Roo Reynolds - What’s Next?

Serious Virtual Worlds, Coventry (Day 1)

Posted by Roo - 13/09/07 at 11:09:13 pm

Notes from the first day.

David Wortley, Serious Games Institute

• An introduction to the conference.
• Time, technology and change. Virtual worlds are a new frontier.
• Day one: orientation and exploration.
• Day two: practical applications and conclusions.

Christian Renaud, Cisco - Getting serious about virtual worlds

• Chief architect of networked virtual environments.
• His job is to get Cisco into new technology, quickly.
• It’s time to get serious about virtual worlds.
• We’ve tried before, and we’ve failed, for social and business reasons.
• Where vs How. Serendipity of common shared space, built in ability to interact with 3D worlds. Evolutionary bias we have for physical world.
• The magic of physical proximity.
• Making remote participants first-class citizens [I want to think and talk a lot more about this. I bought it up in my presentation on Friday, hopefully without offending the conference organisers].
• Making virtual meetings not just as good as RL meetings, but better. It won’t be face-to-face, but it can be richer.

Fabrizio Cardinali, CEO Giunti Labs, chair European Learning Industries - Innovating learning in a flat, virtual world

• Innovation is not optional
• “Knowledge warriors”, the next generation of knowledge workers?
• Information space (interoperability), inclusion (individualisation), innovation (and wider investments)
• Copying existing models is what happens, and fails.
• ASPU (avg satisfaction per user) is important. Telcos are considering this in addition to ARPU (average return per user).
• augmenting gallery experience with nuggets (via mobile?) - learning pills.
• Pool Paradox analogy: if human existence were a single day, we’d have started using spoken language at 9:30pm, writing at 11:52pm, analog recording and TV etc at 11:59:49, computers at 11:59:58 and the internet at 11:59:59.

Jim Purbrick / Babbage Linden - Serious Second Life

• Beware of false dichotomies. Play vs work (or fun vs serious) does not have to be a problem.
• Already talking re standards and use existing ones. OpenID. Where they don’t exist we may need to create them.

Mary Matthews, Trusim (a division of Blitz Games) - Emotion and Fidelity

• Using emotion to connect game players
• Emotion in learning
• Uncanny valley.
• Surface representation vs behaviour and movement.

John Burwell, Forterra - Virtual World Evolutions

• market evolution (move from technology to entertainment, corporate use)
• customer requirements (behind the firewall. High quality models. Interoperability)
• “Second Life is the best thing that has happened to us”. Driving interest and clients with requirements which SL doesn’t hit.

Ron Edwards, Ambient Performance - Serious Virtual Worlds Implementation Ecosystem

• Ambient Performance are the European reseller for Forterra
• Faro laser scanning
• Virtual Worlds Consortium

Simon Stevens, Wheelies - Second Life and disability: a review of the issues

• Highlight of the day for me. Simon has cerebal palsy, and I had to pay very careful attention. His message, which included his history of being the first disabled person he knew in SL, was fascinating.
• “I live in Second Life”
• Simon Stevens in RL: consultant with Daden, loves watersports,hates peanut butter. simonstephens.com
• Simon Walsh in SL: runs Wheelies and Second Ability, loves dancing, hates griefers.  secondability.com
• Sense of community. SL is not just a VW, it’s a community.
• A lot of people said “you don’t have to disabled here. Why are you in a wheelchair?”
• Some people want to look disabled in SL, other’s don’t.
• Accessibility. SL not very good. Technology needs to catch up with what the community needs.
• Consider environmental access when building. You need handrails on open top roofs, wide doors and ramps for access. Not just for wheelchair users, but for avatars controlled by disabled people.
• “People tell me ‘this isn’t real’ but we’re all here because of virtual worlds.”
• It’s not a game. There are real people online, and if you hurt someone, you can’t start again.
• Q: where should disabled people getting started in SL go? A: anywhere. Shouldn’t have to be a specific place. 

Kevin Corti, CEO PIXELLearning - Flash-based immersive learning simulators

• Consultancy (work for hire), Off the shelf, eventually: technology and toolsets
• Moving from “interesting concepts” to accepted “business solutions”.
• Specialise in Flash
• Moving from awareness to an inclusive behaviour.

Chris Branigan, MD Caspian Learning - user managed immersive worlds

• Three overlapping spaces. 3D worlds: learner control. personalisation, exploration. Games: motivation, challenge, competition, feedback. Simulations: content, safe failure, practice, experiential.
• Focus on 3D worlds leads to an overlap with simulations and games.
• User managed immersive worlds
• 70% of all new jobs since 98 require employees to make complex judgements and decisions. Now 40% total.
• % of jobs which require retained knowledge have dropped from 75% in mid 80s to 8-10% in 2000.
• Three sorts of journey through worlds: directed journeys, branching journeys, open journeys.

Update:All presentation materials are now online via the Serious Games Institute