for Success
Blogging and Podcasting are grabbing the headlines these days and it’s encouraging that learning professionals are beginning to use them to keep themselves informed while exploring how they might support informal and formal learning in their organisations. Yet only a few people are talking about applying the power of the underlying technology which makes receiving automatic updates to blogs and podcasts possible – RSS (Really Simple Syndication).
RSS feeds can be found almost everywhere now including news sites, blogs, wikis, podcasts, online calendars (Google Calendar) photo sharing (Flickr), video sharing (You Tube), social bookmarking sites and more. This enables subscribing to content one finds of interest and aggregating these into one viewer (a feed reader) so anytime there is an update the headline becomes visible. Feed readers are web-based or installed on computers or mobiles. Many people are using the Google personalised home page to subscribe to RSS feeds and Microsoft’s Live.com page supports this as well. Subscribing to several feeds gives one a sense of being “on top of it” as always the most recent postings are visible. The latest Podcast available is listed as a headline which provides a choice of when to listen or if to download, saving storage and time.
Extending RSS into Your Enterprise
Subscribing to feeds to stay informed of industry and professional news is just one of many applications. Projects can also be tracked with a feed reader enabling viewing updates from team wikis, calendars and blogs in real time and these can be combined with other news so everything of interest and importance is combined onto one page, creating a high performance personal portal for free. Studies show how using collaborative wikis shorten production time to help teams reach consensus while reducing email inefficiency on everything from policies, procedures, presentations to new product ideas so why not propose their use for projects within your organisation? Team members would benefit from more efficient practices over email updates and employees could be kept in the loop of proposed changes or just when the new information is available. Finding project applications where staying informed through the use of RSS would build acceptance in the value of subscribing to feeds. This in turn helps open the door for using them in learning and development programmes.
RSS & Learning
RSS is helpful to learning managers in a variety of ways as well. Keeping colleagues informed of new programmes via RSS feeds instead of relying on a website not enough people visit, or surfing through an LMS which may not highlight what’s new, or relying on often ignored email is an automated way to ensure the latest developments are always at the forefront. If your organisation is one of the few that already has an internal feed reader established, you should ask your IT department how to enable RSS feeds on your departmental portal. If your primary tool for communicating learning programmes is the LMS, you should enquire as to how (and when!) their platform will support RSS.
Blended learning programmes which happen over time are another good place to look for opportunities to improve information flow by using RSS. Many leadership development programmes utilise posting comments and reflections in online communities or blogs. Course facilitators would benefit from having an RSS feed of these aggregated in one place so as to always be up to date with postings, especially when working with several groups simultaneously. Learners would benefit as well by knowing when each other had commented or when the facilitator had news for the group. Keeping the group constantly and automatically informed may help delegates stay focused and keep up with the learning process. Information from a variety of sources are often used in blended learning programmes so using RSS to subscribe to certain sites to guide learning and discussion could often be more efficient and may introduce people to using RSS feeds that could have a follow on benefit.
RSS Goes Mobile
People are increasingly mobile and it’s no surprise that we want to stay informed on the move as well. News feeds on PDAs have been around for years through free tools such as AvantGo, which now enables subscribing to RSS feeds in addition to their news, entertainment and education resources and is also available on BlackBerrys. Smart Phones which support Internet access enable use of the same Google or Microsoft home pages used on the desktop to subscribe to feeds and many have RSS readers already built in (or can be downloaded). The Sony PSP game and entertainment device also supports RSS to enable subscribing to video podcasts or viewing and contributing to blogs. It’s clear that up to the minute content is now available on a wide range of mobile devices.
Subscribing to RSS feeds and making it easy for others to subscribe to key information which constantly changes is growing in both interest and application. Aggregating information using RSS helps us stay informed, engaged and learning!
About the Author
Ron Edwards is the Managing Director of Ambient Performance, Ltd., a UK based firm specializing in helping organisations apply mobile, Web 2.0 and Virtual World technologies for better performance. You can subscribe to Ron’s blog at www.ambientperformance.com/connection
Posted by Ron Edwards at 07:24 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 04, 2007
Gaming 3.0 Nothing New?
This story in Next Generation provides a compelling argument that game player generated content and games have been around for years with historical examples including Second Life and offers 6 keys for how Sony's new efforts with Home and Little Big World could be successful:
1. User-driven content 2. Straightforward creation tools 3. Content sharing 4. Community experiences with that content 5. Commercialization of user creations 6. Major industry backing
Posted by Ron Edwards at 11:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 03, 2007
Gaming 3.0?
Check out this game 'LittleBigPlanet, that was shown last month at the Game Developers Conference. It is generating quite a bit of buzz. Celine Llewellyn-Jones highlighted it on her blog here.
I found this quote about it on Kotaku, a popular gaming site (recent news on the Sony PSP price drop and rumors of the PSP2 generated dozens and dozens of comments) especially enticing...
The game they showed was LittleBigPlanet, a user designed playground, a make-your-own-platformer tool, an actual game with deep physics that looks beautiful and shockingly fun to play. If you really need comparisons, the game is like Line Rider meets Garry's Mod meets Super Mario Bros. meets an orgasm.
Between this new game and the recently announced Home by Sony for the new Playstation 3 (described as a cross between Second Life and the PS3, free, and set for beta this month) I'll just have to add the Playstation 3 to my list of dream acquisitions, behind the Xbox 360 for which I'm waiting for the game Crysis to give me the extra little 'gotta have it' momentum. Hmmm. In looking for a good link to the Crysis game, I learned that Crysis isn't planned to come out on the Xbox 360 because the graphics won't be good enough! It will be out on the PC using new DirectX 10. Wow. Should be impressive. Better add a new PC to the list...
Posted by Ron Edwards at 09:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 02, 2007
Second Life Brand Map
I Found this map listing brands in Second Life interesting. via Techscape, then Ana Lutetia @ SL to the source, K-Zero.. They will be mapping universities on it, too.
Which ones are interesting? If I see one more empty corporate model of their HQ, I think I'll scream!
Posted by Ron Edwards at 04:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack