Smoke and Mirrors The Magic of Emerging Media

The Association for Information Technology Professionals (AITP) invited me to speak on a variety of topics related to Emerging Media and reversible business models at INTERFACE Denver 2012. Highlights from the talk are depicted in my presentation on Slideshare.



To complement the topics that were showcased during this one-day conference, the session blended social media, social networks, reversible business models and the impact of IT, augmented reality, QR codes, creating streaming video, using hash tags in Twitter, mobile apps and easy app generation tools, designing simulations in virtual worlds, games, and game-based cultures in the workplace.

Many thanks to Randy Storm and Kathryn Schnepple for the invitation! *cheers*

Doctor of Computer Science Fall 2012 Innovations

During the Fall 2012 Workshop at Colorado Technical University's Doctor of Computer Science Symposium, our research students contributed their innovation ideas to a time capsule that they called their Brain Map.

In it, they worked in small groups to identify innovation areas for future research after watching several inspirational videos, including Corning's A Day Made of Glass 2: Unpacked and discussed their call to action for further research and development.  

Based on their recommendations for future research, we ended the session with a review of Microsoft's vision of the future, as featured in a video called Microsoft at 2020.

CTU Summer 2012 Celebration

Students from CS 855 and EM 825 joined graduates from prior classes and members of our learning community in a celebration at the end of Summer 2012 term.



Click here to view Lyr Lobo's Celebration Summer 2012 video on Animoto.

In Second Life, DJ Astoria Luminos hosted the music stream of hits from the 70s and 80s as we distributed gifts and discussed our plans after the term ends.

If you missed out on the treats and would like a copy, please contact Lyr Lobo in Second Life.

Futurist Larry Johnson visits CS855

In February 2011, we were fortunate to have Dr. Larry Johnson, CEO of the New Media Consortium, join us in Second Life just prior to the launch of the NMC's Horizon Report on innovation and the future of technology in education.

A Human Barometer for the Future

In a lively game show style, Larry asked the students to vote for the next five year's top technologies. During our human barometer exercise, the class and guests from CTU's emerging media doctoral program, via their avatars in Second Life, took a stand and voted with their feet as they stood by the areas that represented each of the technologies.

Visit the Horizon Report Wiki

This was my first opportunity to narrate and simulcast to an Adobe Connect session. I was repeating Larry's wonderful narrative style like a United Nations translator, and let me tell you, I have a great respect for them. *cheers* It is not easy to listen and repeat the content while participating during the session as an avatar.

QR codes are hot and are part of the augmented reality technology featured in the Horizon Report. To the right is a QR code from the Horizon Report wiki - scroll down their page to see the QR code on the bottom left!

Many thanks to Larry Johnson, CS855 and the emerging media students who shared their ideas and participated in this lively session!

Our Shared Knowledge

Greetings to CS 855 Futuring and Innovation! *cheers* 

Don't forget - when you post your explorations in the future, analyze them through two of the forces that may facilitate or impede its success.

These include the words ending in -al, such as technological, cultural, global, ethical, legal, political and temporal. Some ideas are before their time... *grins*

Above all, have fun setting up your blogs and post them in our blog roll on Moodle.

Have a great week! *waves*

Our class podcast using Gabcast

Futuring and Innovation class examples #1 - Summer 2010 Demo Podcast

We used a cell phone in class to create a quick podcast. Many thanks to everyone for participating!

How to access the file and player html:
http://gabcast.com/gc1/index.php?a=pub&id=35436#

NMC Future Symposium video

The New Media Consortium's Symposium for the Future was a delighted experience and highlights from it are depicted in my Animoto video. During some sessions, I was so engrossed in the content that I forgot to snap a shot, so I recommend using the search tag #nmcfuture to view the rest of the sessions.

NMC Symposium for the Future

The amazing series of New Media Consortium (NMC) Symposium for the Future sessions and discussions demonstrated the creativity of the presenters and the NMC design team.

Hakone, the NMC Virtual Worlds Conference Server

It was held on the Hakone Server, a stand alone version of the Second Life virtual world server developed by Linden Lab. Many thanks to Beth Sachtjen and Chris Holden for their excellent virtual world designs!

Be sure to visit the NMC Symposium for the Future conference program for a list of the audio recordings, slides, PDFs and urls from each session. Click on the image to enlarge them.

NMC Symposium for the Future - Keynote Addresses

Featured to the left is Beth Kanter's inspiring session on The Networked Nonprofit. She dazzled the audience by arriving as a Jetson, flying inside a spaceship with her dog Astro nearby!

She built on the metaphor offered by Robert Frost's The Wall to show how walls that are intended to protect can also be barriers when it comes to the non-profit use of social media and social networks.

Larry Johnson, in his closing address, noted that her insights into the use of social media and social networks may "offer the greatest impact on solving the challenges of our time."

Gardner Campbell in his Two Painters, One Poet, and Some Sweet Soul Music keynote address took us on a journey through sight and sound, worthy of Rod Serling, and as we toured the twilight zone of the future, he reminded us of the cautions from the past.

One illustration included the M5, the Ultimate Computer from the Star Trek series. Far be it for me to let an opportunity pass to interact with some of my favorite Star Trek content! *chuckles*

The film clip from the Portrait of Jennie was especially moving, as I agree with Ethel Barrymore's character when she scans the artwork, noting that there was not an ounce of love anywhere in them.

The references to ethical and safety concerns as well as the passion that fires the creative genius is especially important as we gaze into the future.

NMC Symposium for the Future - Day One!

Bryan Alexander dazzled us with the responsibilities of futuring and highlighted the Horizon Report, a five-year look into the future published by the NMC in his Catching the Future Before it Catches You session.

Between sessions, Bryan Alexander and Peter Shoemaker discussed Peter's session near his image of an urban horizon that reminded us that we are Separate, Equal, Powerful.

National Geographic offered a visual feast in the form of our planet, with the speakers seated on a rotating platform.

Their moving presentation on Media for Inspiring People to Understand and Care about the Planet encouraged a love for life on earth and its sustainability. Many thanks to Ford Cochran and Anne Heywood at the National Geographic for drawing us into this wonder of life!

Stay tuned for more highlights from Day One as we tour the future, NMC style! @nmcfuture

Many thanks to our intrepid new Second Life students! Between the two classes, 20 students participated in our course discussion and Second Life skills activities on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

In CS 855 Futuring and Innovation, we continued our discussion of The Fortune Sellers book by William Sherdan. The discussion centered on the differences between futuring and innovation research programs and their funding in Japan and the United States.

We also discussed the student blog posts. When you introduce your blog in our Moodle discussions, please include the url for your blog post.

In CS 820, we focused our attention on building some Second Life camera skills and building a simple shape, stretching it, texturing it, copying it and linking it with a second object.

We will prototype the projects in Second Life and conduct usability tests near the end of the course.

Our class times are the same for next week. Check the Calendar on Moodle for the latest information! *waves*

Constitution Day and Graduation Party

Our last Futuring and Innovation class featured a trivia game designed to celebrate Constitution Day and a party to honor our graduates.



Congratulations to our Colorado Technical University graduates! *cheers*

Great Thoughts - The Futurists

In our Week 5 class, we discussed the following thoughts about the future. This extends last week's discussion, when we observed that there is no single method for predicting the future.

“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” (Albert Einstein)

"Any useful idea about the future should appear to be ridiculous." (Jim Dator)

"A part of our future appears to be evolutionary and unpredictable, and another part looks developmental and predictable. Our challenge is to invent the first and discover the second." (John Smart)

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” (Albert Einstein)

“Forecasting is not a respectable human activity.” (Peter Drucker)

After discussing the semantics and how we would re-phrase them, one student closed our session with the following quote.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." (Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of the Future" - Clarke's third law).

Next week, we will examine how Christakis describes the SDP method and discuss a case study from his book during our Second Life class session.

Visit the CS 855 Summer 2009 list of blogs to the right to view the student discussions each week. The topics range from inspiring videos from Ted Talks, our opinions about the Horizon Report's predictions, the use of collaborative Web tools and our reflections on the future.

CS 855 Week 4 Classes in Second Life

We gathered twice this week to discuss our perceptions of the myths and truths that are associated with creativity and innovation.

Does creativity require creative people? Bill Breen raises the question in The 6 Myths of Creativity. Our responses ranged from no, anyone can have creative ideas to yes, when they are stimulated by necessity (a requirement) or executed by talented individuals who have the tools and skills to envision these ideas.

Each of us has the opportunity to meet the creative challenge.

Does technological innovation have a method? Scott Berkun, in the interview about his book The Myths of Innovation, notes that in retrospect, the stories of how certain innovations evolved may seem as if they were derived from a logical progression of steps. Yet, if the creators of each incremental development were interviewed, the failures and uncertainty associated with evaluating and rejecting alternative approaches would surface. There is no single method.

While we did not constrain our discussion of creativity and innovation to technology, one of our focal points in this course is to understand how new ideas become future technologies.

Near the end of class, we created content in Second Life, using the building tool to develop a one prim design that began as a tube, evolved into a 1) one prim stool, 2) twisted into a fountain and 3) rotated, stretched and textured into a Tiffany lamp.

The term prim is describes a single primitive shape, one of the beginning shapes offered in the Second Life building tool. These shapes a cube, prism, sphere, cylinder, torus, tube and ring. There are also modifications to these basic shapes and a sculpted shape available in the SL building tool.

Next week, we will meet on Thursday (August 6th) from 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM Mountain time. The first and last half hour will include some Second Life content and skills while the middle of the class will explore futuring and innovation concepts.

How to use voice in Second Life

Tip: You can hear others speak even if you do not have a microphone and you can continue to hear and speak even if you lose connection so long as you do not close your SL software.

Select:

• ctrl + P for preferences
• Voice Chat tab
• Enable Voice Chat
• Check the box for voice from the avatar position - to hear around your body
• Push-to-talk mode and toggle
• Select the Apply button and Ok at the bottom of the Preferences window

Look at the bottom right of your display screen.

Click the Talk button if you have a microphone enabled and wish to talk.

If you have problems, revisit the Voice Chat tab in the Preferences at ctrl P and check your Device Settings and Voice Chat Settings.

To hear other speakers better:

Click the Active Speaker List (the button to the left of the Talk button). Highlight a name on it and use the slider at the bottom of the window to turn them up or down. Move the speaker window up if you do not see it. Only the names in this list can hear the Voice chat.

Tip: If you do not see names in the Active Speaker List, you are not connected to the voice server. If you Enabled Voice Chat in Preferences and you have a working microphone, headset or speakers, then log off and reconnect to Second Life.

See you in Second Life! *waves*

Futuring and Innovation: Myths, Metanomics and Social Media

While preparing for this week's Second Life class sessions, I flagged a few topics worthy of further discussion. Don't forget to check out Howard Rheingold's video at http://tinyurl.com/6ymbnr

The Myths of Innovation
http://www.theagitator.net/creativity/how-does-innovation-occur/

Futuring for visual/spatial learners
http://www.slideshare.net/tag/futuring

Futuring and innovation in a virtual world
Metanomics in Second Life
http://www.metanomics.net/pastevent
http://metanomics.net/futuring-and-innovation-center

Futuring and innovation - cancer research towards 2015
http://labs.cancer.org/FIC.asp

Futuring and innovation for non-profits - social media
http://www.fispace.org/