Roo Reynolds - What’s Next?

Augmented Reality Panel - Video and Links

Posted by Roo - 07/09/08 at 07:09:36 pm

David Orban recorded our panel, and has put the video online.

Here’s a slideshare of the accompanying videos and images we used to illustrate the panel.

And finally, from the live blog that David was maintaining, here are the notes taken and shared during the panel…

11:02 David Orban - I am now sitting on the podium with Roo on the Augmented Reality panel:
- Marc Goodman, Director, Alcatel-Lucent
- Eric Rice, Producer, Slackstreet Studios
- Blair MacIntyre, Associate Professor, School of Interactive Computing, Director, GVU Center Augmented Environments Lab, Georgia Institute of Technology
- David Orban, Founder & Chief Evangelist, WideTag, Inc.
- Andrew (Roo) Reynolds, Portfolio Executive for Social Media, BBC Vision (moderator)
11:03 David Orban - People are still streaming in, as certainly the parallel sessions are putting a strain on everybody’s decision centers. They are nice, and complementary, but the choice is still sometimes not easy.
11:05 David Orban - We are introducing ourselves with 25 seconds each. Laughter as Marc from Alcatel starts saying “I was born in Illinois at a very young age…”
11:08 David Orban - Starting from the Wikipedia page we talk about how each of us defines Augmented Reality. Blair says that it is where you are strictly registering media with the world. Eric says “There is so much data around us we just don’t see it.”
11:11 David Orban - Blair is describing the ‘magic lense’ and ‘magic mirror’ terminologies as Roo is showing short YT clips to illustrate the background of the concepts. The flow is pretty good and fresh. I hope that the audience is also feeling like this.
11:18 David Orban - Eric says that the best application of AR is gaming today.
11:23 David Orban - I described the difference between having the data (important), and visualizing the data (possible only after the first). And segwayed into the description of semantic understanding in synthetic worlds, folksonomies, and the necessity of relying on sensor networks to collect data that people won’t. The more autonomous the better. Blair agreed.
11:23 [Comment From Grace McDunnough] David, can you share the YT links? Thanks :)
11:25 David Orban - Grace, I will ask Roo for them on the fly. Now he is speaking, and asking us the potential of technologies to overcome the social isolation of visualization technologies.
11:26 [Comment From Mal Burns] oh - good question
11:26 David Orban - The panel is describing how looking at our phones all the time is normal, and how this is going to impact our social behavior more and more.
11:27 David Orban - YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2i-W9ncV_0
11:31 David Orban - I remarked that it will be all right, because as a society we will work out what makes sense, and what not, as we originally did with using mobile phones in restaurants, etc.
11:31 [Comment From Roo] More links: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=NLahYcb7Ppg and http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ODgZtriNYoc
11:31 David Orban - Thanks, Roo, for helping out here…
11:33 David Orban - Marc from Alcatel is describing a mixed reality application on a mobile phone.
11:33 David Orban - Roo is asking about interoperability and “is this as messy as in Virtual Worlds?”
11:34 David Orban - Blair says that you have to deal with these issues, and develop standards. There was a proposal of ARML, combine geotagging with semantics.
11:36 Roo - Pessimism from Eric on interoperability. “We will not learn” from our mistakes elsewhere
11:37 Roo - David comparing email w/ X400 and getting philosophical. “It’s a mistake to put reality on a pedestal”.
11:38 Roo - David: info should flow, and it should, but can only do so if interop. is possible.
11:38 Roo - David: Culture, Rights and Laws all need to be considered
11:40 Roo - Halting State by S
11:41 David Orban - Postsingular by Rudy Rucker. Freely available on http://www.rudyrucker.com/postsingular/
11:42 Roo - Halting State (Charles Stross)
11:43 Roo - Plus of course, Sterling and Spime
11:45 David Orban - Halting State url: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_State
Vernor Vinge: Rainbows End http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End
11:45 David Orban - Quote from Postsingular:
“Craigor was a kind of fisherman as well; that is, he earned money by trapping iridescent Pharaoh cuttlefish, an invasive species native to the Mergui Archipelago of Burma and now flourishing in the climate-heated waters of the San Francisco Bay. The chunky three-kilogram cuttlefish brought in a good price apiece from AmphiVision, Inc., a San Francisco company that used organic rhodopsin from cuttlefish chromatophores to dope the special video-displaying contact lenses known as web-eyes. All the digirati were wearing webeyes to overlay heads-up computer displays upon their visual fields. Webeyes also acted as cameras; you could transmit whatever you saw. Along with earbud speakers, throat mikes, and motion sensors, the webeyes were making cyberspace into an integral part of the natural world.”
11:46 David Orban - Blair: “I like to think of Second Life like hypertext systems were before HTML and the web”
11:47 David Orban - Eric adds: “We also need metadata for experiences.”
11:49 Roo - Question from Tish re Internet of Things: social purpose. Instrumentation of reality (Cory Doctorow), implications on the public space.
11:49 David Orban - Tish Shute of Ugotrade is asking relative to Bruce Sterling’s remark that this technology is also for social good. The instrumentation of reality instead of surveillance. We need to understand what public space is.
11:51 Roo - David says: it’s important. Web was not properly planned. OpenSpime working with EFF to find best practice. Yet some people think of Spime as Slime. Being more aware of our environment can be a very good thing
11:52 Roo - Eric: “totalitarianism is also user generated now”.
11:54 David Orban - Blair is describing how buildings can become intelligent without having full details, and achieve results nonetheless.
11:55 David Orban - Blair: “If it is centralized, who can decide who puts up an AR sign in front of the Staples center”.
11:57 Roo - Question: How will AR be picked up by commercial space?
11:59 David Orban - Collaboration, telework, modeling, are some of the application areas that are being mentioned.
12:28 David Orban - The panel ended. A lot of questions from the people coming up to the podium.

Panel on Augmented Reality at Virtual Worlds Expo

Posted by Roo - 03/09/08 at 08:09:30 pm

I’m in LA this week for the Virtual Worlds Expo.

Tomorrow, as part of the track on the Future of Virtual Worlds, I will be moderating a panel on Augmented Reality.

Augmented Reality: Virtual Interfaces to Tangible Spaces

Augmented reality is an emerging platform with new application areas for museums, edutainment, home entertainment, research, and industry. Novel approaches have taken augmented reality beyond traditional eye-worn or hand-held displays, creating links between the real and virtual worlds. Join this panel of experts as they guide you to where the augmented world is headed next.

I’m joined by:

• Marc Goodman, Director, Alcatel-Lucent
• Eric Rice, Producer, Slackstreet Studios
• Blair MacIntyre, Associate Professor, School of Interactive Computing, Director, GVU Center Augmented Environments Lab, Georgia Institute of Technology
• David Orban, Founder & Chief Evangelist, WideTag, Inc.

I might mention the Radio 1 ‘Band in your Hand‘ project.

David Orban has already shared a summary of what’s on his mind in this space.

Blair has been doing interesting work using the open source Second Life client, augmenting reality with live embedded scenes from Second Life.

If you won’t be there (room 406AB, LA Convention Center, 10 - 11am tomorrow) what ideas would you like to see thrown into the discussion, and what questions would you like me to ask the panel?

Brief thoughts on virtual worlds

Posted by Roo - 27/06/08 at 01:06:59 pm

My boss’s boss Luba recently asked me to put together a short video for an internal conference on the future of applications. I didn’t have long, so I wandered around Hursley with my camera and my laptop for an afternoon, thinking out loud about the near future for virtual worlds.

For anyone following virtual worlds, none of this will come as a surprise. It’s just a very quick summary covering some subjects I tend to talk about a lot anyway.

In putting it together, I distracted myself by buying the full version of ScreenFlow, which made the gratuitous picture-in-picture stuff from 2:09 onwards stupidly easy and is generally a lot of fun.

Update: transcript:

Introduction
Hello. My name’s Roo and I’m here in IBM Hursley.

There’s a number of virtual worlds projects now. Not all of them are external. Not all of them are public-facing, although there are some of those as well There’s a variety of recruitment events and conferences - public outreach is definitely a big thing for IBM in virtual worlds - but unlike most companies it’s not the only thing we do. We’re also exploring collaboration. There are a number of different projects now, inside IBM’s firewall, exploring what does it mean to come together and work as a team when you’re using a virtual world. Is it different to Instant Messaging? Is it different to using a teleconference? And the answer seems to be that yes, it is different.

Interoperability

In the last 12 or 18 months there have been a lot of people meeting and talking and signing deals and agreeing to interoperate and open up a lot more. Linden Lab have made a joint press release with IBM in which we talk about avatar portability and being able to move your avatar between virtual worlds. A lot of people hear that and they get confused. They start thinking, well I don’t want my Dwarf from World of Warcraft to move into my Second Life space, that would be nonsensical. And indeed it would be. There’s very limited appeal for that kind of interoperability. I think what people really could be thinking of instead is more like could I bring my friends list with me? Could I bring my contact list? Could I bring my wallet? Could I bring my inventory? What are the standards what are the services that are going to be required in order to make true interoperability between virtual worlds make sense.

Bringing together different services APIs and data sources in the intranet and visualising them and allowing people to come together and collaborate around those things. It’s all SOA. It’s all just Service Oriented Architecture. We’re simply treating a virtual world as another endpoint - another way of consuming and composing different services and bringing them together.

Augmented reality

Once you get into the idea of a mobile device with a screen and a camera and sufficient processing power to do some interesting things then augmented reality starts to rear its head as well. This idea of dynamic overlays on top of the real world, and holding up your mobile phone and looking through the screen and using the camera and the onboard processing to display real-time information about the real world.

I don’t like making predictions, but I think I can pretty confidently say that we should pay attention to augmented reality. I think it’s going to be a pretty important theme in the next generation of applications.

Can the Third Sector use Second Life and Other Social Media?

Posted by Roo - 31/01/08 at 03:01:16 pm

A presentation I gave recently for a British charity. Ren Reynolds (no relation) suggested an alternative title for it, “Third Sector in Third Spaces”. That’s much better and I’d use something that next time.

I’ve trimmed it down to an hour, but included most of the Q&A/discussion at the end, which included:

• How to virtual currencies and real money interrelate?
• How did IBM get started in virtual worlds
• How do virtual worlds compare with teleconferencing and videoconferencing?
• What do you think we should be focusing on in the next 12 months? What kind of applications?
• User generated content vs keeping control

Web 3.0?

Posted by Roo - 10/12/07 at 06:12:38 pm

Richard Wallis of Talis recently asked some questions on his blog.

1. Do you think Web 3.0 will be the label of the next technology wave?
2. Will the next wave be based on Semantic Web technologies?
3. Does it matter what we call it?

I have a bit of an affinity with Talis, since they also employ Ian Davis. Back in July 2005, wrote a wonderful essay on Web 2.0, which contains a quote I use a lot. I have come to rely on it to get technically-oriented (or technically-baffled) people out of the assumption that Web 2.0 is a standard, or a set of technologies. It’s not. In Ian’s words…

Web 2.0 is an attitude not a technology. It’s about enabling and encouraging participation through open applications and services. By open I mean technically open with appropriate APIs but also, more importantly, socially open, with rights granted to use the content in new and exciting context

Do you think Web 3.0 will be the label of the next technology wave?

I’ve wondered the same thing. In fact, I’ve half-jokingly used it as an assumption. Something like “if we understand Web 2.0, what will Web 3.0 be?”. Outside of that usage - the logical next wave of the web - I tend to avoid using it as a term. I don’t think it helps, and I can’t see it ever sticking. If that next wave does turn out to be based on something specific, like Semantic Web technologies, then the very fact that people already use ‘Semantic Web’ to mean that bundle of stuff should suggest that ‘Web 3.0′ would be an ugly and unnecessary alternative.

In November 2006, Nova Spivack said

“while we probably don’t need another label I would at least say that “Web 3.0″ is less intimidating than the term “Semantic Web” to many. On the other hand, I can see a potential confusion arising from terms like Web X.0 as well.”

I think he’s right that we don’t need another label, and wrong that “Web 3.0″ is less intimidating than ‘Semantic Web’. It’s less meaningful, which means people will still want to use “Semantic” to describe it.

But anyway, that brings us on to the second question:

Will the next wave be based on Semantic Web technologies?

Maybe. It’s one possibility, and they may at least play a part. Of course, the Wikipedia page on Web 3.0 contains a good roundup of some of the other potential directions, which include a move towards the web as a database, AI, open identity, even 3D Internet.

That last one has long been a passion of mine. I’m not just talking about the real-time participatory nature of virtual worlds, but the interoperable universe of virtual worlds, the standards and conventions which tie them together and the interconnection between virtual worlds and the 2D web. Inspired by people like Mark Wallace and ‘3.D’ (a hybrid of 3.0 and 3D), I’ve begun talking about Enterprise 3.D. I don’t know (or care) if it sticks, and I don’t even spend long explaining it. If people like it, they might use it. Otherwise I’ll have to find a better way of explaining myself.

Does it matter what we call it?

Well no. Not really. The one thing that I can’t possibly agree with is Nova’s proposal that

“Web x.0 terminology be used to index the decades of the Web since 1990. Thus we are now in the tail end of Web 2.0 and are starting to lay the groundwork for Web 3.0, which fully arrives in 2010″

I don’t think that’s at all useful there. There is no advantage to being able to say that ‘Web 4.0′ officially begins at the start of 2020 and Web 5.0 in 2030, ad nauseam.

I think these things tend to be spotted, rather than invented. Placing arbitrary dates on it doesn’t help, and ‘Web 3.0′ will probably never becomes common usage in the way Web 2.0 has. I’m continuing to keep my eyes open.

My talk at Online Information 07

Posted by Roo - 07/12/07 at 11:12:56 pm

I presented on Thursday morning, followed by Ewan McIntosh (who was also chairing the session) and Mary Ellen Bates, who has a link to her slides online too.

It’s a slightly re-worked and reduced version of the Warwick one, with a (tiny) bit of the CIO 2010 Outlook mixed in for good measure.

I also recorded the audio for the rest of the session. I really like how the various parts fit together. Here’s the whole thing:

• Enterprise 3.D - Roo Reynolds [slides and audio also embedded above]
• The Bebo Boomers - Ewan McIntosh [audio]
• Connecting with the Millennium Generation: how will information centres respond? - Mary Ellen Bates [audio] [slides] [blog]
• Panel Q&A with the three of us [audio] [blog]

Ewan invited questions from audience via a roving microphone, but also while the event was still happening, via Twitter and comments on his blog. Ewan was, I think, the only session moderator to try this, and as far as I could see it really worked. It was fun, and I’d like to do more of that sort of thing. Thanks Ewan.

Warwick University - What’s IT All About?

Posted by Roo - 22/11/07 at 02:11:51 pm

I presented at a careers fair at Warwick University yesterday.

I actually gave the presentation twice, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. The audio on the above presentation is spliced from the two, partly to aggregate the questions from both versions, and partly because the first time through the battery on my laptop died halfway through the talk, which meant I improvised the second half and went remarkably off script. This was actually quite a lot of fun, and made me realise how little I need the slides at all, other than the obvious reason of keeping people’s eyes entertained. SlideShare (or the Internet Archive, I’m not sure which) has, as usual, truncated the last few seconds, but you only miss me wrapping up.

It’s blatantly a merge of my 2 or 3 recent presentations, but combines things in a new order and is probably an improvement on what I did for the IET. I’m wondering if I have tome to come up with something totally new for the IBM iForum next week (and Online Information 2007 the on the 6th December).

Talking with Rob over tea today, we got rather excited about the idea of a camera pointing at a whiteboard (streaming live video to a screen rather than pre-prepared slides), with physical props, and bits of paper, and ARTag style augmented reality, and and and…

Now I’ve said it, I have to make it happen. It may require buying a better webcam though, so perhaps it’s something for next year.

Mountbatten Lecture video up on IET.tv

Posted by Roo - 12/11/07 at 09:11:29 pm

The video from my recent IET lecture is now (update: new URL…) online at IET.tv. That is all.

IET Mountbatten Lecture 2007

Posted by Roo - 09/11/07 at 02:11:43 pm

Last night I deliverd the 30th annual Mountbatten Lecture for the IET. The Mountbatten Lecture has been around for 1 year longer than I have, so it was quite an honour to be invited to speak. It was lovely to have some friendly faces in the audience (thanks to IBMers Ian Smith, Andy Piper and James Taylor for coming along) and I was pleased to see they met up with Adrian Trenholm. I was also able to invite Ren Reynolds (no relation) and my wife Rachel, both of whom also came along to the formal dinner after the event.

Here are the slides I used for the lecture.

I covered how people are already using virtual worlds to work, learn and play.

I quite enjoyed it (with the exceptions of a couple of brief moments when I totally lost the thread of where I was going). A few things I’d have done differently:

• I could have used some live demos, rather than just pre-canned video clips. This is a tough call, but by avoiding the risk of live demos I probably missed out on people really getting a sense of how a virtual world really feels. (The other reason I didn’t give a live demo of a virtual world was not wanting to show just one, and not having enough time to show 3 or 4. Hmm.)
• I spoke for (I think) about 55 minutes, and had about 10 or 15 minutes for (encouragingly lively) questions. I wish I’d left even more time for questions, because that is usually the bit I enjoy more, but also the way that people get to hear what really interests them.
• I totally forgot to record the audio (something I’ve become quite good at recently). In the rush to get ready, I forgot to even take the mp3 recorder out of my jacket pocket. D’oh. Oh well. At least the IET captured the video. It will be avilable via http://iet.tv in a few days (I’ll update with a direct link later).

Given how broad the audience was, it was always going to be quite a basic introduction to the space. The best feedback I recieved afterwards was from non-technical people who enjoyed hearing an introduction to virtual worlds they could appreciate. That was always the aim, so I was happy with the evening.

Update: video now available via IET.tv

Walking the Digital Dog – Work, Learn and Play in Digital Worlds - The IET 30th Mountbatten Memorial Lecture Andrew (Roo) Reynolds Andrew (Roo) Reynolds, IQ Collaboration Development team, IBM - Metaverse Evangelist: 2007-11-08 05:52:46.0 IT Channel >> go to webcast

Virtual Worlds Forum 2007

Posted by Roo - 25/10/07 at 10:10:09 am

The Virtual Worlds Forum is in full swing. There was a pre-event workshop on Tuesday, at which I presented “Building a [virtual] community within a (big) company” for the first time. The audio is now attached (lots of background noise, sorry). For your viewing and listening pleasure, here’s what you missed.

Of course, with it being the first day back, I was still pretty tired, and there were definitely a couple of things I missed, but I think I just about managed to share the points I wanted to get across. It included some holiday snaps from Iceland which I slipped in on the train on the way to the workshop. Some of them (such as slides 9, 22 and 23) were pretty subtle, while everything from slide 26 onwards were shoehorned in around some points I thought I should make (under construction and controlled vs freeform particularly).

Yesterday’s agenda consisted of an impressive array of speakers, but unfortunately I only managed to catch the very last session, an interesting panel on “social networking meets virtual worlds” consisting of Adam Pasick (moderating), Meg Pickard, Cory Bridges, Aleks Krotoski, Cory Doctorow and Giff Constable.

 

As well taking part in lots of press interviews it was a great chance to catch up with old friends, make new ones and (significantly) physically meet many people face-to-face in the real world for the first time. David Orban, Chris (’Satchmo’) Carella, Alice Taylor and Aleks Krotoski have all been internetfriends for a while, so it was wonderful to put faces to names. There’s something quite exciting about meeting people you already know. Lots of people commented on the excited “it’s you!” moments, and Aleks wanted to check I really was as tall as she’d thought. I really am.

I’ll be leaving a little early today to get to Derry (via Belfast) for the Serious Games conference there tomorrow. Reykjavik, Southampton, London, Belfast, Derry all in one week. I am really looking forward to Sunday.