Toluu

Dove Lane

Kaye Vivian's observations on knowledge, virtual worlds and uncommon things.

Presenting Virtual WorldsJuly 22 2008

Last week a colleague invited me to make a presentation on virtual worlds to a class at NYU. Having had a major computer melt down only three weeks ago (which accounts for my long silence here), it was a bit of a struggle to get the presentation together. I was to have 45 minutes, which was a large chunk of time for a rather obscure topic. The last time I did a basic introduction presentation, I had 10 minutes, and it focused only on Second Life. This time, I wanted to really do the topic justice and show a lot of pictures from a variety of virtual worlds. I did…89 slides worth!

What was most interesting about the process to me was how my point of view has changed on Second Life. If you look back two years ago, I was skeptical about it and didn’t think it deserved all the hype it was getting. After a year of delving into Second Life and exploring all the variety it has to offer, I can now say without reservation that it is the best virtual world out there for content creators/builders and people who just like to explore. So far, anyway. Yes, there are issues with the SL platform — security, server lag, unexpected down times, a non-intuitive user interface — but it is still the best there is right now, and a rich place to spend time and learn what virtual worlds can offer. There are some exciting new worlds emerging now, and the early views look very promising, even though none of them yet looks like the “killer app” that will turn us all into v

KM Quotes PageJune 19 2008

I just uploaded a long page of KM quotes that I had been accumulating on a community site I manage. I thought it might be helpful for anyone who’s putting together a presentation or doing a cost benefit analysis — or simply wants some inspiration! The link is in the right sidebar under Pages or you can follow this link.

Thoughts from the Front Edge of the MetaverseMay 28 2008

Serendipity is great! Today I had a reason to go back and search for a video I had saved in my favorites on YouTube, and completely by accident I came across a great set of video interviews by Henrik Bennetsen of the Stanford Humanities Lab from the Metaverse U conference at Stanford University last February. You have to tune out all the background noise…the interviews were obviously taped on breaks between sessions…but the content and the insights you can get from the 40+ talks is considerable. All the virtual worlds you’ve heard of, plus some you haven’t, are represented, like Second Life, Multiverse, Wonderland, Metaversum, Ogoglio, BigWorld, Twinity, TomorrowSpace, Transmutable, and Metaplace, as well as Stanford academics who hosted the program and other thought leaders and pioneers, like Jerry Paffendorf, Ren Reynolds, Rob Bloomfield, Mitch Wagner, Daniel Terdiman, Raph Koster, and John Perry Barlow.

The interviewer asks the same four questions of each person, and here is a sampling of the responses. Some discussion threads are clearly starting to emerge.

1. What excites you about current metaverse technology?

“Interaction increasing between virtual worlds and current social networking sites”
“Having a persistent identity that you take with you as a person through all the different techno

Implementing Virtual Worlds: Key Planning DecisionsMay 20 2008

Last year I made several presentations to executive groups about Second Life and other virtual worlds. The overwhelming response I had led me to create a workshop comparing the features of many of the current virtual worlds to help business leaders understand their options so they can make solid decisions about what works best for their own organizations and business processes. The people I have talked with are universally fascinated by and intimidated by what a 3D Internet means. They don’t really know what criteria they should use to evaluate the technologies or to gauge the impact on the people in their organizations. Many are not even sure what questions to ask a consultant. Here is a list of things that can help you plan for a 3D future:

How do you plan for it?
When you say “plan”, know whether you mean educate executives, prepare the organization, explore technologies or prioritize implementation features.

How far in advance?
If you’re asking now, the answer is “start now”. As one business leader recently said, now is the time to get into the shallow end of the pool and splash around…while there still is a shallow end!

What are some baby steps to take that still give flexibility if the winds change?

Consider open source platforms Identify a few work groups or departments that could really benefit from 3D interactions and just offer it to them initially Identify the business proces

KM Standards Should Be Aimed at…What?May 19 2008

There have been some very interesting and erudite discussions recently in the ActKM group which I have, unfortunately, been too busy to participate in. This comment by Neil Olonoff caught my fancy, though, so I decided to blog it. He has written a position paper noting that many recent US government mis-steps have been “knowledge failures,” and he is now searching for a way to establish KM standards to drive success and consistency in the Federal government. He said:

“Tim’s (Kannegieter) analogy to the fire code is a very good starting point. Fire codes are aimed at avoiding having buildings burn down. KM standards should be aimed at … what? Here are a few suggested functional standard areas …

- knowledge sharing across boundaries under certain circumstances to be defined locally
- adherence to good knowledge storage and retrieval practices, to be defined locally
- meeting an acceptable level of learning and skills in knowledge work competencies (according to a common benchmark, like TPFL or similar)
- formulation, vetting, and publishing of best practices
- expertise and personnel location capability
- knowledge retention and sustainment capabilities to ensure transfer of knowledge to successors.”

There are troublesome words in these suggestions that frequently have different meanings to different people (in bold above), not to mention that the term “knowledge” is used when