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December 25, 2007
Happy Holidays!
Happy Holidays!
Originally uploaded by ron777.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 11:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 17, 2007
Enterprise Virtual Worlds Presentation and Poll Data
I did a few informal polls during my presentation last week to the eLearning Guild on Enterprise Virtual Worlds.
There were as many as 55 people online at once, and about 35 when I did this poll:
Poll 1 - How often do you play online multiplayer games and/or visit virtual worlds?
Haven’t tried 17
Occasionally 14
Often 4
(this suggests to me that people are still very new to exploring virtual worlds and networked game environments but have heard enough to be interested - vs being a gamer and seeing applications themselves.)
Poll 2 - Which of the following Virtual World platforms have you heard of? (check all that apply)
Second Life 34
There 7
Active Worlds 7
Forterra Systems OLIVE 2
Qwaq 0
Protosphere 6
Multiverse 3
(This suggests to me that there is a need to better explain the range and important differences of virtual world platforms targeted at enterprise use (Forterra Systems OLIVE, Qwaq, Protosphere and others ranking much higher in evaluations for internal business use - see my recent post on this here)).
Poll 3 - Is your organisation experimenting with virtual worlds now? (e.g. Second Life, Forterra Systems OLIVE, Qwaq)
Yes 7
No 26
(I asked this question twice, asking the first time if their companies were considering virtual worlds for their enterprise, about half said they were showing growing interest and activities but you have to take it with a grain of salt, they signed up for the session because they already had interest). 20% actively doing something with virtual worlds in their companies is pretty amazing when you consider where we were a year ago.
Poll 4 - Is your Organization Considering Virtual Worlds for: (check all that apply)
Training 15
Collaboration 8
Marketing 2
Product Design/Prototyping 0
Not considering it yet 8
(That training was selected 2:1 to collaboration probably better reflects the eLearning Guild audience of training professionals vs. the lines of business and IT professionals inquiring about Enterprise Virtual Worlds with us which is more often a conversation about collaboration first, then training second.)
Posted by Ron Edwards at 05:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Exploring Enterprise Virtual Worlds and the Metaverse **updated**
I recorded my presentation for the eLearning Guild last Friday and have uploaded it here. I'll add the slides soon and hope I can get the poll results where people indicated a pretty even mix of interest in collaboration and training applications to post here. ***UPDATE*** My presentation is here.
There were quite a few participants online with a range of experience and knowledge of virtual world applications.
It was encouraging to see lots of interest in the training role play videos I shared (these are in a youtube playlist I created which can be accessed here.
ambient's podcast
Give it a listen!
Enjoy! -- ambient
Click here to get your own player.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 02:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 11, 2007
Comparing Virtual World Platforms for the Enterprise
Check out this comparison of Virtual World platforms by Tony O'Driscolls MBA students who looked at various features across seven platforms. Guess which one ranked lowest in terms of features relevant to enterprise applications? Second Life. This fits with Gartner Chief Analyst Steve Prentice's remarks at the Enterprise Virtual Worlds workshop in London that Second Life is the last place companies should look for internal virtual world applications (but many continue to look there first!) I think that can be a still be a good thing though, as long as expectations are managed during the exploration and costs are minimized (you have to leave what you build when you decide security,stability and interoperability ARE important and switch/expand on other platforms).
Tony has been researching virtual worlds at IBM before recently leaving for a University teaching post. His blog Learning Matters has a lot of insight and thorough analysis, check it out here. He's also speaking this week at the eLearning Guild virtual worlds online conference.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 10:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Great Free Online Video Conversion Tool
I have finished preparing my keynote on Enterprise Virtual Worlds and the Metaverse for the eLearning Guild on Friday and found that I needed to convert my .wmv virtual world videos to Flash to upload into Adobe Connect. No problem! Just used the online tool Media Convert which can rip video from URLs or files for free. Just too easy! So if you want any of the videos on this site 'to go', you can just provide the URL from YouTube.
Works to rip video to mobile too!
Posted by Ron Edwards at 09:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 10, 2007
Serious Virtual Worlds - my webinars this week
I'm presenting a free webinar on Wednesday, 12 December at 4pm GMT on Enterprise Uses of Virtual Worlds with Jude Ower, MD of Digital 2.0, hosted by Learning Light. You can register on the Learning Light website here. Jude and I will be discussing business uses of games, game technologies and virtual worlds. The first hour will have a more strategic focus for people considering the business value and building a business case, the second will focus on implementation considerations. I hope that you can join us! ***UPDATE*** this has now been posponed to January next year, and will be split over two weeks, one session on strategy (the why) and one on implementation/enterprise examples (the how).
I am also delivering the closing keynote online on Friday, 14 December at 8pm GMT for the eLearning Guild 2 day online conference on Virtual Worlds and Social Networking. There is a fee to either join eLearning Guild or just the conference. There are several speakers and topics. Check it out at the eLearning Guild website.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 08:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack