IBM’s vice president Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger, held a press meet-up in Second Life last week while in London – and in the process brought IBM’s “secret” Second Life island out of the shadows.
The purpose of the press meet-up was to discuss why IBM considers Second Life so important. IBM has been researching and experimenting with virtual worlds to understand, among other things, the importance of visual imagery to convey information - and a vast range of other aspects of human interaction with visual and virtual spaces. IBM believes virtual worlds and gaming will have a huge impact on IT, business, society and our personal lives in the very near future.
According to Wladawsky-Berger, the cutting edge of "visualizations" is taking place in MMOGs (massively multiplyer online games) and video games. And IBM is committed to being right there with them for business applications.
The IBM meet-up in SL last week was certainly not a first for IBM. IBM’s Hursley Park Lab has been blogging about Second Life and related projects over at eightbar for a while.
Depending on how closely you follow Second Life “gadgets” you may know that there is an in-world interface with Amazon.com's database, making it possible to search for and purchase books in-world. There is also a very recently released in-world language translator for use with the Second Life chat feature. Both of these have been contributed to Second Life by the research teams at IBM.
Read Dr. Wladawsky-Berger’s blog entry for some fascinating insight into what IBM has been up to and get his take on why Second Life and virtual worlds have IBM’s attention.
Read the article in the UK's Register about IBM's press meet-up as well as for a peak into IBM’s present and future in Second Life that came out of the press meeting.
While I'm on the subject, a couple more IBM notes:
Roo Reynolds, one of the contributors at eightbar (and Second Life IBM researcher) announced today he will be speaking at an upcoming conference in the UK, My So-Called Second Life, sponsored by the UK non-profit New Media Knowledge (If you are in the UK October 24th you might consider attending – the fee of £50-80 is a steal).
Finally, read in the Telegraph about IBM’s Innovation Jam – an electronic brainstorming session open to all 335,000 IBM employees aimed at developing a list of ideas for moving the company forward, and to which IBM has committed $100 million to develop. The process generated 37,000 comments from employees. The online brainstorm was informally combined with IBM's Virtual Universal Community and 3D Jam on the New Media Consortium Second Life campus.
Update: Michel Leblanc has posted some snapshots.
Photo credits: eightbar;
IBM Blog: Adventures in Gaming
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Posted by: Rosie | May 09, 2007 at 03:16 AM
FIRST VIRTUAL STRIKE ON "SECOND LIFE"
The people of Second Life is moving to defend IBM employees rights.
It is announced as the first "virtual strike", the first online demonstration in the famous virtual world of Second Life.
And it will involve in September one of the biggest worldwide corporation: IBM.
The unions are mantaining the silence on the organization of this event, but we believe that the effects will be really impressive.
IBM is a globally integrated company with over 300000 workers worldwide, and since many months is pushing the mass-media with a strong campaign based on the innovation.
The italian IBM employees should have well understood the concept: at the "old-factory-style strike", they are substituting the new "virtual strike".
It seems that the reasons for this first virtual strike are related to the renew of the internal agreement: while IBM is one of the company with major profits, its employees are receiving very few fruits of this big mountain of money.
The internal climate is below all the IT industries (taking advantages for the famous IBM's competitor: HP), and the drop that overflowed the glass is the long and inconclusive negotiation for the internal agreement.
While the workscouncil, supported by the majority of IBM Italy employees, was asking for a small salary increase, IBM responded with the complete suppression of the "productive results benefit", with a loss for a single employee of 1000 euros per year.
For a company that wants to lead the corporate social responsibility, this is really too much.
So this is the reason for the innovative virtual demonstration, the first in absolute in the Second Life world.
The high offices of the company are worried..cause this action will turn on the lights on the project of creation of a global union alliance, that is engaging the unions from over 16 countries worldwide, including the new IT boundary: India.
IBM will succeed to avoid this explosive initiative of its "too much innovative" employees ?
Investors and stakeholders hope so...
Posted by: RSU IBM | Aug 23, 2007 at 10:58 AM
IBM is still innovating after all these years, and they are still making the best laptops and PC's on the market.
Posted by: Tina | Sep 23, 2008 at 12:38 PM