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*

Kick Ball at Air University in Second Life

Today at the Air University Innovations and Integrations Division Lunch and Learn, we played kick ball.

Brad Aldridge provided blue and red hats as props and led today's activity. Visit the activity site to view the introductory videos and see the playing field and activity description.

It's a great way to build skill in 10-20 minutes.

Slide 3 features a Torley Linden video on  how to use the Second Life Viewer 2 to look around using the camera presets. Slide 4 demonstrates the basics of moving and flying with your avatar.

We used a ball with physics enabled and divided into two teams to kick the ball around the obstacles while aiming for the goals. It was such fun and a great way to build motor skills in a virtual world.

Many thanks to the AU Innovations and Integrations team for hosting a fun event!

Electronic Textbooks Anyone?

Want a portable color display that receives inputs from my smart objects and is as thin as cardboard? Watch the end of this video as it demonstrates how thin. From CES 2009:

Game Simulation Tour in Second Life

As part of the Think Balm Innovation Community's Un-Lecture series, game design masterminds Mike McCrocklin and Dr. Andy Stricker in addition to the talented Toni Scribner and I will give a tour of their game simulation kit in Second Life for our LinkedIn Group attendees at 08:00 Pacific time today.

I created a third Animoto video to commemorate today's tour called A Game Simulation Kit in Second Life.

Speakers for the Un-Lecture Series No. 4

1. Charlie Herbek of CSC, http://tinyurl.com/n5a3r7

2. Leon Cych of Learn 4 Life, http://tinyurl.com/kqjo4e

3. Janalee Redmond of IMMERSION: tools.jam, http://www.linkedin.com/in/janred

4. Cynthia Calongne of Colorado Technical University, http://tinyurl.com/5uqgga

For more information about the game simulation at MyBase Zeta, visit my Slideshare presentation entitled Evaluating a Game Simulation Kit in Second Life. It features scenes from the game, rubrics for evaluating it, and a summary of student feedback after play testing the game in March 2009.

See you in Second Life! *waves*

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.

Futuring and Innovation: The next 5,000 days of the Web

Kevin Kelly discusses the next 5,000 days of the Web on Ted Talks

Imagine for a moment that you summarized the Web's development as the first 5,000 days (13.7 years) that led to the Web as we know it today. Travel back in your mind 13-14 years. What were you doing prior to the Web?

In 1986, my family and I ran a BBS for 150 Mac users out of our home. Sending email messages in 1988 across a defense network required long email addresses that identified the machines en route.

What will the next 5,000 days of the Web offer in terms of capability and use? Kevin Kelly compares what we know today to what it will be like in 13.7 years.

The statistics from today's Internet use help us to put our experience into perspective.

The Web 2.0 has provided us with a wealth of free collaboration, broadcasting and social tools. In the future, Kelly's notes that your identity and your ability to find friends across future social sites will be consistent as you travel between tools.

For the Semantic Web, Web 3.0 and the giant global graph to be effective, we need to be open to sharing our data in addition to sharing web pages and our computers. I can see a few barriers to open access when it comes to private and sensitive data.

Moving to a world with the easy retrieval of data will require a culture shift from today's compliance and control to an effective information accountability system that supports the fair use of data. How we feel about web privacy and the protection of data limits what we share today.

Linking things between the Web and the real world, as noted by Kelly's observation about the Internet of Things helps us to experience a seat on the plane or to reserve a table at a restaurant, as I proposed in my Futuring and Innovation course introduction.

I wrote my introduction before watching his video and am gratified to see that his vision of the future aligns with mine. *chuckles*

Will we become co-dependent on the future Web as Kelly suggests? *grins* His summary notes that We are the Web and we will become the machine. What do you think?

He concludes by observing that the result from the next 5,000 days (13.7 years) won't be the Web that we know today, only better. It will offer a smarter, more personalized and ubiquitous experience.

I am ready for it! Are you?

Innovation Week in Second Life

Visit Orange Island to see a schedule of events for their presentation of Innovation Week in Second Life! I was fortunate to attend Monday's fun presentation by the bantering duo Gwynneth Llewellyn and Jade Lily as they looked Back to the Future.

Monday also featured a special Metanomics panel discussion stimulated by the recent interview with Philip Rosedale, Founder of Second Life.

After the Metanomics session, Malburns Writer led a fun tour of innovations and quizzed participants using an audience participation Human Barometer exercise. In response to his questions about innovative products and technologies, the guests stood on signs to Agree, Disagree or be Unsure.

My favorite was the demonstration of Second Life on a Samsung cell phone using gesture-based recognition that reminded me of using the Wii. To look down at the ground in Second Life, the user tilts the cell phone to pan the camera down.

The Sims 2 representation of the future of eCommerce with avatars examining real life products appealed to me, too. While a few items, like shoes, benefit from trying them on before buying, a virtual shopping mall for real life goods is appealing for interacting with products and browsing for gift ideas.

Would I buy from a virtual shopping mall? If the products are interactive, well-organized and delivered within two days, you bet!

Last CS 855 Class Session in Second Life

Tonight's CTU doctoral classes wove a discussion of innovation prediction techniques with an overview of expert systems, risk assessment, and the technological, social, cultural, ethical and legal issues that affect the success of a socio-technical innovation plan.

We reviewed the requirements for the project, including 2-3 models, 2-3 citations, good coverage of the risks and a discussion of one or more of the issues that affect success.

Our Second Life activities focused on testing how to improve voice interaction, using the physics system and setting physical, phantom and temporary properties on our objects. The class worked on a collaboration activity and discuss when to use phantom and the physical settings.

As we turned our attention to the recent activity for Burning Life, the second class session analyzed how to simulate a fire that consumes a sculpture. We rezzed particle and textured fires, blended them, then discussed the alternatives for simulating it.

For the final project, document your ideas on your blogs, then continue it by gathering your entire blog into a document and weaving it into a coherent story. Look at the News forum for additional requirements and feedback throughout the next two weeks.

Class concluded with a discussion of how to find attachments using the Edit menubar and Detach object listing, then searching the inventory. Cheers to the student who discovered and reattached his head!

Next week's classes are informal prototyping sessions where we will build models for our projects and discuss alternatives for simulating behavior. These prototypes include data visualization models and medical diagnostic systems. These sessions are optional and some students are scheduling them at alternative times.

Rezzers, a HUD and Innovation Project Discussions

Our CTU Week 9 class activity explored scenes that render at the touch of an object, a Second Life tour HUD, and how to complete the socio-technical innovation projects.


As the class began, we tested rezzing the Mahjong tiles on this game table in SL. We also removed and rezzed the island's castle within 10 seconds, showing the speed and power of larger virtual world rezzers and visited a variety of context-sensitive scenes that appeared around us.

If you missed class, be sure to visit and pick up your copy of the Touring Second Life folder. Inside are two notecards, one that organizes a set of landmarks and the other features touring information and a copy of the Boracay Hitchhiker's Guide to SL Heads-up Display (HUD) device. The HUD is included both in the folder and on the touring notecard.

While we were wearing the HUD and testing its interface, I quickly demonstrated how to create a similar prototype and link it.

During our socio-technical project discussion, we explored space travel and hovercraft vehicles as project topics. Both topics may require long-range projections beyond our 10-15 years for non-research topics and 15-30 years for topics within our research areas.

For space travel, the ideas ranged from exploration to a trucking system in space. Naturally, that led to a review of the technological, social, cultural, financial and political influences that need to be considered.

Related technologies may also be needed, such as a mid-air traffic control system for hovercraft vehicles. While it is challenging to consider everything that will be needed, discuss the influences and how they may impact success within the socio-technical plan.

The projects need to include 2-3 models that analyze it and address risk. For Second Life prototypes, one is sufficient. Types of models for the projects include physical (in SL), analogue (on paper or in SL), mathematical and schematic.


During the second class session, we explored a variety of prototypes and particle emitters for project ideas from the residency session, including the diagnostic and treatment medical system.

How will it look, how confident will we feel using it and how will we get feedback from it? Aside from technological capability, how secure, safe and ethical will this system be?

While we will not be able to address every contingency, as we explore an uncertain future, keep in mind the influences that support and hinder your innovation plan.

Next week, we will continue our discussion of the socio-technical innovation plan and summarize the course content. If you plan to design a project prototype in Second Life, contact me for design ideas, textures and scripts.

If you want to hold a graduation ceremony in Second Life during the last week of class, let me know.

Think Tanks and Second Life Gestures

In Tuesday's CS 855 Futuring and Innovation classes, we explored the similarities between our think tank activities and the innovations predicted in Technology's Promise. After reflecting on the technique that we used to identify likely innovations, we asked how our results differed from other think tanks?

For Second Life skills, we activated a set of speech gestures and inserted slides into a preloading slide viewer for giving presentations in Second Life.

In both CTU classes, we discussed the podcast assignment, noting that some students used their podcasts to talk about predictions while others evaluated the podcast technology. For using open source or custom-created mp3 content, embed it with a photo into a video and upload it to your blog.

Congratulations go out to the one-month-old birthday of our newest class member and his proud papa (depicted in this photo).

Both class sessions stated that the use of Second Life helped them to connect, share ideas and learn virtual world concepts in a relaxed setting. Students who are graduating this term asked us to hold a virtual graduation in Second Life as many of them will not be attending the next residency. I'll contact Stella Costello from the NMC Virtual Worlds team to see if we can use the NMC cap and gowns. *grins*

Next week, we'll continue our discussions on futuring and innovation, and take our first virtual field trip.

Aug 12th CTU Class Activities - Two sessions

Technology, tools and the risks associated with making predictions were among Tuesday's class discussion topics.


We tested our knowledge about entrepreneurs and demographics in the U.S., then looked at how our textbooks Technology's Promise and The Fortune Sellers organize and discuss trends and innovations.

At the end of each session, we examined a variety of free Second Life technologies. The early class studied aircraft and vehicles, learning to render and use their objects.

One aircraft worked beautifully for demonstration purposes, but did not cooperate for students. In the hour between classes, another student joined us and we studied cooperative movement in a UFO multi-person vehicle (depicted in this photo).


The last class discussed the course concepts, then looked at particle scripts, some devices that use them and the castle rezzer. Students received an additional staff with particles and an animation override on it. Check with Lyr Lobo to get her staff and a UFO vehicle.


For next week, grab your Technology's Promise book by William Halal and we will discuss Chapters 4 and 5. Focus greater attention on pp. 45-52 - Online Societies, pp. 53-56 - Virtual Reality and on the advances and trends listed on pp. 57-62, 66 and 72-78. Note how this content compares to the results from our technological forecasting activity during the residency. We will also weave more Second Life concepts into our activities.

See you in Second Life!

Creativity vs. Innovation in Second Life

CS 855 held two excellent class sessions in Second Life tonight. We borrowed the Take a Position concept from Global Kids and examined some common myths about innovation from the books The Myths of Innovation and Ban the Humorous Bazooka: And Other Roadblocks and Speed Bumps Along the Innovation Highway ("Ban" is available from Books 24x7 at the CTU Library).


Students discussed the concepts and myths associated with creativity and innovation while standing on platforms that represented Myth or Truth. After examining nine myths, the class observed that the definitions tend to blur as a series of small creative efforts contribute to innovation.


Both classes ended with a short building session that covered intermediate building skills. Next week's classes (at the same time and location) continue to weave the class concepts with social media experiences in a virtual world.

Check out the Week 5 News forum post for more information on how your futuring and innovation assignments are being evaluated.

Let me know if you are interested in prototyping your class project or need a Second Life session at another time.

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/