HiPiHi is taking up the challenge of building a managed world with the emphasis on creating a strong virtual economy and a community built around the trading and creation of virtual goods, just at the moment when Linden Lab is beginning to make serious moves to an open grid (see here, here, and here).

While HiPiHi will not focus on real life integrations or enterprise applications, they will provide APIs for enterprises to do that themselves. They will be using the Chinese micro payment system Alipay, by alibaba which unlike PayPal does not have prohibitive costs for micro transactions.

IBM is a “solutions provider” for HiPiHi helping them design a systems architecture that will facilitate running a scalable world with a strong virtual economy. The early focus of HiPiHi is on building an architecture to support the virtual economy.

Toshitaka Jiku, HiPiHi’s new CTO and Executive Vice-President notes: “Virtual goods will be housed in a server for the purpose of creating a market place that will be our vision for an ebay for virtual worlds, so these virtual goods would be portable as opposed to having avatars being portable first.” IBM is also working with Linden Lab in the Architectural Working Group (see earlier post) on scaling and interoperability for Second Life and interoperability and avatar portability is part of the long term vision for HiPiHi.

And, HiPiHi is partnering with Intel to tap more CPU power. It has often been noted that one of the weaknesses of all current game engines and virtual worlds is they do not tap the power of the new CPUs.

HiPiHi has only 40,000 users so the focus of the public beta, which began April 2nd, will be on community building. While they have a future vision of interoperability with Second Life and other platforms based on the Linden Lab technology, the focus, for now, is on building a Chinese community. But they are experimenting with a dual naming system with avatars bearing English and Chinese names because international communication is very much in the HiPiHi vision of the future.

While HiPiHi plans for some mobile integration early on, IMing friends and inventory management for example, the emphasis at the moment is building the community inworld (also note Second Life’s recent integration with mobile, “Samsung Unveils Second Life..” ). But Toshitaka Jiku, HiPiHi’s new CTO is one of the first to develop a mobile interface for SL. And, Jiku comes from NGI the Venture Capital company that is also backing 3Di, so look for interesting innovation with mobile integration in the future.

While HiPiHi is commonly seen as a mere Second Life clone, the work they are doing with IBM and Intel on the system architecture is hoped to produce some valuable innovation. They are also researching the innovations of realXtend’s client. HiPiHi has a close relationship with OpenSim through their connection to 3Di and with Adam Fisby’s company, Deep Think, that is opening offices in Shanghai. It will be interesting to see how these relationship develop over time. Xu Hui and Philip Rosedale met last year and there is a long term vision of cooperation possible. These connections if they blossomed into cooperation and full interoperability would create a very interesting step forward for positive global development through virtual worlds.

Interview With Xu Hui, CEO of HiPiHi

Xu Hui, CEO of HiPiHi with Toshitaka Jiku, HiPiHi’s new CTO and Executive Vice-President

Bjorn Lee, Senior Manager, Marketing & International Business Development for HiPiHi, did an excellent job of translating for this interview, not only with Chinese and English but with the skillful and patient way he worked with me to find the essence of some of my long stream of consciousness questions! Bjorn also contributed many insights, and Toshitaka Jiku stopped by with some interesting insights into HiPiHi’s direction.

Tish Shute: Please could you tell me about your vision for the future of virtual worlds?

Xu Hui: The global virtual world industry will be undergoing a revolution over the next few years. What HiPiHi, Second Life and the other virtual worlds have done in the past few years has really been just setting the stage, exposing the world and educating on the possibilities – kind of like a proof of concept for what virtual worlds can do and can’t do. The goal this year for most virtual platforms will be to build system architectures that can truly scale for a massively-concurrent user base, in addition to inter-operability.

Tish Shute: I know that HiPiHi has formed a patnership with IBM. Could you tell me more about this?

Xu Hui: We are working very closely with IBM in terms of building new technical infrastructure for our platform. What this means is that we will specifically be collaborating very closely on aspects such as redesigning our architecture.

Tish Shute: RealXtend has been working on interoperability of virtual worlds with “real life” and working on meshes and facilitating 3D imports. Have you been in contact with realXtend yet?

Xu Hui: We are actively researching what realXtend is doing, as with other exciting virtual world technologies; and will seriously considering integrating them with our new system architecture.

Tish Shute: What is the strategy of HiPiHi re building a community of content developers?

Xu Hui: This is one of the focuses for HiPiHi this year. We are looking into incentive systems for content creation, including monetary and non-monetary forms. For the former, our approach will be to facilitate universal trade and have a secondary market for people to exchange their virtual goods, their creations, their applications, and so on. But in China, the model will be slightly different initially as we favor an ecosystem approach where we work with third-party providers of virtual economy functions and services. An example could be in payment systems, where instead of reinventing the wheel, we could explore ways to facilitate transactions conducted through Alipay, often regarded as the Paypal for China.

Tish Shute: I am a Mac user and, of course, I am really interested to know when there will be a Mac Interface and easy to use english version?

Bjorn Lee: I am a fellow Mac user too, along with an increasing number of colleagues. So do rest assured we have an internal Mac evangelist team! Since December, we have had a very basic English version but our lack of bilingual staff has affected the development of a satisfactory support system, not to mention interface only for English users.

Tish Shute: How big is the market in China for Mac?

Bjorn Lee: It is about 1%. But of course it is out of a larger population base here in China. Despite their relative lack of scale among China users, Mac users here are very enthusiastic, grassroots, and very tightly knit. Macbook Air ads are playing heavily across Beijing too and have garnered strong brand awareness among the younger set of Chinese consumers.

Tish Shute: What are some of the goals for the public beta which is starting in early April?

Xu Hui: The Public Beta will begin April 2. For public beta what’s interesting is this dual naming system that we are developing for the very first time. The first phase is for the current Private Beta users to migrate to the new naming system before we release that naming system to the public.

We expect a fair amount of proactive user feedback in the initial days, as with all things new. But I think it’s a good step forward because it will try to bring together the English and the Chinese speaking worlds. In a “first” for the virtual world, this new naming system displays both your English (that we call international name) and your Chinese name on top of your avatar. Across many in-world interactions such as chat, social networking, and for future commerce , we are trying to break down the language barrier in the virtual world.

But we are trying to do something to move forward in trying to foster multi-cultural interaction, with the foreign audience and local Chinese audience. Because there’s a lot of demand from local audiences here who want to internationalize and meet people from overseas and the same feedback is coming from our foreign users such as Suezanne C. Baskerville who seems very keen on learning some Chinese. She would like to put some Chinese and English on her avatar too – it’s like a social “code”, you start putting Chinese words in your avatar and so you say that you know I’m friendly and I’m willing to speak to Chinese users. And so too for the Chinese because with the English names up there it doesn’t look so foreign to the foreign audience.

In the later part of the year after our new system architecture is up, we will begin to consider micro payment systems. But because we are migrating to this new infrastructure, the initial stages of the public beta will just be to get more people to use the tools and continue to gather feedback.

Tish Shute: “What is the business model for HiPiHi?”

Xu Hui: Our platform is oriented more for the individual users, that is the residents as opposed to the enterprises and the corporate residents. A lot of the features we are adding and a lot of the feedback that we’re taking is user centric. But, as for our relationship with corporate residents, we will be opening a series of programs and that includes opening our API to allow development on our platform by the enterprises. We think of it as a self-service approach, in the form of open APIs and maybe incentive programs for enterprises to kind of drive this for themselves. But we will design and customize the platform more according to our core user group which are the non-corporate users.

Tish Shute: What is HiPiHi’s relation to other virtual world initiatives, e.g., Entropia’s and other virtual world start ups in China?

Xu Hui: My starting point in responding to this is the definition of a virtual worlds in our company’s opinion is an open-ended user-directed environment. User-directed means that users would drive the content creation, the development of not just their own content, but also feed back to the company, and what they hope to see on a platform level. Open-ended also in the sense that they can have a freer rein in creating and managing their creations.

Concerning that kind of concept, as it plays right now in China, we are the only company that really does that. A lot of the other initiatives that have sprouted recently from the interested companies or other startups in this space have more of what we classify as virtual communities which means that they place real limits and constraints on the users ability to create, and actually have more control over their lifestyles in these worlds.

We will welcome other players as they enter too. We actually welcome the entry of others into this ecosystem because it helps this ecosystem grow and mature faster. And, it can only be good for the users to have so many different companies push out their products and try to reach out to them. So it’s good because then they’ll be able to make an intelligent choice and see how fulfilling a virtual lifestyle they want.

Tish Shute: How do you plan to expand beyond China and how will HiPiHi differ in other countries? I know Linden Lab has met some interesting legal challenges as they have expanded globally.

Xu Hui: HiPiHi will be the sole platform operator for China. As for regions outside China we will take a partnership approach to finding local companies which will then operate this platform. They will be licensed and hence operate this world on our behalf. Thus they will be entitled to benefits commercially and so will have to be responsible to bear the legal costs and challenges. This will reduce the amount of legal burden on our side. A US based operator of the HiPiHi platform in US will certainly have to follow US laws to be entitled to collect revenues but also they will have to handle US based law suits.

Tish Shute: Will HiPiHi have a strong ID verification system tying virtual identities to real identities as a way to try and control griefers etc?

Xu Hui: This question itself doesn’t address how we think about identity. First, we are not going to have a very strong link between real world identity and virtual identity because we feel that our focus would really be to improve accreditation of what is popularly known as a reputation system for virtual identities. So we will focus on building an attractive incentive program for avatars to view their virtual identities in our virtual world as opposed to saying that you’re going to tie this virtual identity very tightly to your real identity.

We want to create mechanisms to facilitate and encourage residents to improve their in-world reputation. But it doesn’t mean we’re not going to manage disruptive behavior such as griefing, which is already known to create problems for virtual worlds like Second Life.

We will have a monitoring mechanism for these troublemakers in our virtual world. But our intention is to let the actual policing be done by residents themselves, through self-organized groups and features we provide for them. .

Tish Shute: The next generation of the Linden Lab grid architecture will separate avatar identity from what constitutes their environment. Will you be going in this direction too.

Toshitaka Jiku: (HiPiHi’s new CTO) Our server architecture will have a different focus. Our server architecture picks out virtual goods as an item that we will separate from the others in the sense that we are going to place them on different servers first. So virtual goods will be housed in a server for the purpose of creating a market place that will be our vision for an “ebay for virtual worlds”, so these virtual goods would be portable as opposed to having avatars being portable first. These are just our first steps and it does also mean that avatars would be housed in a separate server. But the focus right now is to make virtual goods portable and enable the virtual economy.

Tish Shute: How is HiPiHi going to deal with issues of protecting IP rights? This issue has become quite a difficult one in Second Life.

Xu Hui: This is a very big question. I am just going to lay out some basic principals. We like the concepts of giving back the rights of a media creation and returning it back to the creator, enhancing the motivation and incentive systems for people to share their creations and so on. A lot of our influences come from Creative Commons – that is the first part. The second part is when IP rights are infringed we understand where we stand in the whole legislative environment. We are not a legislative body, nor can we judge or rule on certain issues of conflict. Hence what we can do as platform is to provide the data but when it comes to actually making decisions in the legislative environment we are going to rely on third-party intermediaries. This could involve bringing in real-world law makers and courts to uphold some of these IP right because we can’t do that ourselves. So we do face limits somewhat similar to Second Life.

Tish Shute: What are your goals with IBM and Intel?

Xu Hui: IBM to us is really a solutions company. They have expertise in almost every single aspect of the IP sector which makes them a very good partner for us because we considering the architecting of our systems across all areas, client, the backend, algorithms and so on. They can help because they are pretty broad in their understanding of all IP areas.

But Intel has a little bit more focus. Intel is the father of the CPU. They are still the best right now in their understanding of CPU performance and we believe they are going to continue to lead this sector. So when we work with them it is going to evolve around the understanding of the CPU unit – what kind of features and abilities are we able to extract and are going to be useful for virtual worlds. I think this is something many virtual worlds have not focused on – that is extracting value from the CPU. And where better to find out how than from the makers themselves which is Intel. So we work across a broad spectrum with IBM, but with Intel we work in the vertical, and we drill very very deep.

Anshe Chung (picture from Rik Riel’s Flickr stream) spoke live from China at the grand opening celebration for the new Non-profit Commons island in Second Life. Anshe expressed her passion for using virtual worlds to connect globally.

Anshe Chung is SL’s first millionaire, a global metaverse entrepreneur, and donor of the island and buildings that house the NPC. Anshe described some of her own early experiences in virtual worlds and the power of the immersive social experience. She has seen virtual worlds and the internet enable people, previously forgotten and disconnected, to become connected to a global economy, and to meet other people on a more even footing. She talked about how people isolated from the world economy use rural internet cafes in China to socialize globally and make things of value in in virtual worlds.

Anshe, through her own portals on Second Life and other ventures, has been responsible for getting a vast number of people involved virtual worlds. She explained that she hoped the Non-profit Commons in SL could extend this process of finding new ways to connect technically, socially and emotionally to the members of non-profits.

Connecting Virtually: What makes the experience in Second Life so compelling?

Christian Renaud of Cisco uses the term “networked virtual environments” in the blog description of Cisco’s new Virtual Worlds Blog saying:

We believe that these environments offer an excellent new tool in our collaboration toolbox, alongside established technologies like IP Telephony, Web Collaboration, and Telepresence.

And, in my view, the time is just around the corner when “networked virtual environments” will be the tool par excellence for global collaboration and much more. This is one of the founding inspirations of the Ugotrade blog.

SuezanneC Baskerville, makes a fascinating comment to Christian’s post drawn from her recent post Virtual World moguls meet across shared Surface in Metaverse Poker Room. She suggests “that it would be interesting to see Linden Lab link it’s San Francisco and Boston offices using Cisco’s Telepresence system.” Christian’s Renaud’s response to her comment is also a must read. He notes his own experiences with wall sized video conferences, “bumping into colleagues in our break-rooms in our Technology Center offices in Raleigh and San Jose…..”

But, of special interest to me, is Christian’s comment on one of the key aspects of virtual worlds or “verses” as he likes to call them.

The “serendipity” of virtual worlds is a key part of the paradigm shift that Second Life has brought to “over the network interaction.” Christian explains:

One of the areas that we are constantly striving to improve is how you make an ‘over the network’ interaction as valuable and signal-rich as an ‘over the desk’ interaction. One of those variables, which is a key attribute of virtual worlds (or ‘verses, as I call them), is serendipity. I can’t very well bump into you on a telephone call, or (other than your example above) on a Telepresence call, however I can bump into your avatar in Second Life easily. How do we facilitate this serendipity, perhaps even nudge you in the direction of someone with shared interests? Food for thought.

“The Serendipity of Second Life”

And, just to press home a point on this “magic of Second Life,” I had a serendipitous encounter on SL only minutes after reading Christian’s comment. I bumped into a rising Japanese Electro/techno/house star, Shingo, on Virgin EMI Music Japan.

Risso Little is new to Second Life. I had gone to Virgin EMI Music Japan to follow up on some interesting posts on Japanese sims by my friend Al Kronos. While we were chatting an earthquake struck Tokyo, and my new found friend’s eighth floor apartment started to shake. I had just gone to his My Space. And, I was listening to one of his excellent tracks when this happened. (Click here to listen)

Well to make a long story short, Rizzo and I were very relieved when the shake up was over. I offered to take him shopping (yes, I know, what was I thinking? “I shop therefore I am”). But, nevertheless in a few short hours Shingo gave me an introduction to some Japanese areas in Second Life. And, I took him around some of the American and European sims. Here we are chatting with a group of Japanese fashionistas waiting to earn Linden dollars modeling dresses in panels. Later, I connected Rizzo Little to Nat Mandelbrot (of Cruxy Player fame) who is pioneering new ways for musicians to extend the experience of their music in Second Life.

Thinking on a global scale – Second Life is not “empty space.”

The casual drop-in approach to Second Life taken by some main stream journalists, and their resulting cursory view from afar, has created a lot of misunderstanding in recent months about how Second Life works to connect people globally, in completely new ways, for business, pleasure and social change.

Story Geek recently wrote an excellent post pointing out that stories in “Wired and the L.A. Times have deemed Second Life (SL) a failure because of it being empty” misunderstand this new virtual landscape that appears empty to a casual glance even though it is actually teeming with life and economic activity.

Story Geek gives an excellent analysis of why a high level glance at a virtual environment misinforms the observer much the way such a high level glimpse might in the real world perceive Canada as empty. And so, Story Geek quips, “Maybe all businesses should pull out of Canada also.” Story Geek points out some of the specific ways that Second Life’s teeming economy and bustle of activity might not be apparent to a drop in observer. And, he points out:

by understanding the mechanics of the world you get a clearer picture of how the residents exist, inter-relate and consume.

Reflexive Architecture: Experiencing People in the Global Reaches of Virtual Space

3D Experience architect Keystone Bouchard is currently engaged in exploring through reflexive and responsive architecture new ways for people to experience other people’s presence in virtual space. As Story Geek noted, mis-perceptions of emptiness can arise in virtual environments for many reasons, e.g., because Second Life is an open 24/7 space with people arriving from multiple time zones at different times of the day.

In a Gallery of Reflexive Architecture, to be exhibited as part of the new Library Gallery exhibition on Info Island by the artslib group, Keystone is showcasing some of his work with scripter Fumon Kubo. Keystone has posted a video composite of several machinima pieces each describing a different installation in the gallery, such as Rippling Prims, Prim Decay, Sudden Space, Restless Spheres, Carvable Prims, Visible Traces, Moving Tiles, Interactive Glass, and The Cacoon. Some include sound as an integral part of the experience, which is best experienced first-hand (SLurl … subject to change).

The picture below is of Sudden Space.

Keystone explained to me:

One thing I’ve struggled with is the idea that people think sims are ‘always empty’ just because there wasn’t someone there the instant they visited. But in actuality, these places are flooded with people flowing through them. The difference is, we’re on a global scale now most websites are ‘empty’ most of the time too. So, I wanted to build in a system that illustrates that you’re not alone, a relatively low-impact way of measuring how spaces are used as well.

Keystone took me through the reflexive 3D experiences he has created. Here is a short selection of some of the comments he made.

Visible Traces

Each one of us should have a different color and they follow our trails. Right now I have them set to last 2 hours so, we can see visible traces of people who have been here before us. I can already see in the first day this has been here that some of the corner installations are overlooked, so, its meaningful feedback

Rippling Prims

I’ve wondered how this one will behave with many avs present so far, its only been tested with 2 but, its created a nice little space for us where nothing was before.
On Demand Architecture = Prim Ripples.

Carvable Prims
This explores the idea of avatar movement gradually ‘carving’ the architecture. Every time an avatar appraoches, the ‘wall’ elements move a slight bit away so, over time, the high traffic areas become larger.

It was based on a conversation Theory Shaw and I had a while back one of those monumental ‘What If?’ conversation

Keystone and I discussed how reflexive 3D experience architecture will take on new value and meaning when it can be laced with data from the real world. The potential of virtual world/real world intergrations to provide a doorway to a sustainable future is a key theme on Ugotrade. And, I have discussed this many times, including here, here, and here in some depth.

We are on the cusp of virtual revolution that will shift the world away from models of communication, representation, and production that emerged in the industrial age.

In Second Life we are beginning to see Global initiatives like EOLUS One put together the kind of global collaboration that will make virtual environments the stage for planning, designing and managing real life buildings and cities in new collaborative and participatory ways. And once built, these cities will stream back into Virtual Worlds as data that is responsive to our needs and the needs of the environment.

Then 3D experience architecture will emerge as not only a beautiful expression of a new era of global communication and collaboration, but as a a tool par excellence for benefiting communities and people, and creating a sustainable future.

Thinking Globally: How Can Developing Countries Benefit from Virtual Worlds?

An important question that came up at the non-profit commons launch was how non-profits in developing countries can utilize virtual worlds. This is a topic I discussed with Alanagh Recreant of Uthango Social Investments in this post. Also see this interesting article on Uthango’s work in the South African national newspaper Cape Argus. And, please see Uthango’s new blog, Africa’s Second life , Our Virtual Reality, to learn about the first event of Uthango’s African Round Table Initiative, in Second Life, Aug 24th.

These are exciting times for Non-profits on Second Life and the fact that facilitating developing countries participation in virtual worlds seems high on the agenda is very encouraging.

MacArthur funding a non-profit track (see press release) at the SLCC convention which Rik Riel will be blogging.

The Grand Opening of Non-profit Commons on Second Life

There are some excellent blogs on the non-profit commons launch. Ruby Sinreich live blogged it. And, Rik Riel has posted some great pictures on his blog and more here. Susan Tenby (avatar Glitteratica Cookie) talked about TechSoup’s work in Second Life – 300 group members and thousands of avatars have come to their weekly meetings. Coughran Mayo from Preferred Family Healthcare spoke (via Skype), and Glitteractica Cookie (Susan Tenby of TechSoup), Jeska Linden (NP liaison for Linden Labs), and Anshe Chung live from China.

Evonne Heyning (avatar In Kenzo) elaborated on some of the specific ways the Non-profit commons on Second Life will be a portal bootstrapping the non-profit process on Second Life with efforts like, an “office in a box,” to help non-profits get up to speed fast on Second Life. Go visit nonprofitcommons.org on the web and in Second Life:
slurl.com/secondlife/Plush%20Nonprofit%20Commons/130/125/22/ to find out more.

After the panel there was a tour of the 32 nonprofits who have offices at NPC. Here I am at Yehoodi, the swing dance society run by Rik who is DJing real time. The swing music was great. And, I didn’t have to wait long before I landed a very dashing dance partner -Dore Junot (film maker Salvador Luna in RL) who I gather was the video guru for the mixed reality panel (photo below of the live event, “Jeska and Susan in two worlds,” from net2photos flickr stream)

I met with Alanagh Recreant (a.k.a. Dorette Steenkamp) from Uthango Social Investments, on Virtual Africa in Second Life. And, while Uthango’s Virtual Africa initiative has barely begun yet – terra forming is first on the agenda – there is already a very special feeling of possibility, and great things to come. Uthango has already put out tender to all the listed developers on the Linden Lab website. And, many of Second Life’s top developers, PR companies, marketing experts, and consultants have offered services, as well as pro bono work.

The core of the USI strategy for poverty relief in Africa does not primarily revolve around Second Life. But Uthango uses Second Life as an enabling platform for social innovation. By doing this, they are taking the visionary extra step of including Second Life in their strategy to make an impact in the lives of the people they benefit.

A participatory social media convergence bringing mobile, Web 2.0 and Second Life together for community engagement, is happening now and will – in itself – make the first steps to addressing the exclusive nature of 3D-platforms. And, USI is determined not to let the digital divide that is exasperated in Africa by expensive, inadequate/non-existent broadband coverage (for now) widen any further. While significant moves are afoot to bring broadband to large swathes of Africa, often known as the “missing link,” because of the lack of connectivity, access is still a big problem for all but the most privileged.

Uthango’s concerted effort to tackle inequality and social injustice in South Africa goes beyond advocacy for connectivity to other divides – economic, educational and access to opportunities as well.

Investment is our passion – to draw attention to investment opportunities for people in Africa.

But, Uthango is pioneering the inclusion of participatory new media and advocacy for connectivity in their vision. And, while broadband remains prohibitively expensive in Africa, they are preparing the way with projects utilizing mobile connectivity. Mobile phones have become a powerful tool for creative economic development in Africa (see African Uptimist). Uthango has a participatory social media initiative in the works that will link three very diverse communities – two with 65% unemployment and lack of resources, and the other an affluent sea-side community with better infrastructure.

We plan to institute an inter-cultural and civil engagement program across these communities, using video-blogging, mobile, and upload to a central server, and link it up to Google Earth. There will be a community portal, initially linked to computers at the schools and library and ultimately with an upload facility from mobile phones – a mobile magazine linked to the portal with community events. Ultimately, this extensive and integrated social network will be linked to Second Life. Meanwhile, innovation from the more inaccessible SL will be channeled back via the more modest communication framework in real life. This RL/SL convergence for social gain will be a unique example of an integrated ICT approach to development.

Uthango are working with partners and professionals in Second Life to explore the commercial value for companies and individuals and the social benefits for institutions such as universities and schools, in their preparation for Virtual Africa. A key initiative on Virtual Africa will be a Bottom-of-the-Pyramid Innovation Center (see ‘Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid’ by C.K. Prahalad). Uthango are serious about seeking ways to bring community voices into Second Life while broadband issues are addressed.

But the plans for Virtual Africa also include creating one of the most sophisticated ecosystems on Second Life that will extend to the wildlife to ensure an exciting, educational experience: Eagles swooping, lions hunting, zebras reacting and mirroring wildlife patterns as closely as possible whilst highlighting endangered species and indigenous cultures. The vision of Second Life/Real life integrations possible for Virtual Africa goes well beyond educational and immersive goals into a vision that includes health, travel, adventure, e-commerce, environmental monitoring, and even disaster management.

Virtual Africa will be a key place for Uthango to bring attention to their Real Life work in poverty reduction, and collaborate with others on the goal of social investment in Africa. There are many initiatives already planned that will both bring in the Second Life Community to Uthango’s work, and make connections to Real Life projects – including concerts, a Second Life Bikeathon, publishing parties, and much more.

A new global market is emerging. The sellers are intelligent, energetic and pragmatic young African leaders with innovative projects in their respective fields. The buyers are equally intelligent, energetic and pragmatic young Westerners yearning to apply pragmatism to their idealism. The market place is new media, where stories are told, opportunities are elucidated, connections are made, and action is taken. (Joshua Goldstein, African Path)

From the Blogosphere, to Twitter, to Facebook, to Second Life!

I first met Yee, who is from Jinjiang, China and a recent graduate with a Business Diploma from HELP College University, in the blogosphere. Yee’s blog caught my attention and I linked to him in a post, “Bridging On Line Off Line Worlds.” And, Yee’s comments on my post re the task of bridge blogging were so wise that a connection was born.

Then we became friends on Twitter where I followed the obstacles Yee faced keeping his blog open to world despite the GFW (Great Firewall) of China. Then last night Yee joined Facebook. We instantly struck up a messaging exchange that covered everything from the role that religions played in American culture to how participatory media, blogs, social networks etc. could play and important role in intercultural communication. This is what Yee had to say on this topic.

There are many many English language learners in China. But a large number of them just take this language as a means to pass the exam or a “certification” for better job occupation, once they achieve these goals some of them will probably stop learning, in a word, they do not treat English as a tool for two-way communication. So you can see there are many many translations of English-to-Chinese blogs in China. But, there very few Chinese-to-English blogs.

To encourage participatory media in China, I think it’s important to help Chinese English learners realize that English is not only a means for graduation or better jobs. It’s a tool for communication! In addition, they must have confidence to use it properly

The obstacles: According to my experience, all Chinese people welcome the behavior of translating their posts or profiles or business documents into English. They have a strong desire to be understood by the world. However, things are not always so easy, as our logic and mind and culture are quite different from foreigners. And, culture conflict happens from time to time and sometimes conflict leads to bigger misunderstanding. Besides, on the internet, there is a Great Fire Wall which was founded by the Chinese Gov to block “sensitive info” from abroad.

I had asked Yee a little while ago if he had ever explored Second Life. I said I would love him to write about his experiences in SL for Ugotrade. Well in a matter of minutes after our Facebook exchange Yee had logged into Second Life for the first time. And so I met his avatar Yee Heron on Scope Cleaver’s sim.

It is hard to describe the excitement of meeting Yee for the first time in Second Life. The gulf of culture and geography and even the GFW of China seemed to dissolve as his avatar materialized in world.

Here is a picture of Yee, Scope Cleaver, Miko Omegamu (Scope’s right hand!), and I greeting Yee only minutes after he logged on and got his Second Life Avatar.

There were a few obstacles to getting Yee’s avatar fully rezzed. And, whether it was due to network connection issues, or the need for more memory on his lap top, chat was lagging and SL was taking a while to rez for Yee. Yee did mention that HiPiHi will not let him log in and was giving a message that he has not enough memory. Interesting that it was easier to get in SL from China than HiPiHi. But, we managed despite the technical obstacles to show Yee some of SL, including Scope Cleaver’s awesome virtual furniture store in Second Life, EOLUS One, and where to shop for cool clothes! And, here is a snippet of our chat as Yee saw Scope’s work on Second Life.

[23:29] Scope Cleaver: This is the office furniture building
[23:29] Scope Cleaver: I seel modern furniture here for Second Life residents
[23:29] Scope Cleaver: sell*
[23:29] Yee Heron: wow,so cool
[23:31] Scope Cleaver: the building looks empty but it’s only to hold all the production and hard work I’ll be doing on the coming months hehe
[23:32] You: Yee Scope is what they call a metabrand
[23:32] Scope Cleaver: in the making
[23:33] Yee Heron: IS Miko your partner, Scope??
[23:33] You: scope makes products and architecture just for the virtual world
[23:34] Scope Cleaver: Yes she is Yee
[23:34] Scope Cleaver: Been working in SL for a bit
[23:34] Yee Heron: cool, you do your business just as real
[23:34] Scope Cleaver: Yes indeed
[23:35] Scope Cleaver: You’ve been here less than half an hour and you look better than I do.
[23:35] Miko Omegamu: lol
[23:35] Yee Heron: are you a full time SL business woman?
[23:35] You: I know it is amazing Yee!
[23:35] Scope Cleaver: Should I work on my AV?

Yee stayed on Second Life for a couple of hours or more. And, we talked until the time difference meant I really had to leave to sleep. Welcome Yee to Second Life! We all look forward to seeing you again soon. And, as Scope Cleaver said:

[23:43] Scope Cleaver: Good luck Yee, and give SL a chance and it will reward you

Second Life is the global creative context for key debates about the future of virtual worlds. Chris Renaud, notes the China and Entropia deal could be a game-changer. But, this evolving role of Second Life as a global virtual institute of the future may be a game-changer too.

Second Life is creating the kind of linking back from virtual to real worlds that will drive virtual worlds to be even more highly valued, and “people to find and create more value because of this linking” (see the manifesto for Flickr).

There has been a lot of excellent high powered commentary on the future of Second Life and Virtual Worlds in general recently, see Chris Renaud’s Weblog, Mark Wallace on 3pointD, and IBM vice president of standards and open source Bob Sutor who has done a series of posts. So, it takes a little audacity to pipe up with some more commentary!

But, Second Life seems to have become the de facto Virtual Institute For The Future regardless of the scaling challenges supernova growth has caused in recent months. And, I think this has a lot of significance. A dizzying array of world class conferences, meetups, and opportunities to interact with metathinkers, futurists, leaders in art, architecture, technology, law, education, politics, and culture are scheduled on a daily basis, often concurrently.

Gwyneth Llewelyn has just written a post that looks at the history of governance on Second Life and Linden Lab’s changing role re Second Life. But, what I am noting, and this is not just Linden Lab but organizations, corps and individuals in Second Life as well, is a growing movement to transform Second Life into a “global creative context” of the future.

Friday, I found myself in the hallowed halls of Columbia University, New York City in Real Life, attending, “The Economics and Business of Second Life and Virtual Worlds.” And, while I listened to John Lester of Linden Lab giving his presentation, “Virtual World, Real People,” I participated in the Second Life component of the iCommons Summit 2007, Dubrovnik, Croatia, which was being streamed into Second Life, on my laptop. Cory Ondrejka (also of Linden Labs) was speaking at the time.

To interact with all four levels of these two conferences being held continents apart – the two real life conferences and their virtual components – was an extremely valuable experience.

These conferences looked at two of the major forces shaping virtual worlds at the moment. Columbia focused on business and economics (law/governance, marketing, applications and national interests). And the iCommons Summit, 2007, in Dubrovnik, Croatia, is the forum developing new contexts for creativity (a global ecology of free culture). Recordings and presentations for the Columbia can be found here, and from iCommons Summit here.

“Creative Commons and Peer Production” – Second Life and Dubrovnik, Croatia

Below is the “Creative Commons and Peer Production in Second Life,” panel with Anna Berthold – USC Center on Public Diplomacy (Anna Annenberg), and Jean Miller (Jean Linden in Second Life where she and Anna have been available for interviews and questions for much of the conference), Cory Ondrejka (Linden Labs), and Chinese artist, Cao Fei (China Tracy in Second Life) is in frame in the picture at the beginning of this post. Cao Fei talked about how Second Life was a place for artistic expression that gave Chinese artists unrestricted access to an international audience. See more about China Tracy in New World Notes. NWN reviewed and posted all three parts of China Tracy’s awesome machinima art project i.Mirror here. Also see China Tracy’s blog.

Of course, there were questions on when SL will open source server side. But Cory Ondrejka was clear that with 520 new sims per week Linden Lab needs other people to host as quickly as possible. And, he commented re questions on the transaction system of Linden Dollars that while having this transaction system has been a very important part of the growth of Second Life, Linden Lab doesn’t want to be a bank. And, they are looking to partner on this.

Cory also mentioned one of the areas I have been talking about a lot on Ugotrade: How communities who have been cut off from the global economy up to this point, with recent break-throughs in broadband access, particularly wireless, are seeing the possibility of connecting to an economy that they have never had the chance to be connected to before.

The building housing the event in Croatia was a world away from The Columbia Business School (screen grab).

I will go into how peer production, creative commons, and public diplomacy (all key areas to understanding global creative contexts) are evolving with, and integral to, Second Life later in this post.

The scene at Columbia University – photo courtesy of my digital camera.

“Virtual World, Real People” – John Lester (a.k.a. Pathfinder Linden) at Columbia University, New York.

John Lester, in addition to speaking to the Real Life participants at the Columbia Conference (see presentation here), hung out as Pathfinder Linden on the IBM SOA HUB “causing trouble” (his words not mine!) with the Second Life conference participants, many of whom were noobs (recent arrivals on SL). IBM helped the Columbia Business School to put on the Second Life component of their event.

Pathfinder Linden does not appear to have gone to the newly opened lab and gotten a photo realistic face job, yet. Pathfinder introduced the audience in Real Life and Second Life to some of his many avatars on Second Life.

“Global Creative Contexts” of the Future?

The title of this post is inspired by the futurist Chris Luebkeman, the director of Arup’s Global Foresight, who gave his first talk on Second Life, last Thursdy, “Future Challenges: Global Creative Contexts.” Chris Luebkeman (a.k.a. Luebke Mannonen on Second Life) spoke on Autodesk Island HERE (SLurl). It was a real thrill to see someone who is, “tasked with exploring and synthesizing the trends affecting society’s development” in real life, getting excited by Second Life.

I heard the excitement in Chris’s voice when he described the experience of working with the Clear Ink and Autodesk and Keystone Bouchard:

seeing while we were talking, architecture and space created right in front of me with me being a participant – the equivalent of being in a bar and drawing on a napkin – the power to convey concept intent and meaning. Where that will go? I can’t wait to explore that medium…..

Keystone desribes the event in some detail here:

The event started with Chris (avatar Leubke Mannonen) and Autodesk moderator RevitQueen Oh sitting on top of a virtual replica of the Drivers of Change box that typically serves as a give-away during real-life presentations. In this case, the box contained a HUD, created by Kiwini Oe of Clear Ink, that enables visitors to read more about each category.

I see Chris’s arrival on Second Life as a very special occasion. An architect who has taken up the challenge of global planning – a new composer is becoming engaged with Second Life.

The “jumping off point” slogan for the Flickr, in “Transcendent Interactions manifesto” is:

Don’t build applications build contexts for interaction.

So it is in light of both the Jon Jerde entertainment enclosure and the new model of relationship-based computing that we begin to understand the monolithic entrapment that heavily branded MMOGs and closed social software applications represent.

The real action of inter-relation happens in the spaces between these monolithic structures. Play, improvisation, and communication don’t need containers, they need platforms.

The new composers of these platforms are more like urban planners than architects.

Play between between avatar and identity are vital to the emotional bandwidth of Second Life.

Click on this screen grab to see a stunningly beautiful clip from Pierce Portocarrero who is experimenting with Christian Prior, and SnoopyBrown Zamboni in using the camera control programing inside of SL to create a more cinematic experience of Second Life.

Pierce P. is creating a language of possibility for machinma that expresses the power of the experience of Second Life.

Identity Play and Authenticated ID

One of the most interesting questions re the future development of virtual worlds is how identity play will change as virtual worlds are increasingly linked back to real worlds. Identity play has been a driving force in the early development of Second Life. The arrival of brands, commerce in particular, and increased attention to transactions in virtual economies has brought a new impetus to moves to authenticated ID – linking an online identity with a physical one – on Second Life. This increased linking of identity will also strengthen the relationship between law in real life and virtual life. The main point that came across from the legal speakers at the Columbia was that legal issues re virtual worlds – property issues and money laundering and other issues were evolving with this increased linkage.

But, there is speculation that as Second Life becomes further linked back to real life what might be sacrificed is the opportunities to play with identity and the emotional bandwidth that has energized the miracle of creation of this first great immersive user generated virtual world.

Ren Reynolds, (a.k.a Renzephyr Zircon on Second Life) has proposed on Terranova a Four World Theory:

• ludic-worlds (aka game-worlds)
• social-worlds
• civil-worlds

With our geographic world being a fourth, a common context in which these sit (so it’s the Three World Theory with the geographic one tacked on)

I was fortunate enough to meet Ren Reynolds on Second Life Saturday night, and to hear his thoughts directly. Ren, a friend he was introducing to Second Life for the first time, Aleister Kronos and I met (fully clothed) in a hot tub/hot cup of coffee for a chat. The discussion ranged from our varying desires and non desires for alt gender avatars to the multi billion dollar question that Al plopped out into the rising steam.

What’s your “take” then Ren [on left] – on SL and its ramifications for the next N years

Ren explained (after a little repartee with Al):

I think that SL will move from the Social status to the Civic status in that identity play will reduce as brands come in and authenticated ID – the idea of linking an online identity with a physical – will become more important. In the EU it will fall under the e-currency directive within 5 years.

We also talked about “the possibility that different virtual worlds will one day support a standard that would let users travel freely among them.” Ren suggested that with the transfer of identity should be the idea of this being permissions based so that one can opt for multiple identities and the degree that they are linked to others. Ren has written at length about this elsewhere.

As I was writing this post I twittered some questions and, the twitter streams of deeeepwitte, timbok28 both came back with a stream of interesting micro-blogged thoughts on linking the real/virtual and identity across mutliple metaverses (Sunday June 17th).

The President’s Daily Game

What kind of avatar Ruth M. Bush, Division Chief, Information Exploitation Division, Disruptive Technology office, Office of the Director of National Intelligence wears was not revealed at the Columbia Conference. But, Ruth gave us the heads up that she is not a spy.

She recommended, to understand virtual worlds better, we should read, “The Innovation Dilemma,” by Clayton Christensen about changes in basic business model that are a revolution not evolution – these are called “disruptive” technologies. The Intelligence Communities Information Exploitation division has its own Intellipedia Wiki project and they are very interested in the immersive context and massively multi-user environments, identity and the use of “disruptive technologies,” i.e. virtual worlds.

Oh and brace yourself. Ruth mentioned that The President’s Daily Brief might instead be The President’s Daily Game. I twittered this and got this response:

HiroPen @Ugotrade the Pres already has a MMOG. It’s called “American Usurper”. *sigh* 02:21 PM June 15, 2007 from web in reply to Ugotrade

iCommons Summit 2007.

Some of the magic of attending a conference in Second Life happened when Rik Riel got a question through to Dubrovnik and an answer back.

Rik has blogged and posted:

a quick video of Jonathan Zittrain answering a question I posed to him from Second Life. Namely: How do we win the fight for free culture when the hardware / OS layer is being increasingly locked down by Microsoft and Apple for freely creating, sharing and re-mixing our content?

It is really is a thrill to be able to be an active participant in these world scale and world changing events in this way. Rik Riel has also blogged another significant event that I attended last week – the Second Life component of The Game 4 Change Conference.

iCommons Summit on Second Life in Pictures

Here are some of the great pictures that can be found on the page Sitearm Madonna has created. The captions are by Sitearm too. These pictures tell the story of an extraordinary event. Here are just a few of them. The are licensed Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. Share, Remix OK

SJ KLEIN describes the One Laptop Per Child Project. A savvy SL resident promptly asked Cory Linden, also on the panel, “would Second Life run on the laptop Mr. Klein describes.” Answer? “Um.. no.. but soon!”

WIKIPEDIA FAN Wellington Bahram chats with Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales, present in world as avatar Jimbo Berkman.

CORY, YOU LOOK MARRVELLOUS! The sharp-looking avi in blue and black is Cory Linden, Chief Technology Officer of Linden Lab. And above him is ALSO Cory Linden, visible on vid stream simulcast from Croatia. Yes, RL Cory IS looking at his laptop, admiring SL Cory o..O)

Cory answered questions about the way creative commons is, in Second Life, in the object ownership where it is aligned with permissions and therefore on the level of technology. The questioner noted that creative commons is supposed to be expressive and wanted to know whether this be implemented on Second Life. Cory agreed this would be a good idea. But the discussion didn’t go much further on this.

But, as Mia Garlick wrote:

In a very real sense, Second Life exists as it does because of Lawrence Lessig [founder and CEO of the Creative Commons]. A few years ago, he advised Linden Lab to allow their subscribers to retain IP rights to whatever they built. The result of this has been an explosion of sustained creativity, with many Residents making all or some of their real life living by their imagination and efforts in SL.

Good Copy Bad Copy” by Henrik Moltke was screened in world (also available on the web here). The movie documents the status of copyright and culture. Also the visionaries of Creative Commons, Yochai Benkler who writes about the emergence of networked economy and society, and Larry Lessig, Free Culture (2004) are interviewed. They explain how participatory culture is winning in the social, cultural and technological spheres (ironically with some big corporations blazing a trail here, e.g. IBM, Sun and HP), even while the conservative forces of “old media” continue to win in court.

Public Diplomacy was also a key topic at iCommons, and how Second Life was a significant application for this, and can be used to facilitate inter-cultural dialogue.

Public Diplomacy is one of those terms that (at least for me) needs some unpacking. Sitearm Madonna described it nicely as, “how one country relates to THE CITIZENS of another country. And, at its best public diplomacy is authentic communication from citizen to citizen.

Sitearm Madonna was present in-world throughout the conference. She has been working with USC Center on Public Diplomacy. Sitearm built the exhibition area, scheduled the concerts and mixers, and worked closely with the icommons organization to create a parallel conference as in-world producer of the in-world conference, doing the in-world event promotion, production and co-ordination. Sitearm and her team did an impressive job. And, as there are regular SL get-togethers planned to translate the knowledge gained at the conference into practicality, there should be many more opportunities to visit and participate in iCommons events on Annenberg Island.

Extra!

Ugotrade Junior turns 8 this week. And, I proudly attended his 2nd grade publishing party. This is the photo he took of the cover of his book, “Wonder Pets Save The Day.”

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Tags: Second Life | Virtual Worlds | Virtual Reality | Creative Commons | Peer production | iCommons | iCommons Summit 2007 | Larry Lessig | Cory Ondrejka | Web 2.0 | Web 3pointD | Jimmy Wales | Wikipedia | Intellipedia | Pierce P. | Pierce P. Portocarrero | machinima | Christian Prior | Snoopy Brown Zamboni | Games 4 Change | Rik Riel | Public Diplomacy | Sitearm Madonna | Annenberg Island | Autodesk Island | Free Culture | Yochai Benkler | Good Copy bad Copy | participatory culture | disruptive technologies | authenticated ID | open standards for virtual worlds | metaverse | multiverse | multiple metaverses | Transcendent Interactions | relational Computing | Chris Luebkeman | global creative contexts | drivers for change | China and Entropia | Entropia | future of virtual worlds | |

Virtual Worlds will change the nature of who we are. This type of experience changes you, makes you demand change in the real world that is so easy to change in virtual environments…..this technology ends up changing us as people.” Philip Rosedale, Virtual Worlds 2007.

I found this drawing on the Clear Night Sky blog. Igor Gasowski saw this picture by a second grader at an art exhibit at one of his kid’s schools. To get a feel for the possibilities for change please take the, “What You Want Machine,” for whirl. Gasowski suggests:

Just pour yourself a drink, light up a cigar and ponder the implications of the “What you want machine.” Can you even imagine how your life [and the world] would change?

Gasowski also notes:

I also want to compliment the artist on the user interface. Given the benefit it delivers… It’s an exercise in restraint.

I agree with Gasowski on the elegance of the user interface. The only possible downside I see is the “What You Want Machine” will miss out on all the brand loyalty an arcane user interface produces with a good old fashioned hazing.

Thought experiment #1: Try out the “What You Want Machine.” (And, read to the end of the post to see #2 and #3!)

“Real Life” Development Stories in the News This Week.

Ecocity in China

These pictures are from Rizhao, China. The March/April 2007 issue of World Watch published a one-page article titled “Rizhao, China. Solar Powered City.” In a letter to the editor of the HJNews, George Hargreaves summarizes the report:

It is a city of nearly 3 million inhabitants and a climate similar to that of North Carolina. In the city’s central district, 99 percent of the houses use solar heating. Six thousand houses have solar cooking facilities and 60 greenhouses use solar heating.

Hargreaves concludes, “China has made an inventory of the wind potential for the country. We in the U.S. can learn from China.”

And, so we must. But, the lessons will not always be easy or unidirectional. Boing Boing reported from a post on the Wired News blog Threat Level that “shareholders ask Google to counteract foreign ‘net censorship.

In recent years, American internet companies have swooped into booming foreign markets and, occasionally, cooperated with repressive regimes seeking to crack down on free speech and democracy. The NYC Comptroller’s proposal attempts to limit Google’s ability to forgo internet rights that most of us take for granted.

See previous posts on Boing Boing for the full story on Google, China, and genocide: web censorship and Tibet. Also see, Preserving Tibetan Culture: A Digital Cultural Library For All.

Legacy of Enron Orgy in India

These pictures are of the Dabhol power plant in India which was closed down five years ago in the Enron debacle. “Nothing quite captures India’s dilemmas ['fast growing but energy poor'] like the sorry tale of the Dabhol power plant,” wrote Vir Singh in IEEE Spectrum. It was announced recently that after years of problems (see timeline for Dabhol tangle) that India’s Dabhol plant will “run full throttle by Nov,” althougn only yesterday there was a report of the possibility of yet another delay.

“Many energy companies have invested in closed or repressive countries — arguing that their investment would help develop the local economy and thereby improve the human rights situation. But in this case, Enron has invested in a democratic country — and human rights abuses there have increased. Enron hasn’t made things better for human rights; it has made things worse.” (Human Rights Watch, 1999)

These stories caught my attention this week because they show that complex development issues don’t always lend themselves to chirpy optimism in real or virtual worlds.

Real Dreams for Emerging Worlds

It is early days for virtual worlds, and as a metaverse evangelist (a job description that IBM has given cache to!), unless you are an Ostrich, you cannot be unaware of reports of griefing, and corporate misunderstanding of how to participate in the developing economies of Second Life, and other issues of connectivity, stability, scaling and social instability in virtual worlds.

I am reminded how advocates for developing economies in “Real Life,” e.g., Benin, from Africa Ready For Business, and beninmwangi work with the negative perceptions that arise from real and imagined obstacles to development. Benin writes about Africa in “What Do Investors Think?”

I am torn here, because on the one hand what the Economist says here is true. I mean, although there are some countries on the continent which have made some tremendous gains over the last decade, as a whole the continent has a long way to go-politically and economically. However, on the other-hand, I ask myself why would potential investors and business people think any differently about Africa if this type of ambiguous reporting about Africa is all that they hear? Sure, the risk may be higher in a country like Ethiopia or Nigeria, but there are still some companies that do extremely well there-in spite of all of the other things that go on there.

African American/African New Media Collaboration

These pictures are from an African American internet entrepreneur, Patrick Gorham, who is pioneering a collaborative new media project called Africa Writes. The Africa Writes crew don’t let the challenges of developing environments keep them from realizing their dreams.

Patrick writes:

Nearly a year ago while filming near the border of Liberia in the deep forested mountains of Guinea, the AfricaWrites staff and I were honored to witness the Kissi ritual known as the Hiowolan, the dance of the Yokia (see video here). Although performed by the young males of the community, who were not of age or ordained Yokia, it was an impressive display of animal mimicry, acrobatics and defensive capability. Luckily, our low powered batteries held up during the incredibly dusty shoot.

“Real Action” in “Virtual Reality”

The mission of Ugotrade is not just to talk about innovative uses of technology in developing “real life” countries. I have decided to make a leap and treat virtual worlds as developing “countries.” I make this coupling, not just because I think virtual worlds have an enormous potential role in human development. But, also, because I think looking at some of the “real life” development dilemmas through the lens of virtual worlds will be helpful, and visa versa.

On Ugotrade, I follow the development of virtual worlds in general, when I can (see Croquet). But, I pay particular attention to Second Life. This is because, at present, Second Life’s open, persistent, genuinely user generated environment, vibrant community and economy gives the best glimpse of what a global metaverse might have to offer humanity in the future. (See my post, and “Onder’s big three,” for more elaboration on the specific qualities of Second Life in relation other virtual worlds.)

Also, CEO, Philip Rosedale is unequivocal and passionate about opening up every piece of software, every line of code, “right down to the filesystem formats,” so that SL can become the basis for a 3D platform that could become “as ubiquitous a platform as the web is to us today.” (from speech on Second Life at the Life 2.0 convention, May 1st, see Metaverse).

Virtual worlds have a huge role to play in positive global development – again see my earlier posts, if you are wondering how I arrived at this view.

Yes, virtual worlds as social spaces face many of the familiar obstacles to development that “Real Life” developing countries do – problems with instability (see recent open letter to Linden Lab and LL’s response, with a promise to address the grievance in full. And, another ongoing democratic movement that NWN says will impact SL just as much, if not more), accusations that they are poorly governed “dictatorships,” (see, Can You Be A Citizen in A virtual World?), and questions about their fitness for for business and investment (see the 4th of Gartner’s 5 Laws for Virtual Worlds, and the cautions: “Be prepared for interruptions that can range from strange behavior from new residents to vandalism (Gartner).”

But, my interest in coupling the development of virtual worlds with positive global development in “Real Life” is about something more awesome than the obstacles both face. The closest I have found to a way to frame the enormous potential of developing environments, virtual and real, is the Electric Sheep futurist, Jerry Paffendorf ‘s meme, “Return On Awesome.”

Jerry explores ROA of life logging with his Nike

Click here to view.

I asked Jerry to give me a short history of “Return On Awesome.” And, his reply confirmed my instinct that ROA is an idea good to think with:

The short story is I first used ROA/Return on Awesome to describe the spirit I wanted to see come out Sheep Labs, the beta and R&D site that’s been bubbling up out of The Electric Sheep Company. Since it’s more of a sandbox space we need the freedom to pursue interesting ideas and ROA more than immediate ROI. When it popped into my head, I remember hearing someone somewhere present what I thought was a very poor idea which was defended because it would ‘provide good ROI’. Worse than defended, I could tell it was a very poor idea *because* they were starting from the POV of ROI. Not unusual, but it really made me think Gross! There is not ROI [return on investment] without ROA [return on awesome]!

ManorMeta Mashup: SING by Dresden Dolls
Click to view video.

In my exploration of Second Life this week, I met and talked to a few of the many Second Life pioneers who explore ROA (not sure whether they would all call it that themselves, yet!)

I chatted with Second Life visionary In Kenzo, Creative Director of Amoration – a new media nonprofit organization dedicated to creating a culture of conscious compassion. You can see an excellent profile of In kenzo, Dave Pentecost, Technology Director, Lower Eastside Girls Club of New York (Avatar: Usu Ventura), and Barry Joseph, Director of the Online Leadership Program, Global Kids, (Avatar: Globalkids Bixby) on Tech Soup. Tech Soup describes how these three organizations use Second Life to “Change the World by Working in a Virtual One.”

I hope to get updates from these three groups and talk to Sue Stonebender soon. Also, I will follow up on Infinite Vision Media’s Social Responsibility Initiative that “offers high-end services to Second Life bound non-profits” (see story on Business Communicators of Second Life).

I met Sibley Verbeck, founder of The Electric Sheep Company right at the end of Virtual Worlds 2007. We were both too exhausted to talk! But, he kindly got back to me. And, Sibley will be doing an interview for Ugotrade on positive global development with an ESC perspective.

Thought Experiment #2: Think about Return On Awesome and take the “What You Want Machine,” for another spin.

There is not ROI without ROA

Click on these pictures to find out more about Open Architecture Network.
OAN asks the question: “How Can You Improve the Living Standards of Five Billion People?”

This week, I talked to two digital marketing agencies, Clear Ink and Converseon who unlike say The Electric Sheep Company, Millions of Us and Infinite Vision Media, do most of their work outside of Second Life and other virtual worlds. But, both of these agencies have put up pro bono builds that impressed me (and Clear Ink more than one – TED Island, and Capitol Hill). Capitol Hill has been the site of much activity including, Rep. George Miller (CA) and Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi joining Joanne Colan of Rocketboom there, anti-war protests in February, and gatherings of Obama supporters in March). Clear Ink seems to be right in the ROA groove.

Clear Ink works with Sun (see 3pointD for news on Sun’s new 3D ebvironment) and Autodesk in Second Life (sim opening today). But, I was prompted to visit Clear Ink Island this week mainly because I noticed they had streamed the recent TED conference into Second Life, and were responsible for the construction of TED Island (to be publicly announced this month).

When I met Kiwini Oe, co-founder, EVP and chief strategist for Clear Ink inworld, I was very excited to hear they are discussing streaming Global TED, June, 2007 in from, Arusha, Tanzania, Africa.

Clear Ink also organized a live audio discussion in Second Life with Cameron Sinclair, 2006 TED Prize winner, Executive Director of Architecture for Humanity, co-editor of the book ‘Design Like You Give A Damn‘ and contributing writer for Worldchanging.com and Sun Microsystems founder John Gage. They discussed:

collaboration and participation in 3D environments, as well as the newly launched ‘Open Architecture Network‘ – which represents the fulfillment of Cameron’s 2006 TED wish. The event will feature a virtual version of the ‘Porchdog‘ and the Global Village Shelters – both of which are contributions to the Open Architecture Network.

The Arch writes (for more about Wikitecture see here):

Given the open and collaborative nature of this initiative, I think Second Life provides a perfect platform for visualizing, co-designing and brainstorming future contributions to the Network. Perhaps architects and designers from all around the world could gather virtually and collaborate on real-time relief solutions in the wake of an unforeseen disaster.

On the left is the Porchdog home. Real-life construction is part of Architecture for Humanity’s effort to provide housing relief and redevelopment in post-Katrina Biloxi, Mississippi.

On the right is another of my favorite projects from Open Architecture Network, An Edible Home For Humanity.

Reforestation through Second Chance Trees

I spend a lot of time on this beautiful build last weekend – a collaboration between Converseon and Plant-It 2020. For the price of 300 lindens (roughly equivalent to US $1), visitors to Second Life can purchase and plant one of 10 species of trees on a designated island in the virtual community.

Converseon payed for the build, and the island maintenance so that every tree here results in a tree in the real world. The planting of a tree in Second Life will trigger Plant-It 2020, a non-profit organization founded by the late singer John Denver, to plant the same species of tree in the endangered rainforest to which it is indigenous. The virtual island is accessible online at: Second Chance Trees. Luna Bliss - a virtual environmental designer, built Bliss Gardens, a huge seven sim nature reserve. Bliss Gardens provided the location for the Earth Day Hub.

Luna Bliss writes: “We offer a unique perspective in SL – nature comes first and the buildings follow.” The beauty of the Second Chance Trees build may be a big part of its remarkable success. While I have no hard data, it is evident just by walking through the planting areas that many, many trees have been planted in only a few short weeks since the build opened. In fact, after I had planted my Tamarind tree, I couldn’t find it amongst the many other trees. But, one of the community of Crimson Star “furries” that support the sim, Idris Heroin spent a long time searching the note cards to help me find it again.

I had a very interesting discussion on “immersion or augmentation” with Idris while we did this. I have been giving more thought to the “Augmentation versus Immersion debates“ – another post! And, when I returned the next day to talk to LLPlatypus, from Converseon, the “immersion” discussion continued with Skunk Spatz.

Awesome!

A two decade veteran of the UK music and game industry, Laukosargas Svarog has built a functioning ecosystem in Second Life. For the more on this story see New World Notes.

Laukosargas Svarog’s island of Svarga (direct portal here).

“If I was to turn off the clouds the whole system would die in about six hours,” she tells NWN “Turn off the bees and [the plants stop] growing, because nothing gets pollinated. And it’s the transfer of pollen that signals the plants to drop seeds. The seeds blow in the wind, and if they land on good ground according to different rules for each species, they grow when they receive rain water from the clouds. It’s all interdependent.”

Xerox and Customer Led Design in Second Life

I visited Xerox Innovation Island again to talk in depth with Jonas Karlsson, aka Poinky Malaprop, a researcher for Xerox, Webster New York and Karen Arena, Xerox PR. Xerox is one of a growing number of major league corporations who seem to be giving virtual worlds their full attention.

The conversation began on the issue of stability of virtual worlds. Poinky was going through something a bit beyond feeling a little green on an ordinary bad hair day!

my eyes keep falling out of my head, and my body leaves little pieces of itself when I move, so stability is something I look forward to…

Xerox, and the PlayOn group at PARC (Bob Moore and friends) has been studying Second Life, and avatar interaction in particular, for a while. But now Xerox is starting to look at what applications they can develop for internal use as well as for external.

Karen Arena later sent me this article from Business Week , “Xerox New Design Team Customers,” which gives a pretty good idea of what Karen meant when she said:

We’re looking to explore ways in which Xerox can engage in the community as well, learn from the community……..

More on this at the Xerox Thought Leadership site from Sophie Vandebroek, Xerox Chief Technology Officer, (and a Second Life video).

And Jonas added:

Rather than trying to target the right people or everyone, you setup a space so that the right people find you. ………One idea we are exploring is this notion of bringing customers into environments like these and exploring what new technologies they would like to see to solve their problems. These environments are so useful for interaction, so taking advantage of that and making the interactions easier and more valuable is very interesting.

Here I am cruising around on my Nu-Ness bike inspired by the Xerox Nuvera digital printing systems. It is a specially commissioned 9-foot-long, black-and-white, chrome-covered custom motorcycle designed by Arlen Ness – one of the world’s most innovative customized bike builders.

When I asked Jonas about some of the cautionary tales about Second Life that circulate. He responded:

I’m not that concerned with the cautions listed by Gartner and others because I think the community understands how to deal with most of those issues. A lot of people cite instability, only being able to have 40 avs at an event, and adult or other disruptive content as reasons to be cautious. But, in day-to-day SL activities and events, I see those things being handled in various ways. So, I think we’re at the point (and Sibley and Reuben said this at VW07) to seriously start thinking about how to use these tools in an integrated way with our business and create value.

But, there is pretty general agreement of the need for business to integrate into virtual worlds. Steve Nelson (aka Kiwini Oe) of Clear Ink noted, “One of the main things for corps to remember is they have to be in-world more than they think they do. They can’t just lob brands in over the wall.”

A piece of wisdom in the Gartner Report to enterprises who may not have the established research and innovation teams that Xerox has. ““Find enthusiasts within your enterprise and support them.”

In an earlier post, I mentioned Seven Digital Divide Fallacies from Digital Divide.org. Three of these fallacies may be as good to think with in virtual worlds as they are in real worlds.

Three fallacies of digital divides that seem to apply to virtual worlds.

1) It is not a job for business or government [or "Gods" like Linden Labs or their equivalent] but both.

2) Not about choosing open source software over closed systems but both.

3) Not about bottom-up vs. top-down efforts but both.

The amazing statistical presentations of Hans Rosling brilliantly illustrates how skewed and erroneously pessimistic many of the myths about global development are. I haven’t seen the equivalent kind of analysis done for virtual worlds. But, I am sure such a look might debunk many myths about development in virtual worlds too.

Thought Experiment #3: Use the, “What You Want Machine,” to imagine a map of the online communities of Web 3.D, 2011.

Here is the great map of the World of Online Communities in 2007 Kroosh posted that inspired me to think about this.

Tags: Second Life | Virtual Reality | Virtual Worlds | Metaverse | Web 3.D | Web 2.0 | What You Want Machine | Rizhao | China | Ecocity | Enron | Dabhol | Metaverse | Metaverse Evangelist | IBM | Xerox | Xerox Innovation Island | Xerox Thought Leadership | Xerox Parc | Global Develoment | Digital Divides | Return On Awesome | |

Even though I live in New York City, I think I will go, on Saturday, to Podcamp’s, “unconference within the unconference in virtual space.” 3pointD suggests that podcasters’ meetups might be especially fun. And, I will miss a chance to hand out those delightful Moo Cards! But, I suspect, on Second Life I may meet a more international group. And, perhaps, I will find some people with some interesting things to say on the topic from the PodCamp site that tweeked my interest.

“As various flavors of social media collide, maintaining a consistent digital persona across various platforms becomes a challenge.”

Enter Podcamp NYC in Second Life @Morpheum

“Nail” House Settlement!

For a report go to Chinese Content Bridge Blogger ESWN
But, “At this time, both parties claim fatigue and are refusing press interviews for now.”

And, if you do follow the link to ESWN check out: An Idiot’s Guide to watching movies online in China. This is a really interesting post from Peering.Into.the.Interior.   And, for more on video websites in China see Danwei.

Tags: Second Life | Web 2.0 | Social Media | Web 3.D | Web 3.0 | Virtual Worlds | Virtual Reality | Metaverse | social networking | pod casting | pod camp | blogging | meet ups |

Check out what’s going on at “the nail house.” The whole story on Global Voices Online. Here’s how it starts. “But is Zola really China’s first citizen reporter? Big-name bloggers like Herock, Doubleleaf and Zhan Bin say he is. Out of what Zola says is a ’sensitivity to news’ and desire for fame, on Monday afternoon he hopped on the train, arriving in Chongqing two days later. Armed with a Lenovo cellphone and one thousand RMB, Zola is determined to cover the nailhouse story where domestic media currently cannot.

The subheading on Zola’s blog reads (in English) “you never know what you can do till you try”; a March 23rd post which unpacks the meaning behind a meme now making its way around the Chinese blogsphere, ‘vote with your feet’ [用脚投票], and a second post from the same day looking at the nailhouse situation ends with a wager on how many more days the house would remain standing.”

The “nail house,” blogged on Ugotrade on March 10th , and March 22nd and Boing Boing, March 12th, and again on March 23rd (hey, I can’t resist pointing out again how I scooped Boing Boing twice on this one!), and many other English blogs after that (also see Virtual China). On March 22nd, Peering Into The Interior translated an interview with the owner. Now Global Voices Online points out, it is also picking up steam fast again on the Chinese BBS’s. “Smelling a story, journalists from all across the country rushed to the city [zh] to see what would happen when the owner, Wu Ping, ran out of time to evacuate her ‘nail house‘ at midnight on March 21. In the meantime, Wu set up her own blog and released this video.

“Nail House” at Night!

Check it out! A pioneering “bridge blogger,” has done a translation of this long interview with China’s Most Incredible Holdout,” giving “an inside look into the local politics of relocation and the kind of difficulties people face if they chose to fight the developer.” ( see Peering into the Interior and for more holdout stories boingboing)