The Venice Session (2)

Now, this is interesting… PDI Index.. Power Distant Index.. it measures, roughly, the ability of a system to allow those at the lower end of the scale (say in a company..) to comment and disagree the ideas or whatever coming from the top..

Horizontal culture and system, vs verticalism…

• China more verticalised: 80
• France, the first in Europe: 68
• Italy, good second in Europe with 50, and then 40 for the US, 35 for Germany, and the most horizontal society is Israel, 12…

When compared this “index” with the impact of a very horizontal media like the Web.. you do the math, and understand where Internet could either disrupt or die forever..nice food for thoughts, I dare say,..

BTW, numbers quoted by Jacopo Barigazzi, an Italian journalist..

The Venice Sessions

Sounds like I should go back and write..

Let’s start with the Venice Sessions.. It is a yearly Innovation event, held in Venice (really?? How weird…), sponsored and run by Telecom Italia, the Italian incumbent telecom operator (again.. redundant explanantion!?!?! )… I am now listening to Ahmad Humeid, a Jordan entrepreneur and blogger (http://www.360east.com/)

It is most interesting to notice that the Internet would be one of the preferred channel to improve and foster freedom and innovation, and the work to be done is huge when considering that, for instance, the Arabic version of Wikipedia is still far too small to cater for the needs of more than 600 million Arabic speaker..

Apart from the fact that I thought Arabic speakers were slightly more, but the call for more contents and critical knowledge in the Arabic perimeter is highly interesting…. I have cases to mention in which the attempt to foster innovation in the Arabic world goes via a far to aggressive digestion of “westernised” contents and practices…

Creative Commons, Al Jazeera, Twitter, content production, UGC…all at your disposal to understand and open up your mind..

Nice to be back!! and apologies for having written just few, very trivial words, but heck, before the marathon I have to prepare for the 10 Km and the Half..!!

I love my books, despite e-books

Since quite a long time, I have been debating about technology usage, and stressed the fact that, quite often, users can be divided into:

§

§Systematic Users. Those who will immediately dig into the new features, swapping massively from legacy technology / social interactions.

§Critical Users. Those who will approach new features as a potential alternative to fit into a consolidated pattern of legacy technology / social interaction.

Now, that actually applies to books, as it seems from this survey. It is sometimes incredible how fundamental aspects of a consumer experience, intangibles, social history and current demographic evolutions are skimmed over by tech marketeers.. a book is not only a repository of information, it is not only a waste of a piece of a rainforest (albeit it is somewhat an usage of an otherwise scarce commodity such as, yep, a forest tree..)(ok, some editors may recycle, appreciate that..), a book is a personal, full-bodied, complex experience that, nevermind what, can be rendered by the most advanced of eText book reader…

You enjoy stepping into a bookstore, browse the shelves, look at covers and wander what’s inside, you weight the colors, loose yourself in that maelstrom of printed words and weird characters..then, later, your listening to the crisp noise of the turning of the first page is something close to meditation, and the smell…

It is not just digesting information, is a tactile, multisensorial experience about someone else’s dreams. Then, clearly, I may accomodate some tech into my personal library, but alongside, very purposely, targeted, whatever.. BUT, nevermind the eBooks, do not touch my collection of worn-down paperbacks and hard covers!! Could kill..

Enterprise 2.0 and an interested Italian audience

Just back in the office after a long two-day conference, held in Milan, on Virtualisation and Enterprise 2.0. I run as speaker and chairman some of the sessions yesterday and the entire of today’s discussion on E2.0.

Admittingly, I have tried to get all speeches and presentations on Monday as a sort of preparation for today big show.. I trust it went real fine!!!

Virtualisation technologies and SOA strategies have, admittingly, set up the enterprise IT environment to dynamically absorb all potential changes stemming from the E2.0 evolution. Most interestingly, we run a small in-conference survey on SOA perception, and over 50% of respondents admitted SOA was a fundamental pillar to respond efficiently to any potential market change. Very little about the techology complexity mix, very little about the nitty-gritty details on virtualisation (despite an hefty presence of VMware…), a lot of attention and feedback on the implied strategic and business changes SOA may enable. Cool.

Today the event went even better.. the room was full of very interested attendees, and the conversation, thanks to the two opening speeches, was directed toward the Web 2.0 social impact and the aftermath within the enterprise environment. The Q&A session went on forever (had to stop it at the end, quite an unique occurrence, I dare say..), the audience was most interested into networking math theories, Barabasi, adaptive systems and the complexity theory… questioning was raising towards the panel (myself, the italian managing director of Viadeo, Pietro Gentile, vice president of Intermedia and journalist expert in 2.0 topics, Claudio Pasqua, SEO and an early enthusiast of social networking and evolutionary web theories) as to address all those issues, asking for some clarification on likely futures opening up in front of the business community, about personality “caching” and data security, the evolution of Second Life and synthetic worlds… honestly, up until yesterday I had in front of me an audience that, when listening to such topics, coupled with words such as “change”, “strategy”, “evolution” et alia, most time was head-shaking, smiling, doing all sort of body-language mix up as to say “rubbish”..

We have all being absolutely stunned by the response, the interest, the willingness to know more and act accordingly. I have also to admit, there is very little knowledge on the fundamentals of the complexity theory, small worlds and the rest of, say, Barabasi thinking are far from being well distributed and understood, and yet I trust there is a massive change in approaching the systemic evolution of the enterprise into a rather more performing, market aware and “discussion-driven” actor. These are good news, more to come as soon as I have gathered some feedback and organised my thoughts!!

NOW mobile operators start whinging about being “just pipes”…

Barcelona event is setting up an utterly dynamic environment for each and every mobile user; communication capability dramatically improve in speed and reliability, handsets are becoming the real next-big-thing with their “smart” declination, the outer Web has long since transformed in a social platform able to let you grow, learn, interact and ultimately “be” whomever you like.

In this terribly interesting ecosystemic shake off, mobile operators realise they have been hedged, or rather they are loosing client’s ownership, provided they ever had it…  quite rightly Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone, stated that pundits such as Google or Yahoo have so far delivered a better “mobile experience” than operators’, which is altogether pretty weird, if you come to think to the starting points for both this industry conglomerates..

You know what??? I recall working with some of the big guns in the mobile industry, right at the verge of the UMTS era, say some five years ago, and the overall, consistent, solid approach was along these lines: “the network is my capital, so everyone has to pay to use it”, “clients are topping up and there won’t be much of a market share shake off” and, when presented with service strategy such as the Japanese DoCoMo or KDDI, thus based on an aggressive revenue sharing model (roughly speaking: you provide the service, I put in the network, every penny coming from this wedding will be shared accordingly..), I can still hear the words “no way” resounding all around the room…

Those very shortsighted managers did not even consider the possibility to act and plan in a systemic fashion, thus accepting the fact that the entire industry was not revolving just around “them” but there were some concurrent R&D and marketing strategy that were already shaping the marketplace, absolutely and indisputably well defined. By the way, I have a slide deck dated “2002″ proving the above…

So, now doomsday has come… and clients are slipping through the fingers of mobile operators in terms of “attention” and “equity” perception. The crisp money mobile companies did accumulate in the past years now is merely a remnant of what was once an empire.

Admittingly, that could possibly be slightly harsh and not quite accurate, but the message is all about “expectation”, “relative importance” and “experience”. In this sort of strange equation, users expect from mobile operators to have an always-on pipe, quite likely a fast one (HSDPA/HSUPA as tendency) and that is about the end of it.. ah, nop, one more: all-inclusive tariff plans. End of message.

The experience is about handsets ergonomy and usability (I told them, let me boast this!!!), multiple connectivity opportunity, and all the IP based services you can master, plus the media fundamentals, video-photo-sound, at the highest possible level. The rest (thus the pipe) is commodity, pretty much like expecting light when switching on a lamp..

The Vodafone payoff is “Life is Now”… may I remind that someone said that life is that thing happening whist you are busy doing something else, which is probably the case for some of the mobile execs in the recent past…

nvohk… crowdsourcing in management, or a nice try?!?!?

Browsing around, I bashed into a strange sort of a project.. nvohk, of which you find the banner down my sidebar, is a nice attempt to build up a community that will contribute to run (partially) an eco-friendly clothing company..

For a rather smallish annual fee, you are entitled to participate to such decisions as logo design, advertising strategy, marketing et alia… some of the “perks” of being part of this experiment are, I believe, rather intangible, as per the satisfaction to be “in the process” whilst the idea of having about 35% of profit shared with the members in form of “buying certificates” for nvohk products is kind of nice…

Yet, it won’t change the world, it will definitely pump some fresh air into my wardrobe (eventually..), will have me as part of a social-conscious community, and I may say “been there” should the thing really boom up!! Most of all, it is a nice experiment, someone called “socialism 2.0″.. nobody did??? OK, let’s do it from here, then!!!!!!!!!!!!

Life is truly amazing…

Mobile and smart, this is the future ahead!!

We have since long heralded these were times of changes, deep and systematic changes, basically an evolutionary step was taken before our eyes.

Yesterday the Barcelona Mobile World Congress slammed the doors open on a brand new future: definitely mobile and incredibly smart!!! All the major handset manufacturers have launched either brand new hyper-powerful phones or revamped massively some ol’darlings.

New specimens that are making all the technofans drooling are popping up about anywhere… SonyEricsson Xperia X1 is one heck of a smartphone, and please notice the nice add of HSUPA connectivity on top of the now-basic HSDPA.. users may start (where available..) enjoying uploading auto-generated contents at a decent speed and thus augmenting the mSocial experience level.. and somewhere there is a S-video connectivity…

Yep, there are the much awaited Gphone prototypes on the catwalk, they cracks open the very concept of “smart” and “phone” suggesting the future may have a simil-mobile-smart-phone form factor to add/substitute the laptop environment… particularly when considering that most of those smarties are yielding a smashing Wi-Fi capability to top connectivity up..

Also check a bunch of Samsung’s.. SGH-G810, a top of the range, feature-full smartphone, its sort of younger brother i200, topping the whole bunch up with the ever-so-gorgeous Soul, and Nokia N78, N96, and the list goes on (why not including the nice and crisp Garmin NuviPhone??)… (btw, thanks to Telefonino.net for the infos…)

You enjoy browsing around..

Bottom line, the platform for a significant change in lifestyle is on, pretty much available to the everyday man, albeit an above-average, well off technofan for the time being, services are all converging into the mobile device to enhance and top up the users’ experience… it is still a matter of understanding where are the systematic users that will immediately shift communication paradigm to embrace the new tech (the posers are not interesting in the long term mobile services uptake..), and how these may eventually relate to the slower tribes/clusters… again, it is a matter of crossing the technology chasm..

One hurdle will be tariffing and data packages.. the easy answer is an all-inclusive monthly fee, plus an ecosystem of pay-per-use third party services, but the basics such as calls, Web navigation (down and upload) and a basic GPS navigation should be easily available and hassle-free… we will see…

Still, on top of Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and lots of other such things, we are forced to include a Mobile 2.0?? Already done?? Dunno, but you got the overall idea…

Being “social” will pass through the mobile device in an empowered way, and as we said back in the early UMTS days, the mobile may actually become a super-hub of anyone’s digital lifestyle, able to connect and re-distribute contents and activities to the more bulky, less mobile items of our XXI century experience.. and yep, that includes our beloved laptop!!!

Apple is on Air, really!!!!!!!!!!

That time of the year has come, pretty much like xMas, my birthday, the first MotoGP race or the very first swim before summer season starts: MacWorld!!! (One out of the zillion links you may already have…)

The 2008 edition will be remembered possibly for the flashy side of computing, the unbearable lightness of being Apple, the MacBook Air. A thin jewel of hardly 3/4 of an inch max, a featherlight computer… basically a MacBook on diet like, say, comparing Jessica Alba with Kate Moss, without illegal boost, mind you…

I won’t spend more time on it, it is gorgeous, stylish, the ultimate tech fashion statement, nothing all that new when considering Apple, isn’t it???

It is rather interesting the attack Steve Jobs is setting up at the movie industry or, better, how consumer actually USE the movie industry.

iTunes Movie Rentals is going to revolutionise the movie experience.

Rent any movie for 24 hours, choosing from a large collection from majors portfolios such as 20th Century Fox, Universal, Sony, Warner and the rest of the pack, watch it on any device you may like, with obvious preference for Apple hardware (Macs, iPod, iPhone, haven’t read about iTouch…), pay $2.99 or $3.99 and there you go… a thousand titles by the end of February, more to come, and add to the pack some TV shows, concerts, video podcast and some more goodies..

From your couch directly to the smashing flat screen you just bought on sales, your digilife is going to get pampered, boosted, enhanced, whatever!! Isn’t that nice????

This move was somewhat expected, and yet it is quite likely that this will change massively the entire industry approach to entertainment. Also, more significant, it redefines the concept of “ownership” compared to “timely experience”: it is not necessary to own, it is rather more important to experience something. I do not need to “have” everything, to hold it in my safe, I could and possibly will be much more selective, and the entire idea of value could be reorganised.

Clearly, we are talking about movies, really not a cornerstone, but heck, life is a glittery game nonetheless!! See whether Steve Jobs is able to make another miracle, at least for himself and Apple’s shareholders!!!!!!!!!!!!

By the way, nevermind what, in my wardrobe there are no black turtlenecks…

How social are you?? Fast enough??

I have started my blogging experience a little short of a year ago, and I have to admit it has been rewarding and challenging, fun and worrisome, but most of all it has been like a long, unplanned backpacking trip along the roads of social evolution and global changes! And, should you be so nice to have read me all along this time, it is a bless for a curious being the like of myself..

I have started this personal journey when MySpace was one of the coolest place to be in, SecondLife was supposed to position as the next big thing for human interaction and business ventures, one year ago there were articles about how cool is blogging about, the entire 2.0 was an humongous affair encompassing and including the whole of mankind and any aspect derived from it (almost, say…).

Then, I went on holiday in Tanzania, Zanzibar to be precise, and spent a whole week without even thinking about wearing shoes, my feet gorging on white and warm sand and more white and warm sand, my skin crackling into the African sun..let alone considering the World stressed about whether being 1.0 or 2.0 or x.0 at all…

I stepped into a plane, packed full with over-talkative holiday village goers, and slowly but surely I hit the -2° in Milan… a night sleep, on it was the PC the morning after and here it is…

MySpace has been dubbed as “uncool”, nevermind the overall results (incidentally, this drop in page views I saw it first mentioned here, dating back Sept. 11th.. ouch…), SecondLife seems to have trouble in mocking the real world as someone was hoping it would have done (silly, silly, silly!!!), recently the most “real” stuff, money, has been quite regulated and there is no longer that “be there, be rich” sort of approach (something along the lines of the first appearance of the Web in our daily existence back in, say, ‘95), and most of all there is no longer such ranting about “2.0″….

More importantly, CES in Las Vegas has finally completed the transition to a “business-determined” social ecosystem to a “consumer-driven” fabric… I read endless analysis concentrating on how the corporate environment has to mimic the private users dynamics, how important is to accomodate users’ needs, also in technology terms, as to foster a superior working environment, tailored and geared to make the most of each individual working style and “social graph”….

Now, this is the next one you will be pestered about in the coming months: SOCIAL GRAPH.

Six degree of separation, networks, nodes and hubs, this is all making the news, together with complexity theory and chaos.. finally someone have made the point: interconnecting more than a billion people is not as simple as plugging a PC into the socket.. it is a matter of re-defining the social canvass, it is a matter of managing a life of endless information streaming across the planet, it is about one, large, living organism… quite a long time ago I posted about what I called LITO, Living Information Technology Organism.. we may all want to go back and study evolutionary theories instead that SecondLife for Dummies…

Welcome back, I hope a marvellous 2008 for all of you!!! It will be a nice ride, stay tuned!!

Want to party in Second Life??? Go to Rome universities!!!

Second Life is a plethora of different things, depending on your perspective, your attitude and will to explore… it is, as previously said, a spectacular ecosystem to foster communication, collaboration of some sort, and occasionally it is a learning platform…

If you put all these things together, and add some festive atmosphere, there you are: two Rome’s universities are having their Xmas and New Year’s party together in Second Life!! Università di Roma Tre and UniNettuno, a distant learning leading university, will launch the party at 5pm CET, both at the Roman premises of the URT and on line, on a Second Life space… the RL (real life!) event will be broadcasted onto the island’s screens, there will be DJ sets, dancers and the whole paraphernalia!!! The entire event will be streamed over satellite channels Dec. 31st.

It is designed to be an opportunity for those international students of UniNettuno that want to keep in touch with fellows, it is an opportunity to ignite a cross-fertilisation program between universities and foster collaboration!!  Meanwhile, get your flurry sorted out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Please, would you Kindle drop down that book??

Technology is, clearly, a never-ending race or, as someone put it nicely, “Technology is anything that wasn’t around when you were born” (yep, Alan Kay, to be precise..), so it seems unavoidable that someone will try (again) to invent, re-invent or envision a bit-and-byte device to substitute all those heavy, environmental unfriendly, space-wasting and, heck, dust collectors called books!!!!! When that innovation-evolution-revolution comes from the very company that made the book itself one of the most rewarding business items on the Planet, an appropriate and bias-free thought is due. Bezos and his Amazon announces the creation and launch of Kindle, the ultimate reading machine..

First, a reading on Newsweek for the “Bezos’ pensiero“, aka his philosophy and the fundamentals behind this tech launch.. I let you go over the detail and the tech specification of the object (notably a sleek, whitish piece of tech… anyone??!?!?), whilst I would like to focus on a couple of remarks.

It has been made a comparison between the digitisation of other media, such as music and video, and for argument’ sake I may question that music went from a vinyl-based experience, enhanced through the years via superior playing and sound amplification capability, to a CD-based reproduction and lately to the full digital mp3 (and Bros..). Vinyl and CD has got roughly the same “playing liturgy”, whilst the mp3 family goes back to replicate and enhance the “walkman” style (a walkable substitute of vinyl via cassettes..), gaining in music storage space / handling and output quality. Bottom line: the acts, the experience of the user was similar to the ol’ days, gains were mainly in space, music library “management”, and quality of output. Then, if in a rainy and cold day you put on a vinyl of Nina Simone or the digitalised version of it, pretty much the same (someone would argue vinyls were more “alive” than the perfection of CDs..). Video goes pretty much along the same lines, better picture, easy storage and management, and the rest.. experience is again fairly similar in its inner procedures, the actual liturgy!

Now, the book… could we say it is an entirely different matter??? You do your thinking, but I believe there are more “senses” involved to make the experience invaluable, the liturgy about reading a book and using an eBook is to me entirely different. One point to the book to this one.

On the other hand, as posted in other occasions, it is not a matter of being a “systematic” user of the new Kindle, but rather finding the own critical way of putting it into our personal technology mix. Do you love to read your Chatwin novels but simply browse and use business books??? Is it great for you to have all those quantum mechanics reference texts in the backpack but you are not the size of a Canadian lumberjack?? There you go.. Kindle does the trick!!

Let me put it in a different way… today Milan has got a wintery set up, sky is grey and kind of rainy, it is cold.. I would love to sit in a comfy armchair, a superb cup of coffee to sip and a nice BOOK to read… now, incidentally I am at work, I have to prepare a presentation to deliver with my speech at the School of Business Administration in Turin, it is about Digital Ecosystems and Professional Networks, I may want to read a few things and would love to go and SEARCH on my Kindle about, say, “metaverse” and “business”… I can browse and access to knowledge, I could potentially link together the power of Internet (reference, information..) with the batch-approach to info-digestion a “kindle” would provide: I find, buy and read when needed, off-line.. cool..

Experience is something complex and multifaceted, we live multi-experience lifestyles, and it would be utterly restrictive to believe there won’t be differences anymore in one’s daily activities… there will be a time for a book, there will be also a time for Kindle, for some those will converge and melt into something new, for others there will always be two separate and rewarding experience nonetheless.

Difference and divergence still make the difference, after all, every innovation stems out from someone diverging from status quo…

UPDATE: you may want to browse through this “live performance”… and do not forget to click and jump to the Amazon site, there is the new born baby in all its glory!!!!

Twitter, low expectations and “being critical”!!

Again.  Another social phenomena. Twitter is making the press in a more pressing manner than before.

Which I do not mind, but it all seems like adding to that disease I once called “cyber-inadequacy”. You’re not twittering???!?!? How sad could your life be??? Small circle of friends??? No friends whatsoever??? Meanwhile, I am enjoying my lifetime  three friends hanging around the Mediterranean with the newly bought 39-feet Azimuth one of the above decided to get to reward himself, nevermind someone with a weird nick lost somewhere…

Still, it is interesting to notice that someone pointed out as, for this new born communication arena, you may have a sort of a batch approach, a lower expectation level, an on-off style. Something like  I AM NOT ALWAYS CONNECTED!!!!!!!!!!! TO YOU AT LEAST!!!! Which I believe is pretty much a revolutionary and almost blasphemous thought. Nonetheless, I love it!!!

This is the first hint, the initial sparkle, the subtle rise of the “power of disconnection” we spoke in an earlier post, it is about being a “critical” user of technology..

Nice one, we get back some room  for ourselves, not to be shared necessarily with the rest of the Planet, and most interestingly we should not feel guilty about!!!!!

Loopt and your whereabouts on display.. why???

I have been reading an article, courtesy of the Italian “Corriere della Sera”, about the advent of GPS based localisation services in USA, nothing new to be honest, and the consequent ramp up within the youngsters.. for a mere $2.99 a month, everybody connected to services from Loopt and Helio Buddy Beacon may actually be seen and found over a GPS-enabled map… OK, fair enough, you do have the possibility (how kind..) to decide who can map you down (try and say “no” to your wife/husband or girl/boyfriend..) but nonetheless other “someone” will always know your whereabouts…

How hard will it be to ask and answer to the question “Where the …. are you???”. Not too long since the power of disconnection will hit the roads..trust me!!!

Hang around and work in Japan!!

Creativity is such an overrated word these days, but sometimes it is more than applicable to everyday’s touch of genius.. This is, roughly, the situation (courtesy of Joy Ito): youngsters in Japan have become some sort of hang-around-and-see-what-happen group, with very little inclination in sorting our their lives and hunt for the proper job, standard life.. the World is mutating so fast, life is a big swirl of occurrences and possibilities and, as the drunken man leaning on a lamp post with his home key in the hand and “if the world is swirling sooo fast, sooner or later my home will pass from here”, they wait and see, doing almost nothing.

So, some businesses may have trouble in finding a decent workforce, or even a workforce altogether… so, the sparkle of genius comes in.. you may know this already, I did not (cannot have a God-like, all-embracing knowledge.. can I???), but here it comes Otetsudai Networks (if you have any Japanese language skill click here)!!!!

The “thingy”, run by Mr Sunagawa, basically puts together demand and offer, nothing new, here but, wait..

Say you need someone to help out your car-wash given the recent sandy rain..you hit ON, in which you put down your request (someone to help washing cars for four hours….), people that are connected (subscribed) to ON will actually see you ads, and will apply to the “position”, if they want, if they need some cash, if they have some spare time, if, if, if…. Now the icing on the cake.. people will be on GPS, thus will see and will let you see the entire picture: where is the job, how far from my position, and for you how many people applied, how far they are and which sort of experience they may have…(in washing cars, yep, you know..). This “referral” is actually applied also to the job advertiser (how good the owner-manager is, the pay, the actual workplace…).

You choose the right chap/lady, and there you are, problem sorted for the car-wash and some cash changes hands, allowing the kiddie to spend it, and having it circulating, and so, and then, and the rest…

Why it is interesting?? Clearly it makes the most of the tech available: mobile networks, GPS, some Web 2.0 features (mashing up sites with location-aware information), the amazing array of mobile devices scattered allover the place (and people living in full symbioses with them..ring any bell, Italy???), but most importantly it is designed after analysing in full details a young tribe that is populating a modern city, the service has leveraged a modification of the social canvass to deliver a win-win solution for all parties involved. Most effective I dare say, and without starting a social debate on temporary jobbing, the condition of the youngest in large urban conglomerates and blah blah, but solving a rather simple equation: problem, solution (in this case good enough..). Add to the recipe some flexible work regulation (I believe..), and above all acceptance of social changes and there you are, a modern city-society problem solving activity. No questioning on whether this is good or bad, and furthermore that is private and not governative (who cares…), if it solves a problem or augment recrudescence, I am just stressing the effectiveness of social and urban tribes analysis. With very little talk on innovation, evolution, case studies, round tables and so forth.. it has been simply done.

Would like to see it happen closer to home..

A day at SMAU!

Just back from SMAU… right, what the heck is SMAU, for those of you that are not Italian??? Simply, that is (should be..) the largest, most famous and historical ICT exibition / convention in Italy, held in Milan and generally in October. The event went through a roller-coaster, somewhat hard times: it once was the reference for anybody in IT (ICT, later..), it was submerged by schoolboys in desperate quest for the latest gaming/pc/whatever cool gadget from, say, end of ‘90 to mid Naughties, then went a bit downhill and then, supposedly, resurged in the last couple of days.. supposedly, as to avoiding the screaming hordes of hormonal youngsters crazy for bytes and bums (companies’ stands swarmed with hostesses..), SMAU became a business-only game… quite sad indeed, to be honest..

The excitement buzz was lost, no perception of technology riding the tidal wave of innovation, no feeling that ICT was out of the basement and into everyone’s house and life… it is back to be a trite and sparkless affair for boring attempted-pin stripes suit wearers … nevertheless, I went.

Scope was to attend a conference (more a workshop as it turned out to be..) on Web 2.0 business opportunities…

A good two-and-a-half hours blew in the wind of Second Life and geomarketing “a la GoogleMaps”… incredibly boring, to be honest, particularly for a couple of issues:

• the SL part, albeit well documented with infos and numbers from the usual sites, including Second Life Insider and KZero, was poorly organised as to give out some new insights on what is business in/with/via SL (if any.. ) and focused on the end user experience guideline (how to fly, why to fly and some other amenities..).. the only biz remark was about the SL potential to extend relationships and create some sort of improved customer care, supposing your customers are actually in..
• nobody stressed the cultural impact of approaching SL to enhance and empower the organisation, that including training, virtual conferencing, interactive product / feature demonstration, workgrouping and so forth.. in a country (Italy) where it is scarcely adopted even the “remotisation” of a workplace, or at least is not as widespread as it should be, I trust it will be hard to explain your boss “I am actually working..” when interacting with a fish called Wanda …

Plus, there were some other statements and pearls of wisdom which I thought were superfluous for those already within a VW and totally out of place for those who are not yet in (remarks included something along the “people buy stuff for the avatars and not something to take back to real world..” lines).. the approach was either druidic or “we and the Others” kind of patronising tone. A big no-no altogether.

There was a nice notation on all of the above: the absolute high percentage of female attendees in the audience. Now, before you start with pub-style comments, it is interesting to notice how an usually male populated area (girls, IT WAS boooooring !!!) today was sort of 50-50.. you give this a nice explanation, I believe it could be due to information technology being increasingly embedded into everyone’s life, with some cool declination quite recently and, more importantly, it is no longer a technical affair but it could well be placed amongst the “humanistic” topics…. (which I rather..)

The interesting presentation from Microsoft about its Virtual Earth application was somewhat too quietly digested by the attendees, I was expecting a rain of questioning, how that could go against Google Thingy(es) and similar amenities, whilst all went out with a mild clapping of hands, unheard it went in the overall buzz-chatty sound of the hangar-like compound SMAU is in..

Some missing companies: Microsoft itself, nobody from the mobile comms industry apart from RIM and Telecom Italia (partly mobile, ok…), none of the networking giants (Cisco and bros..), PC manufacturers went AWOL apart from IBM and a neighbour such as Lenovo, absolutely nobody from the Web 2.0 industry, whatever that may be… if someone of the above was around, either its stand was real tiny or it was placed nearby the toilet area, which I did not explore at all.. furthermore, gadgets were horrible, I ended up with a c@#p yellow yo-yo… poor me, what a day…

So, end game was not so exciting as I supposed it could be, and that is remarkably sad, considering the wealth of innovation and buzz that is going on today all over the World.. and that is scary, for you need to have a stronger grasp and a better picture of ICT as the main change agent at your disposal today, if you want to have an healthy country system, ready to ramp up. I better go to my feed reader and see what is going on…somewhere else??!?!

MySpace loud voice will be heard above the Sky(pe)!!

The very concept of value got an entirely different meaning since the planetary explosion of the Internet phenomena, insofar “value” was increasingly linked to “users” or, more disgustingly put, “eye balls”. Then came the day in which the old World ruler, Money, claimed back its throne and there it was, the Internet bubble….

Slowly but surely, the old remnants of the Internet started to morph and mesh, evolve, develop into new, unprecedentedly seen permutations and those are called the Web 2.0 days, in which the concept of value, again, moved towards more alluring shores, Community and Social Network (again an elegant permutation of “eye balls” to some). This being the present era, it is quite understandable that champions arise and fall, alliances are made and demolished.. and in this context the once-independent Skype, the ever-so-famous “open communication” platform, was bought by the other ever-so-famous eBay, the everyone’s favorite auction site, in the attempt to breed a super-champion (as if we were talking about Varenne…). The attempt failed.

But persistence is a quality not to be overlooked and there we are, another super-breeding exercise on the run: Skype and MySpace, another ever-so-famous social networking site, are somewhat beginning the preliminaries..

This could make some sense, since both companies are involved in the communication arena with a “social” flair.. minor hiccups are found in the presently not so strong (as before) market positioning of both, once the undisputed rulers today are at the most part of an oligarchy..

Whether the voice capability added (going to be added..) to MySpace will revamp the social site, which has experienced a significant drop in visits, pageviews (-20%!!), and a bunch of other variables (data from Compete, August 07 vs. July07…), and more importantly whether users will like to add another way of communicating (also considering that, as it seems from other Compete analysis, MySpace users tend to stick with the site or eventually to drop off altogether and move away – possibly from the social networking two big contenders, the other one being Facebook?!?!?!) .. is it something like the incoming diatribe between convergence-divergence, in this case meaning “I will use the appropriate communication medium (and intensity) according to the people I am interacting with??”. MySpace’s fundamentals were about profiles, bits of digital life gathered for others to see, and with a sort of near real time communication.. if that has to be enhanced by adding voice to the mix I found it quite debatable. Then again, I trust someone have been playing quite thoroughly with the Web tribes concepts…

PS So, why not adding voice capability to avatars, and the possibility to run a sort of “avatar multi-conference” as to interact with several other “Us”??!??! Endless possibility, but heck, do not beat the drums too early!!!

Second Life wired to your real brain…

.. or, at least, what is left of it after having played for such a long time with all the VWs, MMPORG, videogames and Co’s since you were a toddler.

Still, this is what some Japanese researchers of the Keio University Biomedical Engineering Laboratory are currently perfecting. The entire idea is to “connect” the brain waves produced by the very thought of, say, moving around SL, to a BCI (Brain to Computer Interface) which will make the most of your EEG and will have you fly and hover around sims.

As usual, most of these “strange” applications are designed to allow people with some sort of disabilities to interact with a wider range of possibilities and to, partially, overcome some hurdles they may experience. Yet, this opens up some nice “futurology” exercises to accomplish…

Ads in a virtual age..

Once upon a time, a world called “Advertising” was shaken by the advent of a new specimen, the “Web Surfer”, which was compromising all the evolutionary theory keeping up the Advertising planet as we knew it… that specimen had an extremely effective mobility, thus allowing for a superior confrontation ability, he/she was incredibly skilled in finding things and confronting them, he did eventually developed a communal conscience, and thus the opinion of his/hers peers was infinitely more valuable than the one provided by the oligarchic powers of Advertising..

Little by little, and with the help of some undercover Technologists, Web Surfers evolved into Avatars… a small and yet very powerful community of so-to-speak super-surfers, able to mutate from a mere purely virtual existence into a simul-physical appearence, albeit byte based. Avatars complicated Advertising a bit more, since the exchange of information and sensation would have improved from a virtual to virtual basis to something slightly closed to that one typical of a mythical world called Real Life, in which people were once made by flesh, oddly enough, and they were able to see each other in person, to speak about oddity!!!, and all events, objects and occurrences were discussed and judged, accepted or scorned via a plethora of concurrent communication methods: words (wow!!!), physical expression, body language, and few more refined tools..

The Advertising rulers, having not the faintest clue about the first batch of the new specimen, the Web Surfer, got completely lost with the advent of this radical evolution of the species… worried about their very existence, scared about a planetary-scale revolution potentially able to depose them once and for all, rulers of Advertising suddenly decided to foster collaboration with the least revolutionary wings of the new species, in a revamped version of the old “if you cannot beat them, join them” motto.

Here we are, then, hybrids such as this new guardians of the Advertising world are set to see the light of dawn any time soon, and the free rides along the Web of those revolutionary Avatars and their predecessors, the Web Surfers, might be gone forever…

Wi Fi in the Park, and Milan goes on air..

You all know that I am not staggeringly in love with Milan, which I believe is somewhat living and pretending way above its current status of second-tier European city, however, “render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s” and there we are.. there is, for the not-in-the-know, a lovely park in the middle of the city, Parco Sempione, which should actually be considered as the local version of NY Central Park or London’s Hyde Park (sort of..), and it is packed full with the usual fauna of joggers, mums with going-to-be-famous babies, some execs and other city parks’ paraphernalia. The whole community will enjoy the beauty of Wi Fi connection across the park!! Well, most of the park…

There is a “strategically positioned” antenna over the Torre Branca, sort of in the middle of the park, and some smaller antennas in four other location. The tricky part is the access, which is actually going via a “card” that the WiFi surfer should collect in dedicated “outlets” nearby the antennas (as the Corriere della Sera points out), and the card will guarantee access for three hours to be spent throughout the day. The card is free, seemingly for now…. Ah, forgot, to get the card you have to leave your full name, no nicknames allowed , and an identity document number.

Now, that is particularly ludicrous, even for an over-rated city like Milan. Could you actually think about how to complicate something that should be “free” in the first place a tad more???? Why do I have to give out all those info??? To protect who from what?? Do come along….

The nice thing is that the local “assessore” (someone in charge something, at municipality level) for the urban layout stated “the parks are our top priority” when considering the Wi Fi implementation, and the very chap claims “so that we will allure a larger number of people to go about the park to study and work” as if I rather be stuck in the office if I had not my boss checking for my whereabouts.. rubbish, utter rubbish and sounds very much like “parrot talking”…

And yet the entire plan, which entails the coverage of the urban territory by 2009, via more than 4,000 access points, is a nice step forward to the fuellest coverage to be available by 2015 for the “Expo” to be held in Milan. It is interesting, it is a nice way of pushing forward a city that may have lots to offer to residents and tourists alike, but the feeling is, again, that Milan is playing like it were a much larger and much more important city. And it is playing way too bad!!!

It has already been mentioned a “feasibility study” to be prepared in collaboration with the local Polytechnic, which I trust would lead to proving the project will have massive returns for the parties involved.. when, not too long ago, the city of San Francisco (!!!!) had some trouble justifying its project of Wi Fi cabling… SF, at the very heart of the tech evolution!!!

Guess if that rings any bell ….

In the meanwhile, it has already been stated that the wireless coverage of the city will not be free for surfers, and furthermore there will be a public tender to award the project… that would allow an immediate cash back into some pockets, with very little creative effort.. so, nevermind people would eventually pay for some contents, nevermind the fact that the municipality could use the widespread capability of being in touch with a range of potential “customers” via laptop or, increasingly, mobile devices to push for entertainment offers (info, tickets, discounts, coupons…) that may create a flow of activity and opportunities for a plethora of commercial actors (which would pay, say, for advertising… isn’t that the model of all the top flying Web companies today???)… and you could go a long way along these lines… why on Earth hindering the overall uptake of such a nice opportunity just to make money the easy (potentially) way??? That’s silly… (for the project itself, not for the pockets that may benefit from sheer stupidity..)

So, the overall idea of “virtual streets” in Milan along the old, real ones comes to a price.. for the users to pay… guess most of the people will keep on browsing the nice cafes and shops in the Triangolo della Moda and will be oblivious of Wi Fi.. apart from the typical Milanese posers, but that is another story..

PS By the way, if the municipality wanted to measure the citizens’ satisfaction for such a service, first should have not bother everyone with that data collection via crucis, and secondly, should have potentially launched the project not at the very doorstep of the autumn rainy season and winter cold… talking about stupidity…

CEATEC in Tokyo

I know, I did promise to write about my Japanese trip, but since I have landed back over to Italy, I had sort of lulling the experience, everyday a little bit more, every now and then going back to check few pictures, or an article, or some TV show, or.. something like this, the consumer electronic show CEATEC  in Tokyo (a summa of articles if you follow the link..)!!!

For those of you that have been over to Akihabara, there is no need to explain, for the others… it is, provided you like or love technology, like throwing a toddler into the research and development department of Mattel and Walt Disney combined together!!! A Middle-earth of adventurous bytes, never-seen-before tantalising electronic creatures, cavernous subterrains packed full of treasures and blinding lights of colored cathedrals … an amazing experience, truly remarkable!

You know what?? I love this creative buzz, and I sadly pity those who do not even perceive that something is massively changing… OK, fair enough, it is not all about VWs and electronics, but whilst we are at it…

Our world in 3D

I have already mentioned that, as of today, VWs are a superb 3D communication medium, and as such should be considered. Today, the 3D capabilities of VWs have been (seemingly) extended in a massive and very powerful way. Multiverse Networks, a company based in Mountain View (must be the air in that place…), will deliver a “platform” to create virtual environments  based on Google’s 3D Warehouse and G-Earth captures. The ultimate mashup so far…

The possibilities are endless, I believe. Certainly the entertainment industry and online gaming may produce some nice outcomes, but also the open source community could have a massive go at it and, why not, challenge some of the largest gaming companies on one or two titles, particularly when development will take the form of a “wiki” work, with everyone contributing with own’s ideas and stuff from the media scrap book in drive E: …

Also, that would open up a playground for the tourist industry, allowing anyone to experience a place without necessarily being there (that would be a tremendous interactive brochure, wouldn’t it?)..now, since the tech running in the background is currently set to support just a thousand of concurrent users, that would possibly cater for a premium experience for some “already alive” VWs… and what about a boost to the eCommerce and eBusiness industry??

And more to come..

Now, the overall feeling is… JUST GIVE ME A SEC!!!!!!!!! It is absolutely incredible the pace evolution has taken, and the immense wealth of opportunities, ideas, projects, technology that can be combined to create something that was not even remotely there a month ago. The extreme power of the so-called Web 2.0 is simply this: put together things and allow people to play with it, and put together those new things and allow people to play with it, and put together those new things and allow people to play with it… a creative “nuclear” reaction set to blow the established and know territories away. In which way, form and intensity is yet to be understood, if it ever will.

Yesterday we were pointing out that relying on numbers when working at the edge of chaos may actually prove somewhat useless, or at least partial… 24hrs after that, I repeat that the most important asset you may boast when analysing such a mutating scenario is a superior connection between your right and left brain hemispheres, since our parallel processing capabilities are constantly challenged. Someone could call that “an open mind”..

However, enjoy the show!

Virtual worlds and the gold rush..

Long time ago, my mum bought for an unknown reason a book titled The Sword of Shannara. Admittingly, I had not read any fantasy before that one (no, not even the Lord of the Rings..), but I quite fell for the plot, the adventure, the…everything.. and I thought what an amazing movie that would be, or what a smashing game it could become..

I sometimes believe that quite a lot of our inventions, creations, and to some extent evolutionary endeavors come from the way we grew with our dreams, what we wanted to do and what we liked when we were free to play.. thus I like to think that the current hype and the explosion of the virtual world frenzy could also stem out of other than business opportunities.. it is like traveling in spaces and realms made by our imagination, and more interestingly composed by the dreams of hundreds of thousands of people like us..

The child in us is constantly in charge..

Then, incidentally, dreams are valued for what they are, the food for anyone’s soul, and thus monetise that is quite an easy and most interesting task.. in the recent times the VW environment has gained traction and a wealth of venture capitalists have decided to inject fresh capital into the dream theatre, according to Virtual Worlds Management that amounted to an hefty $1billion.. more on that here..

Given that there is no philanthropy involved, I have to assume the entire operation yields some sort of return (apart from cashing the venture capital by the VW owner..) .. ads??? No way, we have already discussed about the potential fallout of extensive ads campaign into originally-free worlds..eBiz? Perhaps, but not in the immediate future, again for the very reason the VW existed in the first place, connection amongst dreamers, and thus very little inclination in spending frenzy here..(maybe at a later stage..). So, where’s the beef? Lateral return? As in brand equity, standing, fit or anything intangible?? That would actually make some sort of sense, since you may operate in an “intangible” world…

Discussion open, in the meanwhile dream on!!!

UPDATE: and, to put it straight, investments in VW should also leverage something like this Metaverse Market Index, due to be launched at the San Jose convention, October 10th … gosh…

Radiohead’s new work … and it is up to you!!

Today is such a fine morning in Milan, I headed into work quite lighthearted, God knows why, and I was deeply buried into listening Virgin Radio (since my mp3 is just 1Gb and I need all the music I have for this eve’s training session..), and there it was, Karma Police, Radiohead… nice intro to the morning news the band from Oxford is launching a brand new album, due out October 10th…

Nice, but where’s the beef? Quite simply, their new work is absolutely free!! Sort of… actually, Radiohead have decided to leave up to the fans to decide what to pay for the dowload, from nothing to whatever they want!!

Apart from some obvious considerations about the current business model of the music industry, what really strikes me is the lesson the band is giving: music is community, and in a community each member helps the others. Someone is playing music, the others reward him for doing so..

I know, it is not that simple, however I find it socially important, it is a significant shift of paradigm, the value is upon those who enjoy art, and not set beforehand. It actually assumes that people have some sort of social responsibility, a high level of education and respect.

But, most of all, it would be a lesson against restrictions and impositions, and it would be great to know, at the end of it all, how much people have valued (that’ is the trick…value.. very much “social internet”, isn’t it??) the new Radiohead work.. could all end up with a massive blow to DRM theorists and such (by the way, RHead said “no, thanks” to Apple..)???

Dreaming is free, after all…why not..

Facebook and how to spoil a piazza…

It seems that today there are two types of frenzy within the business community, either to conquer the outer space or to get hold of a worldwide renown social site… now it is Facebook that makes the press!!

Both may actually signify that “the World is not enough” (I have to stop watchin’ telly…) and there is a dare need to discover new frontiers .. where to place ads, maybe???!??!?!

The valuation Microsoft is currently placing on each and every couple of eyeballs in FB is around 66$, which is significantly higher to the 11$ paid for MySpace’s eyeballs… it seems that users do not really love to be considered “eyeballs” and thus MySpace performances have been going slightly down, as the Italian “La Repubblica” pinpoints, or at least are shadowed by those of the going-to-be-acquired Facebook (541% growth in UK vs. 20%..). Google, incidentally, is part of the race…

However, point is: would it possibly be that the fame of a social network in the business community may become inversely proportional to its resilience within the Web community itself???

Are we still perceiving that the entrance of a revenue-driven behemoth is hindering freedom altogether???

After all, why on Earth Mark Zuckerberg would like to impose or push anything to his beloved audience?? For no reason whatsoever, insofar that would be a risky move and prone to, well, spoil the fun of it all and slightly piss .. sorry, upset customers.. that is exactly why he is cleverly cashing in and selling the whole thing off to someone that will transform a free space into a massive billboard.. or something along the line..

In the meanwhile, waiting for an easy way to move one’s identity around (see other posts..) we will browse around to find the perfect hangout, that lovely place without ads, silly people showing off fake boobs or six-packs, in an attempt to be the next Web-phenomena, and without tens of thousands of friends we do not know anything about!!

Mashup….wazzuuuuuupppp??????

We all know that some of the features that people keep on tagging as “Web 2.0″ are about content creation, elaboration and management, as to obtain an auto-generated content stream to “widecast” … this is quite nicely combined with the possibility to have two or more set of contents (web sites, information, data, whatever…) interacting to create a brand new entity, an hybrid, an end-results of a careful dosing of ingredients.. aka a “mashup”!!!

Now, that has probably been a kingdom few fairly skilled individuals could fathom and approach, and then mash, mix, combine were all words for the initiated ones ..  but today, this all come down to a dead-easy level, as it seems with this Intel (wow!!) MashMaker!!

Vivienne Westwood has said just yesterday, at the celebration party held in Milan for her 35th anniversary in the fashion industry, that

this is a terrible World, in which anybody thinks anymore: everybody’s watching TV, nobody’s reading or looking for arts, and yet people constantly want to express themselves, but have got nothing inside and nothing interesting to say, they are boring…

This may actually be slightly harsh, but considering Ms Westwood is the least she could have said about the current intellectual bankrupt we are witnessing, still it is nice to sit and wait about the results coming from combination, cross-fertilisation and fusion of different experiences… after all a meticcio is actually stronger than the separate parts…

However, and despite the above, one word of advice (not that I am anybody to take this honour..): as all top DJs could tell you, two good songs do not get mixed nicely together into something worth earing all that easily, superior skills (intelligence) are needed to arbitrate amongst parts to reach a better One.. and skills (…) are in short supply..

I am all in one piece.. I mean in one place!!

You know, since quite a long time we have all followed the latest “virtual” hype, and today our cyber identity is fragmented and scattered in zillion of different places..

This would be a case for a good psycho therapy, needless to say virtual,  but instead of lying down somewhere in SL and telling a flurry how complicated and desperate was our childhood (nevermind our adult life, to come to that…), someone actually thought about gathering all our remains into one place, which was basically sort of “pre-Web 2.0 BigBang” kind of status…

Some months ago I believe it was IBM going about a cyber passport (sort of) to go and byte-jumping across virtual immensities to experience different worlds whilst maintaining our electro-personality (or virtual projection of real-life personality, as some studies do actually argument..), then someone cristallised all that in the nicer idea of “aggregate lifestreams”… here is a nice compendium of thinkings… (oldish post of Steve Rubel but kind of OK to read..)

Quite clearly, being our personality a kaleidoscope of emotions and interests, it is unlikely we can satisfy our curiosity all in one place (otherwise any marriages would really last forever!!!) whilst, on the other hand, it is quite disturbing to think about our entire time spent in chasing the update of “n” contacts, profiles, sites, virtual friendships and so forth… so, post once and distribute allover, collate ourselves into one space (sort of…say… my space.. kind of… but seems a spoiled idea…), have all your eBits in one place, all you created, everything, a “river of news” for other to swim in and enjoy (like this example here..)!!

eClippings then, a personal working table, a barebone website, a social network element without the social and the network as they were, it is about MySelf and You… seems like a nice way to go back to square one, where the individual is the pivot, emerging from the mob and allowing a selected group of people to have full access to his entire eLife. The cyber existence has got another layer, the individual, 360°, on top of the social network…

Or, rather, is a hyper-MeNetwork … I am networking myself… I am stepping over the six degrees that separates Me from Myself from I…

Yep, guess we may need a good doctor any time soon.. funny though…

SecondLife is a FreeLife???

It seems it is, actually!!! A group of avatar (people??), amongst which there are journalists, photographers, writers of all sort and most definitely virtual freelancers, hired directly online to tell the rest of us about SecondLife and its wonders: FreeLife is born!!!!

Couple of things: it is written in both English and Italian, it can be pdf-downloaded from several locations across SL …

Is it all alive and kicking then, despite the doomsday reports of businesses jumping off the SL phenomenon??? Seemingly so, the fun is still there! The fun, yep…

Web TV.. damn, just got that satellite thing..

Now… we knew IPTV was kind of hot on someone’s agenda, and as it seems, it still is! MySpace (wasn’t that place where you used to mingle and meet…) is going to launch miniseries on its portal..

I will keep it short: what about the autogenerated contents??? Or, admittingly, this post was true at the end???? As soon as the mass is there, ready to digest the next rubbish, there you go, it’s on its way.. so much for creative freedom..

At least, as soon as one is down, somewhere in cyberspace there is always another place for the pure ones!!

But, as it stands, now I have got a satellite connection, three WebTVs, two DVD readers, plus a PlayStation and three laptops, a couple of MP3 readers and a portable media player.. would I ever see the sunshine again?? Would I ever see this planet the way I remember it last time I went out???

Again, think about “attention”.. beware…

More on SciVee…

Sometimes we get it first!!

More on scientists “youtubing” around..

Everything’s real in virtual worlds..

Every now and then (in Internet time that’s the time in between lunch and dinner..) virtual worlds are coming back (never went away, mind you…) with rejuvenated energy and a bunch of titanium-like statement, pretty much like the one Paul Twomey, CEO of ICANN, made at the Influence Forum 2007 in Australia (here).

Mr Twomey argues the virtual world will most definitely be the future of global commerce, nevermind ecommerce.. One of the most interesting factors would be, seemingly, the migration of “gaming experience” into much more commercial interactions, as thus to maximise an already established “virtual experience” into a real life problem-solver tool.

And, since SecondLife is the current champion, that is the springboard for future thinking..

Now, despite SL keeps on producing nice bits of activity, such as auctions of virtual goods (for real money, to come to that, again!!), there are few issues to be sorted out before ever thinking about having virtual worlds as the solution for troubled consumer spending patterns and new industrial value network..

Again, it is a cultural approach in the first place, do not forget that most of the people interacting at a decent level of complexity over the Web are a well defined tribe and, by no means, a proxy for a more society-wide assumption of what interactions would look like in the near future.

Then, there is a matter of the technology involved or, better, the ease of the virtual experience that would be required to transform it from a game-like system to a more business-effective ecosystem (data flow, control, identity match, data storage, retrieval, regulatory and compliance…).

Then, the “cui prodest”. In a business environment, at least up until today, anything entering the door downstairs should produce a business enhancement in some form, being that strategic positioning, operation streamlining, pure and simple profit, whatever you may consider “enhancement” but, I trust after the Internet bubble of circa 2000, companies would not, and should not do something just because “it is cool”.. What you consider cool and must-have may not be seen likewise by your value network, that meaning a problem in coherent supply strategy, co-marketing, awareness building policies and lots of other nice edgy things..

As already stated by some press, large corporation are reconsidering the SL presence, since early results were not as expected. Which is, per se, a massive blunder… expecting what???? Selling what??? In a place where most people go and interact with others, have fun and live the experience of being there… guess they may be little concern about buying “real” goods (or marketing message) and rather going for fun things such as angel wings to fly around (or gather for discussing issues, as in a large instant messaging platform…at least for now, then we will see….!!!).

They are all missing the point. Virtual worlds are in the first place a nice corporate training ground for alternative positioning strategy and tactics, it is also a nice laboratory to experiment tribe clustering (customer segmentation, to use a paleolithic definition), and to prove the ability to listen instead of pestering with information… virtual worlds are places where the “power of referral” is fundamental, but you should get the referral in the first place, and what you did in a “PreviousLife” is not a guarantee to find one in a byte-based world.

So, culture, technology, strategy, communication. In a world, the entire corporate structure. Get to work, soon. Otherwise don’t bother talking.

Mr Twomey may be right, but he needs convincing a hell of a lot of people, first…